25/05/2004
FEATURE BY MARGEIT & CROMPTON
 |
"...What a cracking race! Everyone here in Monaco is buzzing and I'm sure that those of you who saw this one are buzzing too…"
Those, quite clearly, are not our words. According to the patron who sent the missive containing the above, they are the words of long-time ACHQ target of vitriol, ITV's rabid ranter, James Allen.
It is of course against our work ethic, to verify whether or not Jabbering James actually said or wrote such words even if the sentiments are of a nature that suggests he did.
Whosoever might responsible for that quote, we regretfully accept that, on the basis of the majority of reports we've encountered since the conclusion of the Monaco GP, the general tone of moron-media output is alluding to much the same sort of twaddle.
Initially, we thought it might be amusing to address the literal content of the offending quote. Something which perhaps calls into question, the metaphoric invocations such as; when the author says that everyone was buzzing, are we to assume that, without exception, the populace of and visitors to, the otherwise dignified and restrained principality were engaging in an outwardly embarrassing collective fit of impersonating bumble bees?
Then we realised that such a response would be even sillier than the quote in question and according to our many critics, we are already quite silly enough. Thus, we decided to give over, whatever remains of this introductory phase of our column to the righteous correction of the "it was a great race" anomaly.
It was not a great race. It was an incident-filled race. Great races are, unsurprisingly, eponymously peppered with great racing. Once again we remind those too new to the sport to know any better, that great racing is a matter of drivers vying for, battling over and regularly exchanging, positions on the track, preferably with respect to positions of importance such as the lead.
With that in mind, we contemplate the only 'pass' we saw during the entire event. Montoya passed Rubens. Great, 70 odd laps and one pass. Whoopee diddy doo doo. What a cracker eh?
On the other hand, let us contemplate all that which leads the snout-in-troughers to suggest that this was in some way a great race.
OK, there we have it. If you happen to think that one passing manoeuvre, stacked against an artificial fog, a Sauber making unsolicited aerodynamic modifications to a McLaren, a couple of crashes involving lapped Williams' and a fruitless chase to the flag constitute a 'buzzworthy' race, then you probably thought this was all quite wonderful.
We don't! We think it was yet another bore-fest, held on the impossibly skinny streets of a picturesque, harbour-side well-to-do-town whose willingness to hang large tobacco signs in prominent places, assures it what we happen to think is the incongruous title of The Jewel in F1's crown.
And so on to the points
Drivers
10 Points - Jarno Trulli: It was none other than us who drew global attention to the fact that Jarno seemed so eternally cursed, that if you found yourself boarding the same flight as he, you'd just tear up you ticket and walk as a safer option. Now were not definitively claiming that in so doing, we alone are responsible for his turnaround in fortunes but…actually, no, that is exactly what we are claiming.
6 Points - Fernando Alonso: Long-term fans of the ACHQ will recall that above and beyond even our love of Fernando and the fact that our early proclamation of his talents continually gives us cause to smirk with excessive smugness, is our love of a certain hand-gesture. We speak, of course, of that which is broadly known as 'the bird'; that which, after it's invocation towards an errant crane driver at the Austrian GP, we re-named in honour of the then BAR pilot. And thus 'the flipping of the Zonta' was born. Ricardo has been and gone in F1 terms. A new driver has made this most emphatic and common of traffic hand signals his very own. And besides, the gesture was aimed at one for whom the ACHQ harbours little regard, namely Ralf. Thus, we command that the gesture concerned be heretofore know as 'flipping a Fernando'!
4 Points - Jenson Button: Yeah, so we'd be the first to admit that we never expected anything to come of JB's gallant charge in the closing laps, even if he did make it as far as Jarno's rear wing. On the other hand, he made a gallant charge in the closing laps and, well, in an era when drivers are wont to justify their lacking efforts by claiming they were nursing the car home and opt for the safety of assured points, it makes us very happy to see a lad throw caution to the wind and set off with the dedicated commitment of Nigel Mansell chasing a one pound note on windy day.
3 Points - Giancarlo Fisichella: We like Fisi. We've always liked Fisi. Taking the Scottish git out of the race most certainly does not make us like him any less.
2 Points - Takuma Sato: The Scottish git can say what he wants about Taku's start. We heard nothing about suggestions of a jump start from anyone but DC. Fact is, Taku leapt from the line like a hormone-crazed adolescent boy in pursuit of his first amorous encounter. Heck, he even brushed Michael aside with scant regard. And anyway, his ultimate demise precipitated DC's retirement and you wouldn't have to be a genius to figure out how much that pleases us.
1 Point - Mark Webber: We are, undeniably, on record as doubting Mark in oh-so-many ways. We even undertook the unprecedented step of retracting much of what we'd so derisively said about him earlier this year. But in Monaco - at least in our eyes - the young Antipodean raised his game yet another notch. At a time when, in Mark's shoes, we'd have found ourselves using phrases such as "Who gives a dingo's bum about some crappy Hollywood sequel" and "What say we spend less money getting diamonds mounted on the nose of my car and more time getting it to go fast", Mark opted rather to play by 'sponsor's rules' and refrain from lambasting the idiots in whose employ he currently finds himself.
-1 Point - Rubens Barrichello: What? He finished on the podium? Well we still don't care. We're not giving him a positive score. And anyway, what was all that twaddle about 'I drove past the pits really slowly so they could look at my rear end'? We know who we expect that from and, until Monaco, it wasn't Rubens.
-2 Points - Christiano da Matta: Christiano blubbered like an infant unable to locate its favourite teddy-bear, about copping a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags and went so far as suggesting that the FIA had made a mistake in doling out the penalty. Jenson suggested, having being waylaid by the lap-down Brazilian for at least two laps, after the eventual appearance of blue flags, that da Matta was 'pathetic'. We happen to agree with Jenson.
-3 Points - David Coultard: If you can't figure this out, it's probably time you stopped reading our work.
-4 Points - Juan Pablo Montoya: Here's the deal. Pace car or not, inappropriate driving by Michael or not, dim lighting of the Monaco tunnel or not. A driver who was a lap down ran into the back of the current race leader and took him out of the race. We repeat, lapped driver. Juan, until you can get yourself onto the lead lap, stay out of the way and leave the racing to the grown-ups!
-6 Points - Ralf Schumacher: There's no other way of putting this. He's just, well, such a Ralph.
-10 Points - Michael Schumacher: This kind of score in the AC could easily be the result of the fact that we are card-carrying members of 'Guys Against Needless Destructive Helmet Indiscretions' (GANDHI), but it is not. Rather, we will never forgive Michael for being involved in a racing incident, while behind a pace car, which removed him from the race, thus assuring that the nutbag fringe who attribute everything from global warming to the demise of the Dodo bird to Michael, have yet more fodder for years of accusation and lunacy.
Constructors
10 Points - Renault: Well, they did win and we do have a long history of favouring them. What did you expect?
6 points - BAR: Hmm, let's see, this one is tough. One BAR finished second, all the while hunting down the leader. The other lasted only a few laps and then its demise precipitated a huge shunt. Oh, hang on, that was the shunt that took DC out.
4 Points - Sauber: Not only has Peter Sauber given ACHQ favourite Massa a drive, the kid came home well and truly (not Trulli - truly - stupid shpell scheckerer) in the points.
3 Points - Minardi: It's not something we like to be widely known, but we run an Alternative, Alternative Championship in-house here at the ACHQ. We won't even bother to attempt to explain the complex formula by which we conduct this intellectual experiment, save to say that roughly speaking, our brilliantly executed spreadsheet macros (thanks again Chris, we will buy that shandy one day) factors in the budgets of the teams and the history of the drivers, lifts the data from Bernie's live-ish web site feed, and re-calculates the probable finishing order as a function of qualifying times. Suffice is to say, on this moderated basis, Coverboy Zsolt not only completed thirty one laps more than expected, he won the Alternative Alternative Championship round at Monaco by some 246 seconds. Any reports you might hear suggesting that Rob and Crompo are now regularly seen wearing full Minardi team uniforms and indeed have been spotted arriving at The Plumbers Arms in a 2002 Minardi two-seater, should be disregarded as embittered propaganda, likely originating from a disgruntled spreadsheet macro programmer.
1 Point - Jordan: So Jordan actually managed some points? Clearly, and we can't stress this enough, this has more to do with Nick's talent than that embarrassing facsimile of a Formula One car they keep sending the young German and that other hapless cash cow out in.
-2 Points - WilliamsF1: On more than one occasion during the fabrication, erh, writing of this piece, we've alluded to the fact that this team were not on the same lap as the leaders. For cryin' out loud, these guys were once capable of producing cars that even Nigel and Damon could win in!
-3 Points - Toyota: Despite our best efforts, and repeated reminders that this factory team did not choose to withdraw from the World Rally Championship, they were chucked out by the FIA for cheating, they just keep showing up at Grands Prix and getting in people's way.
-4 Points - Ferrari: Owing to the excruciating pressure stemming from the mere week separating this event and the European GP, we are yet to discover the exact reason we are taking four points away from Ferrari. Whilst in no way wishing to pre-empt or prejudice our own comprehensive witch-hunt, we think it probably has something to do with the fact that Ferrari alone, have never, ever, ever, acknowledged our existence. Should this baseless supposition prove to be inaccurate, we will issue a comprehensive apology, retraction and offer to wash Luca's car for a month.
-6 Points - McLaren: Hee hee hee, har har har, haw haw haw. Two DNFs and they weren't - hee hee hee - even both the team's haw haw haw fault - ouch, our stomachs hurt. Oh, hope the opening of the new building went well Ron.
-10 Points - Jaguar: Now far be it from us to suggest a cheap, tawdry marketing scam. Wait, that's wrong. In fact who else would you expect to suggest exactly that kind of thing? So anyway, Jaguar, whose form this year has been crap, do a one-off promotional deal with some movie and some diamond company, then, astoundingly, one of the diamonds - whose presence on the nose of the unquestionably velocity-challenged Jaguar nose-cone we are still unable to reconcile - goes missing. You know, missing as in the kind of missing that might keep Jaguar's name in the global press for a few extra days in spite of their appallingly bad efforts at Monaco. Well, we smell a rat, or at least we smell a Jaguar that could do with some advice concerning personal hygiene. And when we detect an unpleasant odour, concerning diamonds, pink members of the feline family, and all in the immediate vicinity of France, we know precisely who to call - so we did. While our esteemed detective was not able to locate the missing rock, he did however notice that one of the stars of the forthcoming movie so heavily promoted by Jaguar at Monaco, was sporting some new bling-bling jewellery, heavily encrusted with diamonds!!!
Standings - Drivers
30 points - Fernando Alonso (Spain)
23 points - Jenson Button (UK)
16 points - Jarno Trulli (Italy)
11 points - Mark Webber (Australia)
10 points - Michael Schumacher (Germany)
10 points - Felipe Massa (Brazil)
10 points - Takuma Sato (Japan)
6 points - Christian Klien (Austria)
5 points - Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy)
1 point - Kimi Raikkonen (Finland)
0 points - Giorgio Pantano (Italy)
0 points - Gianmaria Bruni (Italy)
-2 points - Olivier Panis (France)
-6 points - Rubens Barrichello (Brazil)
-6 points - Nick Heidfeld (Germany)
-10 points - Zsolt Baumgartner (Hungary)
-11 points - Christiano da Matta (Brazil)
-13 points - Juan-Pablo Montoya (Colombia)
-30 points - Ralf Schumacher (Germany)
-38 points - David Coulthard (UK)
Standings Constructors
27 points - Renault
26 points - BAR
16 points - Ferrari
1 point - WilliamsF1
-4 points - Minardi
-8 points - McLaren
-8 points - Sauber
-25 points - Jaguar
-33 points - Toyota
-43 points - Jordan
To check out previous features from the Alternative Championship, click here