Used Car for Sale: 1 Owner, 2 crashes, £8 mln o.v.n.o.

Rowan Atkinson, a classic car motor racing enthusiast (there you go, there is the motorsport connection), is reportedly selling his McLaren F1 road car which he bought for £540k in 1997. During his time of ownership he has famously shunted the car into the back of a Metro and more recently, in 2011, he had a serious off road excursion all on his own where he hit a tree and near enough wrote the car off, resulting in a record £910k insurance pay out.

After the first accident with a Metro.

The crash in 2011 almost wrote-off the car....

...a £910k insurance payout (a UK record) followed.

Despite this, the car is reportedly being sold through Taylor & Crawley (owned by fellow classic car motorsport enthusiast and Director of McLaren Cars F1 1994-97, David Clark) for £8mln.

The car seen fully restored in 2014 outside the McLaren Headquarters in Woking.

Happy bidding! :)

Where I learnt to race - POD!

Ubisoft's 1997 release of the futuristic racing game POD was the game that, looking back, taught me the basics of how to race and helped make me realise how much I enjoyed racing and competing in the first place. Based on the idea that you are one of the last of a band of survivors on an infected planet, you have to race to compete for the last spot on a ship set to leave the planet (not that the plot matters much in a racing game). Whereas my brother's lost interest fairly fast in this fiendishly tricky game and accepted the fact that they were always going to finish eighth out of eight in every race, there was no way I was going to allow such an outcome to occur and I was addicted in my pursuit to master all the tracks and beat all the opposition.

As my first proper racing game it was difficult to master but the physics of the game were sufficiently advanced to allow you to learn the basics of racing with respect to correct turn in points, the importance of maintaining your momentum and the mental discipline to lead and win a race.

 It also highlighted the impact of various track configurations and even allowed you to adjust various settings on the car to adjust the performance of the car accordingly. All dramatic stuff! It obviously helped that I found it very enjoyable and addictive, despite being terribly frustrating at times. But this game really was that good, as the numerous attestations will confirm on any website you can find now reviewing the game (Wikipedia article here). I would put this game as the reason why I won a family karting championship event in 1999 despite the fact that I was only sitting in a kart for the second time in my life!

I literally only discovered yesterday that the POD Gold, a more complete version of the game than the one we received free with the first PC that my parent's bought my brothers and I,  can be downloaded from the website 'God Old Games' (http://www.gog.com/game/pod_gold). So go ahead, if you are a racer, download the game and put your skills to the test. I promise you, you will love every frustrating minute of it... ; )

My favourite handling car in the game!

A good YouTube video of some of the menus and gameplay can be found here.

The struggles of Jolyon Palmer...

The struggles of Jolyon Palmer to secure a test driver role, let alone a full race drive in F1 for 2015, despite being the newly crowned GP2 champion, tells you all you need to know about the F1 of today. Driving talent is not the defining factor on who gets to drive at what most would consider the pinnacle of motorsport. Thrown in the mix is obviously sponsorship money / commercial backers as well as the management team of a driver and their existing connections in the world of F1.

I strongly believe another key factor that is also a major consideration that never gets mentioned, and also helps explain why Jolyon has so far been unsuccessful in gaining a role in F1 whilst some of his peers from GP2 have made it into F1, is because of his nationality. Jolyon is British and we already have British former and current F1 world champions on the grid, in the form of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton. Formula 1 is a huge commercial machine whose ambition is to deliver a spectacle to the largest possible audience and thus maximize its returns. Why else would a F1 track be built in the cricket loving India or the politically sensitive Turkey?

Form on this matter can be found in previous champions such as Michael Schumacher, who was the first German F1 World Champion and ensured the viewing of a whole new nation after his success and Fernando Alonso, who convinced the motor bike loving Spanish to convert en masse to supporting their Champion. Jolyon will not help further the reach of F1 geographically and thus boost audience numbers and race ticket purchases and I believe this ensures that he will not get the ultimate nod from Bernie and his fellow F1 management (private equity group CVC) from giving Jolyon the nod. May be in a year or two when Button retires and Jolyon is still around he will be taken on but I doubt beforehand.

My bet would be that with all the tracks being built in recent years in the Middle East, that a driver with a Muslim descent is much more on the top of F1's commercial management's most wanted list (e.g. Enaam Ahmed).

So what can Jolyon do in the interim?? I would say he needs to take every opportunity possible to challenge and take on the more established and famous drivers in some form of competition, where the playing field is leveled and he can display his talent by hopefully beating them and thus showing F1's mistake in not taking him on.  One such opportunity that came up recently , the Race of Champions, did not turn out as hoped however, despite Jolyon putting on good performances against more experienced competitors (link here).

I would lastly say that I really would love to see Jolyon in F1 and wish him the best of luck. His overtaking prowess alone warrants a chance in F1 and I believe that as the reigning GP2 Champ, F1 is exactly where he should be.

Daytona Motorsport

One of the best, if not the best, companies that I have come across that own and operate kart tracks is Daytona Motorsport who have their flagship track in Milton Keynes. I have raced at their 1360m outdoor Milton Keynes track only once but really enjoyed it as the track is quite technical (i.e. tricky) in places so is a challenge. I managed to qualify in pole and finish in second at one of their arrive and drive D40s (40 minute endurance race), despite a spinner punting me into the barriers early in the race and falling well down the order.

I have raced on their outdoor 900m Sandown Park a handful of times (again in their D40 format) and  enjoy this track more as I tend to like tracks that flow and I have had some good results there too (but despite getting close, I have not managed to win it yet!).

Mark Webber at Daytona's Milton Keynes track

Before the practice and race you have a swanky video briefing presented by Martin Brundle which is always cool to watch. The reception staff and track marshals are all professionally presented and friendly and are a cut above the kind of staff you find at the more common indoor kart tracks (you know what I mean). You always get a well presented and detailed printout of your race results including all your lap times and the fastest lap times of all your competitors - this is also e-mailed to you after the race. Almost forgot to mention that booking a race is a very well managed through their website and online booking system so it is very easy to check the availability of their various race formats up to a month in advance(!)

Overall, attending one of their events is a very satisfying and enjoyable experience that will make you want to go back time after time. The only downer I have on Daytona is that they do not make their outdoor tracks available to people who have their own karts, which I was disappointed with when I did eventually get my own. But otherwise you won't find a better run karting experience anywhere else and I know as I have been to a fair few...!

Nigel Mansell's still got it!

At the Canary Wharf Motor Expo in 2011 I had the opportunity to take part in the RaceRoom competition that was taking place there where you could win the opportunity to drive a single seater Lotus F1 car if you posted the fastest lap time around Brands Hatch GP circuit. The charity behind the competition was sponsored by Nigel Mansell and he had a chance to post a lap time on one of the first days of the competition.

The video of Nigel's heroic effort can be found here and is well worth a watch as it is very impressive. You can see how an ex-F1 World Champion very quickly gets to grips, albeit not completely, with an alien form of racing to him and also how his competitive streak comes out despite just playing a 'game'.

I managed to post the 5th fastest time in the competition at the end of the week at a 1:05ish (as compared to Nigel's 1:09ish!) It was great fun but I am still irked I didn't win it!  : (

1990s F1 Cars

As a Christmas present to myself I finally bought a copy of the F1 2013 Classic Edition and was very excited to have a go at driving some of the iconic cars from the 80s and 90s that come with this version of the game. After having a go at most of the classic F1 cars I have to say that Nigel Mansell's 1992 Williams F1 car was the most fun to drive.

After driving the car, it reminded me of a recent article and video I had seen in which Karun Chandhok (top guy!) drives the 1996 Williams F1 car. after having got as close as i could to driving such cars his comments that F1 could learn a lot from the simplicity of the design of the F1 cars back then seem to ring true:

"One of the thing the strikes you is how simple it is in many ways,".
"Look at the front wing in comparison to a modern one, which looks ridiculous.
"The 1996 Williams is a nice looking car and I don't know a single person who looks at it and says that it's ugly.
"You always want the sport to evolve, but you do get to a point where you have to ask if you are spending too much money on things that the fans don't really care about.
"There's a lot of things that F1 has done right to cut costs and bring F1 into the more logical world, but the 1996 Williams still looks spectacular even though it is far simpler than a current car.
"There is a lesson in that."
Full interview with Autosport here.

The video of Chandhok driving the car can be found on YouTube here.

In the expanded F1 2013 you can also have a go at driving the 1996 Williams F1 car and it is a lot of fun too with tons more grip than you believe to be actually possible. I could also match and potentially beat the times I set in the 1999 Ferrari so from that point of view these cars aren't slower even though they are from over 20 years ago.

With reagards to F1 2013 classic edition, it is great but would have loved to have had the chance to have a go at some of Mclaren's iconic F1 cars from the 80s and 90s...! ; )