Despite having had a pretty anonymous year behind the wheel in F1, Michael Schumacher has apparently done enough to warrant being given the ‘German Man of the Year’ award by GQ Magazine.
Schumacher picked up the trophy, the only one he… has been near all year, at a glittering ceremony in Berlin last night.
However, there were some who thought that if anybody deserved the award it should be Red Bull’s young charger Sebastian Vettel but the GQ judges were keen to justify their decision.
Said one; “Schumacher is definitely a GQ type, he is in his forties, married with children and drives a company Mercedes – not very quickly” He went on, “However, Vettel is really more of a ‘Loaded’ kind of guy and he doesn’t have a dinner suit so we could not choose him”.
We are sure that the fact that Mercedes sponsored the ceremony had NOTHING to do with Schumacher winning the award.
Reports from Monaco suggest that Michael Schumacher was very lucky to only get a twenty second penalty for his illegal move on Fernando Alonso at the final corner of Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Race steward, Damon Hill, pushed hard for much sterner… penalties including a custodial sentence for the German, for what he might have called a ‘typically underhand action’ although we cannot be sure he even thought of saying that.
Apart from the Alonso move, Damon allegedly also asked for several other offences he saw over the weekend to be considered:
On many occasions the Mercedes driver was seen driving at 150 mph on Monte Carlo roads, most of which have a maximum speed limit of 30 mph.
Schumacher was also cited by Hill for not using his indicators or for slowing at pedestrian crossings.
Hill added that Schumacher’s misdemeanors where not confined to his driving but there were also offences in the paddock, where he said he saw him wearing ‘silvery clothes’ and heard him talking with ‘a distinct German accent’.
The other stewards managed to convince Hill to ‘let it go’ and apart from the crime of overtaking another driver, all other charges were dropped.
There are some things the Germans are good at, efficiency, making high quality and reliable products, penalty shoot outs and invading neighbouring countries but it has to be said, with the possible exception of Nena and her 99 Red Balloons… that music is not one of them.
Now, all that is about to change with the release by J R Blackmore, son of Deep Purple and Rainbow legend, Ritchie, of a new single ‘Silver Arrows (Racing On), a tribute to the new Mercedes F1 team.
You can hear 1 minute 49 seconds of metal F1 mayhem on the bands website, it feels like a really long 1 minute 49 seconds but you’ll love it.
We particularly liked the reference in the lyrics (see below) to ‘Englands Black Pearl’ by which we assume they mean Lewis Hamilton and ‘From Monte Carlo to the green, green hell’ which can only be Silverstone.
Rock on!
SILVER ARROWS (RACING ON)
The Silver Arrows racing on
Racing to be number one
The Silver Arrows racing on
Racing to be number one
The silver story born in 34
And golden Rudi ruled until the war
In the fifties the Maestro won
Good-bye Grand Prix, still the legend lives on
The engines scream, you can feel the power
225 miles an hour
The crowd goes wild around the track
Shout it out loud: The star is back – yeah!
The Silver Arrows racing on
Racing to be number one
The Silver Arrows racing on
Racing to be number one
40 years later shined the Flying Finn
Then England’s Black Pearl was the new silver king
Mercedes, who are not at all a German team, look set to add German driver Nick Heidfeld to the driving strength alongside German driver, Nico Rosberg and er.. German driver, Michael Schumacher.
However, team insiders are now worried about the Germanic… nature of the team, as during a recent shakedown of the MGP-01 at the Nurburgring, the car kept turning left and heading off in the direction of the Polish border.
In this weeks edition of ‘Sport Bild’, Nick Heidfeld says that a drive with the Mercedes Grand Prix team for 2010 would ‘be a dream’. Nico Rosberg, faced with the possibility of having either Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen or Robert… Kubica as a potential teammate is said to share exactly the same sentiment.
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