“First, they take the dinglebop, and they smooth it out with a bunch of schleem.
“The schleem is then re-purposed for later batches. They take the dinglebop and push it through the grumbo, where the fleeb is rubbed against it. It’s important that the fleeb is rubbed, because the fleeb has all of the fleeb juice. Then a schlami shows up, and he rubs it and spits on it. They cut the fleeb.
“There’s several hizzards in the way.
“The blamfs rub against the chumbles. And the ploobis and grumbo are shaved away ”
You have no idea what I am on about. That’s Okay. Sometimes, I feel that way about Formula One. You see, I’ve enjoyed watching F1 ever since way back when, when it was still televised on SABC3 or was it SABC2.
In any case, I digress.
It was all about the skill, the speed, the egos, the baritone grumbling of the engines that rumbled in the chest, Michael Schumacher on an off day, the flying Finn Mika Hakkinen, Kimi “Iceman” Räikkönen, defending champion Damon Hill finishing second in a crappy
Arrows ’97.
It was all very exciting. Also, it was the only sport on in that specific time slot on the telly, so you either took an afternoon nap to screaming engines, waiting for M-Net Open Time, or you watched big V12-powered engines throwing themselves around some track in an exotic location Except when that location was Kyalami.
Recently, Bernie Ecclestone sold the commercial rights of the sport to Liberty Media for $4.4bn - that’s about R58bn - in a changing of the guard. Bernie had ruled over F1 for 40 years, building a Barad-dur-like dark tower - that’s Lord of the Rings speak, if you didn’t know - impenetrable to all except his inner circle.
Like a dark lord he forged ahead - conquering, dividing, dominating, ruling from his iron throne, fashioned from exhaust pipes, I imagine.
In comes Liberty to emancipate the sport from this draconian reign.
And they’ve promised a raft of changes and new ideas to transform the sport, from non-championship races to a larger social media presence.
And, while they are at it, can we have a side-order of “dumbed down” racing please.
For that is the major problem with F1. It has become too technical. And that’s Okay if it’s your bag of chips, baby.
But for the casual viewer, understanding the niceties of tyre width, rear-wing diffusers, front-wing splitters and bargeboards can be daunting. It’s cool when you’re in to it, less so when you are new to the sport.
Don’t get me wrong, as the highest form of racing, F1 needs a smidgen of those technicalities. What it can’t afford is to remain a niche sport. And that’s exactly what the constant, yearly tinkering of rules and regulations make it - technical and difficult to keep up to date with.
Moreover, these technical rule changes also need big money to develop and implement and therein already create advantages for the bigger teams who have the capital, manpower and technical know-how to exploit loopholes and develop championship winning cars.
Already, the big teams - Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull - were capitalising on the shortcoming in this year’s rules in testing this past week.
The sport has become predictable like that. It has, become, dare I say it, boring.
If F1 truly wants to re-brand itself as a sport for the masses, it needs to bring back racing that the everyday man can understand and be enthused about. It needs personalities and dogfights on the track and off it, to drive it forward. That can only be achieved by taking a step back on the regulations, levelling the playing field and giving every driver a shot at the podium.
If Liberty do that, maybe, just maybe, it can bring back racing.
Oh ja, by the way, before, at the beginning, I was talking about how they make plumbuses.
@FreemanZAR