Aussie F1 GP and a tiny bit of AFL

The Formula One^(TM) Grand Prix came and went and all of the annual woodwork whingers complaining about the use of taxpayer funds to support the GP or the lack of real V8 racing can all forget about it for another 358 days and whine about something else. It's a big event with worldwide exposure. As much as anyone might care to argue, if Bernie Ecclestone says he wants an Australian Grand Prix at night, sooner or later, the Australian Grand Prix will be at night or will cease to exist (in its present form).

The race itself? Not too exciting, but enough to keep interest. The Coulthard-Wurz crash was big, but Lewis Hamilton's pass around Fernando Alonso at the first corner was pretty damn confident, if not impressive. It wasn't as ballsy as Juan Pablo "Nutsack" Montoya's F1 entrance where he passed Michael Schumacher at the first corner in his second or so race in Brazil, but you can consider me a great fan of Hamilton nonetheless.

Kimi Raikkonen was near-faultless, with just a little "brain fade" that anyone who's completed a 58 lap simulation of the Australian GP on a video game can identify with. (While I'm at it: shoutout to F1 World Grand Prix for Nintendo 64, thanks for being there on Saturday mornings before I learned to sleep in.) Many people want Kimi to show a little more enthusiasm or charisma - well, you're looking in the wrong place. F1 drivers have been trained to be PR robots as not to cause controversy. Obviously Kimi takes it further. I bet he's a great poker player. But you don't need to show you're happy, and if that's the biggest complaint that the great unwashed has after a pole-to-flag victory, well, I'd cop that pretty easily if I had a silver plate in one hand and 10 points in my pocket. I'm also one of the few people who can actually understand what he's saying. I'm willing to translate!

One last F1 thing: Kimi went from McLaren, my favourite team (that actually wins) since 1998, to Ferrari, my least favourite team since 1997 when I started watching Formula One^(TM). In soccer, you'd call that a defection (harsh as it is), wouldn't you? People who spoke to me about Raikkonen's victory (family members, the pizza guy who saw my McLaren jacket) seemingly expected me to supply a bit of "Kimi, Kimi, Kimi! Ra, ra, ra!", to no avail. So while I am pleased that it wasn't a Schumacher on the top step of the podium, I can't be happy about the result. I've trained myself to not go for the red cars with the horse on them and I don't plan on getting used to them beating home the silver McLarens!

The AFL season's nearly upon us. I think I miss footy tipping more than the footy itself right now. Ben Cousins appears to have added "caught on drugs" to his growing CV of drunken antics, drink driving, car crashes and doing runners from the police. With many other Eagles' late-night behaviour under scrutiny, I wonder if they're playing a game of West Coast Bingo, just marking off each infraction.

I'll leave you with a question. In 2008, what will there be more of: blades on a shaver or captains of the Brisbane Lions? (That means over 22% of the team is a captain)