Look everyone makes mistakes.
You’re sitting there on the front of the grid, you’ve got 19 desperates revving their engines behind you, the crowd is roaring anti clog and pro sunburnt country slogans, and you’re about to win 10 races in a row. No pressure. The green light goes on and the bunny’s away and you push your foot flat to the floor. Now the only thing you’ve forgotten to do is to let the handbrake off. Not only does it make the car handle funny, it does slow you down a bit. Early on Mad Max was telling the team from the front of the field that the back of the car was loose. All the experts said it must be the front wing, must be the new engine, must be the autumnal leaves on the track, well that was until the rear right-hand brake actually caught fire and there was more smoke out the rear of the Red Bull than when you throw kero on the BBQ to get it going and Maxie had to come in for the fire brigade treatment and a new car which wasn’t quickly available.
So, Carlos Sainz Vazquez de Castro, 29, of La Piel de Toro land, took the lead for the rest of the procession.
Look, a couple of things here. One, Carl went to a lot of trouble to win. He decided if his Feezer wasn’t fast enough to beat Max he would lose weight. And what quicker way to lose weight than an appendectomy. (I bet he has it in a bottle above his wardrobe.) Carl didn’t worry about possible complications like blocked bowels and injury to nearby organs. No, he just walked out of Saudi General straight into a hyperbaric chamber and an electromagnetic Indiba machine. Non-medical readers will be interested to know that the Indiba was invented by the same person who came up with the Peter Brock, DB Tech Energy Polarizer that came with crystals aligned to the direction of the high energy transmission as standard.
In the Indiba machine, an electromagnetic current is delivered to the body via electrodes at a radiofrequency of 448kHz. At high temperatures there is a hyperactivation effect, which increases both deep blood flow volume and intensity, which may reduce wrinkles and fine lines as well as improve the appearance of cellulite. No wonder Carl looked so good in Melbourne. Then again, we are reliably informed he did try the healing properties of the Yarra (the Ganges of the south) and will be selling bottled Holy Yarra water from his website (carlossainz.es) in the same manner as you can buy Gangajal Holy Ganga Water from Devprayag, where river Bhagirathi, river Alaknanda and Gupt Saraswati meet to form Gangaji from Amazon for $12.29.
To all those commentators who said bye bye Max and Red Bull, just remember, despite leaving the hand brake on, Max won the start and led till too much braking was barely enough and he slowed to a stop. The one to question is Red Bull’s number two driver, Sergio Perez, who came in fifth, one minute behind. The one that Ferrari and every other team will be thinking about is Ollie Bearman, 18, son of David Bearman who started his own insurance company aged 18, was a serious racer himself and, helpfully, is quite rich. Sensibly, Ollie went against Mum’s advice and at age 16, left school and joined the Ferrari Racing Academy. Ollie’s performance in Jeddah started a new train of thought for the teams. Get young drivers who are super quick, desperate for a drive and, above all, are cheap.
Things are really crook at Mercedes. Both the Hamster and Georgie Russell failed to finish the race around the lake. Lou’s engine carked it on lap 17 and Georgie rolled his car near the finish. After the race, team boss, Toto Wolff said: “I don’t think we’re missing something, it is just a complication of what’s happening with the car that we can’t see. And, it’s like an on-off switch.” There’s no doubt Hamo’s Merc is almost impossible to drive, so let’s hope Toto finds the on-off switch soon.
Now some readers (well one) have written in saying Red Bull is a private company, why should they be transparent? Well, all the teams share in taxpayers’ money. So, the Victorian government investment is around $100m a year. Governments around the world generally pay between $50m and $75m to host the F1. And all the team share publicly funded facilities.
Writing in The Klaxon, social critic Dr Sarah Russell takes the transparency gun at the statutory authority responsible for staging the F1, the Australian Grand Prix Corp. “Unlike Victoria’s other major events, including the AFL grand final, the Melbourne Cup, the Australian Open tennis, the Boxing Day Test and Taylor Swift concerts that scan all tickets so they can publish exact figures, the Australian Grand Prix Corporation refuses to release precise crowd figures. They claim scanning all tickets poses a “national security risk”. What other event adds 67,500 “credentialed” persons (like staff, drivers, teams etc) and 35,000 freebies (many for schoolchildren who don’t attend) and then claims “record” attendances?
Talking of Monte Carlo (which pays only $20m to host the F1), get there early in May to buy the yellow 1981 Porsche 917 K-81 for a tad over $5m from RM Sotheby. Arguably the greatest of all Porsche sport prototypes, the final 917 built, and the last of the model to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it received the Special Jury Prize at the Le Mans Heritage Club Concours at the 2014 Le Mans Classic.
And sorry readers, next week definitely will be the “why you shouldn’t buy a Porsche, Audi issues, unintentional acceleration and more electric car dirt” edition.
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