"Er, this Hakkinen-Mania of which you speak, er, I do not know what, er, it is. Just keep taking your vitamins and, er, saying your... er... prayers. Yes, I do have a, er, sense of humour."

F1(tm) misses Mika. He made all the other drivers look cool.

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I'm rather surprised by this -- my understanding was Vince McMahon lost a pile of money on the failed XFL last year, and was not doing as well financially as he once was.

I read an odd article in last week's New Yorker about the Pro Bowlers Association, of all things, incorporating more wrestling-style braggadocio and trash talk. This is being led by Pete D. Weber, son of bowling great Dick Weber and a fine bowler in his own right, who has rechristened himself "Pee Dee Dubya," and occasionally fashions the "suck it" sign to other bowlers. Ratings have increased dramatically, but I feel this would turn off many other fans (including myself, although I don't watch the Pro Bowlers Tour much anymore).

Further, as with driving (and as is not the case with wrestling), bowling is something many, many people do, in addition to watching. I fear the usual bowling etiquette may go by the wayside if the popularity of this revised PBA continues, and goodness knows you don't want to flash someone the "suck it" sign when they're holding onto a 16-pound object.

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It pinpoints most of the problems with F1, I guess.

Nobody cares that there is more than one official tyre. In fact, the fact that there is more than one helps with the pricing. What is the price of a NASCAR Goodyear? $1200? And a lot of the blame goes with the monopoly. At least the oligopoly of Goodyear vs. Hoosier kept the prices a bit more reasonable.

The problem they fail to answer in the article is the miserable point system. What is it now? 106-40? That's awful. How is anybody supposed to take the series seriously? Vince McMahon won't help.

They finally redid the point system for the local Super Stocks for this year. In 1996, Rick Hed (son of Limited Late Model racer Dick Hed) dominated the 1996 season 182-135 over 2nd place finisher Tim Thompson. It may not seem like too much, but it was at a time that a Hobby Stock (the old title) could only earn 23 points per night. There are worse examples, but I cannot find them at this time (I think that either the 1987 or 1988 season was a mess)

Old System:
Heat: 8-6-5-3-2-1
Feature: 15-12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-3 (all drivers outside of the top-10 got 2 points)
Semi: 8-6-5-3-2 (all drivers outside of the top-5 got 1 point)
Consi: 5-4-3-2-1

New System: http://www.ewscracing.com/stocksr.html

The relatively simple system was axed in favour of the more "fair" method, although 77 points will always be an odd number of points to earn for a feature win. So: screw tradition and tell Vince McMahon to screw himself.

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The thing about having two tyre manufacturers is that it's another way in which cars can perform differently to one another. Theoretically, there will be circumstances in which one tyre is particularly well-suited and the other is particularly ill-suited. (This should give the weaker teams a way to catch up relatively cheaply, if they can pick the well-suited tyres.) It gives the F1 anoraks another factor to consider, basically.

That's an interesting scoring system, but pretty complicated. I can see where it's coming from. Some of the other auto racing formulas in this country (touring cars springs to mind) have pretty intricate scoring systems too, largely because they try to have two races on each race day - a sprint race and a feature race. Not a bad idea as such and one that is suggested for F1 from time to time.

Will anything ever change, though? Ah, tradition...

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