Motorsport May

  Qualifying Max Verstappen Fernando Alonso Esteban Ocon (after Leclerc took a penalty) Result Unsurprisingly the same as quali... Well, well, well... If it isn't one of my least favourite races of the year! Monaco... Dull, pretentious Monaco... BUT! I didn't hate it as much as I expected to...  I decided to watch it with my friend at my favourite place on Earth; The Motorist. If you follow my Instagram , you will have seen me posting pictures of this place, it's so dreamy! The perfect place to watch a race I don't usually enjoy. You will also know if you watched my Insta Stories, that we had technical issues for the first ten or so laps of the race. It was traumatising!!! Luckily I had my reliable source and good friend formula1_kingdom to keep me updated on the fact that nothing really happened while the telly was having a strop. Finally, we got sorted, thanks to some legend sitting and holding the HDMI cable in place while the staff went to get tape (see my insta st...

  Okay okay so the other night I had an F1 related dream again, but it was short and not very detailed so I wasn't gonna post about it. But then I had another dream based on F1! So why not stick them both in a post?! A twofer (two for one). Dream 1 If you follow my Instagram account, you'll know the first dream was about the Ferrari boyos, Carlos and Charles. In the dream, my family was having a party and Carlos and Charles were there. Happy days! Carlos was playing beer pong and having the best time, Charles was sat at a table on his own, glaring at people...  That's the dream! Short and sweet like I said.  I would definitely be a Charles in that situation! Mostly because I'm terrible at beer pong... Dream 2 Now, this one is proper weird. I was in a park in London, the weather was gorgeous and for some reason, there was a piano in this park for people to just randomly play. Just like there is in St Pancras Station, London. Anyway, who should be there but the lovely Dan...

Qualifying Ash Sutton Tom Ingram Colin Turkington Race 1 Ash Sutton Jake Hill Colin Turkington Race 2 Ash Sutton Jake Hill Colin Turkington Race 3 Tom Ingram Rory Butcher Daniel Rowbottom Well I hope everyone took their sun cream to Snetterton this weekend for the next three rounds of the British Touring Car Championship! What a scorcher! And if you didn't and have a case of sunburn today, you have mine and my ginger skin's deepest sympathy. I step outside on a day like that and I burst into flames if I'm not wearing SPF 50... Anyway, enough about my problems in being alive! This has been another racing weekend where I'm reminded of why I love this championship. I've probably said that in every post about it though. It's just constant action, positions are gained and lost, you can start at the back of the 27 car grid and finish 11th, it's chaos and I love it. The first race saw reigning champion Tom Ingram bog down at lights out and lose numerous positions, ...

Niki Lauda 22nd February 1949 - 20th May 2019 Today we remember the incredible life and legacy of three time world champion Niki Lauda, four years on from his passing. Niki's determination and passion for the sport is really something else. We all know about his unfortunate accident in 1976 that is a massive part of F1 history and ended up raising awareness and continued to improve safety standards and protocols in the sport. It's possible that without this infamous event, paired with the introduction of the halo back in 2018, Romain Grosjan may not have survived his accident back in Bahrain 2020.  Going back to Niki, his passion and drive, he returned to the track, missing only TWO RACES and taking SIX WEEKS out. He was suffering with severe trauma, which is completely understandable, but still finished FOURTH in his first Grand Prix back. What a champ! Speaking of him being a champ, only a year after this event, Niki went on to achieve his second championship! Imagine being a...

  It feels like the 2023 season of the BTCC has only just started (I mean, there has only been two race weekends so far this year) and, already, the calendar for 2024 has been announced! Queue me and my chaotic brain trying to figure out which dates I should go to and checking hotel availability and prices for dates over a year away... This announcement feels like it's come super early in the year, like I said, we're literally two events into the new season, the third being this weekend. I've not even managed to attend one yet! I've got my tickets & hotel booked for Donington part 2; it can't come soon enough. There is a bonus with the calendar being announced this early though. It gives me a good amount of time to save money so I can attend as many races as possible. Maybe 2024 will be the year I can attend them all and cross that off my Motosport Bucket List .  Every year, I can't help but wish that the calendar would be longer. I love this championship a...

 The Mechanic  By Marc 'Elvis' Priestly Rating: 8/10 The first non-race weekend in a while... I'm not really sure what to do with myself so I thought I should finally write up my review of The Mechanic by ex McLaren mechanic Marc 'Elvis' Priestly. I mean, I finished it on April 27th so I've put it off long enough. First of all, I'm really proud of myself for finishing this book. Not because I didn't enjoy it, I found it really interesting and quite shocking in parts. This book has THE TINIEST font! I'm long sighted! This is not a match made in heaven! But anyway, I struggled on, squinting and looking really annoyed (this is nothing new though, I have resting bitch face...). This book was fascinating to me as usually books about the sport are written by journalists or biographers (sometimes with driver inputs) but The Mechanic provides a unique POV into the world of F1 and covers some well know events from recent F1 history, such as Spy Gate and the r...

Qualifying Sergio Perez Fernando Alonso Carlos Sainz Jr Race Max Verstappen Sergio Perez Fernando Alonso Honestly, I've been sat on this one for longer than I wanted to. I have no thoughts about this race because it was so dull. Like, worse than Baku. To the point my family started discussing how good it would be if there were Mario Kart style power ups in F1 like blue shells and banana skins. I don't know if my expectations of entertainment were just super high following the absolute wildcard of a qualifying but I was really let down by this street circuit. I guess, just like Baku, there'd been so many incidents prior to the race, drivers were being way more cautious. I think my most exciting moment from the race was when Lance Stroll briefly had the fastest lap, which was quickly stolen and swapped between the Red Bull boys once again.  I hate that this is literally my blog post about the second Miami GP but my god, it was so boring. I haven't formed any decent though...

Qualifying Result Dan Cammish Colin Turkington Jake Hill Race 1 Colin Turkington Ash Sutton Dan Cammish Race 2 Ash Sutton Tom Ingram Colin Turkington Race 3 Ash Sutton  (after Ricky Collard received a 10 second penalty for track limits) Bobby Thompson Tom Ingram Finally the British weather cheered up for the final day of the BTCC weekend, allowing some straight forward racing talent to be shown off with no real hinderance from safety cars or red flags. All but one! Yes, a big old accident at the end of Lap one during Race one saw Morgan, Jelley, Watson and Rowbottom have a speedy exit from the race and an immediate red flag. It was a shame to see Rookie Watson leave the first race so soon in only the second meet of the season after such a promising start at Donington. I'm still excited to see what he achieves over the season though. Rookies are always exciting to watch during any championship. Honestly though, there were so many impressive performances this weekend. Sutton reminded...

  Ayrton Senna 21st March 1960 - 1st May 1994 It sucks to to be writing another memorial post the day after the last one. It sucks even more that both these lives were taken on the same race weekend, the first in qualifying, the second in the actual race, both within a couple of corners of each other. Today marks 29 years since the 3 time world champion and F1 legend lost his life through an accident at the Imola GP, the day after the track claimed the life of Roland Ratzenberger. As I write this, I'm sat watching the Senna documentary and honestly, I'm a little surprised that there weren't more deaths in the sport back then with how big and open the cockpit's of the cars were. I'm not going to recap Senna's career and tragic death for two reasons. 1. I will be here FOREVER documenting this man's achievements and legacy. 2. It's already well known and well documented since Senna is an F1 legend and if you know anything about motorsport (not just F1) then...