Eff One Season Preview

With the Formula One season about to kick off in Mudbourne this weekend, welcome to the World Of Bollocks' timely preview of... well, the Formula One season. Thought that was pretty obvious, actually.


McLAREN
Choadafone McLaren Mercedes
1 Fred Alonso (ex-Renault)
2 Token Black Guy (ex-TISM)




McLaren has the honour of being the only F1 team named after a dead New Zealander, at least until Tiger's caddie Steve Williams carks it (presumably by getting his head trapped up Tiger's arse and asphixating.) Set up by Bruce McLaren in the 60s and bought by charisma bypass recipient Ron Dennis in the 80s, McLaren won multiple titles with the likes of Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen and are basically F1's Arsenal - based out of shiny, architecturally interpretive new digs; untouchable on their day but average off it, reputation for being passionless and boring, and run by a guy who talks a lot of bollocks. Though they are favoured for success this year, the Mercedes-Benz owned team are hoping to guarantee their success through a proposed realignment of the pointscoring system, whereby points are awarded not for race results but on the basis of how much of a premium that label-obsessed wankers will spend to get the maker's badge on the nose of their car, thus making the season a two-horse race between them and BMW Sauber.
Chances: Conceptual.


RENAULT
F---ING Renault F1 Team
3 Giancarlo Fishkiller
4 That new Finnish dude who isn't Raikkonen




Back in the 80s, French govt-owned Renault were the first (and only) fully unionised F1 team in history, meaning everyone worked four-day weeks, half the team was on strike at any given moment, and they couldn't get their shit together to win a single fucking thing, even with future four-time champ Alain Prost driving for them. Prost was eventually fired for boofing the team director's wife. Reigning world champions, though known best for team boss Flavio Briatore' shagging (also of world champion quality - scaring sixty and with both Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum in his recent bedside visitors' book). Losing Alonso to the stormtroopers in silver will either fuck them completely or might actually prove that someone there actually knows how to engineer a race car. Heikki Kovalainen (yeah, had to look that up) appears to be the first Finnish F1 driver with an actual personality since the chain-smoking, perennially sideways Keke Rosberg in the '80s - and noone knows why the fuck The Fish still has a gig - but they might do OK.
Chances: Musty.


Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari Mafioso
5 Felipe Massa Attack
6 Mika Raikkonen... no, Kimi Hakkinen... no... ah fuck it, it's not Schuey anyway



Ferrari once were warriors, now they're just corporate whores. Back in the day they were run by wogs for wogs and did weird and wonderful things like making beautiful, superfast cars that broke down a lot, and hiring lunatics like Jean Alesi and Villeneuve the elder - not the whiny bitch with peroxide hair and stupid glasses, his mad dad who lived fast, died young and left a rather second-hand looking body. Then Schumacher and his team took over in the '90s, fired all the Italians, replaced them with drones from his Benetton team and that was the end of the fun. For Ferrari, and for F1. They won a bunch but who gives a fuck, that place hasn't been Ferrari for ten years. Will probably win something this year, even if it's 'only team still to depend on cancer-stick advertising this far into the 21st century'.
Chances: Embittered.


Honda
Honda Racing F1 Team
(as distinct from the Honda F1 Racing Team, Team Honda F1 Racing and the Honda Postie Bike Riders Club of Lithuania)
7 Jenson's Buttocks
8 Barry Rubenschello

Back in the day, this team was originally set up as a vanity project for Jacques Villeneuve (something like 'Babyshambles' for balding Canadian race drivers), Honda have wasted years, as well as more money than Roman Abramovich throws away on Marat Safin's exes, trying to get their F1 shit together and recreate the success they had in the late 80s as an engine supplier for Williams and McLaren. Buttocks managed to pinch an arsey win last year in the wet in Hungary (and knows there's nothing worse than hungary arse, particularly trying to dig your intimates out of your crack in public - Britney's not mad, just strategic) and now all of a sudden they're being bigged-up as world beaters. World-savers too, as discussed in previous media commitments. They think they'll win; they will not. I don't like big Butts and I cannot lie, while Lemoncello fermented many years ago and should be put out in the recycling bin.
Chances: Inconvenient.


BMW
BMW Sauber F1 Team
9 Nick Heidfeld
10 Robert Kubica




No humour is permitted. This is a German team run by Swiss people.
Chances: Efficient.


TOYOTA
Panasonic Toyota Racing
(if they are, I'm backing the Panasonic to beat the Toyota)
11 The Stupid Schumacher Brother (awarded on a countback)
12 Jarno Trulli Average

Have managed to trump their Japanese enemies from the postie bike factory by wasting even more money than them for even less result. Toyota's F1 operations were borne out of their successful world rally team which won multiple titles through the 90s with their Celicas. The minor fact that their Celicas were running massively oversized (and equally massively illegal) turbos didn't seem to bother the team's Japanese masters, even though their disqualification effectively gifted a world title to random haggis Colin McCrash, an anomaly that was thankfully never repeated. Chances for success are hamstrung by a persistent belief in their HR department that driving talent has a genetic component. Having spent more money than Chelsea, another year like the last couple will either lead Toyota to either to chuck this shit in and focus on that Camry NASCAR they've been bolting together in a barn in Louisiana, or getting those old Celica turbos out of storage and bolting them onto the F1 car. For the Japanese Grand Prix at least, given that it's at Fuji, a track Toyota kinda... own.
Chances: Inscrutable.


Red Bull
Red Bull Racing
(like Pamplona but with less Spaniards trying to fucking kill themselves)
14 Crazy Dave Coulthard
(och aye the noo, motherfuckers!)
15 Mark Webber
(former Canberra Raiders ballboy)

Before Red Bull were Red Bull, they were Jaguar, and they were shit. But awfully, awfully good at attracting publicity in inverse proportion to their competitiveness. Case in point, the Oceans Eleven cross-promo exercise at Monaco one year when both cars had several hundred thousand dollar diamonds impregnated into the nose of the car. Yes, at Monaco, the world's narrowest and most treacherous street circuit, where there's more fencing than a fucking Errol Flynn movie. Unsurprisingly the dickhead in the second car stuffed the thing into the barriers mid-race and the diamond was never recovered. This year in pre-season testing, Red Bull have been slower than a Datsun 120Y towing a horse float, up to the point when there were slammed in the media for being slower than a Datsun 120Y towing a horse float, after which they were all of a sudden topping the timesheets and walloping all comers. In unrelated news, in pre-season testing there is no technical inspection to see if you're cheating like a fucker.
Chances: Overstimulated.


Williams
AT&T Williams
(they have an engine, but they're too embarrassed to admit it's a Toyota)
16 Nico (Above The Law) Rosberg
17 Alexander Brat Wurz


Back in the day, while McLaren were the paddock wankers, with spotless garages, shiny uniforms, PR speak and a faultless sense of their own importance, Williams just used to get on with it. They won handfuls of titles through the 80s and 90s with smaller budgets and less grunt by just out-engineering every motherfucker in the field. And by employing hard-arsed racers like Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Keke Rosberg and Alan Jones. Of course they buggered this up in the 90s signing Villeneuve and have never been right since. Sledged horrendously by former driver Webber, who said they'd never win a fucking thing again now they were nothing but the Toyota B-team (which is slightly rich, as pointed out by one of our regular correspondents, coming from a guy driving for the Renault B-team). His replacement, former Benetton pilot Alex Wurz, is the latest in a long line of former world champions Williams has had driving for them. However, given that he was actually the 1986 world BMX champion, this probably shows how far these boys have slipped since the glory days. Not much chance for podiums, but after last year's abortive run things can hardly get any Wurz.
Chances: AT&Tenuous.


Scuderia Toro Rosso
Red Bull Wog Division
18 Vitantonio Liuzzi (Tony to his mates)
19 No idea yet but probably that Seppo cockhead Scott Speed



Scuderia Toro Rosso (what's Italian for 'Red Bull B-team'?) started life as perennially underfunded-but-cheerful backmarkers Minardi in the '80s, who gave half the field their first F1 drives - Webber, Alonso and the Fish among them. The new outfit is half-owned by unpronouncable Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz and half by former Ferrari, McLaren and Benetton ace Gerhard Berger, who was renown throughout his long and illustrous F1 career as one of the most dependable 'number twos' on the grid. Not to say he drove like shit, but that he was always happy to come second. That's why the ladies loved him. STR are running second-hand Ferrari motors and last year's Red Bull chassis, so they'll be thereabouts, but probably not there.
Chances: Astringent.


Spyker
Spyker F1 Team
20 Christjian Alby Mangels (fuck me, a Dutchman driving for a Dutch team!)
21 Some rent-a-hack with just enough budget to keep the wheels turning


This team's greatest highlight was as the Jordan team in the 90s, apexed by Hairy Harry Frentzen's unlikely run at the title in 1999 in the Honda-engined Jordan 199 (wonder how they came up with the model name?) Jordan went broke and sold to Midland, a bunch of shady looking Russian oil barons (think Roman but dodgier), who in turn bailed out to Spyker, a reinvented Dutch sportscar company who first traded in the early 20th century. Spyker's own greatest highlight was one of their two-seater sportscars scaring several shades of shite out of Clarkson on Top Gear. Last year the team hit upon a remarkably successful means of increasing their airtime on TV: painting the cars to look like McLarens. And getting lapped a lot. Their best chance for success this year is to paint this year's cars to look like Ferraris, and swapping the wogs enough drugs and porn to get a few of Schuey's old motors to bolt into the back. Done, and done.
Chances: Oranje.


SUPER AGURI
Stupid Aguri F1 Team
22 Takuma Satay
23 Anthony Davidzzzzzzon




To call Stupid Aguri the Honda B-team would be an insult to the letter 'B'. Can you have a 'Z' team? This is the vanity project of former Japanese F1 'star' (as in 'a character used in place of an expletive in printed text') Aguri Suzuki, who somewhat ironically has sold his soul to a different motorbike manufacturer altogether. Despite pedalling near-new Honda chassis and engines and getting plenty of yen shovelled their way from the postie bike factory, they are still slower than Paris Hilton. Both drivers, while competent, are unremarkable other than for the fact that they are absolute fucking midgets. I can't be arsed going on about them, and I'm sure you can't either.
Chances: Nepotismic.