With one race late, the scorecards on the Sportellate Formula 1 Grand Prix are back.
Rating 10: Red Bull developers who managed to get Mario Kart to run on F1 wheels
It’s incredibly difficult to build a Formula 1 team and make it extremely competitive, it’s mindlessly complicated to make it dominant, it’s self-defeating to get to the point where you have to develop toys for the drivers’ steering wheel or they’ll fall asleep. The domain is constantly temporal and three-dimensional and all the competitors practically tell each other. Up to Imola there won’t be any kind of competition other than the purely autocratic one for whoever gives way first between the driver and his car. A tip for Red Bull: also give the spectators the games because we are facing one of the most soporific Championships ever.
Grade 9: the royal house of Asturias together with the Canadian one who throws checks with a slingshot
The big jaw from Asturias said a few years ago that he would retire from F1 in reality he went to some oriental place where they do those mystical things and I practically didn’t quite understand if he had a Dorian Gray portrait done or like Pirates of the Caribbean not I know well I ask for help from home thanks.
Alonso besides being incredibly rejuvenated he’s also boh faster than ever. Incomprehensible. Shout out to Stroll Sr. who finally, by dint of paying rents with revisable results, begins to glimpse the + sign on the scale, even shows off and orders his working-class son to leave the car with the 4 arrows in the middle of the track to play the safety card car: loose cannon mode is complete. The story of the post-race penalty… let’s go to “Score 1”.
Grade 8: IVAN CAPELLI!
Sky’s wall is what it is, Vanzini come on it’s fine you know, BUT IVAN CAPELLI WHAT A BUY! Maybe we can hope to find some live matches as well? Who knows, for the moment some Free Practice and post-match study, but for those who grew up in the 90s, RAI is a return that smacks of nostalgia. If there were even a sport to support the well-assorted study of excellent personalities then you know how nice it would be to watch Formula 1.
Grade 7: OTMAR SZAFNAUER PASSION CONSONANTS
According to ancient Middle Eastern legends, “Otmar Szafnauer” is the title of a curse with a sports background which, if pronounced correctly, transforms direct competitors into shitboxes with square wheels. At the time it was used in chariot races, nowadays it is used to make a competitor stable fail. For those who watched Drive to Survive, surely 2 laughs will be had in front of Brown-Szafnauer, laughter that will grow fatter and fatter in the face of the current results of the incredible Piastri and his McLaren. Gasly and Ocon are two time bombs ready to be triggered but the French car marches and puts its competitors behind. Objective fifth place quietbut knowing Ferrari I wouldn’t be ashamed to dream.
Rating 6: the blue English phoenix
The Williams it’s that historic house that unfortunately ended up in (pass me the metaphor) sporting ashes. Williams this year, after a couple of quite adventurous and disordered years, seems to have risen again and offers glimpses of sporting commitment. Finally, the role of buffer is intended for McLaren, that the sludge of the Circus can finally be a distant memory?
Rating 5: Guenther who is perhaps a little tried by somersaults
It’s hard not to love Steiner, hard not to love his constant somersaults to keep a complicated team alive, hard not to empathize with his pissed off when faced with decidedly unprofessional moments from his drivers.
This year he played a particular card by bringing together two motivated, surly riders with very, very little to lose and just as little to prove. Watch out for the white hair Guenther because the situation looks hot, the battle for tenth place with Tsunoda was more complicated than expected with a car that is objectively more performing than the Alpha Tauri, not a great sign already in the second round of the Championship.
Rating 4: Zak Brown
Reconnecting to vote 7, McLaren seems to have completed its involutionary process in free fall towards the worst management of the Circus for many years now. Reckless and wrong investments, very elaborate marketing in the face of a very slow machine, even the public mockery of the French neighbors. It is very, very, VERY bad and Zak Brown’s team shows no glimmer of idea to grow over time.
Rating 3: the BOSS CAM
Every year the Circus has to amaze us with some fireworks. In the constant shame of the international director who, in the face of important battles, always enjoys showing decidedly unattractive moments, this year we have the amazing BOSS CAM.
It’s not Hugo Boss’s personal camera, it’s just a piece of rubbish aimed at the poor unfortunate team principal on duty who is called in the middle of the race. Here in the face of these things I become a Beyblade with the Tourette: what is the goal, to improve the entertainment of sport? But what do you think, if to improve the much vaunted entertainment, you behave decently and give us back a competitive sport, instead of a camera aimed at a poor Christ who would most likely like to throw decidedly inelegant phrases live, but unfortunately yes finds himself forced to answer calmly the questions DEL CAPPER – I hold back – of journalists who, poor things too, faced with the flatness of sport they have to invent questions precisely DEL CAPPER to try to get to the end of the race?
Rating 2: now I’ve run out of sarcastic epithets
Unfortunately, at dawn in Bahrain, I ruled: Leclerc wins the World Cup. Now unfortunately for fairness I will continue to repeat it until the end. I had already planned a departure mehI had already taken into account that Vasseur would have transformed the wall into a trench of “either with me or against me”, I had also taken into account that Red Bull would have been unplayable at the start of the Championship, but like this…
Vasseur and company demonstrate that they have no track to follow, neither from a technical point of view nor from a managerial one, and if I really hear repeating even one more time that they are seriously thinking of giving up the championship already at the second race to concentrate on development next season, I’m officially launching a petition to turn Maranello into a potato field. Binotto was a technician, we said it over and over again to exhaustion and we will say it and we will repeat it until we really run out of breath, in fact the car was there. How is it possible that the car has suddenly become a 2-speed cart (and the second speed is reverse)? Leclerc squeezes himself to cry blood in qualifying despite the 10 positions for the incredible penalty due to the Power Unit, the stars seemed to promise a race at least in competition for fourth place, instead yet another cosmic nothing. Sergeant Vasseur (because I don’t know about you, but to me he really conveys the vibes of one of those soldiers with a somewhat obscure past) seems to have entered the stables with his feet a little too square. I approve, of course, if heads are knocked out by the Binotto management (Mekies and Rueda above all, what questions), but then results must follow. And if they don’t follow results, they DEFINITELY shouldn’t follow a process of involution with respect to the starting point. Because then you start digging into a bottomless pit.
A little note: at the first comment “Do you see that BiNoTtO wasn’t the proBlEmA????” I respond with flames and rocket launchers. Binotto wasn’t the problem, but Binotto was inadequate for the position he held, denying it means not following Formula 1. The problem is the Ferrari company as a whole which – to date – is inadequate to compete at high levels in this sport, we know that, but this doesn’t justify the unforgivable mistakes made by the former Team Principal and his low wall during their management.
Grade 1: International Red Nose Federation
Practically Let’s start with last year’s penalty at Red Bull for the budget cap, which as we are all seeing these days has actually penalized and put the development of the Austrian team in serious difficulty. We go through the Safety Car call for a car parked quietly with the handbrake on, inside the blue lines, off the track and if you look closely there was also the parking meter ticket displayed clearly for the Arab police.
We arrive at penalty imposed on Alonso. But it was later removed. But no, in the end they gave it to him. Eh but no look here is the evidence that you don’t have to give us the penalty. And then at 11 in the evening, no more penalties. So, ok that Mercedes and Toto the Devil’s Advocate cling to everything, but the FIA is really incapable of keeping the sporting ranks of a Formula 1 Championship. It is urgent to find a steady pulse and control of the races.