Fourth place at the Japanese Grand Prix earned Fernando AlongtimesincehislastchampionshipALONSO, FERNANDO
Fernando always keeps abreast of the latest technical developments. Alonso's full name is Fernando Alonso Diaz and few people realise that he is the half-brother of Cameron Diaz, the well-known jizz-haired actress. His success in Formula One has led to a huge growth of interest in the sport in his home country of Spain, where not so long ago you could easily pick up cheap tickets to the Grand Prix and pretty much have your pick of seats, so thanks for that, Fernando. Like many of the sport's stars, Alonso began his F1 career with Minardi and he made a splash at his first race, where he out-qualified his team-mate by over two and a half seconds. That margin is rendered slightly less impressive when you learn that his team-mate was Tarso Marques who, as racing drivers go, has a lovely personality. Fernando was soon snapped up by Renault, where he spent a year testing before being promoted to a race seat. He became the then youngest world champion in 2005 and the youngest double champion in 2006. There followed an abbreviated tenure at McLaren which failed to yield a third title, largely because he proved unable to beat a rookie, after which he was welcomed back to the Renault team, where he is expected to wait grumpily until a Ferrari seat becomes available. Alonso is an exceptionally talented and complete racing driver but he also has a reckless - often self-destructive - streak and an eccentrically unique take on what it means to be a team-player, traits which have doubtless closed a number of F1 doors to him. In 2005 he was appointed one of UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassadors, which may explain why he never has any left for anyone else. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper the record for the greatest number of world championship points amassed by a Formula 1 driver, with 1571, annihilating Michael Who?macherSCHUMACHER, MICHAEL
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. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper's tally of 1566. Of course, it would be churlish of us not to recognise the fact that Alonso's record-breaking pointage does rather owe most of its incredible size to the massive hoik in points awarded since 2010, but still..., nyah-nyah-na-nyaah-nyaah Schumi - LOSER!
Some clever bastard on AlanWhickerpedia has put together the career points standings for drivers as if they had been using the post-2010 system all along, which, rather distressingly, suggests that Who?Me?SCHUMACHER, MICHAEL
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. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper would have cheated and team-ordered his way to 3890 world championship points, leaving Alongtimesincehislastchampionship with another 476 points (or nineteen and one-twenty-fifth race wins) of catching up to do. As with any information contained in that wholly remarkable book, these statistics are unverified as yet, but we at dotdotdotcomma will get our anally-retentive team of statisticians right on it, as soon as we can get them out from up their own arses.
Increasingly likely contender to usurp Who?macher's now legendary position in motorsport in oh so many ways, Sebastardan VettelVETTEL, SEBASTIAN
Sebastian draws attention to the plight of 'slanty-finger syndrome' sufferers whenever he gets the opportunity. Sebastian Vettel holds pretty much all the "youngest ever" F1 records going and several that hadn't even been thought of before he turned up in his pushchair as Sauber's Friday driver in 2006. At the time of his F1 race debut in 2007, he hadn't actually won a title since taking the 2004 German Formula BMW Championship - not exactly a blue riband championship - and he had twice failed to win the F3 Euroseries, being pipped to the title at his second attempt by team-mate Paul di Resta, a man almost as dull out of the cockpit as he is scintillating in it. Vettel started as he meant to go on, however, setting a record just six seconds into his F1 career by speeding in the pit lane as soon as he left the garage and chalking up comfortably the shortest time ever between making your debut as an F1 racing driver and incurring a penalty. He's been setting records on a seemingly daily basis ever since and marks each one by shouting, "That's what I'm talking about!", although he usually hasn't ever mentioned it before. Early in his F1 career he was often referred to as "the new Schumacher" because he (a) comes from Germany, and (2) began racing at the Kerpen karting track, although he has conspicuously failed to live up to the nickname by not repeatedly driving his rivals off the track, parking his car in the middle of the track during qualifying in Monaco or being disqualified from a whole season for trying to kill Jacques Villeneuve, however justified that may have seemed at the time. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Vettel continually changes his helmet design, which should make it more difficult to identify him during a race, although oddly enough it has probably made it easier: if there's a driver whose helmet you don't recognise, the chances are Sebastian Vettel is wearing it and if you can't be bothered to learn helmet designs, you can recognise Vettel because he'll be the bloke leading the race. A life-long sufferer of slanty-finger syndrome ( digitalis diagonalis), Sebastian is unable to point his index fingers straight up. His own condition is the "30-degree" strain, for which there is currently no cure; we can only hope that he simply stops qualifying in pole position and winning races, so that he will no longer be forced to display his disability in public and we can all stop laughing at him when he does. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper's disappointingly inevitable victory in Japan (we were rooting for Mark CobberWEBBER, MARK
Mark Webber's trademark air of weary resignation, which he honed during years in sub-standard Minardi, Jaguar, Williams and Red Bull shitboxes. Mark Webber is an Australian racing driver and a bloody good one too, mate, although ever since an aerodynamic fault led to his Mercedes somersaulting twice on the Mulsanne straight during practice for the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours, he has put forward a convincing case for being Johnny Herbert's successor as the unluckiest man in F1 or, indeed, sportscars. He has lost more F1 podium finishes through no fault of his own than he has any right to and more than once he has been in a position to win a race that has then been snatched away from him. Notable amongst these occasions was the drenched 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, when his own nearly-team-mate Sebastian Vettel ran into the back of him behind the safety car just as it looked as if the second-placed Webber had the beating of eventual winner Lewis Hamilton. Strewth! In fact, the Japanese race in 2007 turned out to be really quite eventful for Mark, who had food poisoning for the race and threw up inside his helmet during the first safety car period. Yuk. Given his luck, it is perhaps not surprising that Mark is also twice a winner of the "Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'F*ck' In A Live ITV Broadcast" award 1. 1"What was Sato doing, for f*ck's sake?", Turkey 2005 and "Kids with not enough experience to do a good job that they f*ck it all up", Japan 2007 TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper, who really deserved it, frankly, bless 'im) takes him to within 2 race wins of equalling (and hence beating, thanks to the unique way in which dotdotdotcomma's F1 records are calculated) Who?macher's record of 7 wins in a row that he has held since Hungary in 2004. To be fair, Who?Me?'s record equalled (and hence beat, etc etc) Nalberto NASCARi's 7 race wins from way back in 1953, when men were real mean, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were Zsolt Baumgartner.
Vettel's bigness in Japan also means that, if he wins all the remaining races of the season, he could equal (and hence beat, yada yada yada) Who?macher's record of 13 race wins in a season.
Watch this space (or even this one) for more updates as soon as we get them.*
* Subject to dotdotdotcomma's usual terms and conditions regarding the flexible nature of time.
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