Rugby | F1 | Race & Car Event

THE YANKS ARE COMIN'!!
Trevor Stott-Briggs
C! Magazine: July 2004

 

Soon the "high-nosed" circles of Formula 1 may reverberate to that Good Ol' Boy rumble of the American V8.......... That high-pitched, 18,000 rpm scream of a V10 Ferrari engine lapping ever faster around the tracks may soon be a thing of the past. Really! Can you see Ferrari shoe horning a Chevy Small Block V8 into the back end of Shuey's Sunday Special? And Schuey Baby driving with a stetson on, one hand over the edge of the cockpit, smoking his last Marlboro, like a Sunday afternoon driver cruisin' along the boulevard? Well, perhaps not, but something like that may well happen. Remember last month when I mentioned that "someone" was trying to slow F1 cars down? It looks like the FIA may well achieve that when the current set of agreements between themselves and the teams runs out next in 2008.

Right now an F1 engine HAS to be a 3 liter V10. Bernie the Bolt's Bad Boys want to make them 2.4 liters, which if you do the math, means a 20% reduction in capacity. Which could most easily be achieved by chopping 2 cylinders off one end of the engine. Not quite as simple as that, really, as the reciprocating dynamics of a V8 and a V10 are completely different. Normally, V8's are known for their low down torque. Basically, bags of grunt at low to medium rpm so that you can pull tree stumps out of the ground and the Good Ol' Boys can stand around and drink a few Bud Lights afterwards. V10's are high revving screamers, more like motorbike engines and jealous Filipinas when you come home late with lipstick on your collar. The engine manufacturers are not at all happy about this, as you can imagine, as they are all tooled up for V10's. Maybe what they need is someone like Robert Duvall, in his chief mechanic role for then young hot-shot Tom Cruise in "Days of Thunder", to sort it all out for them. Ross Brawn at Ferrari had better watch out!

One thing it should do is make the starts even better that they are now. Half the problem for the drivers is that the engines have 700 hp and are at their best at 16,000 - 18,000 rpm. That does not make for good starts as when the engines are "on song" at that rpm, the tires would just spin uncontrollably. And at the mid-range rpm needed to get a good start they just bog down. Now the Yanks have spent years Drag Racing V8's and even the CART racers and Indycars have them. So it should be fun to see what Jours Truly in a V8 powered Renault could do when you see what he does already with a V10 in the back end. Did you see the start of the Spanish GP? Jours Truly blasted past everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - to jump from fourth to first.

Have you noticed I managed to get to the fourth paragraph without mentioning about Schuey Baby winning (again) and Ruby Tuesday being second (again). That makes it 5 times in a row. Now, although lots of people go "Yawn, oh yeah, yawn, yeah, yawn, yeah" it is actually statistically very difficult for anyone to do that in the high-tech, competitive environment of F1. I believe that the last person that did it was Nigel "Mr. Grumpy" Mansell back in 1992. That year he won 9 of the 16 races including having 5 in a row. Funnily enough, no one liked him at the time either. Must be a moral in there somewhere? Well, just think of all the things that can and do go wrong. Even Schuey's "Runs-Like-Clockwork-Orange" Ferrari had a problem. "Gasp" they all said! Yes, the exhaust developed a crack in it. So he slowed down a bit so as to assess the damage. Funnily enough, Ruby Tuesday running second, also slowed down for the same batch of laps - but not quite as much - so the gap got down to just over 4 seconds. Then Ruby Tuesday went in for his second and last pit stop (Remember her was on 2 stops and Schuey was on 3) and strangely enough, that normally oh-so-precise prancing pit crew lost his tires.....! He wasted a good 5 seconds while they found them - which is an absolute eternity in the time warp that surrounds every F1 pit. And as a result, he was suddenly way back from "Da King". What a coincidence. Who said there were no Team Orders these days?

And then there was Takuma Sake. Aaah so! What a great qualifying he had. Best ever for a Japanese driver. Jensen "Interceptor" Button in the other BAR-CAR didn't quite have so much luck though as he had a bit of a whoopsy in qualifying and dropped down to 14th. Actually, I'd been trying to figure out why the BAR-CAR suddenly came on so strong this year. And then good old David Coldhead - now 10 years in F1 with McLaren and fast becoming a bit of an "old woman" - had a bit of a grumble. Well, more of a back stabbing, really. Oooh you girls! You see, under the 2004 regulations, the bottom six teams from 2003 are able to practice on the track with their spare car on the Friday of every Grand Prix weekend. Nice, eh, cos they don't wear out the engine on the racecar! Now, among those six are BAR - who did really badly while Jacques "Canada Dry" Costeau was driving for them - but are now arguably the second best team in the sport. Meanwhile, the once dominant "Donner und Blitzen" Mercedes-McLaren team has moved in the opposite direction. So old DC thinks it's "not fair" and is whining. I reckon he should just console himself in the arms of his very beautiful girlfriend, Simone. Some things are better than winning. Honest Injun, DC. Actually, because of all this, Anthony Davidson, British test driver for the BAR-CAR, has suddenly become a bit of a star as nowadays everyone sees him blasting round the track on Friday. Normally he is testing on some cold, empty test track in the middle of nowhere with no one to watch him except the pit crew. By the way, Jacques The Lad was also spotted hovering around in the pits during the Spanish GP. Hmmm, perhaps he is looking for his old job back.

And talking of Indians, well the other type of Indians actually, not the so-called red ones, there is a very strong rumor that there will soon be an F1 track in India. Someone has crossed Bernie the Blond Bombshell's palm with silver, which usually helps a lot in these matters. Funny that. Supposed to be there in around 2007 I hear, in some place called Gopanapally or Vattinagulapally or both. That's a name that will roll off the tongues of the announcers. And just when I had mastered "Baahhchhhkrrhainnn". Maybe that will elevate Baby Bernie Ecclescake back up from his lowly position as only the 8th richest man in the United Kingdom, with about $3500 million, according to a new survey by the Financial Times. Tell me is that $3.5 billion in American counting? I guess it is as I think they have 1,000 x 1 Million = 1 Billion. Of course in British counting they have 1,000,000 x 1 Million = 1 Billion. So I suppose that makes Bernie E a billionaire by American standards and a poor simple multi-millionaire by British standards. Mind you in Indian counting it's even more, as in their local numbering system they don't use thousands and millions, they use things called lakhs and crores. A lakh is 100,000 of something and a crore is 10 million. So it all gets a bit confusing. There are about 44 rupees to the US Dollar, so when they talk about the wealth of Mr. E in rupees it comes to Rs 154,000 crore. That's Rs 15,400,000,000. Either way it's a lot of cash. No wonder he is a happy teddy. Maybe that's why they named that "Celebrity Drug" after him. Goodness gracious me!! Mr. E, you are having what I am wanting and I am wanting what you are having.

Remember, last month I mentioned that Baby Bro. Ralf had been driving abysmally this season. Well, my hero to zero prophecy is panning out. It looks like he won't be driving any fancy HP computer-generated, BMW-powered cars for much longer and may soon be pedal to the metal in a Toyota F1 Taxi. Now does that come with the 1300cc engine with the manual shift or the 1600cc automatic? Hmmm, not sure he could handle all the power of the 1600cc. Not the way he has been driving this year anyway. Good thing about Toyotas is that they withstand a lot of bumps and fender benders. I mean just look at all our taxis in Manila. So when Baby Bro. does one of his usual overtaking maneuvers across the front wheel of some other poor soul he will probably get away with it without damaging his car.

Also, one last thing. Can any of you guys that read this count as well? Do you realize that since Hungary last year - eight races to be exact - Bridgestone has won every race, and most of them from pole? Now why should that be? Its even statistically more difficult than Schuey winning 5 in a row. Well, in that race in Hungary a certain Herr Michelangelo Shoemart (using Bridgestone tires) was lapped (and yes, I will say it again) was lapped by the winner Fandango Alonso (using Michelins). Holy Moly! Well, shortly after that it came as no surprise that there was a small slip of paper left anonymously on the doorstep of the FIA headquarters saying that maybe, just maybe, someone should measure the width of the Michelins. And funnily enough that eventually led to Michelin having to revise their designs and their moulds. And they haven't won a race since. They have done very well thank you, but they haven't won. I guess that's another notch in the pearly handle of the frequently-smoking Maranello gun. Hey, who said F1 was fair........................?

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