My heart goes out to Robert Kubica. This time last year, he was fighting for the F1 world title. At one stage, he even led the championship . Things were going brilliantly for him, he was driving well and people were saying some very good things about him. Fast forward to 2009 and where is he? Nowhere. Where's the press coverage and hype about his talents? Nowhere. It's as if he's fallen off the face of the planet. What went wrong? From what I've read, halfway through the 2008 season, BMW decided to shift their development efforts to the 2009 car, despite the success they were enjoying in 2008. The effect of this was that their 2008 season quietly tailed off, taking their #1 driver from championship leader to frustrated also-ran. If I were Kubica, I would've been mad as all hell. What makes it even worse is that, while Honda adopted the same approach and built a pretty awesome car for 2009, BMW completely failed to capitalise on their long development time for...
Okay, so the supposed September launch of this section never happened. Nor did the October one. It’s unlikely it’ll happen in November either, but I may as well post things into Blogger’s database regardless. Here goes... First off the bat, the arrival of the Cooper S has been brought forward nearly 3 months. It should now be ready to pick up on the 20th January 2003. Hurrah! Secondly, I’ve changed its spec a bit. Out with the air conditioning (it always was an impulse choice anyway) and in with a bodykit! Boy-racerdom, here we come. ;) Thirdly on the Mini front, I’ve decided the car’s really going to need a name. Best so far is Biffa (as in Bacon, of Viz) on the grounds I want the car to look like it’s asking “Did you spill my pint?”. ;) Now for some non-Mini news. I took the Puma out for a drive today. Just a drive, not really going anywhere, despite heading in the direction of Kielder Water. The journey was interrupted many a ...
Many years ago, my mother established the tradition of getting me a motoring-related calendar for Christmas. She’s still doing it, despite the fact I’ve told her I have no use for calendars outside of Outlook. The best thing I can say for them is that they usually put a nice picture on a small area of the wall for a year. Unfortunately, in 2003, that picture will be of a Formula 1 car. All year round, I’m going to be reminded of how little I now enjoy a sport that used to have me captivated. From time to time, I’ll even get to smile wryly at the Arrows F1 car staring out at me. *sigh* You know, I really don’t enjoy F1 these days. The only thing about it that I can look forward to is Jacques Villeneuve venting everyone’s frustrations or making a stupidly daring overtaking manoeuvre. That man personifies everything that used to be great about the sport and now he’s pretty much the only fire left in its belly. Shame, damn shame.