The top 5 from Valencia

It's time for Badger's top 5 favourite things, drivers, teams, ducts, marshalls, (you get the idea) from the recent European grand prix at Valencia!

At 1 it's the mighty F1 car!  Mark Webber looked rather cheesed off as he clambered out of the car following his crash, and only realising "in the shower" what a lucky escape he'd had.  So you can drive into the back of a slow-moving Lotus, flip the car high up into the air for a few seconds, do a mid-air side-roll, come back upright again, and slam it into the wall at 200 mph ... and guess what?

You'll escape completely unharmed.  You've really got to hand it to the designers and the FIA this time; they've done a great job on safety.  The drivers can be forgiven sometimes for forgetting about safety when their number 1 priority is to win win win, but at least we know the car is doing its job pretty darn well.

Number 2 is Germany.  Christian Horner, who is himself English, joked to the German Vettel that it would be Germany's only win of the day when Vettel triumphantly crossed the finish line.  Sadly for us English fans this was not the case.  The 27th June 2010 was a great day for German sporting achievement.*

*unless you're Michael Schumacher that is.

At 3 it's the midfield!  Yes, the entire midfield.  It's my Badgerometer ok, and if you don't like it you can create your own and post it in the comment box at the bottom of this page.  Leaving aside the 'B' teams, it's a great sight to see the whole of the midfield being competitive and successful at Valencia.  There's a Williams in 4th, Renault 5th, Force India 6th, BMW 7th, and a Toro Rosso in 9th.

Everyone loves an underdog, and if Valencia was good for anything then this was it.

At number 4 it's common sense.  Football is anti-technology altogether, and spurns time delays, resulting in some very dodgy decisions ... but Formula 1 goes entirely the other way by having only 'provisional' results for hours after the race.  Poor Jenson Button had to stand on the podium knowing that his trophy and 3rd place could be taken away from him at any moment by the stewards for being the wrong speed behind the safety car.

However, common sense prevailed to everyone's relief.  The 5 second penalties shuffled the deck a little towards the end of the points, but that's about it.

At 5 it's the only drivers who ever drove for Brawn GP - Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, now at McLaren and Williams respectively.  JB knew what he was doing all along with Kobayashi, and picked up a nice podium from it as well.  Did anyone notice he took the fastest lap of the race too?  Badger loves Button.  Simple.  And Rubens had a stunner of a race!  He won at Valencia last year, and took an extremely impressive 4th place behind his former team-mate in the race.

Nice work chaps.

Don't mess with Montezemolo

This week I'm miffed with Ferrari.  They are nowhere near fast enough on

the circuit, so who do they blame for their string of poor performances?  Themselves?  Of course not, you mad English fool!  Blame the FIA, blame McLaren, blame Hamilton, blame the rules, blame the Pope, blame Canada ... blame everyone but themselves.  In the manner of some evil genius baddy in a bad Bond film, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said this of the Hamilton safety car controversy,

"We are sure that the FIA will fully analyse what happened, taking the consequent necessary decisions. Ferrari will watch this with interest."

Quite frankly Ferrari should spend more time developing the car, and less time moaning!