If I am at home on a Sunday afternoon, my brain has been known to slip out of gear and I then find myself tuning the TV to Sky Sports’ F1 channel to watch the start of whichever Grand Prix is taking place. Ten minutes before the lights go out, there is Martin Brundle wandering around the starting grid chatting to various ‘celebrities’ asking inane questions and getting even more inane answers. Yesterday, we were lucky enough to hear from the model Naomi Campbell, the cricketer Chris Gayle and TV funnyman Michael McIntyre, who at least had the good grace to ask Brundle whether he “couldn’t find an A lister to talk to”. Frankly, it was terrible to watch, but compared with the dross to follow, by which I mean what people, somewhat laughably, refer to as “the race”, it was TV gold.
Sunday’s “race” was the Monaco Grand Prix, run on the streets of Monaco, a circuit known as Circuit de Monaco. It’s shit. This non-event has been running since 1929 and so far as I can tell there has not been a single instance of overtaking in the succeeding years. That is probably down to the fact that the circuit is about as wide as an English country lane. The whole thing is an expensive procession of shiny motor cars, attended by the rich and not always famous who have about as much, if not even less, interest in it than I have.
In order to make things more interesting, the head honchos at F1 decided to bring in two enforced pit stops for all drivers, which would enable drivers to “overtake” on the simple grounds that other drivers would be forced to stop at least twice during the race. I am no F1 expert, but even I could see a potential problem here. Instead of being a race between different drivers and different cars, it would become a context of which pit crew could change their cars quickest. This has given me a great idea: why not simply do away with the “race” and simply have a race between mechanics changing tyres? In this way, you could cut out the middle man – the driver and his car – and allow the rich and not particularly famous stand around waiting for Martin Brundle? If this didn’t take long enough, Sky Sports could always pop up to my local Kwikwit where it takes upwards of a couple of hours to replace just one one of my tyres? Plenty of time for TV ads.
My favourite driver Max Verstappen summed up yesterday’s Monaco farce: “You can’t race here anyway so it doesn’t matter what you do. One stop, 10 stops. Even at the end I was in the lead, but my tyres were completely gone, and you still can’t pass. We were almost doing Mario Kart. Then we have to install bits on the car – maybe you can throw bananas around? I don’t know, slippery surface?”
What a cracking idea. Instead of the safety car we can have the banana car, lobbing banana skins around the circuit hoping to cause a few crashes so that we could have overtaking? At least we could have a few laughs along the way. But seriously, re-read Verstappen’s opening five words: “You can’t race here anyway“. In which case, what’s the point of the Monaco Grand Prix?
Well, there’s no sporting purpose, that’s for sure. It’s not a meaningful contest between men and their machines. At Monaco, it never was. There’s all this history, but history is all there is that’s left. What is the point of it all?
From my point of view, Monaco is not exactly a Formula 1 outrider. Most “races” are turgid processions, despite the best efforts of Sky Sports to pretend otherwise. I cannot think of a single occasion when someone said to me” “Did you see the F1 at the weekend?” That’s partly because it’s tucked away behind a paywall and because it’s rubbish to watch.
I may watch the start of the next Grand Prix too, assuming it doesn’t clash with hair wash night, but then again I may not. I may just call it a day after Brundle’s grid walk, if I don’t fall asleep first.
