28/03/2004
FEATURE BY MARGEIT & CROMPTON
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It's been a good week here at the Alternative Championship Headquarters (ACHQ). We've rather enjoyed basking in the glory of getting it right, not least of all because getting it right is not exactly something we're renowned for. Sure we occasionally luck-in a guess of the kind that makes real journalists wonder if we don't actually have some kind of inside line. But in the main, our runs of getting it right tend to peter out after about one in a row.
So what is it we're gloating about? Our mildly revised format for the 2004 Melbourne GP of course! The reaction was spectacularly underwhelming. Not one single phone call or e-mail by way of reaction. And let's face it; the only mail we get is hate mail. Ergo, no hate mail equates to complete consumer satisfaction. So whomever that guy is who still bothers to read us, thanks for not objecting.
Speaking of getting it right, we thought it might be fun to look at F1 in precisely that simplistic, mono-dimensional way. No grey areas, no mitigations, no wily Maximilian or Berniesque rhetoric, just plain old right, wrong and the getting of "it" thereof.
Now thinking persons worth their sodium chloride are probably, at this very moment, crowing that the concept of right and wrong is endemically subjective and can never be absolute. This is of course absolutely correct. So to those people we say: why is somebody as clever as you reading our work? And anyway, if you don't like it, go write your own nefariously shallow F1 column.
Drivers
10 points - Mark Webber: And we, unlike the entire bandwagon-vaulting Australian media who've never shown a jot of interest in F1 until last Saturday, aren't beside our collective selves regarding Mark's impressive grid position either. Mark - when bailed up by Louise Goodman after his retirement - listed the litany of car-difficulties he'd suffered during the afternoon. THEN, he closed by saying that it was his job to adapt to the car's problems so it was his fault that he spun out! Now that, loyal readers, is getting it right.
ACHQ Editorial note - include for publication: Max, Bernie, Ron and just about everybody else in Formula One for that matter. Suggest you acquire a copy of the Oxford Concise. In it you will find reference to the word "honesty". Please review this text in order to appreciate the importance of the previous sentiments - Rob and Crompo
6 Points - Felipe Massa: The Sauber is not a delightful racing car of the kind that would make Sir Stirling liltingly and wistfully recall it as "a joy to drive". It is vile, skittish, erratic and scary. Despite this, the oft-slighted-but-deeply-appreciated-by-us Felipe, brow-beat and manhandled the contemptible contraption home in the points. In so doing, he got it right.
4 Points - Jenson Button: Being more famous as the love-interest of that girl from the talent show does not constitute getting it right. For that matter, falling off the road at the final turn of the final lap in a Malaysian GP when you looked set to cop your first podium smacks of not getting it right either - but that's history isn't it? Genuinely crafting and grafting your way onto the podium for the first time however, is very definitely getting it right.
3 Points - Fernando Alonso: We laboured over this one. Which is to say, we took more than thirty seconds to agree. Yes, he spun, thereby likely transforming a very real chance of a front row place on the grid for a view of Minardi and Jordan rear wings. Forgivable by us only because in a matter of laps, he'd turned that lacking grid position into eighth place. Perhaps not a case of getting it entirely right so much as a case of getting it right enough.
2 Points - Michael Schumacher: It comes down to this. Failing to afford Michael a decent score when he has so clearly asserted his dominance again, inevitably results in a deluge of hate mail from whichever splinter-faction of the red-face-painters it is who are sufficiently skilled as to be able to send nasty e-mails. We have enjoyed our week free of such vitriol. In affording a positive score to the man who's domination threatens to turn yet another championship into a cakewalk, we are getting it right.
1 Point - Takuma Sato: We don't care what the doubters say. Taku is fast and Taku is dripping with potential. Besides, he entertains us and in an era when we are touched by a pang of guilt by simply using the word "entertains" in the same sentence as "Formula One", that is very much getting it right.
-1 Point - Juan Pablo Montoya: Nope, sorry, it just has to be said. Juancho spent that entire race teetering on the edge of making a battle royale of it. And was there a battle royale? No there was most certainly not! Preventing us from saying "hang it, let's hit the record button on the VCR and go to the pub early 'cos nothing's gonna come of this bore-fest", is certainly getting it wrong.
-2 Point - Olivier Panis: Let us ignore for the moment whether or not we harbour any scepticism concerning the bovine excreta Toyota are trotting out about a communications problem resulting in Olivier's needless trip down the pitlane. That said, even we would advise Olivier against the rather unmistakable gesture he visited on his masters as he passed their coven on the pit wall. Not that we are suggesting it is good to repress one's feelings, nor are we keen to extol the lacking virtues of deceit. Simply put, offensive gestures to one's masters are universally regarded as a fast track to unemployment. In plain language, getting it wrong.
-3 Points - David Coulthard: As if we even have to justify it any more? As if we can even be bothered inventing a justification. On the whole and with due respect to his entirely decent parents, to be David Coulthard is to be getting it entirely and utterly and unmistakeably wrong.
-4 Points - Ralf Schumacher: The well-known truism runs that "boys will be boys". Another popular truism is that boys play rough. A further, though infinitely-less-well-known truism (owing to the fact that it's not really a truism because we just made it up), runs that when a boy called Mark plays rough with a boy called Ralf and the boy called Ralf nastily nerfs the boy called Mark from behind and causes him a puncture, the boy called Ralf is getting it wrong.
-6 Points - Zsolt Baumgartner: Qualifying over half a second behind your team-mate, a driver of whom we are not entirely convinced in any case, probably amounts to getting it wrong. Finishing the race a lap adrift of the very same team-mate, almost certainly amounts to getting it wrong. Wanting to be an F1 driver and having a big bag of money and yet winding up at Minardi, removes all doubt with regard to getting it wrong.
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-10 Points Kimi - Raikonnen: We doubt there can be a more hospitable, demure, courteous people than the Malaysians. Immediately after his second retirement in two races, Kimi needlessly and malevolently shoved a member of this gentile race for no greater reason than the man was trying to do his job. Such behaviour is beyond naughty. It is getting it unforgivably wrong!
ACHQ Editorial note - include for publication: Kimi, Had you had you saved your pent-up frustrations until you'd made it back to the pits and purveyed the same thuggery upon Ron or Norbert, you'd have gone away from this round of the AC with the top score - Rob and Crompo.
Constructors
10 Points - WilliamsF1: Williams spent most of the Melbourne GP watching Alonso's Renault disappear into the middle distance. There is a line of thinking that runs if Alonso hadn't gaffed in qualifying, Malaysia might well have been a case of de-ja-vu of Melbourne. Moreover, he finished ahead of that other guy who drives for Ferrari. It would therefore be fair to opine that somewhere in the last fortnight, WilliamsF1 have gotten something right.
6 Points - BAR: The refusal of team principal, Dave Richards, to embrace a hairstyle befitting his age and state of follicular challenge, should have assured this team mention in the "getting it wrong" end of the table. Mercifully for Dave and his errant hairdresser, Jenson drove a race truly befitting the love-interest of a TV-talent-quest-winner and then some. Of course doubters will be proudly voicing their belief that that it's all down to a major step forward by Honda. Doubters should be advised that even if this is the case, credit must be given for maintaining a relationship with said engine-supplier. Whatever the case, BAR's sparsely-populated though magnificently-located trophy cabinet now has a little something extra to distract the viewers from the empty shelves. This must be construed as getting it right.
4 Points - Ferrari: For no other reason than we have this hang-up about not dolling out at least a few positive scores for the constructors after each GP, we're grudgingly giving this score to the team who, in spite of the utterings of the many ill-informed doom-sayers, were not found lacking in the heat of Malaysia. And so we acknowledge that making the many ill-informed doom-sayers look exactly as ill-informed as they indeed are, amounts to getting it right.
-1 Points - Renault: Over the last eighteen months, Renault have vaulted from the rest, to best of the rest, to mixing it with the not-the-rest. Not a bad effort by anyone's standards. Maybe this has something to do with Flavio imbuing his team with the same, inexplicable magic that permits an aging Italian to freely consort with super-dooper models? Regardless of which, the team opted to long-fill Fernando on Sunday in an ill-judged attempt to improve his race. Like Crompo's attempts to ingratiate himself to some grid girls (who turned out to be grid boys in any case) history records that this was a clear case of getting it wrong.
-2 Points - Minardi: Mark Webber is Australian and we've learned to love him. So is Paul Stoddart and yet we've been increasingly resisting the urge to love him. Clearly, Paul is getting it wrong.
-3 Points - Jaguar: OK, so maybe Mark Webber's grid position was an anomaly. Maybe it was a weirdo strategy intended more to please Ford management than harvest championship points. Thing is, who's to know? Because the reality is that all that glory went out the window in about a nanosecond as Webber was swamped off the line by, well, just about the entire field and for that matter, his team-mate fared equally poorly off the start line. This is in all likelihood, the definitive version of a team getting it wrong.
-4 Points - Jordan: Time was when this team were seriously knocking on the door. Time was, they were the archetypal team-next-in-line. In the event that the big guns failed, there was Jordan, justly poised to capitalise and snatch some glory. What a distant echo that all seems now. We assume Jordan were in Malaysia because their name appears on the results sheet, albeit very far down. For a team once poised to vault into the A-league to slump into the realms of "grid-filler" is most definitely to get it wrong. Note to insanely passionate Dutch fans, this still does not warrant the sort of things you've been sending to Jordan.
-6 Points - McLaren: As tempting as it may be to deride this team for its seriously lacking performance, we'll refrain. Naaaaaah. No way! They can't offer Kimi a car that will last a whole race and DC is plodding around the bum-end of the top ten in a manner that even he doesn't deserve. To date, the reaction from Woking seems to have been to turn up the output on the Ron-speak rhetoric-pump which has resulted in the sort of marketing doo-doo that makes claims suggesting that the magnetic north pole is really in Antigua and that Elvis is still alive, look positively lucid. This, without question, can be seen by us as getting it oh-soooo wrong.
ACHQ Editorial note - include for publication: Readership at large, Whatever became of the smartest F1 designer in the known universe, Adrian Newey? Funny but we don't seem to hear his name mentioned much anymore! - Rob and Crompo.
-10 Points - Toyota: Picking up on the point we passed over while discussing Olivier Panis, as it happens we are not even vaguely convinced by the bovine excreta Toyota are pedalling about a communications problem resulting in Olivier's needless trip down the pitlane. It is our view that while we may never know the real reason for that turgid little affair, chances are that the official Toyota line falls somewhere between slightly spurious and a load of old cobblers. Those who've been following Mike Lawrence's treatises regarding the culture of Toyota will most fully appreciate our point. In any case, offering our beloved Oliver the sort of lacking vehicle Toyota have visited upon him is bad enough. Further handicapping him by way of forcing him to drive a goodly length of the pit straight is unquestionably getting it wrong.
Standings Drivers
13 points - Fernando Alonso (Spain)
11 points - Mark Webber (Australia)
10 points - Felipe Massa (Brazil)
8 points - Michael Schumacher (Germany)
6 points - Jenson Button (UK)
3 points - Rubens Barrichello (Brazil)
1 point - Takuma Sato (Japan)
0 points - Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy)
0 points - Jarno Trulli (Italy)
0 points - Christian Klien (Austria)
0 points - Giorgio Pantano (Italy)
0 points - Gianmaria Bruni (Italy)
-2 points - Juan-Pablo Montoya (Colombia)
-2 points - Olivier Panis (France)
-3 points - Christiano da Matta (Brazil)
-6 points - Zsolt Baumgartner (Hungary)
-6 points - Nick Heidfeld (Germany)
-8 points - Ralf Schumacher (Germany)
-12 points - Kimi Raikkonen (Finland)
-13 points - David Coulthard (UK)
Standings Constructors
14 points - Ferrari
7 points - BAR
5 points - Renault
0 points - WilliamsF1
-10 points - Sauber
-12 points - Minardi
-13 points - Jaguar
-14 points - Jordan
-16 points - McLaren
-20 points - Toyota
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