Formula One - Times Online - WBLG

Silverstone - (not) so near yet so far

Just a quick note on Silverstone. I am sitting in the dry press room overlooking the pit straight(listening to Nightmares on Wax)  and I can see one of the things Bernie does not like about this place - thousands of people getting soaked sitting in the main grandstand which is open to the skies. (The GP2 boys are having a go just now, with spins and smashes a-plenty on a very slippery surface).

However on the good side, I have to report that my journey into the track today was almost without hold-ups. Coming from the south on the A43, which links the M40 with Northampton, the traffic flow arrangements which turn the two lanes on both sides into one giant access road, worked superbly well. I made it to the car park(grass) at about 8.30am which must be around peak time - all the more impressive.

If only the BRDC had managed to replicate the improvements in the roads(which were paid for by the government) with similar work around the track to stands and facilities, then they would not be staring down the barrel of Donington as they are now. The BRDC has fiddled and fiddled and has lost the goose that lays its golden eggs.

Having said all of the above, there is a strong element of scepticism in the paddock this morning that the switch to Donington will actually happen. Getting it ready in time looks a very long shot. Can they really do it all by 2010 or will Silverstone have to step back into the breach as a(permanent/semi-permanent) fall-back measure?

It's Tuesday, it must be Amsterdam

It's exhausting enough just following Lewis around in cars, boats and planes in one country after another, let alone being Lewis himself. Today it was Tuesday so we were in Amsterdam where Lewis was unveiled as the new sporting ambassador by the clothing and footwear company Reebok.

These companies love to climb on board a success story and I am sure they mean well with people like Lewis. But it is a bit much watching and listening to them telling us how important they suddenly are to a young man who got to where he is today without any help from Reebok.

In Amsterdam it was a beautiful day and we got the odd glimpse of a canal and a windmill on our way to the launch venue which was staged in a dreary convention centre with no views - we could have been in Bombay. Anyway Reebok stunned us all briefly by first introducing a talking, walking, apparently living Lewis which turned out to be a hologram. We discovered that was the case only when the real Lewis walked onto the stage and stood beside it. I must admit it was very effective.

There then followed a long scripted interview of Lewis with a presenter on stage and then some questions from the floor. The bottom line here is as follows: Reebok are paying him £10 million over five years and require him to work for them for 10 days each year. Together with his McLaren earnings, this deal increases his take-home pay over the next five years to just under £90 million and probably quite a bit more.

Lewis is a very busy young man. This deal makes him busier and richer. Does he really need this extra money? One wonders what the real price he is going to pay for earning it is going to be.

Ooh Ahh, Felipe spins and "Pepe" is expecting...

First practice was pretty uneventful apart from a couple of session-shortening errors from Felipe who spun twice and was restricted to just nine laps as a result of flat-spotting his tyres. The Ferraris look dominent and were half a second up on the McLarens, with Kimi leading the way from Felipe and then Lewis third.

At McLaren there does not seem to be too much concern but I think it is fair to say the paddock is generally expecting a Ferrari masterclass this weekend with Lewis and Heikki left to fight over third place. The same pattern may well hold for Turkey, but let's see...but we should always remember that practice can be very misleading.                   

Anyway...

I was going to tell you a little story about Fernando. But I have to be careful obviously. One slip of the keyboard, one ill-judged adjective(God forbid), one slight misrepresentation of the FACTS, one word lost in translation, or worst of all, another post about Fernando(which is not allowed...)

Anyway I like this enough to try and re-create it for you. It was only a small moment but it illustrates Fernando's sense of humour which many of his critics are not aware of(careful, the word critic...oooh, arrgh...I think I'll risk it). (But what about the phrase "sense of humour" and highlighting that? It could be misconstrued as me not taking Fernando seriously...again I'm prepared to take this challenge on board.)

So there we are in Sepang(I'm not trying to remind anyone of Fernando's performance there; it's just that that is where this little cameo took place. I suppose I could move the setting to Albert Park where Fernando was better, but then that would be playing fast and loose with the FACTS). It was incredibly hot as you all recall and, as I walked down the paddock, I noticed Fernando emerge from the Renault motorhome.(He looked to be heading in the direction of Ferrari...no, that is a joke...or was it McLaren...) (That was a joke - I'll find the italic key for that). (BTW, I wasn't looking for Fernando or anything, I just happened to notice him, that's all).

So he comes out of the Renault motorhome dressed in his driving suit and starts walking across the paddock to the Renault garage. Fernando looked relaxed, cool, happy, unconcerned about life and had that certain charisma which we have come to recognise as Fernando's style(I think that bit's OK but I may have to correct it - or lie awake at night worrying about it more likely).

Anyway, Fernando's walking and minding his own business as drivers often try to do. In their minds you guess they are thinking "I'll just try and get across here without being stopped or hassled"(now that's not a comment about Fernando in particular but Formula One drivers in general. I fully recognise etc that Fernando is one of the most generous with his time). So he is making his way towards the garage and, as he does so, a TV crew - that would be a camera man and a sound man attached by a cable - spot him and start walking very fast towards him. Now quite a few of us watched as the distance Fernando had to travel to the open door to the Renault garage decreased and the speed that the TV crew were travelling increased. These boys were determined(I'm not saying that Fernando isn't determined. But maybe on this occasion, they were more determined than he was - or so we thought).

Anyway, I hope you are still with me(and not just those trying to catch me out). It became apparent that, at their relative speeds, Fernando, who has excellent reactions(I mean as a driver in terms of time-on-distance and that sort of thing) realised that they were going to "get" him before he made it to the door. And this was the funny bit which made quite a few people laugh out loud who saw it(including me). (BTW we were not laughing at Fernando as it were, but with him. I think I should point that out. You know the sort of thing, he - Fernando - made us laugh in a fairly conventional way).

If any of you remember Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks", you will be able to visualise what the Asturian hero(I'm not in any way misrepresenting him) did next. Instead of breaking into a run, he dramatically dropped his centre of gravity, extended his stride so that he was covering about double his normal distance, kept his focus dead ahead, increased his pace and disappeared. All he needed was a bowler hat and an umbrella and he would have been John Cleese.(I'm not lampooning Fernando by comparing him to John Cleese. In fact I would say that is an accolade).

The nice bit about this little story(at the risk of patronising a man who is, after all, a double world champion) is that I'm pretty sure that having escaped so to speak, Fernando then stopped inside the garage, turned, and gave a short interview or whatever it was to the crew who had chased him.

I think that's it. I hope I haven't offended anyone or even annoyed anyone. And I apologise for writing about Fernando. I'll stop doing this I promise. Now, where is my notebook with that anecdote about Takuma...