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Animated flags from www.3dflags.com
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Martin has his own site at www.martinbrundle.com/
Callie
CAN ANYONE HELP?
One of my readers is seeking a recording of the Grid Walk during the Monaco Grand Prix in 2002. If anyone has any kind of recording of this and would be willing to lend it to her, or can upload it so that she can download it, please email me here and I’ll put the two of you in contact with each other. Thanks!
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BELGIUM
“The weather’s been all over the place, and so have the drivers.”
(Martin’s sarcastic response to the report that a driver suggested that the white lines should be burned off to avoid the risk of skidding on rain-soaked paint)
“Maybe it should all just be straight so they don’t have to risk going round corners.”
“A small, nothingey sort of corner.”
“A good direction change; belief the car will stick on Malmedy at the end there. I smashed a McLaren to bits there in 1994.”
Vettel’s engineer (over radio): “There are some spots of rain in Turn 1. Don’t let that bother you.”
Martin (laughing): “Easy for you to say, Rocky!”
“For a brilliant circuit, it’s got a rubbish start/finish straight.”
“(Vettel’s) got the classic shape of racing drivers. They all look exactly the same; there’s no meat on them whatsoever.”
Martin: “How’s your car?”
Vettel: “Blue, with black wheels on it.”
“That was never gonna stop in a month of Sundays.”
“They’ll be hanging the white flags out. This is a scary part of the racetrack: 200 miles an hour and you don’t really expect to meet something doing about thirty.”
“Sharp as a kumquat fruit today is Lewis. I dunno if I’ve won the bet for getting that word in the programme today!”
“This impetuous nature of Sebastian Vettel: it cost him a world championship last year potentially, I felt, and it’s definitely costing him this year. He needs to calm that down a little bit. I don’t think I’m as unimpressed with his overtaking skills as Jenson Button is today, but generally he’s having too much contact. He’s involved in too many incidents.”
“Hamilton’s having a laugh out there now, really.”
“There are hundreds of millions of people watching this wanting it to rain and twenty-one people out there who don’t want it to rain ... with the possible exception of Sebastian Vettel – he’d like something in there to spoil the mix at the moment.”
(Watching footage from a helicopter of approaching black clouds)
Jonathan: “That looks pretty worrying.”
Martin: “Looks brilliant to me!”
Jonathan: “You reckon?”
Martin (excitedly): “Yeah!”
Jonathan: “Says the helicopter pilot.”
Martin: “No, it looks brilliant for this race!”
“Liuzzi’s got a rocket ship under him on the straights.”
“Kubica’s moving into world class status now; I think he’s joined the very exclusive club.”
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HUNGARY
“It must be a wonderful feeling every morning when your eyelids open as a Red Bull driver at the moment, knowing just what a great racing car you have, whether you’re going to the track that day or not.”
“Hamilton clearly decided to beat the car and the track into submission.”
“This is where (Massa) got hit on the crash helmet by that flying piece last year. The skid marks are still there at the top of the hill.”
“Alguersuari driving as if his life depends on it.”
“Barrichello hanging onto that Williams for dear life.”
(high-pitched in disbelief) “He shifts up on the exit of Turn 11! He’s shifting up!!”
“(Renault) are beginning to support (Petrov), saying what a great job he did in Hockenheim. That passed me by – he did a solid job, I thought.”
(Fed up with waiting to speak to De La Rosa)
“Hasta la vista, Pedro. We’ll talk to you another day.”
“You’ve gotta be impressed by that. That’s Jenson looking down the track and noticing that Rubens Barrichello, who is five cars in front of him – he’s noticing Barrichello’s tyre choice! I’m massively impressed by that.”
“It’s Formula 1 – you’re either giving pressure or you’re taking it. There’s nothing in between. It’s just the way it is. I love it. These are the same people in the same three hundred metres of tarmac or pitlane, racing each other like the Earth’s survival depends on it.”
“Like all the drivers of my era, I’ve got lots of broken bones in my legs and bits and pieces that don’t quite work properly [from] when they used to sit us at the very front of the cars so we’d be the first things that hit the barriers, like most of my ilk who wobble to the commentary box.”
“(Alonso) helping Massa out – there’s a novel concept(!)”
“‘Go fast and don’t crash,’ as Ken Tyrrell used to say to me.”
“Alonso with the widest Ferrari you’ve ever seen.”
(Webber radios how good it feels to lap Schumacher)
“All the drivers see Michael as a trophy, not a threat. It’s a kind of respect, isn’t it?”
“Rubens is either gonna finish tenth or he’s going off, isn’t he, into the side of Schumacher. Rubens would love to get this done. He took a fair psychological beating being Michael’s team mate, and there’s stories yet to be told from that era.”
“No points for Fastest Lap. I always think there should be a point or two for the fastest lap.”
“You’ve gotta be hard but fair; and Michael was a day late and a dollar short on that final move. The trouble is, Michael’s got such bad form on that that it’s difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt. As far as he’s concerned, it’s Rubens’ fault ... ‘I don’t give presents.’ Well, he did give him a present: he shoved him in the wall. ... If they’d have made contact, that would have been an aeroplane crash. It was unfair driving. It was just one move too far. ... He’s gotta have a grid drop in Spa. If [the stewards] don’t give Michael a grid drop for Spa, then I think they’ve missed the moment to make a statement here because, yeah, there’s racing hard, and there’s a trust you put in another person at 200 miles an hour wheel to wheel, and that was over the line.”
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GERMANY
“That Turn 1 is so difficult. It’s like threading the eye of a needle at 145 miles an hour.”
“I think it’s a much better track now, I have to say. It used to terrify me. There was no skill out the back there, being flat out at 120 miles an hour, hoping something didn’t break. I think this is a much more interesting layout for fans and drivers. I just found it frightening rather than skilful.”
“I tell you what: Ferrari need a result this weekend. They have to go home with a lot of points if they’re gonna save their season.”
“That thing just sticks to the road, doesn’t it, like a gecko wading through superglue.”
“He looked like he couldn’t drive a nail into a piece of wood earlier in the year; now he’s found his way and doing a brilliant job.”
“Welcome to the grid, my fellow petrolheads.”
Martin: “OK, mate, don’t hold me up any more, ‘cause I’ve got to get to the commentary box. I’ve got a job to do.”
Jenson: “Oh, really? Oh, really? You call that a job?!”
“This is far and away the best drive we’ve seen from (Massa) since he had the accident in Hungary last year, in my view.”
“That puts a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’ve over-committed to the braking area: you’re like, ‘Oh no, I’m gonna run into him’.”
“I wouldn’t be betting on this bunch of lunatics, to be honest!”
“Massa keeps encountering Virgins in all the wrong places. There’s some great one-liners there we could entertain ourselves with all afternoon.”
“They need Fernando Alonso to do the fastest lap of the race, don’t they? ‘He was faster than Massa; we had to let him through.’ And it’s no good if Massa does the fastest lap of the race towards the end of the race after the swap’s taken place.”
“That’s an extraordinary thing to say, isn’t it: ‘past Rosberg, a back-marker in a Mercedes’.”
“Driver of the Day: Felipe Massa, in my book.”
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GREAT BRITAIN
“Bumps on a racetrack? Well, change the car, lift the ride height, change the suspension. We can’t keep ironing out the racetracks of the world so they can have a perfect billiard table to go on. I can understand the frustrations, but we just can’t keep creating the perfect racetrack.”
“We’re nearly two minutes into the session. If you’re wondering why there are no cars on the track, so am I!”
“This is a Happy Hour type of racetrack: at ten o’clock in the morning you’ll go faster, as you will at five o’clock in the evening before testing finishes, as the track is cooler.”
“I tell you what: I was watching Michael Schumacher out at the 190 mile an hour corners. He lacks no commitment at all, no fear at high speeds, so it’s technique he’s missing. Commitment is absolutely there.”
“(Yamamoto’s) neck’s gone on right-handers, and there’s plenty of those around here. They’re lucky these days – they’ve got the big pillows to lean on. We used to try to tie our heads underneath our armpits with tie wraps in the hope of keeping our necks intact.”
“Turning up here and testing a Formula 1 car, going out at ten o’clock sharp and going down the Hangar Straight with Stowe corner inviting you to have a go was just the most magnificent feeling, and it looks exactly the same today.”
“That McLaren is so harsh over the bumps, I would imagine that Lewis has got a dental appointment and then a chiropracter appointment on Monday morning. It looks violent to drive.”
“Unless they stand on their own tails, Red Bull are gonna walk this.”
“What is the wind speed out there at the moment? If I can find the right page on this computer ... It’s gusting at 7.4 somethings.”
“Welcome to the grid here in the Costa del Northampton.”
(to Sir Patrick Stewart a.k.a. Captain Jean-Luc Picard) “I don’t think even you can beam Lewis up to the top step of the podium today!”
(David Coulthard drives Martin around the track in a two-seater Formula 1 car)
D.C.: “You’re like a national treasure. Can you imagine the hate mail I would receive if I did anything?”
Martin: “You’d never go to Norfolk again if you binned me!”
“... onto the magnificent Hangar Straight. How can a straight be magnificent? I don’t know!”
“They start with 150 kilograms – two reasonable size humans – of fuel.”
“He will argue – as Alonso will always argue ...”
(Alonso gets a drive-through penalty)
“Remember Alonso saying two weeks ago, ‘This race was manipulated’? He was very hard on the FIA. I think he might just have got a little bit of payback there, ‘cause that’s a tough call. We used to sometimes laugh about FIA – ‘Ferrari International Assistance’. I don’t think we’ll be thinking that today.”
“He’s already had some manners put on him by Sutil as he breezed through ... or barged through, actually.”
Jonathan: “It keeps twitching. It seems unstable, that Ferrari, at the moment.”
Martin: “He’s just driving the wheels off it, isn’t he?”
“As Steve Irwin used to say, ‘Poke him with a stick’. Wouldn’t wanna poke this Aussie with a stick, ‘cause he responds, doesn’t he, in the most impressive way.”
2010 Calendar
12 September - Italy
26 September - Singapore
10 October - Japan
24 October - Korea
07 November - Brazil
14 November - Abu Dhabi