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Virgin on the ridiculous

First things first. What an awesome win by Button to kick off the season, great stuff thoroughly well deserved. Absolutely delighted for Button and especially Ross Brawn, they and a large team of people have worked incredibly hard to get this result.

One person who hasn't is Sir Richard Branson. He's got fantastic publicity by sponsoring the Brawn GP team, and his timing was great - but at the end of the day he turned up and paid for the water coolers, paperclips and the bash-hats that the pit crew wear. I was gobsmacked when in a perhaps forgivably euphoric mood the Beeb's commentator declared:

"Brawn GP are winners on their first race appearance and not only that it's a one-two finish Button from Barrichello, the smiles are on Ross Brawn and Sir Richard Branson"

Fucking hell! Way to utterly diminish Brawn's achievement. Hopefully it was just a slightly jingoistic celebratory gaffe and we won't see much more of Sir Richard - or god forbid hear from him at further GPs. Branson is never shy of getting some publicity for his brand, but if we're gonna credit the boss of the sponsors for their part in the win then I think its only fair that we acknowledge the awesome work done by the boss of the Williams sponsor who helped Nico Rosberg get 6th place and 3 important points...

...step forward Sir Fred Goodwin, I have something here for you.

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Silverstone redux

Now re-edited with some cutaways and more Cult. Ye-eah!


Silverstone 1st March 09 v2 from driverchris on Vimeo.

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A boon for stalkers

Google has added to Street View (stitched together photography at street level) to its UK maps in 25 UK cities from Aberdeen to Southampton.

No Milton Keynes yet, ho hum.

So naturally I have been amusing myself looking up places where I used to live, the house in Edinburgh looks much posher than when I was a student - as does the flat in Chalk Farm - in fact outside the Enterprise pub in Chalk Farm there appears to be some sort of Nathan Barley type wearing a Mexican wrestling mask. Twat.

Like a glove

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Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England

In case you wondered if there was a limit to the number of items you can buy affiliated to your favourite automotive brand. Via www.texasgarages.com

Design for Living

Took a visit to the Design Museum in that there London yesterday. One of their current exhibitions is the Brit Insurance Design Awards - loads of lovely work but I do seem to drawn to the stuff with tyres...

Trek’s District bike features belt drive. The belt drive is a carbon fibre composite belt reinforced to prevent stretch. The worry-free, lube-rejecting, lighter-than-any-chain-you’ve-ever-owned belt also produces a ninja-like quiet ride apparently.


Green motoring ideas often promise lots and fail to deliver, but the Think electric car is an actual working solution made with typically Norwegian subtlety and attention to detail. I reckon the headlights give it a little of the Porsche 'face' and think it's cute - my compatriot disagreed...



John Barnard is one of the most innovative racing car design engineers of his generation. Uniquely he has been technical director/chief designer at both Ferrari and McLaren. He has collaborated with Terence Woodgate to create a table that spans an astonishing 3 metres and has a thickness of just 2mm at the edge - it really defies belief. The best bit? Although it employs carbon fibre composite technology in the construction it doesn't look like a massive slab of CF weave. I might get drummed out of the petrolhead club for this but overt use of carbon fibre can look really chavvy. There I said it. But the unidirectional natural carbon fibre of this table is unlike any finish I've seen before, very subtle and somewhere between ebony and slate.



Price is on application - but I suspect it may be a wee bit out of my price range... oh well.

Silverstone 1st March '09

Silverstone 1st March '09 from driverchris on Vimeo.