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I'm figuring that you've stopped by because you think it's about time to enter a team for this year. Well, thanks for your interest, but I'm afraid I'm not running the competition in 2010. Late in 2009, I published the following comment explaining this decision:
I’m sorry that I’ve been unable to update the site and issue e-mails as frequently and rapidly as in previous years. I’m afraid life has rather overtaken me. And it is partly for this reason that I shall not be running Fantasy Formula 1 in 2010.
In 2009, I have learned that if you have three children and a job, your free time can be given only to the most rewarding hobbies. And whilst I have loved and been very proud of the fantasy, Formula 1 itself has become somewhat indefensible of late. I’m not quite sure how Bernie has managed to get the media to participate in mass self-delusion, but last-race championship battles do not make for exciting motorsport. Where the winner is almost a foregone conclusion from the grid, and certain from the last pit stops, there can be no talk of on-track action. Think of the best races of the last five years: all are down to a rain-induced mixup either in qualifying or the race. Put simply, when an F1 race weekend runs to plan, it’s pretty damn dull, unless you’re there, in which case the visceral thrill of the cars cannot be denied.
“Unless you’re there”, I write. But as Formula 1 deserts the traditional venues, the places with honour and with history, chasing dollars to race around cookie-cutter circuits in faraway countries with no motorsport heritage and an uninterested populace, who can blame Honda, BMW and Toyota for leaving? Where the new-for-2009 widescreen TV format is required because the cameras are two hundred metres from the cars. And why not yet in high-definition, when NASCAR was all-HD in 2008? Formula 1 is rudderless, confused by the conflict between technological mastery and cost-cutting, between racing and safety, between cash and cachet.
I can hear the anguished cries, telling me how 2010 is going to be mega, with Schuey back, with the last two world champions in the same team, being Britain v Germany once more, and four new teams. And to them I respond “yes, but 2009, with its massive regulation changes was meant to be mega, and what was it?” That’s right, it was pretty damn dull. Six of the first seven races won by the same guy, the rise of Red Bull as inexorable as it was inevitable, but the championship was sealed during race 7 (of 17) in Turkey, when Vettel, the faster man, was unable to pass Button after making a mistake. Oh yes, Turkey “the best new track of a generation”, which resorted to randomising the seat colours to make it appear on TV as if the place was full, and which couldn’t allow a guy a second a lap faster to generate an overtaking opportunity.
So, thank you once again for your patronage, those who joined in 1999 and every year since. If you still love F1 as much as I used to, I hope you find a good alternate fantasy game for 2010 and beyond. If you come back to giles-guthrie.com (please do), you’ll see some fairly major changes over the next few months as I reconfigure it around my love of photography. And if my love of F1 comes back, I’ll drop you a note.