As if his troubles in Valencia were not enough, Mark Webber was this morning involved in a spectacular 30mph shunt, when he ran into the back of a London bus in Westminster.
Webber was slipstreaming the No 47 to Marylebone… hoping to get past it before the next set of traffic lights when he misjudged the closing speed between his car and the double decker, ploughing into the back of it.
The bus driver, Steve Hull, 59, defended himself saying he had position and that Webber probably just missed his braking point.
In order to keep placard waving beardies happy, the Formula One Teams Association has vowed to cut unwanted emissions by 15% over the next three years.
For a group of people who frequently cross the planet to thrash 24 cars around… at about two miles per gallon each, this seemed a tricky task until somebody suggested disconnecting Fernando Alonso’s radio.
Researchers found that during the European Grand Prix, Alonso’s incessant bleating and whinging on the pit to car radio accounted for an astonishing 9% of all unwanted emissions over the weekend, which equalled the output of a small power station.
By stopping the Spaniard from using the radio during races, FOTA now expect to be able to meet their target, in fact if they cut Lewis Hamilton off too it should be a doddle.
Spanish veteran, Pedro de la Rosa, may have felt that after such a long career in F1 it was time he had a portrait done but he probably hoped for one that would last more than a day and one… that did not smell of fish.
The Sauber plodder was presented on Friday with a paella featuring an image of what was supposed to be his face. The paella was created by some local fans and presented to de la Rosa in the team motorhome. His hair and eyes are created with mussels while his lips and ears are made from prawns. Lovely.
The regional dish, a paella de marisco, starts out with an impressive list of ingredients and is full of promise but in the end turns out to resemble a dogs dinner.
Valencia,Friday. The Lotus F1 team today proudly announced that Sunday’s race would be their 500th Grand Prix start, stunning tail-end rivals,Virgin Racing and HRT, who thought it would just be their ninth.
The competition between the new teams is intense and… the battle for every finish around twentieth place is fiercely fought, so the news that Lotus are suddenly 491 races and an astonishing 79 wins ahead has been a big blow to the newbies.
Lotus, whose main connection to the great team of old is the fact that they are based in Norfolk and that Malaysian owner Tony Fernandes has a cloth cap which once belonged to Colin Chapman, insisted that the instant heritage claim was for real.
A team insider said; “There we were, in the factory, searching for some new bits not belonging to Force India to bolt on to the car, when a mechanic looking down the back of the sofa found 491 race starts and more trophies than you can wave an Air Asia baseball cap at, which was really pretty handy”.
Virgin and HRT were planning to protest but instead decided just to point and laugh every time they see the specially liveried ‘500th start’ Lotus T127.
Force India are set to take the Lotus F1 team to court over a dispute over car design. It is alleged that when Lotus staff visited the Aerolab Facility, they found a wind tunnel model of a Force India car… and thought it might, if it was a bit bigger, make a decent car for the 2010 season.
‘WindTunnelModelGate’ is set to run and run but now there are rumblings that HRT may have similar issues of their own.
Spanish farmer, Diego de Campastilla, says that he rented a barn to HRT last winter and says that having seen how the team has performed so far this year, that they must have stolen the idea from something he had been developing at the time – Picture
Diego plans to have the HRT cars impounded when they arrive in Valencia for the European Grand Prix at the end of the month.
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