Podium or Pits is Badger's weekly guide to what's hot and what's not in F1. In honour of McLaren's 700th Grand Prix in Korea (Jimmy von Weeks assures us this is a True Fact) we've gone a bit McMad; see also for welcome diversions from Force India and Minardi...
Jenson Buttoton - We start off this week's edition with a Jenson Button story. It must be about glitz, glamour and success. Or it could be from a Grimsby Times. You know, one or the other.
Essentially (and please do read the story, as whoever wrote it seems to have been so excited about the F1 connection they forgot how to write), a baby was born in the car park of an Asda in Grimsby after his grandmother took a wrong turn on the way to the hospital. But, guess what? THET CALLED THE BABY JENSON. This is front page news.
JeNiceon Button - another Jenson Button story now - we know, we're spoiling you.
There's not too much more to this than a Frome cancer charity that was on the verge of runing out of money being supported by a £10,000 grant from the Jenson Button Charitable Foundation. POP likes this. Well done Jenson.
Ron Dennis looking bloody scary in Singapore. Don't mess with him. World © Moy/Sutton
McBashen - The Daily Mail have come through for POP yet again. Although we don't share their politics, we do share their love of a) celebrity pictures and b) stupid news articles.
One particular McLaren worker will be getting the call into Ron's torture chamber office, after they managed to crash a very expensive and very new McLaren sports car.
Should've just called Lewis, he'd have done it much better. Probaby would have managed to take the roof off too.
Minardi. Yeah, that's right, Minardi - You thought they'd disappeared didn't you? Didn't you?
Well, if you happen to be in the Gold Coast area of Australia, you can see it going round a street circuit they've set up. It's the old two seater version and, disappointingly, a philistine someone seems to have repainted it from the original black we remember. For shame.
Oasis - Good news for Force India this week, as Indian company Sahara have turned up and bought a 42.5% stake in the team. It only cost them a cool $100 million, so we should have had a whip round at the previous Badger event (in case you didn't know, there's one coming up for the Brazilian GP - stay tuned for details) and made a bid. Disappointing.
Apparently the money will be used to "invest in new technology to improve performance", whatever that means. Pretty much anything we assume.
Comments and Discussion
Minardi - I knew they hadn't disappeared. I think I remember seeing the Minardi Showcar two seater at the Melbourne GP sitting in a pit garage. Maybe it lives over here these days? We never forget Minardi, for Mark Webber's 5th position at his debut race!
Don't worry, there were at least 5 Minardi 2 seater's, enough to have a mini-GP at Donington some years ago - Mansell managed to crash into Alonso on the last corner allowing Paul Stoddart to win the race.
No idea how many survive, but one can assume that they wouldn't have been too hard to sell on.