Listen Up

One of the downsides to traveling on race weekends is having to watch F1 on Sky Sports. The international feed to all national broadcasters is the same. It is the commentary of David CROFT. During Practice 3 he was going on about some movie he had just seen. And the leaves falling in his garden. I hung in until they started talking with Luke BROWNING about the best way to drive a F1 car around Baku. Although he’s never driven a F1 car there. If you didn’t know the lad. He is the reserve driver for Williams. You know the team who made one car to Q1 for the first time this year. Other than being British why he was sourced as an ‘expert’ is a mystery. Last year he finished 16th in a mediocre F2 field. This year in Japan’s Super Formula he’s in 12th behind such racing luminaries as Toshiki OYU and Sacha FENESTRAZ. After turning the feed to ‘mute’ I started looking at the branding on all the cars. Now Artificial Intelligence - sorry Super Intelligence - is every where. AI has the money and is splashing it on F1. Then I noticed the dearth of British sponsors. Barclays Bank, JCB and Marks + Spencer. Not what you would call real big hitters. Perhaps it’s the result of putting up trade barriers to your biggest free trade partners.One of the other downsides of watching Sky, besides the obvious and widely reported English prejudice, is the advertisements. None on F1tv my provider. One of the recurring ads was for Aldi England. The German Aldi company. Picture this. Practice 3 and #18 in the program and number one in our heart is on a warm up lap. He shunts. Goes into an escape road. Says the damage isn’t that bad and he will continue. In the attempt causes more damage putting the car out. Two, count ‘em two yellow flags for the same driver in one incident. At Baku he was +21 seconds behind eventual winner George RUSSEL by the third lap eventually retiring. Yuki TSUNODA is ahead in points. As U.S. Senator John N KENNEDY of Louisiana said “Lord, give me Strength for I’m not a Patient Man.