The growing excitement at dotdotdotcomma headquarters over the start of the new Formula One season has been tempered somewhat by news that Jacques F*cking Villeneuve1 will be polluting the BBC Radio 5 Live commentary box throughout the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
Having amusingly failed to find to race seat for the new season, Villeneuve is disappointingly taking Anthony Davidson's seat next to David "Crofty" Croft, to provide what is laughingly referred to in the BBC's press release as "expert analysis".
Former UndaHONDA
 Honda's 2007 'Earth Car' in geo-stationary orbit above Bracknell. Initially just a renamed version of BAR, Honda set about forging closer links between Japan and Brackley, something that for some reason no-one had ever attempted before. The team has enormous resources and is keen to build on its heritage of dabbling on F1 in the 1960s and the success it enjoyed as an engine supplier in the eighties and nineties. It's safe to say that there's still a way to go. The striking 2007 "Earth car", a laudable attempt to stimulate debate, featured a livery that was just an image of the Earth in space but sadly the car handled as if it weighed about the same and Jenson Button's mechanics taped a cigarette lighter inside his cockpit for the last race of the season, in the hope that he'd burn the damned thing at the end of the race.
The news has caused panic amongst the dotdotdotcomma editorial team, who are rather fond of the Croft/Davidson double act. Urgent clarification has been sought concerning exactly how many more events little Anthony is planning to miss and exactly whom the BBC has seen fit to pencil in as replacements.
"It's almost enough to make you start listening to Jonathan Legard again," said an obviously shaken Mathias Olaf Uncertain, as he self-administered several shots of "something gold and peaty" for the shock.
1"Jacques F*cking Villeneuve" (© Sniff Petrol) is one of a series of F1 drivers who now don't sound right without their sweary middle names, including Felipe Sh*tting MassaMASSA, FELIPE
 The view from Felipe Massa's car for most of the 2008 British Grand Prix. Pretty much since his F1 debut with Sauber in 2002, Felipe Massa has been doing his best to shake off his reputation as a driver who is fast but wild, while for roughly the same period, dotdotdotcomma has been doing its best to reinforce that reputation. It's not that we harbour any particular dislike of the chap but Massa is no more capable of changing his underlying nature than he is of, oh, I don't know, not spinning five times in the wet at Silverstone in 2008. During the duller parts of a Formula One season, it's nice to have someone a bit mad in the field for the occasional moments of insanity they provide and ever since Takuma Sato left the sport, Massa is the best we have. That said, Massa has been guilty at times of Ferrarigance, which is a word we've just made up for the special brand of arrogance only a fully brainwashed Ferrari team member can display. His ridiculous protestations that Fernando Alonso had impeded him during qualifying at Monza in 2006 readily spring to mind, as does his failure to acknowledge that his spin at Fuji in 2008 had been caused when he turned in on Sebatien Bourdais. On both occasions, of course, the stewards favoured the bloke in red. In any case, F1 would probably be less of a spectacle without loonies like Massa and "fast but wild" is not a bad epithet to have. It could be a lot worse. Just look at what we've called Michael Schumacher or Jacques Villeneuve.
 Nelsinho Piquet, a man who routinely walks further than he drives during a race weekend. Nelson Angelo Piquet has six names, although we've picked his three best known ones. He is commonly known as Nelson Piquet Junior and also as Nelsinho Piquet, which he has asked people not to use any more. Nelsinho is the son of Nelson Piquet, who claimed three world championships and made no friends along the way. His father's money meant that he could race for his own team all the way up to GP2, after which things get a bit expensive even for multi-millionaires. His last championship was in 2004 when he won the British F3 title, although the perenially under-funded and criminally under-rated Ulsterman Adam Carroll heroically took the fight to the last event at Brands Hatch, about which we could go on but probably shouldn't. Little Nelson competed in GP2 and A1GP, before curiously being picked up by the Renault F1 équipe, first as a test driver and subsequently as a racer, where his disappointing form was about what many of the more astute paddock observers had been expecting. The perception of him as a sulky rich kid was given further weight when, after being sacked by Renault part way through 2009, he went running to the FIA with allegations of race-fixing, claiming that some bigger boys had forced him to crash deliberately at Singapore in 2008, in order to put team-mate Fernando Alonso on exactly the right strategy to claim the win. The revelation was indeed shocking. We'd all got so used to seeing Piquet crash that believing he'd done so on purpose was difficult to reconcile. The fall-out saw Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds lose their jobs and, if there's any justice, brought an end to Nelsinho's career in the top flight.
 Michael expresses his remorse at having dangerously forced a rival off the track. Again. When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate. We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe. His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently. The wanker. |
