This "This Week in Motorsport" completely got away from me. I'd intended only a few remarks to highlight a hyperlink. I love it when a post takes on an unplanned life of its own.

This Week in Motorsport
One of the questions that I asked myself when picking "my" teams ahead of the 2010 Formula One World Championship was, For whom am I cheering, the driver or the constructor? To carry it further, What if I like a driver but not his team? What about a constructor I favor who seem to have hired a villain as their driver? In the three teams I back in 2010 (and intend to back until something radically changes, on-track performance of course not meeting that definition, as I am no fair weather fan), I have found a pleasing combination of drivers and constructors.

I liked Red Bull (Renault) from the first during the '09 World Championship; certainly it does not hurt that they were competitive—Sebastian Vettel eventually finished second on the World Drivers' Championship—but what I really liked were that they weren't taken very seriously. Red Bull? A team named after the blasted energy drink? Surely they couldn't dream of competing with the likes of legendary F1 names like Ferrari and McLaren, Williams, or even the upstart Brawn (really, the old Honda team, with long-time Ferrari mastermind Ross Brawn at the helm). I'd only had one or two cans of Red Bull in my life before the '09 Grand Prix de Monaco, and had detested every drop of the wretched elixir, but there was something about Red Bull Racing that caught my eye and won my affection. Though I didn't think I knew enough about the sport to back one particular team over another, I found myself cheering for the Red Bulls to best the dominant-in-the-early-grands-prix Brawns in the closing rounds of the World Championship last fall. For this season, knowing the likely competitiveness of the the new RB6 (though no one expected Red Bull to claim all six pole positions in the year's first six grands prix), I had a choice: like Red Bull at the risk of being seen as fair weather or drop them so as to avoid that appearance. I am deeply concerned about propriety, but could not give a dingo's kidneys about appearances ("Image is everything"? I will always hate Nikon.); the spiteful choice was to like Red Bull. The old stalwart Mark Webber and the young hotshot Vettel? Those are drivers I can get behind.

I feel in love with Lotus Racing as soon as they announced the return of the Lotus name for the first time since the 1994 demise of the original Team Lotus. And the classic green and yellow color scheme? Gorgeous. (Though of course the old Lotus famously sported the black and gold John Player Special livery for many a year, too.) In Lotus I can simultaneously cheer for an underdog and celebrate the heritage of Formula One, a sport to which I am still quite new. An additional advantage is my affection for one of Lotus's two drivers, Heikki Kovalainen. Last year, Kovalainen drove for McLaren, where he was clearly outclassed by his teammate Lewis Hamilton, '08 World Champion and runner-up in '07 by a single point. In the off-season, Kovalainen was replaced by reigning '09 World Champion Jenson Button (more about whom later); sorry, Heikki, but clearly a step up for McLaren. I can't even point to any reason, I just like Heikki Kovalainen. Maybe his silly Finnish names? I've no strong opinions about Kovalainen's counterpart, the veteran Jarno Trulli. But my feeling is that as we move forward I'm behind Lotus no matter whom is piloting their cars.

Regarding Williams, I chose them for two reasons: {a} I like veteran driver Rubens Barrichello, despite his driving for Brawn last year; it aids that he was dumped by those Kraut bastards as soon as Brawn G.P. became Mercedes G.P., but what I like best is that the man's thirty-seven years old—he'll turn thirty-eight on Narwhal Day—and has raced in almost three hundred grands prix—if all goes well, he'll reach three hundred grand prix starts in October (10.10.10) at the Japanese Grand Prix at mighty Suzuka. He is rather a living testament to Sir Ernest Shackleton's family motto, Fortitudine vincimus, "By endurance we conquer." I've no strong opinions about Barrichello's counterpart, rookie Nico Hülkenberg, '09 champion of the GP2 feeder series (like Triple-A baseball), though "I'm a well-wisher in that I wish [him] no specific harm." {b} I am, at my core, a student of history, first, last, and always. I am glad that the Lotus name has returned to F1, and I do not begrudge the Malaysian-owned Lotus Racing taking up the history and traditions of the erstwhile British-owned Team Lotus, but Lotus is a new team. (In fact the newest team, as they were granted entry into the 2010 World Championship only after B.M.W. announced its withdrawal from the sport, whereas Virgin Racing, Hispania Racing, and the failed US F1 Team were earlier granted 2010's three new spots on the grid.) Red Bull has been a sponsor since the mid-'90s, but only run their own team since '05. Williams is a team with a long, proud history, being one of only three teams (Ferrari, McLaren) in the sixty-one year history of Formula One to have won one hundred grands prix (one hundred thirteen and counting…). I like that Williams has been running cars in F1 longer than I've been alive.

Wow, okay, this has all been a very long way of saying that, for no reason I could put a finger on, I took a strong disliking to Jenson Button during his march to the '09 World Drivers' Championship. And I oppose McLaren—officially Vodafone McLaren Mercedes—because of the team's use of Mercedes engines. (McLaren is also minority-owned by Mercedes-Benz, though those Kraut bastards have been divesting themselves of McLaren since they bought Brawn and renamed it Mercedes.) Now it seems clear that McLaren is indeed a team of villains, and that my dislike of Button was based upon a proper, if subconscious, reading of his knavishness, on display in the following piece from B.B.C. Sport: Buttonlink. Button doesn't hope to beat the Red Bulls by his own or his team's skill, no, he wishes for mechanical trouble to do his job for him. Jenson Button may be a skill driver, but he's no racer. I'm heartened to know that my snap judgments are still as reliable as they always were; I knew I disliked Button, even if I couldn't say why.

As will be discussed at greater length another time, one of the things I most love about Formula One is that the sport is home to proper villains, 'tis a "wretch hive of scum and villainy" alongside all the glory and glamour.

Formula fun!

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Sarah McLachlan, "Ice Cream" (live) from Mirrorball (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The Impossible Ingenue asked me to join her for ice cream at Ziggy's this afternoon. Par for the course, I heeded the siren song of Superman ice cream. Distressingly, she eschewed the cone in favor of a cup; there is something deeply wrong with that girl.

Mittwoch, 19 Mai
Andy Partridge, "I Wonder Why the Wonderfalls" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)