With the world focussed on sports that where men play with balls, we'd rather focus on one where you need them (at least figuratively). If it doesn't have an engine, it's not here.
It is, perhaps, ironic that one of Ferrari's most ardent supporters, Bernie Ecclestone, isn't the boss of F1 any longer as the Prancing Horse danced its way into the first victory of the 2017 F1 Grand Prix season in Melbourne, Australia.
Qualifying for the Qatar MotoGP race was cancelled due to bad weather. 24 hours later, the race itself was delayed for half-an hour and then, when the riders went out on a sighting lap, several concluded that parts of the track were too wet to even attempt turn 14. Then the Stewards sent out Laurence Capirossi to check. It was a weird situation.
Now the cars have arrived at a proper race weekend, we can at last see what the cars look like, hear what they sound like and get some comparative data on this year's cars against last year's. And we can see what might be not quite right and that's a long list.
Listening to Bernie Ecclestone trying to swerve between keeping commercial confidences and his natural desire to talk to the press at the end of last season was an object lesson in how to tell smiling lies, or to tell such a deviant version of the truth that it might as well have been lies. There were two special examples: there were no negotiations for the sale of F1 and, when that was proved wrong, that Bernie would be in place at the new company for three years. That one was proved incorrect, yesterday, when the deal with Liberty Media was completed and Bernie's jobs were both taken over by someone else.
Manor Racing, which is already in its third iteration (Virgin, Marussia, Manor) in five years, is unlikely to start the 2017 season unless some serious investment or a buyer of its engineering arm can be found very quickly.
Headline: Lewis Hamilton has won 10 races this year, Nico Rosberg has won 9. Hamilton won in Abu Dhabi, Rosberg won the championship. Hamilton has had a disproportionate number of mechanical and electronic failures but he's also had a propensity to ruin his own starts. But, even so, Hamilton does seem to have been hard done by and even his team has, from time to time, been a little less than even in their support for their two drivers.
21 races across five continents and barely time for the teams to breath: for the mechanics and technicians, strategists and skills we never see, who commit their lives to F1, this morning the morning most of them, on a personal level, have been waiting for. They are going home and, after the trucks get back to base and everything is put into its locker, they can go home and see families that have been largely neglected for the past eight months or so. But for one person it's a eulogy, for three people it's the end of an era.
It was announced this week, with no notice of public consultation, that the Government of Malaysia was to consider requesting other parties to the agreement to hold a Formula One race to allow it to terminate its contract two years early. It is rumoured that it is, in any event, unlikely to renew its contract on expiry in 2018. youth and sports minister KHAIRY Jamaluddin said, on Wednesday, that a decision would be made on Thursday but, as of Friday evening, no public announcement had been made.
Recently, the FIA told Formula One Teams that "the honeymoon is over" with regard to radio messages. On Saturday, the FIA announced a "zero tolerance" approach to track limits - but then provided for discretion. Are Stewards decisions now more suited to judging ice dancing where views on artistic merit trump the certainty of black and white boundaries?
What is going on at Mercedes? At the Spanish Grand Prix, both of their cars went out after Rosberg's car had an incorrect engine setting. In the European Grand Prix in Baku, Hamilton struggled for most of the race with an incorrect engine setting. Everyone agrees that the cars have become too technical for the drivers to drive without outside assistance. Surely that is against one of the sport's most basic principles?
Some people like to live in, or visit for show-events, an environment where they can parade their frou-frou doggies with bows in their hair while comparing the price of Paris lips (expensive gains more kudos, regardless of how ridiculous they look), cellulite treatments and, of course, to criticise the effectiveness of someone else's skin cream at keeping sun-induced wrinkles at bay. And they expect clear blue skies and sun.
Welcome to Monaco where it pissed down on race day. Then the sun came out. Then it rained again. Then there was the race which didn't do as expected, either.
Some people like to live in, or visit for show-events, an environment where they can parade their frou-frou doggies with bows in their hair while comparing the price of Paris lips (expensive gains more kudos, regardless of how ridiculous they look), cellulite treatments and, of course, to criticise the effectiveness of someone else's skin cream at keeping sun-induced wrinkles at bay. And they expect clear blue skies and sun.
Welcome to Monaco where it pissed down on race day. Then the sun came out. Then it rained again. Then there was the race which didn't do as expected, either.
