German GP this weekend This weekend the F1 circus has arrived in Germany. Coulthard has to do well or his chances of taking the world title will be practically zero, especially if Schumacher wins in front of his home crowd. However, I get the feeling that Schumi is going to play it safe and run for places until no-one can mathematically pass him and then go on for more wins. Meet me at Shenanigans in front of the big screen. The race kicks off at 7.00 p.m. (but check the UBC catalogue). I generally get there early to get a good seat and have a bite to eat from the carvery to fill in the time. Join me “trackside” this Sunday! The last GP, the British, showed that Mika Hakkinen, when given equipment which actually works, selects gears, gets off the line and other such minor details can still turn in a crackerjack performance. His storming all the way win at Silverstone was a copy book performance. David Coulthard - courtesy of Planet-f1 and Bothwell photographics The same could not be said for 2nd place man in the championship hunt, David Coulthard. David, you do not win races at the first corner - you only lose them at the first corner. Getting tangled up with Trulli was not wise, and sometimes I wonder if Coulthard has the wherewithal to actually be “wise”? The problem now for Ron Dennis at McLaren is that only one of his drivers has a chance of taking the title - and that’s Coulthard. There are six races to go, and that’s 60 points. Even presuming that Michael Schumacher scores zero points for the rest of the year, Hakkinen on 19 points cannot overhaul Schumacher’s current tally of 84, even with another 60 on top. So will team orders prevail? Common sense would say they should, but how often does common sense actually come into championship fights? Not all that often. Coulthard on 47 points is only 37 points adrift of the German, and is still in with a chance - if he makes no more silly errors. But that would be a real breakthrough! Barichello on 34 points and Ralf Schumacher on 31 have a mathematical chance, but it would require Michael Schumacher to sit out the rest of the year for them to have any real shot at the title. No, it boils down to Coulthard, and a guy that in 40 laps cannot pass another car driven by a rookie and 4 seconds a lap slower (Bernoldi, Arrows, Monaco) and cannot get through turn 1 (Silverstone), is doubtful world championship material in my book. There are those of you out there who accuse me of Michael Schumacher favouritism, but let me put the record straight. Personally, I do not like the man, his (apparently past) arrogance and very doubtful driving practices (Hill and Villeneuve for the title for example) make him less than loveable, but he has the runs on the board, he drives at the top no matter what the conditions, he has 50 GP wins and 40 pole positions and is a triple world champion. It would be flying in the face of reality to say he is not the best driver around at present.   Fortunately, there are new drivers coming through the ranks, and I would predict the world gong for Ralf Schumacher (but not till big brother retires) and also Kimi Raikkonen. To say I have been impressed with this young Finn would be an understatement. In his first year he is currently 8th in the world championship table in a Sauber! An amazing effort for a rookie. Looking into my crystal ball, Raikkonen will join Ferrari when Barichello’s contract runs out and will be world champ with Ferrari. You read it here first.

Gates gets it in the pearlies from GeeEmm The following was sent in by Roy Harris, one of the Quiz respondents, who said it had come from the US a couple of months ago. I liked it so much that I decided to print it here. Hope you like it too. Bill Gates At a recent Computer Expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates as usual blowing his own trumpet, reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry we would all be driving cars costing $2,500 getting 1000 miles to the gallon”. In response to that self opinionated statement General Motors issued the following press statement: If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics: 1. For no apparent reason your car would crash at least twice a day. 2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car. 3. Periodically your car would die in the middle of a journey for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all the windows, shut the car down, restart it, and re-open all the windows before you could continue your journey. 4. Occasionally, executing a standard manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would need to reinstall the engine. 5. Only one person at a time could ride in your car unless you bought “CarNT”, you would then need to get a licence and buy extra seats. 6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would only be allowed to run on 5% of the roads. 7. The fuel, oil, water temperature, alternator, turn indicator and windscreen wiper, seat belt and parking brake warning lights would be replaced by a single “General Protection Fault” warning light. 8. There would be no seat adjustments as the car is considered universally compatible. 9. At least once a week your car would lock you out. To overcome this you would need to lift the door handle and turn the key while at the same time holding the radio antenna and kick the front off-side tyre. 10. GM would require all car buyers to purchase a deluxe set of McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary) even though they are neither needed nor wanted. Attempting to delete this option would diminish the car’s performance by 50% and would cause GM to become an investigation target for the Justice Dept. necessitating payment of additional political bribes (sorry donations) to stifle the inquiry. 11. The Airbag system would ask “Are you SURE” before deploying. 12. Every time GM introduced a new car, buyers would need to learn to drive again as none of the controls would work the same as the previous car. 13. You would need to press the START button to turn the engine off. How true or otherwise this all is I cannot confirm - but it certainly has more than a grain of credibility, and I hope GM did issue it.

Autotrivia Quiz

Bertone Genesis

Last week I mentioned that with Zafiras and other “people carriers” being all the vogue these days, which people carrier featured a Lamborghini Countach V12 engine? The answer was the Bertone Genesis. Now that would have been a real People Express!

And so to this week. After chatting about the Ford GT40’s with Roy Harris a couple of weeks back, and the involvement of one Eric Broadley, the founder of Lola cars, prompted me to ask him just why were the Lola’s given that name by Broadley. Since Roy didn’t know, I’ll make that the quiz question for this week. Where did the name come from?

For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first correct answer to fax 427 596 or email [email protected].

Thai car exports dramatic rise Exports of locally assembled cars rose by 39.7% from January to May over the same period last year, according to the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI). Thailand’s automobile industry exported 64,845 units out of a total of 177,561 vehicles assembled, said Surapong Paisitpattanaphong, a spokesman for the FTI. Interestingly, the exported cars’ value rose 65% to USD 682 million. The value of exported engines, spare parts and other components rose 45.8% to USD 873 million. At least the motor industry is looking rosy in this country and especially this neck of the woods.