The majority of our ‘necessities’ aren’t necessary, at all. We are very lucky in the west; we live in houses made from bricks and mortar, we eat food that has been dipped in preservatives and additives to make them taste great, and we have two options for liquid substance – pop or alcohol. The poorer countries like Turkmenistan and a lot of places in Africa don’t have the luxury of central heating, nor do they have GM produced food that has been bathed in a tub of saturated fat and then injected with enough salt to satisfy a bunch of Tequila-based alcoholics. They don’t know the thrill of a 330ml can of Irn-Bru and they have never tasted a ¼ bottle of vodka mixed with Fanta Icey Lemon. We are very lucky, make no mistake.

The same goes for clothes. Just imagine taking your wardrobe to Sierra Leone – they would literally die with shock. Your N-Dubz style winter hats would be completely alien to them; and the horrendous and completely chavved up UGG boots you wear would be about as familiar to them as an internet connection. As a nation we are about as arrogant and spoilt as one of those terrible worsts on MTV’s Sweet 16.

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In 2008 after, the demise of Christian Albers, the F1 grid found itself with no pay drivers what-so-ever. However, on the eve of the cloth being pulled back revealing the new cars which will compete for the 2011 world championship we face a situation where potentially as many as five drivers may be pay drivers. This week I will discuss the firstly what exactly a pay driver is, how it works and what it means for Formula. I shall conclude with discussing the drivers who have potentially paid for their seats on the grid season and if any of them stand a chance at emulating some of the pay drivers of yesteryear who have gone on to be world champions.

A pay driver is a driver who, rather than being paid, pays for the privilege of driving for a certain team. This can come from numerous sources but typically the drive is either self funded or funded by sponsors, often these families or sponsors have little or no knowledge or involvement in formula one and result in exceptionally poor performances. However, pay drivers can sometimes be really quite good. Michael Schumacher was famously funded by Mercedes for only one race. The fee of $150,000 secured him a race with the now defunct Jordan racing team back in 1991. On a track he had never raced on he secured himself a 7th place grid position, out qualifying his experienced team mate, Andrea de Cesaris, who started in 11th. Fernando Alonso’s race placed in his race seat by his then manager Flavio Briatore, in order for him to gain the experience he needed before racing at a faster more established team. Gaining race experience is the obvious advantage if you can find backing as a young driver looking for that big break.

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A battle between two motoring phenoms is close to taking place. Lee Pickering – a respected, well-loved, incredibly talented, living legend – is close to taking his idle and bottled frustrations to the infidels who work at Wigan borough council. I hate them all. Well, not all of them. The receptionists are relatively ok, and the cleaners are bearable – even the administrative assistants are probably half decent.  I hate the big wigs, though - the people at the top of the pile who make all the ‘important’ decisions. If Wigan council had a Facebook page and Facebook made a ‘dislike’ button, I would press it, and then I’d make a thousand more accounts and have every account press the ‘dislike’ button. I’d ensure Wigan council was the most disliked page on Facebook. Its social networking aspirations would be in tatters – all thanks to Pickers. *Evil laugh from 1990s cartoons… ‘mwahahahahahahaha’.

Before I borrow a nuclear warhead from the middle-east, I had better explain my new found hatred for my local council. It involves the colour yellow – one of my least favourite colours, by the way – a line and a man. That’s right; the council has decided that my 15 metre stretch of road outside my house should now feature a single yellow line. This effectively means that I cannot park outside my own home anymore – why? Because the turds at the council think it’s too tight for buses driving down my road during school drop-off and pick-up time (I live opposite a school). Load of bollocks if you ask me. I’ve lived at my address since birth and we’ve only ever seen two accidents involving cars during that time period – hardly an accident black spot, is it?

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This season, more than ever, the teams are restricted in the design of the cars. Aero restrictions will be visible all over the cars this coming season and come 2013 in the face of rising economic and environmental pressure F1 will adopt smaller engines resulting in one of the biggest overhauls the sport has seen in recent history. The new engines will be 1.6 litres four cylinder turbo engines producing , with the help of KERS, similar levels of power to the current 2.4L, V8’s. The motivation behind this change, despite facing much opposition, is presentable in a logical concise way but the ban on many innovations that have defined the sport in the past few years is less so. The decision to restrict designers may lead to the cars becoming increasingly homogenous, their strengths and weaknesses will be common throughout the grid and the racing will suffer. The introduction of adjustable rear wings is an attempt to eradicate the processional racing this will lead to but does that mean the essence of racing is lost as it becomes more Mario Kart than Monte Carlo?

    Brawn won the 2009 world championship with the innovation of the double diffuser (DDD), it enabled Jenson to win six of the first seven races leaving the other teams playing catch up and effectively sealing the both championships before we had reached the bulk of the European season. You only have to glance at the following results of that season to understand the significance of the innovation – once the other teams had caught up and introduced their own DDD Brawn only managed two race wins. I’m not saying this was the only factor, but it was certainly contributory. Last year revolved firstly around the race to get the McLaren driver operated F-duct and then the fight at the front to implement the Red Bull designed exhaust blown diffuser (EBD). All three of these ground breaking innovations are banned for the forthcoming season alongside the shark-fin engine cover, movable front splitters, something that it is now suggested was contributing towards the flexible front end we saw on the RB6 for large parts of last season, and blade roll structures like we saw on the Mercedes last year – something that was likely to be copied by many teams in an attempt to clear up air flow to the rear wing allowing for passive f-duct systems and greater effectiveness of the adjustable rear wing (also expect not to see the V-shaped nose that gave last year’s seasons cars a huge aesthetic appeal in my opinion thanks to a limit on the front chassis height).

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I have quite an odd taste in music. The majority of Britain listens to generic pop artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry and Boyzone (they’re still relevant, right?) and then there’s rock music, bands like Green Day, Nickleback and Kings of Leon tickle a lot of people’s pickles. But for me, it’s a little different. During my school days I was never one of the ‘cool’ kids. I never walked the corridors with such presence that even the teachers saluted you. I never had the nice looking girlfriend – or any girlfriend, in fact. I was just me, with my geeky mates, wishing for a bit of luck – which we never got.

Music was the same. During year 7 and 8, I was doing my best to try and fit in, and that subsequently meant unwillingly having to listen to dance music – which, for the record, I hated. It really is horrible music. It’s a bit like getting your eardrums raped by a disturbingly horny hippo every Nano second – not my idea of fun, at all. Things changed towards the end of year 8, however. One of my geeky friends – who I’m still best friends with to this day – was listening to some chap called Usher. And the music this Usher fellow was doing was something called RnB – stay with me if you can. I was hooked from song one of his album 8701. Perhaps it was due to my age and how easily influenced I was back then, but there was something about that music that made me feel individual and, for once, relatively accepted.

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Roundabouts - Love them or hate them?

I love them! Only Mummy and Daddy ones though, definitely not Baby ones.

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As anyone who reads this will probably know (I’ve assumed here my readership has at least an inch of Formula 1 knowledge, that being the case you can’t have failed to miss it) last year German car giants Mercedes rejoined the grid in their iconic silver arrow livery and with a rousingly nationalistic driver line up. One of those drivers was the seven time world champion and arguably best F1 driver ever Michael Schumacher. Schuey had never left Formula 1, always working within Ferrari, and after Massa’s horrific accident in 2009 the rumour mill started and the spark that had died was reignited within him. This, eventually, led to the adoring tifosi losing their man to one of the archest of enemies and the return of the most successful driver ever to the grid for 2010. His return, however, has been less than the all conquering affair we are so used to in his Ferrari days. This week I shall have a look at the year Schuey has had, suggest some reasons for his struggles and look for hope him in 2011.

Looking at his results and his results alone it was a poor season. He finished ninth in the championship on seventy two points, a long way behind eighth place Kubica and a decent way ahead of tenth place Barrichello. His team mate, Nico Rosberg, finished seventh with one hundred and forty two points. He only out qualified Nico on three occasions to my reckoning and only out-finished him on four occasions, two of those were when Nico had retired and one of those, in Japan, Nico was classified 17th despite losing a wheel. That leaves just the Spanish GP when Mercedes introduced a longer wheel based version of their MGP W01, one rumoured to favour Michael’s driving style. By anyone’s standards it’s a poor record against a man that has never won a race in equal machinery. It was the first season he had not won a race, qualified on pole, or achieved the fastest lap since his debut season in 1991 and his fifteenth place finish in Valencia signifies the lowest of his career.

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2010 was a great year for cars, but 2011 is the big daddy, 2011 is when the supercar industry girds its loins. Why? Well, this year is when the realisation of several cars comes to reality. We’ve been waiting for what seems like an eternity for some of them, and now it’s time for some tail-out, nursing a semi, hold on let me just go to the toilet, sexy supercar action. Here are the cars I’m most looking forward to this year.

SSC Ultimate Aero 2

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Defining greatness is tough. After all, to what standard do we measure? To what unit do we adhere to? Greatness is something that has no specific protocol. No criteria. No rules. If anything, it breaks the rules. Greatness is opinion, and opinion can be varied and controversial – which can often lead to an argument, and I don’t like arguments, so let’s keep it as broad as possible.

10 years is a long time, especially in the car industry. We’ve had everything; technology updates, huge leaps forward in safety, world records broken and epic fails. But when the dust settles, you realise that there have been some truly great cars over the past decade – and here are my favourites.

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I’ve hit the automotive nirvana this week, my dreams and aspirations have come true – Christmas truly has come early. I’ve been lucky enough to drive three of the most powerful, high-performance and exhilarating cars in the world. The Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari 458 Italia and the Lamborghini Gallardo – quite a threesome, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Let’s start with the Veyron. How do you sum up a car that has superlatives sprouting from its every orothis? Figures will probably help; 987bhp, 8.0-litre W16, four-turbo chargers, 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds and a top speed of over 250mph. Needless to say, this is the fastest car I’ve ever driven and probably ever will. First impressions were of the sheer size of the thing; the engine alone is bigger than my house. And then I entered the cockpit – my god, it really is as luxurious as a Bentley and yet it’s a fully-fledged McLaren F1 beating supercar. Fair play to Bugatti, they really have created a monster in an Armani suit.

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