State of F1: wisdom

For the last few years F1 has been positively wetting itself over how young the drivers are, Max is 20, Alonso was 20 when he started and there’s a guy in Formula Renault who is into wearing nappies, he’s 37.

Anyway, if you add up Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll you get a really ugly baby, but still one that is only a year younger than me. And I still harbour distant dreams of being an F1 driver.

But today's impetuousness by Max Verstappen was all about youth, he was on better tyres and had time on his hands to easily overtake the mercedes and Ferrari and win the race. He fucked up because he couldn’t wait. And I get that, when I was 20 I hated waiting for things: girls, boys, beard hair, buses, pubes.

The problem is, as all old codgers will tell you, with age comes wisdom, and a wiser driver (cough, Daniel Ricciardo) would have won that race today.

Don't worry, I have a solution

We need to stop these young whippersnappers coming in with all their inexperience and being fucking kids, fucking it up for everybody else.

But how? We aren’t going to have any kind of age limit shenanigans, we are going to have to think laterally

Which is why I propose artificially aging all the drivers, not physically of course, that would be crazy. Instead I think we should mentally age them. How do we do this? Well we use state of the art F1 technology and utilise the simulators! Every morning when they are not racing the young drivers go into the simulator and are given a real time second by second simulation of a boring job, imagine, tomorrow morning Max Verstappen gets in the Red Bull factory at Milton Keynes and has to deal with a HR department who have spelt his name wrong and Carol who has eaten his yoghurt. Then he has to endure nine soul crushing hours of taking calls from idiots enquiring about insurance plans and Raymond organising Emily’s leaving lunch but don’t forget Craig is gluten intolerant. By the imte he gets out of the simulator his soul will be so crushed he’ll have no desire to crash into anyone. And he’ll drink more

State of F1: Linestone Cowboy

This weekend showed us the modernity of Liberty Media butting up against the Jurassic age of Bernie with a spectacular american spectacle. With bobby duffer doing boxing style announcements, confetti and eagles everywhere it showed how f1 is open for business with arms and legs wide as it wants as many people as possible to climb inside.

Then the race ended on a penalty that no once guessed, made a mockery of the podium celebration and led thousands of people to question why they were allowed to go over the lines most of the times if not all of them.

Let me reaffirm, Verstappen is a dirty cheat who gained an unfair advantage. But is it his fault, or is he the symptom of a broken age of F1 design.

I watched with a friend who is not as f1 fan and for most of the race and quali she questioned quite why they are sliding all over the not very subtle lines onto the ridiculous Stars and Stripes run off areas, though as an aside I do want more flag themed run offs at other tracks, if not just to have those bores that moan when the Union Jack is upside down.

It’s quite simple, if you give drivers room to run off they will runoff

Don't worry, I have a solution

Gravel. It’s not high tech and it’s dirt cheap at home base but let’s bring back gravel, or big bunkers, or water features, crocodiles, massive spikes, electrified fences, or my own personal favorite, gunge. I’ve always said that f1 should be more like the fun house with pat sharp so now here’s your chance. Yes it might be dangerous but if going wide ends your race you won’t go wide. If there was a grizzly bear with a shotgun on that bend then Max wouldn’t have cheated

F1 will act slowly on this so if you are going to one of the remaining races this season do a great escape and have gravel in your trousers, wander on to the track between sessions and whistle as you dump your load on the run off area.