MotorSports: New rules and new ways to boost audiences are the talk of the Formula 1 pitlane. Justin Hynes reports.
In springtime a young man's thoughts turn to, well, if you're me, Formula One. The music of 800-plus horses straining at the bit at the end of the pit lane, the heady tang of oil and melting rubber, the equally heady tang of some fine Honda sushi and a couple of glasses of Chateau Clarke over lunch.
Anyway, aphoristic thoughts of sap rising are pretty much year-round occupations, so why not give in to a little grand prix fever around this time.
And how easy it is to give into that glorious malady when the first episode of illness racks up the temperature by 15 degrees, drenches you in sunshine and deposits you in Melbourne.
Great weather, great food, great people and great parties and, somewhere in the mix, some (hopefully) great racing.
The opening grand prix of the new Formula One season, is a race in which, as the old kids' TV show, Stingray, said, "anything can happen in the half hour." Favourites can blow up or rustily blunder (Ralf Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello last year), underdogs can come through (Eddie Irvine's fourth for Jaguar last year) and fairy tales can come true (local boy Mark Webber's sixth for Minardi last year).
The circus is back in town, us clowns in the media centre are gearing up for another eight months of sorting the wheat from the rumour mill chaff, the teams - the show's main attractions - are already bitching over who gets top billing and quibbling over the rules of engagement and ringmasters Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley are pulling strings and yanking chains.
Take this for example. With TV figures down last year and with the scrapping of Sunday morning's half-hour warm-up session, the latest Max and Bernie wheeze is to replace the Sunday session with coverage of the pre-race drivers' briefing, where pilots are advised by FIA officials on proper race conduct and informed of any changes to circuit regulations.
It is also often a forum for the airing of drivers' grievances - with the FIA and with each other - and this has the potential to turn live coverage of the drivers' briefing into a better spectacle than the race itself.
Take, for example, the Canadian Grand Prix of 2001. Having had an on-track set-to in practice, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve carried their battle through to the drivers' briefing where, after words had passed between the pair, fellow drivers had to step in as the BAR driver allegedly attempted to throttle his Williams rival after Montoya said something spectacularly inappropriate relating to Villeneuve.
While displays of the pugilistic arts are apparently irregular occurrences, verbal jousting is a regular at the briefing with drivers constantly bickering and exchanging petty insults over previous conduct.
At a circuit such as Hungary, which, in the last couple of years, has seen fewer passes than Cliff Richard's bedroom, coverage of a choice bout of name-calling would be a positive boon.
Alas, the king of the drivers' briefing has sadly departed the sport. Legend has it, according to a fellow driver who shall remain nameless (but who is French and still racing), that come briefing time, Eddie Irvine became the least-liked man in the paddock as the Irishman was wont to waffle for weeks at the meeting, often slighting every other driver present for perceived transgressions that he was incapable of committing.
According to the nameless source such a slight even resulted in his own near-bout of physical violence with the former Jaguar driver. All is not lost though, as the mantle of waffler-in-chief has apparently been laid claim to by Jenson Button. And he seemed so quiet and polite.
Whatever, the prospect of seeing Montoya duke it out with Villeneuve has got to be worth looking into. The only trouble is we might also have to put up with the furiously verbose diatribes of Kimi Raikkonen . . .
Until such time as the drivers agree to their petty squabbles being broadcast, however, we'll just have to put up with the racing.
And in true Formula One style, gossip about the performance of teams is already bubbling nicely. In recent weeks Williams has been the target of much speculation as, after initial testing showed the FW25 distinctly lacked pace, the rumour mill began to spit out tales of BMW disaffection with Williams's chassis design; tales that were further fired by incendiary quotes from BMW's Gerhard Berger, who insisted that BMW had built its best-ever engine and that they at least had lived up to their half of the equation.
Williams immediately responded by letting BMW know it had not run its 2003-spec aero package at the Barcelona test and the following week's run at Valencia would demonstrate the car's real potential.
So it proved, and since then Williams have shown well in testing with Ralf Schumacher breaking the track record and finishing four tenths up on Kimi Raikkonen at the team's final pre-season shakedown at Jerez last week.
Therefore tales of Williams' demise are greatly exaggerated and we can expect them to battle with McLaren for the season's runners-up prize. It is, after all, highly unlikely that anyone but Ferrari will carry away either the drivers' or constructors' trophies.
Finally, it's nice to see at least one Formula One team owner stepping outside his ivory tower to see how the other half lives. It was revealed last week that on his way to a test in Barcelona, Eddie Jordan chose to fly with a budget airline - this saving on running a private jet (in Europe) or flying first class (flyaways), as is the usual practice for the sport's great and good.
Jordan's staff will be overjoyed to see the boss embracing the standard of travel he regularly imposes on them. He famously booked his staff £1 Ryanair flights to the team's 2002 launch in Belgium.
And they say Formula One is glamorous?