The Cars Are Out!
Most of the 2015 cars have been presented to the public, and are currently pounding around Jerez covered in paint looking like a pair of decorator’s dungarees. So, now we find out what’s what; will Mercedes suddenly be utterly rubbish? Will all the teams have caught up to make 2015 not a 2 car race for the title? Will hell be placing a bulk order for anti-freeze any time soon? All these hopes and questions of F1 will be answered in the coming days.
But first, some off-track news…
Red Bull have splashed out by sending their drivers and press team to the popular ski resort of Val D’Milton Keynes. Now in fairness, the artificial ski slope is a decent effort at representing the real thing with the resources available, although at full speed you’ll only last about 30 seconds – all of which is much like the Renault engines. In fact the Viry-Châtillon based power plant squad believe this “expectation management conditioning” was the vital ingredient missing from driver preparation last year, so came up with the idea, before going on a double lunch break.
Daniel Ricciardo also told us he’d been informed by the team he was being promoted to lead driver, now no longer under the tutelage of Sebastian Vettel. Although, we couldn’t work out if he was struggling not to burst out laughing at the time, or just looked his normal self.
That wonderfully charismatic and friendly Finn, Kimi Raikkonen, has had some great news with the arrival of his son. He couldn’t wait to break the news to eager reporters; when asked how he was feeling, he replied “It’s okay.” His partner Mintu was also understandably overjoyed with their new arrival of “Robin Raikkonen”, who told a Finnish celebrity magazine when asked how she felt following their new arrival, “It’s okay”. We even caught up with Kimi’s parents at the family home, and despite not speaking much English, the excitement broke through the language barrier and they proclaimed, “Sen kunnossa” (It’s ok).
(Disclaimer: we didn’t actually bother with any research whatsoever for the above section of this article, but like most F1 journalists we always safely assuming Kimi’s gormless monotone appearance in front of a camera is exactly how he is in every aspect of his life. Because there’s no way he could be any different when we’re not about, right?)
In Depth McLaren-Honda Analysis
Since the bombshell news of Fernando Alonso’s return to Woking, and the naming of Jenson Button as the other driver was announced about 5 minutes before departure gates closed for Jerez, the new McLaren-Honda partnership (take two) has given us journalists great excitement, with possibilities of fractious team dynamics and toys being ejected from cockpits. However, we told everyone that would happen at Ferrari last year also.…
We do think that the drivers have already begun trying to out-Japanese each other though. We’ve been told by the two that’s untrue. Jenson coincidentally now has a Japanese flag on his helmet, and also on his new crash lid design for 2015. Fernando has been Twitter spamming the hashtag #ThePowerOfDreams, telling all that the only team he actually ever wanted to drive for as a young boy was McLaren-Honda, and that his favourite car ever is of course the legendary NSX. In fact, the only thing he hasn’t done is post a karaoke video of him singing “The Impossible Dream”. Plus he loves Pokemon.
He has also reportedly bought his mum a Honda Jazz, and been learning Japanese, but cancelled lessons when he found out that Jenson Button was already fluent, hence scuppering his chances of talking to the engine technical staff in secret. Alonso has however appointed himself technical lead in a Delorean time machine clone in the spoof Back to the Future McLaren advert, under McLaren’s programme for the past few years of “generating adequate units of humour”.
Andrea Stella’s early release from his Ferrari contract specifically to play a Libyan terrorist, armed with a bazooka to shoot Jenson, was blocked by Ferrari and all at McLaren except Eric Boullier. Concerned by these developments, we (might have) spoken to Alonso and he told us in no uncertain terms was he trying to assert himself as number one driver in the team, that in fact he’d actually asked Jenson to put rivalry aside to help him build a better car to challenge Mercedes.
And in fact Jenson should put aside his smooth driving style technique in favour of a different car direction, because it didn’t suit Alonso’s style, and would definitely be much quicker for the both of them. He’s also apparently always had a love of English country pubs in Surrey, told us that warm ale with floating leaves and twigs beats San Miguel any day of the week, and all the McLaren mechanics (especially Jenson’s) would be treated to pint after work every night. For no reason, other than the fact they are the best mechanics in the world.
Red Bull Secrecy
Red Bull have launched a novel concept of covering their car in camouflage paint scheme. Aerodynamicists will now view the trippy RB11 off their faces on special “Red Bull pills” whilst listening to Austrian hard house music in order to “see the air”.
However, Red Bull’s Cristian Horner, in between slagging off Sebastian Vettel (after correcting himself from Mark Webber), insists it’s actually to stop the other teams trying to copy ideas from the front running team like always. Bless…
Mercedes Looking Good
The Brackley based squad are in good shape for the upcoming season, to everyone’s complete shock. Nico Rosberg clocked up a total of 157 laps in an effort to break the car before Lewis Hamilton could get to drive, and engineers were so concerned that they had to resort to playing Shirt-Zinger’s new album down the radio to force him to pit.
