Watching formula one over the last 20 years or so I have seen many different rookie drivers come onto the scene. Many have faded into the background, but some have proved their worth, such as Jacques Villeneuve, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher. But now there is another on the scene, Lewis Hamilton and he looks set to eclipse all of these.
Lewis Hamilton has been driving in what might be termed the lower leagues for a number of years and for many people when he popped on to the formula one scene this year it will have been the first time they had noticed him.
Motorsport is an expensive business and although financial support came from his father and family for a long time, he got his big break when he met Ron Dennis – the boss of McLaren racing. The team funded Lewis through carting and the ‘lower leagues’ of motorsport such as GP2. He was therefore always destined to become a McLaren driver sometime in the future as they would have wanted to cash in on there investment over the years.
Well his big break came this year. Many rookie drivers have impressed. Most notably in recent years would have to be Jacques Villeneuve who in his second year at Williams in 1997 took the F1 world title. Michael Schumacher, the legend of F1 who retired in 2006 didn’t take his first title until he was into his 4th year of F1. However it seems as though Lewis is going to beat even these to great drivers.
I am amazed at how well Lewis has done so far this year. Many people say that he is in the best car and therefore he should do well, but remember there have been a few in the same position. The obvious one that springs to mind is Damon Hill. He was at Williams for his first full year in 1993 with Alain Prost. Prost took the title. Currently 6 races into the season Lewis is 8 points clear in the race for the title and looks the best driver out there by a long way. In Canada the champion Alonso was ragged and made to look very ordinary by Lewis. He has a long way to go, but I believe we have a champion and potential national hero in the making here. Lets hope he doesn’t prove us wrong.
As we all know London has finally got the Olympics and yesterday came the unveiling of the Olympic Logo. There have been all sorts of logo’s down the years but this year the logo has received much criticism and in my opinion rightly so.
On the one hand I look at this and think why the hell am I bothered? On the other hand I think, well this is one worldwide event that the country are hosting and therefore it should be right, in order to create a good impression of the event and our organisation of it.
I think that it is really poor and doesn’t really represent anything that anyone can relate to. I noticed that on the BBC people were submitting their alternative logos and some where much better.
My favourite logo was this one that was submitted by James Wren
Searching around on Youtube the other day I found some formula one videos of the 1980s and 1990s. Much of them were crash videos which I have already spoken about, however it did get me thinking about watching Formula One over the years.
I started watching F1 in 1991. I missed the first 6 rounds or so and caught up mid season. Mansell had a poor start but was challenging until the Japanese Grand Prix when Senna just pipped him as he slid off at the first corner. I followed F1 closely all the way through the 1990s watching Senna’s brilliance and then of course his tragic death and then watching the Schumacher dominance broken breifly by Hill, Villeneuve and Hakkinen.
All this new found interest got me wanting to purchase some of the seasons review DVDs that I used to buy as a kid and watch over and over again to the annoyance of my brother, hogging the video recorder. However doing a search it became clear that they were not available on DVD. Therefore I got onto eBay and started looking.
This morning my first of 6 VHS videos arrived. The 1986 season review. Mansell and his blow-out tyre in the final race was almost the champion. The VHS has to come out from under the sofa and I spent an uninterrupted hour enjoying this great video. I can’t wait for the others to arrive – hopefully tomorrow morning!
Today were the last fixtures in this seasons English Premier League and the relegation battle was the big story of the day. One team from Sheffield United, West Ham United and Wigan would be relegated. Sadly for Sheffield fans it was they who were relegated.
Sheffield United lost to Wigan who had to win in order to stay in the division. Wigan triumphed 2 goals to 1 which was enough for them to get the 3 points that they required.
Sheffield United must be very annoyed however. Earlier in the seasons West Ham United (the third team in the relegation battle) had bought 2 players from Argentina – Carlos Teves and Javier Masherano. The later moved onto Liverpool almost immediately however Tevez played several games for West Ham United. It later emerged that the transfer between West Ham and the club in Argentina was not legal and he was indeed an illegal player as far as the premier league were concerned. For this West Ham United were fined £5.5 million.
You might think this is a hefty sum of money to be fined but what annoys me about this and I am sure is what will be annoying Neil Warnock and the Sheffield United players is that the goals that Tevez scored when he was playing illegally with still have gained West Ham points. Points that have meant they have stayed up and Sheffield United have not. It is estimated that not being in the Premier League will cost Sheffield United around £50 million.
Sheffield United have done nothing illegal yet effectively get fined 10 times as much as the offending club. Is that right? Something should be done.
Last night the Australians once again won the cricket world cup for the third time in a row and once again England were not able to make the semi finals. So what is wrong with English cricket and why are we not able to reach the success levels of the Australian team?
Last nights game was memorable for many reasons, perhaps most notably the way in which the game finished in darkness. However it should be remembered for a fantastic innings by Adam Gilchrist. He managed to score an amazing 149 runs from just 104 balls and was a clear example of the Australian players being able to perform under pressure.
Pressure I believe is one of the things that prevents our players from achieving what their talent suggests they are capable of. This applies to most sports we England represent the nation, especially football. You look at the talent on the field and name for name England and the Australian team are not too far apart. We have the likes of Michael Vaughan – perhaps one of the most natural English batsmen of the last 10 years, Freddie Flintoff, a class bowler and can bat to, and then finally Kevin Pieterson a truly outstanding talent in the batting department. It is players like these that are unable to perform under pressure whereas the Australian players are. But why?
Not having really experienced the atmosphere around different sports in different countries I am not sure, however I expect that it is the weigh of expectation on the team that is the problem. Although as I have said we are comparable with Australia everyone knows that they are better than us. However the press and the general public are bitter and upset when we do not succeed in winning these trophies and this passes down to the players. Perhaps if we had more realistic expectations of our players they would feel less pressured and therefore they may perform better.
I have been watching county cricket this afternoon – the Friends Provident one day competition from Tanton in the West Country. Although I really enjoy watching county cricket it is clear that with watching the world cup for the last month the standards in the county game are a million miles away from the kind of standard internationals call for. No disrespect to the players out there but the world cup and international cricket is in a different league. Maybe this has something to do with the national sides lack of success?
With the Australian team they have about 20 – 25 players that are constantly competing for a place in the first eleven and anyone of them could come in and do well. For the first half of the tournament they were without Andrew Symonds and Shane Watson yet they still won every game. The England team are not like that. There is a clear 12 – 14 players that could play and other than that they are clearly a second string choice. Maybe this is due to the lack of a decent standard in county cricket?
I propose more foreign players to be playing in county cricket. In today’s game there was Justin Langer – class player and the captain of Somerset. Then there was Mushtaq Ahmed another great bowler in his time but no clearly past his best, and Ranna Naved, a current Pakistan international. That gives only three players for all the others to learn from. Take the premiership in football. There are dozens of world class players for all the English players to learn from. After all you learn the most from playing the best. So maybe the rule needs changing in cricket.
By no means is English cricket a lost cause. After all in proper cricket (?) – test matches – we are the second best in the world but we do need to do something in order to improve.
Today I watched the premiership game between Everton and Manchester United at Goodison Park and yet again there were examples of players diving in order to cheat the referee into a decision that was not fair. But today wasn’t the only game that this takes place in.
The modern game of football has changed dramatically since the late eighties and early nineties when I started watching football. 15 years ago players were more honest and there was a culture of wanting to stay on your feet as much as possible to show the opposition that you could not be pushed around easily. It was the hope that this would intimidate the opposition into thinking that you were not going to lie down without a fight.
How the game has changed in the modern day. Players now do all they can to win free kicks and cheat as much as possible and it seems that there are some more than other s that are partaking in what is effectively cheating. Take a look at some of the examples of diving from this YouTube video.
In today’s match the main culprit to me was Gabrielle Heinze, the Argentinian central defender for Manchester United. Everton had a young striker in attack (James Vaughan) and every time to striker touched Heinze he collapsed. It is not the fact that he goes to ground that really bothers me it is the way that it is done. He would fling his arms in the air, almost as though someone had shot him from the stands with a riffle. Clearly the aim was to con the referee into making an incorrect decision. On one of these instances it got Vaughan booked for a nothing tackle. Yes is was a foul but the dramatics brought about the booking.
The Portuguese players (Ronaldo et al.) are perhaps the worst culprits and this could not be seen more as in the world cup semi-final of 2006. They were diving all over the place and thankfully it didn’t work and they never progressed to the final.
Footballers have got to take some responsibility for this and if they do not change the the game is going to change forever. Football will inevitably become a non-contact sport, which is was never meant to be. It also makes th referee’s job a lot harder and their job is hard enough as it is, what with all the video replays they must put up with proving them wrong.
Come on players are start playing the game like real men and not drama queens!
Today I sat down with a coffee and popped on the TV and saw that there was a Top Gear all the best bits on. I never usually watch Top Gear. I don’t know why because it is really good. The bit that I was watching was a bit I had seen before and enjoyed so I thought that I would share this with you.
I have actually mentioned this to many friends before when talking about the program and it is funny because no one seems to have seen it and I don’t think that they believed me.
A while ago Jeremy Clarkson raced a diesel Jaguar around the famous Nurburgring racing track in Germany and he was set the challenge of driving round in under 10 minutes. He succeeded, just completing the lap in 9 minutes and 59 seconds. His mentor for the day set the challenge that she could beat that in a van, so in true Top Gear style they set the challenge up
The van they used of course had to be a Transit Van. They kept it commercial in that no modifications were made and they off they went with Richard Hammond in the passenger seat. Having gotten held up around the circuit because of other drivers (the track is open to the public) the time achieved was still a very impressive 10 minutes and 23 seconds. However it didn’t beat the record. This meant that it was time to rid the van of any excess weight including Richard Hammond himself. They are did the lap behind a dodge Viper in order to create some clean air.
Despite some absolutely unbelievable driving the lap still came in 10 seconds too slow at 10 minutes and 8 seconds. Jeremy’s record remained however to get some close in a Transit van I think was amazing. On the ragged edge all the way and I am sure that it would have been a real thrill to have a go.
heffield United must be very annoyed however. Earlier in the seasons West Ham United (the third team in the relegation battle) had bought 2 players from Argentina – Carlos Teves and Javier Masherano. The later moved onto Liverpool almost immediately however Tevez played several games for West Ham United. It later emerged that the transfer between West Ham and the club in Argentina was not legal and he was indeed an illegal player as far as the premier league were concerned. For this West Ham United were fined £5.5 million.
Pressure I believe is one of the things that prevents our players from achieving what their talent suggests they are capable of. This applies to most sports we England represent the nation, especially football. You look at the talent on the field and name for name England and the Australian team are not too far apart. We have the likes of Michael Vaughan – perhaps one of the most natural English batsmen of the last 10 years, Freddie Flintoff, a class bowler and can bat to, and then finally Kevin Pieterson a truly outstanding talent in the batting department. It is players like these that are unable to perform under pressure whereas the Australian players are. But why?
