Monday March 07, 2005

Suddenly It is a Sport Again!

As Robin Wilton pointed out in a comment to my last entry, Michael Schumacher did not finish the Melborne Grand Prix race Sunday. Michael *always* finishes a race, and *usually* wins. The man is a mutant behind the wheel of an F1 car. Combined with Ferrari's deep pockets, Jean Todt's team management and their top shelf engineering team, he has been dominant in F1 racing for quite some time.

Unfortunately, unless you have some fascination with watching Michael's Ferrari passing all of the lapped traffic with no one within 30 seconds of him in the final 20 laps or so of a race, his success did introduce a sense of predictability and boredom. There were several races last year where it seemed that the race got about 20 minutes of airtime, while Michael out for a Sunday drive got 60 minutes. Racing wheel to wheel, pit stop strategies and fuel load strategies designed to squeeze out one or two seconds to gain a position, aggressive (but within the bounds of reasonable safety) driving, those things make F1 racing exciting! Having more than three or four drivers on the grid with a snowball's chance in Morocco of actually winning a race without some catastrophic accident or freak event is a welcome change to the sport.

bill.

( Mar 07 2005, 05:00:05 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [1]