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Date Posted: 13:12:11 12/26/04 Sun
Author: Jeremy Ernest Dave One Of The lads Clarkson
Author Host/IP: host217-42-244-1.range217-42.btcentralplus.com / 217.42.244.1
Subject: Re: My plans to save Formula One (part two)
In reply to: Jeremy Clarkson 's message, "My plans to save Formula One" on 13:10:20 12/26/04 Sun

At the end of the year the best driver wins the driver’s championship because he has made the best use of whatever machinery was made available to him. And the best team would win the team championship because their faster cars would mask the inadequacies of, say, David Coulthard.
Formula One would still be a showcase for technical excellence. It would still be home to the best drivers in the world. But instead of it being a yawn on television, we could never guess in a million years who would win each weekend.



The drivers, I feel sure, would love this too because they’d be freed from the short-sleeved branded shirts and could spend their weekends off having parachute-sex instead of looking at a young offender’s circuit board. And the teams would love it because they could concentrate on running the cars, only having to worry about the ego of their backroom, never-seen test driver.

The trouble is, of course, that in the whole of Formula One, there’s only one team that is clever and adventurous enough to go for such a radical and cunning plan. I’m talking, of course, about Renault.

Think about it. Every time you find a dark erotic thriller set in Prague on Channel 4, you can be assured it was sponsored by the créateur d’automobiles. Whereas Dale’s Big Cash Holiday Supermarket Price is always brought to you by Rover.

And what about the shaking-that-ass advert? Can you see those Mercedes men in bomber jackets sanctioning such a thing?

In Formula One Renault is the only team that seems to understand that the sport is all about glamour, excitement and danger, and having unusual sex with ice-white, 9ft-tall stick-insect women with cartoon lips and breasts that boing upwards when you take their bras off. The boss, for instance, is a chap called Flavio Briatore, and he seems to have dated if not fathered children with every supermodel in the world. The man is so aloof he doesn’t even bother to form sentences properly, so “Hello Jeremy, how are you?” comes out as “hnnf”. I would love to ask what he thinks of Ron Dennis’s jacket.

Then you have their drivers. Now I know Jarno Trulli likes Simply Red and lives in Reading. But they masked this by insisting he grew rock-star hair and wore a bandanna. Some say he was sacked for petulance, but I suspect it’s because he once let slip that he likes Phil Collins, too. This, in the world of Renault, is simply not on.

As a result of this, Renault is the only team in Formula One that does what it sets out to do. Sell cars.

Ron Dennis doesn’t make me want to buy a Mercedes. Frank Williams doesn’t want to make me buy a BMW. But fatty Flav with his Billionaires’ Club in Sardinia and his monosyllabic speech patterns makes me want a Renault Vel Satis.

Traditionally, I would now tell you all about this strange form of executive transport. I’d say it was not an aesthetic or dynamic match for the 5-series BMW or the Audi A6, but that it feels unusual and rather groovy inside. I’d talk about the rather dull front-wheel-drive handling and everyone would be happy.

But to demonstrate that you don’t always have to do what you’ve always done, I’m going to draw a line here and hope — pray even — that Formula One’s bosses do the same.

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