Rambling on…

I haven’t had time to post this, but as you probably know by now, Felipe Massa was involved in an unfortunate accident during qualifying for the Hungarian GP. Thankfully, he’s now out of sedation and is getting ready to fly back to Brazil to recuperate.

It turns out that Massa was hit by a spring fron Rubens Barichello’s Brawn. It’s the size of a drinks can and weighs roughly 1kg. Imagine being hit in the head with one of those while going in excess of 200km/h!! Roughly a week before this incident, F2 driver Henry Surtees (son of racing legent John Surtees) was also hit in the head during a freak accident. Unfortunately, he was killed in the incident. Felipe’s doctors have no doubt that he’ll return to racing sooner or later. The drivers, with the help of SKY Italia compiled a DVD of best wishes for his engineer Rob Smedley to bring it to him. Take a look after the jump.

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I’m writing this just as Massa prematurely leaves the pitbox with the fuel hose still attached! This isn’t the first incident this year, there have been numerous other pitlane related errors, something that wouldn’t have happened when Todt, Brawn and Schumacher were around… and I suspect when a traditional lollipop was still in use.

Think of it logically, if you have one big carbon fibre board which has “STOP” and “1st GEAR”, along with the pre-requisite advertisers’ logos.. it’s quite impossible for the driver to miss it. Even if it were pulled up early by mistake, it is easy for the lollipop man to actually just drop it back down in front of the driver, thereby stopping the driver.

But if the LEDs have already indicated a go, is the driver still gonna be looking at the overhead lights? I doubt it… so Ferrari.. Suck it up.. bring back the lollipop!

related links: F1-Live: Ferrari denies need to ‘lollipop’ return

** Update: Looks like Ferrari reverted to a lollipop on Raikonnen’s second stop.. I didn’t catch the other stops though…

It’s been revealed on Autosport that Sepang now too wants a night race and is reportedly working with the same team of people who are responsible for setting up Singapore’s lighting system.

Now, it’s known that Singapore has always tried to do a ‘one up’ on Malaysia. And generally, they’ve succeeded in outdoing Malaysia. Two most recent examples come to mind:

• The Eye on Malaysia (an obvious knockoff of the 135 metre high London Eye), a 60 metre ferris wheel has Singapore’s 150 metre Singapore Flyer to contend with.
• Then there’s the Singapore Grand Prix, which will be the first night race in Formula 1’s history.

The Singapore Grand Prix has already been dubbed as the Monaco of the East, and yet we have yet to even see F1 cars race in anger there. So, not wanting to be outdone, Sepang has also announced plans to run a night race, preferably in 2009. A case of too little, too late? Not only that… it just screams of “ME TOOO!! I WANT SOME ATTENTION!!!”

Doesn’t it remind you of something? “Ooo.. everyone has a sent a man into space, we can’t be left out! Let’s call ours an Angkasawan and let him hitch a ride with a Russian spacecraft!” Nevermind that we don’t have any program that deserves nor warrants the word ’space’ in front of it…

Sigh… When will there be some form of creative thought and initiative from our ‘higher ups’?

Michael Schumacher and family were on their way to the airport in a taxi. They were running late and Schumi decided to take the wheel.

…the former Formula One ace, plus his wife and two children, caught a taxi back to the airport they were short on time and, after a polite request, cab driver Tuncer Yilmaz watched in wonder as Schumacher took the wheel.

I bet the taxi driver woke up thinking that his day would be as usual as the rest. And he even got a tip for it!  AFP has the full story.

Michael Schumacher is coming out of retirement… but to test for Ferrari in their upcoming test in Barcelona, Spain. According to Ferrari, “It’s half for pleasure, half for technical reasons”.

Whatever it is, it will be interesting to see what his lap times are, after a year on the sidelines. Whilst he was driving, he was always known to drive at 101%.. and nothing less.

Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen have really endeared themselves to their respective teams. I wonder, which of the current crop of drivers are going to be as well-liked by their teams when they retire. So far only Lewis Hamilton comes to mind…