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No Fragments Archive 10: Diskmags
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FRANCE.DOC
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1995-02-25
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FRIDAY 1ST JULY 1994
THE FRENCH GRAND PRIX
It's July. Exams have finished. A crop circle has appeared near Dorchester. And
Nigel Mansell is BACK...
Quite a long way back, in fact. Back in 7th position after today's pre
qualifying session...
Even Coulthard would have done better than that, and this would have only been
his third race! Mind you, Mansell hasn't driven an F1 car for nearly two years.
His new team mate, Damon Hill, is in 3rd, and of course... Shoe licker is in
1st...
Mansell says this 'comeback' is merely a 'guest appearance', but his future in
Indycars is still uncertain. The season is still being dominated by the 3 car
Penske team. On Monday, for the first time, I watched a full Indycar race, the
one in Portland, Oregon (as opposed to the proper Portland, Dorset). The race
was extremely boring. Mansell started from 2nd, and finished 5th, while the
Penskes took the top three positions. In the championship, Penske drivers Al
Unser Jr and Emerson Fittipaldi are the top two, with Micheal Andretti in
either 3rd or 4th (I can't remember which), Mansell in 5th and the other Penske
driver Paul Tracy in 6th, despite having won a race. Mansell, who won the
championship last year, has yet to win a race this season. All this, along with
his fury about his accident at Indianapolis, has made Mansell, er, a bit
annoyed. Anyway, Mansell says that he is hoping to improve on his position
tomorrow. Even if he improves a lot, he still won't be able to win the
championship - the most he could get in 4 races would be 40 points, and
Schumacher has already gone past the 50 mark...
Oh yes, and there was this feature on F1 on the C4 News a couple of days ago.
It was talking about the Arrows team, who had said that all the changes to the
cars had had a very bad effect on the team, since their strong point had been
that they had good aerodynamics... So Morbidelli will probably not ever equal
his 5th position in qualifying (Brazil) again...
Anyway, see you when I get more news.
Saturday 2nd July...
Mansell is NOT back! He is forward... In second position...
I don't know if the (few) results I have in front of me are the final
qualifying results, but if they are, then Schumacher is not on the front row of
the grid for the first time this season... He is in third, behind Hill and
Mansell. The two Williams drivers have been taking pole position off each other
all day, with Hill finally (possibly) emerging victorious. Meanwhile, the two
Ferraris look on from 4th and 5th positions. I didn't manage to see any others,
since I didn't have a pen and paper at the time, so I had to go and get some.
I have spent a lot of the day watching the Wimbledon womens' singles final, so
congrats to Martinez, comises to Martina... The mens' final is at the same time
as the French GP - now, which do you think will have more people watching???
I'm afraid the score will be 600 million / love, to F1... And what nationality
is Ivanisevich, anyway? And how do you spell it?
Iain phoned a while ago, he was having problems on The Hobbit (C64 version).
This ancient game is our common interest (I have the Spectrum version). He
couldn't remember how to get into the boat, and neither could I... We tried
'GET IN BOAT', 'CLIMB INTO BOAT', CLIMB IN BOAT'... I can't remember if he
tried 'GET INTO BOAT', maybe that was it... Iain was at the Glastonbury
festival last week, but he said he couldn't find a 'Levellers' T shirt for my
sister...
I am going to enter in the 5 results I have now, even though I don't know if
they're final...
1) HILL (Williams)
2) MANSELL (Williams)
3) SCHUMACHER (Benetton)
4) ALESI (Ferrari)
5) BERGER (Ferrari)
6) IRVINE (Jordan)
7) BARRICHELLO (Jordan)
8) VERSTAPPEN (Benetton)
9) HAKKINEN (McLaren)
10) FRENTZEN (Sauber)
11) DE CESARIS (Sauber)
12) BRUNDLE (McLaren)
13) PANIS (Ligier)
14) KATAYAMA (Tyrrell)
15) BERNARD (Ligier)
16) MARTINI (Minardi)
17) BLUNDELL (Tyrrell)
18) FITTIPALDI (Arrows)
19) HERBERT (Lotus)
20) COMAS (Larrousse)
21) ALBORETO (Minardi)
22) MORBIDELLI (Arrows)
23) ZANARDI (Lotus)
24) BRABHAM (Simtek)
25) BERETTA (Larrousse)
26) GOUNON (Simtek)
NQ) GACHOT (Pacific)
NQ) BELMONDO (Pacific)
Sunday...
As you can see, Jean Marc Gounon is with Simtek. Also, it seems that JJ Lehto
is temporarily out of things, because Benetton want him to wait until he has
completely recovered from the accident he had before the season. Talking of
accidents, Karl Wendlinger is doing very well, Murray said that we could even
see him racing again next year.
Well, I have just returned from a very long journey which my family forced upon
me... They thought it would be nice for me to get out into the fresh air for a
while...
Well, here's what happened. About 15 minutes before the start, it was revealed
that Mansell had a problem with his car - an oil leak. I assume they managed to
fix it. At the start, Schumacher impersonated a cheetah (or a cheater???), and
got off extremely quickly... So quickly that he overtook both Williams cars and
went into the lead... Around 520 million people lost hope at this point (the
other 80 million were Germans)... Well, it went on like this, with Hill
challenging (but not much) Schumacher, and Alesi challenging Mansell quite a
lot. Alesi took 3rd when Mansell went into the pits. Verstappen had a little
accident and went back to last place. There were no retirements for ages. The
first was Zanardi. He was driving along when the back of his car caught on
fire. He drove around for quite a long time with flames engulfing the back of
the car, then he drove off and was instantly smothered with fire-putting-out
stuff. It just so happened that Schumacher, Hill and Berger took their pit
stops while this was going on, so we completely missed them. Oh, talking of
Schumacher, he was constantly locking up his tyres - desperate to stay ahead of
Hill. Hill did lead at one point, after Schumacher had his pit stop, but
Schumacher took the lead back when Hill stopped.
By this time, Mansell was back in 5th place. There were a lot of retirements
all in one go at one point. While Jonathan Palmer was talking about how good
Jordan were, Irvine went off. Later on, Panis and Morbidelli had a collision -
a shame, since Panis was doing so well (8th position. The French Magny-Cours
circuit is Ligier's official testing track). What really annoyed me was Alesi,
who spun and hit Barrichello. Then Mansell drove off and stopped - this was
because of a gearbox problem. Then we had the second fire of the race, and
second McLaren fire of the season, with Hakkinen. Yet another problem with the
Peugeot...
Can't remember any more...
1) Micheal Schumacher (Benetton) 10 Points
2) Damon Hill (Williams) 6 Points
3) Gerhard Berger (Ferrari) 4 Points
4) Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Sauber) 3 Points
5) Pierluigi Martini (Minardi) 2 Points
6) Andrea de Cesaris (Sauber) 1 Point
7) Johnny Herbert (Lotus) Missed out again...
8) Christian Fittipaldi (Arrows)
9) Jean Marc Gounon (Simtek)
10) Mark Blundell (Tyrrell) Had a 3 minute pit stop...
DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP TABLE:
1) Micheal Schumacher 66 Points
2) Damon Hill 29 Points
3) Gerhard Berger 17 Points
4) Jean Alesi 13 Points
5) Rubens Barrichello 7 Points
6) Nicola Larini 6 Points
Martin Brundle 6 Points
8) Heinz-Harald Frentzen 5 Points
9) Mika Hakkinen 4 Points
Karl Wendlinger 4 Points
Ukyo Katayama 4 Points
Mark Blundell 4 Points
Pierluigi Martini 4 Points
Andrea de Cesaris 4 Points
15) Christian Fittipaldi 3 Points
16) David Coulthard 2 Points
17) Erik Comas 1 Point
Michele Alboreto 1 Point
Eddie Irvine 1 Point
JJ Lehto 1 Point
Hmm, 4 points seem to be the fashion at the moment...
CONSTRUCTORS CHAMPIONSHIP TABLE:
1) Benetton-Ford 67 Points
2) Ferrari 36 Points
3) Williams-Renault 31 Points
4) Jordan-Hart 11 Points
5) McLaren-Peugeot 10 Points
Sauber-Mercedes 10 Points
7) Tyrrell-Yamaha 8 Points
8) Minardi-Ford 5 Points
9) Arrows-Ford 3 Points
10) Larrousse-Ford 1 Point
Retirements (in order): Zanardi, Alboreto, Irvine, Verstappen, Panis,
Morbidelli, Brundle, Brabham, Beretta, Alesi, Barrichello, Bernard, Mansell,
Hakkinen, Katayama and Comas.
Bye. British GP in 1 week. At last, decent gaps between races...
- End of Sockument -
@e