May 27, 2007

F1 UPDATE!: MONACO!

Allegedly, there was a Grand Prix today. Let's take a look, shall we?

*ZING WENT THE STRINGS...: ...but YAWN went the F1 UPDATE! crew. Monte Carlo always has the ability to turn into a snoozefest, but this one was particularly bad. How bad?

We fell asleep on the F1 UPDATE! couch.

*SEE CHAMELEON, LYING THERE IN THE SUN. ALL THINGS TO EVERYONE...: McLaren completely dominated the race, sprinting away at the lights. By the time the carnage was over, they had a one minute, five second lead over Felipe Massa in third.

A lap of the course only takes one minute, 15 seconds. Chew on that for a minute... and you STILL won't have caught up with the McLarens.

(note: bonus points to the first reader to tell us what song the headline is from)

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: American Scott Speed. There's been a Scott Speed sighting! Started 18th, finished 9th, and stayed on Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari the entire race. Terrible result for Raikkonen, great for Speed.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: McLaren. They didn't short-fuel, gambling on rain. They came up with the perfect setup for Monte Carlo and just completely dominated the race... and they say they've got still MORE speed in hand. If so, this season is over, so complete was the thrashing.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: There was no passing to be seen today. The MotR will go to Fernando Alonso for being able to get his car off the line when the lights go green. By the end of the first lap, he had 1.75 seconds in hand and the race was over.

Yeah, it was that bad.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOVE OF THE RACE: There were no stunning examples of bad driving, so we give the Mooooo-oove to Team Spyker, just because.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE: "I won F1's biggest race, and I'm tied for first in the Driver's Championship. Life is good." - Fernando Alonso.

"I came in second in F1's biggest race, and I'm tied for first in the Driver's Championship in my rookie season. I'm rich, handsome, single, and I'm in Monaco. Life is very good." - Lewis Hamilton.

At this point, the F1 Update! crew packed up and went home. Like the race, the interviews were putting us to sleep.

We never thought we at F1 Update! would say this, considering how much we appreciate the history of the Grand Prix of Monaco, but the FIA needs to do something. This wasn't a race, it was a tech demo.

Montreal is next on the agenda, and at least THAT race is built for speed and passing... and it'll be on FOX, to boot, so we get to see if they do anything with the graphics. See you then!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 02:01 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 460 words, total size 3 kb.

1 The news article about the race I read said that the McLaren cars lapped everyone except Massa. Sounds like a real ass-kicking was administered today.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 27, 2007 02:12 PM (+rSRq)

2 I don't know if you saw any of the Indy500, Steven, but the distance McLaren led Felipe Massa would have been from Indy's start/finish line to the exit of Turn 4.

When Hamilton slammed the door on Massa at the start, preventing him from getting anywhere NEAR Alonso, the race was over. The only question was would either McLaren do anything stupid, and the answer was no.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 27, 2007 02:20 PM (2nDll)

3 I don't have a TV anymore; I never watch anything broadcast. What in hell has McLaren done to its cars to make them so dominant? Of course, I'm sure a lot of people are asking that question, but if it's so radical, you'd think someone would figure it out.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 27, 2007 02:25 PM (+rSRq)

4 It's possible they haven't done anything. Some teams own a track, and McLaren is, far and away, the winningest team at Monaco. They may just know how to get their car ready for this particular race.

I don't think that's it, though. It's probably a combination of lots of little things: a tiny tweak here, a little change there... those things add up. Renault, for example, had a pretty good weekend, and if you had told me that two races ago, I would have laughed because they were SO bad.

There's one other thing that it could be. It's Monaco, and no other race is like Monaco. This dominating performance could be a blip, a statistical anomaly. If I was a betting duck, I'd put my money on this reason.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 27, 2007 02:32 PM (2nDll)

5 The ITV-F1 reports:

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 27, 2007 03:23 PM (9imyF)

6 Ron's offical postrace quote was something too:

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 27, 2007 03:29 PM (9imyF)

7 But there aren't any team orders in F1.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 27, 2007 03:31 PM (2nDll)

8 You say you think this was a statistical blip. But McLaren has been overwhelming this entire season, hasn't it? It isn't just this race, it's been all of them. Not as overwhelming as they were today, but they've been at the top all along.

Australia: 2, 3
Malaysia: 1, 2
Bahrain: 2, 5
Spain: 2, 3
Monaco: 1, 2

And that's with one of the drivers a rookie.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 27, 2007 05:48 PM (+rSRq)

9 Forgive me, I expressed myself incompletely. By the 'statistical blip', I was referring to the team's performance TODAY, not for the season.

They're fast and they're not breaking, unlike the past few years when they had the most fragile car on the grid. At times it seemed like you could sneeze and the wheels would fly off the McLaren.

Basically, that's the difference between now and last year.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 27, 2007 05:53 PM (h/YdH)

10 Perhaps so. Certainly the McLaren team completely humiliated everyone else today.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 27, 2007 07:31 PM (+rSRq)

11 Glad to see I wasn't the only one that felt the need for a nap during the race. At one point I felt I'd see a better race if I'd just played my DVD of "Grand Prix."

Posted by: Mallory at May 28, 2007 05:11 AM (iLcnv)

12 ... run, run away. Just like McLaren. One race I'm glad I missed.

My dad heard that Slade song coming from MTV once when I was a teen - and has been whistling it ever since.

Posted by: Vaucanson's duck at May 29, 2007 05:17 AM (oplPK)

13 Vauc, I don't know if that revelation regarding Dr. John surprises me or not...

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 29, 2007 11:25 AM (2nDll)

14 Run Run Away.. Slade.

Posted by: Dave at May 29, 2007 01:37 PM (Vre2j)

15 Dave, quite true... just a smidge too late to earn the bonus points! Vaucanson's Duck beat you to it, I'm afraid.

It's good to see, however, that SOME of my readers were awake in the '80s!

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 29, 2007 02:55 PM (A5s0y)

16 McLaren cleared of fixing! Obviously we'll get the annual "let Ferrari catch up" penalty a bit later in the season, but it's good for now.

I used to work with a guy who drank with Slade when they were at college. Reckoned they were some of the hardest men in Birmingham, not to be messed with. To be fair, I would never mess with a chap in a mirrored top hat.

Posted by: flotsky at May 30, 2007 07:24 PM (6T2ID)

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