(Please note – all quotes for 2012-17 are from races only.)
AUSTRALIA
Crofty: “It’s difficult to pick which story [of the two McLarens] to follow and who’s going to create the most drama.”
Martin: “Well, let’s hope it stays that way!”
“And that’s the man they said can’t race in Formula One! Sebastian Vettel, he can only win from the front, apparently – I don’t think so, that was amazing.”
“Maldonado, rather rudely, just burst through.”
“Vettel was only 2.1 seconds ahead of Rosberg as they went over the line – no wonder he kept his foot in on the grass!”
“He’s going to lob it into the corner and the back end says “you’re kidding me, I can’t do that!””
“This is slightly reminiscent to me of 1998, when McLaren came here with Coulthard and Hakkinen, and basically they were so far ahead they just had to make sure that they didn’t break down or run into each other.”
“His rear tyres are getting a bit second-hand as well, judging by the oversteer he had through turn 14, and he’s ready to hand them back in. Don’t think he’ll get much for them, ’cause they look like they’ve had enough!”
“The last person who wouldn’t yield to a Red Bull in a Toro Rosso is no longer driving a Toro Rosso.”
“He’s in the Sauber-Ferrari, and he’s holding up the Ferrari-Ferrari, and he doesn’t care one bit.”
“You could see – I’ve done it a million times – gingerly turning in, thinking “please don’t miss your braking point!” – you sort of turn the wheel and think “oh, he hasn’t hit me”.”
“Get on and drive. As our opening titles say.”
[Not quite!]
“I think he [Hamilton] just wants to get to the end of the race and just see Nicole [Scherzinger] again, doesn’t he?”
“Here he comes, into the garage of 22 of his favourite men in the world, except 21 of them only like him; the man on the front jack won’t appreciate that.”
“I think we should get rid of blue flags – you’ll hear me saying that once every three races.”
Guillaume Rocquelin: “Sebastian, you can use the fuel, you can use the fuel. Use more fuel.”
Martin: “Turn that motor up!”
[Kovalainen gets wheeled back into the garage]
“He’s looking pretty trollied there.”
[Oh Martin…]
“Ferrari will be massively relieved if they can finish 5th. Might put half a smile on the face of Fernando Alonso. We haven’t seen one all weekend.”
Crofty: “At least it’s not Lewis Hamilton [Massa]’s crashing into this year.”
Martin: “He’d like to have a chance, wouldn’t he, [of] being anywhere near him!”
[There’s a large mark on the side of Massa’s car]
“I don’t know if it was when Massa kicked it as he got out!”
“You can still hear the cars with a bit of a misfire in the slow corners. They put them down to four cylinders to save fuel, slightly better traction as well. That’s within the rules, of course. They’re just not allowed to pop and bang and use the engine to drive the aerodynamics underneath the car any longer, which means if you’re going to Silverstone this year or you’re going to a Grand Prix, you’ll find they sound an awful lot nicer.”
“About five seconds into this race, when the front of Webber’s Red Bull got attacked from both sides, I doubt he imagined he’d be in 4th place on lap 52!”
“Both Toro Rossos passed Paul di Resta, unfortunately – well, unfortunately for di Resta.”
“And Rosberg then comes up the inside and [Kobayashi]’s like “get out, get out! You’re not coming through there! Oh, OK then.””
Crofty: “I wonder, has the Renault got enough pace – the Lotus, I should say, have enough pace…”
Martin: “I’ve done that all weekend!”
“And Jenson Button’s just sent a message to Sebastian Vettel, subliminal: forget it, son!”
“Alonso, as ever, pulls the rabbit out of the hat, for 5th, in a car that Felipe Massa couldn’t drive, basically.”
“Sauber 6th and 8th. Let’s hope they don’t get disqualified this year.”
[Vettel and Button speak to Herbie Blash about an errant yellow flag]
“I’ve caught a red flag before on a dull day or a misty day and it turns out to be a Ferrari fan.”
MALAYSIA
“What were we saying about Schumacher being the man for those conditions? He’s the first one to drop it in the end!”
“Intermediate – they do exactly what they say on the tin.”
“Yellow flags are out – somebody’s had an adventure too many.”
“STILL the Force Indias are side-by-side. That’s going to be a story all season long.”
“So Vergne is still on the intermediates then – and Vettel’s gone off on the full wets! How on earth’s Vergne getting round the racetrack on those? “Slowly” would be one answer.”
“Let’s just rehearse this one more time, Crofty: an HRT is running in the top 10 in the early stages on lap 8 of a Grand Prix!?”
Martin: “Remember I said on the grid the safety car’s got 125km of fuel, probably more, probably 140 in wet conditions.”
Crofty: “Have they got a spare?”
Martin: “They have a spare. You weren’t listening to my grid walk, Crofty!”
[…]
Crofty: “To be honest, I was listening intently to the grid walk, but I was chuckling at your er, altercation with Owen Wilson down there! It was the shortest Hollywood interview ever.”
Martin: “He’s treading on my toes!”
“The race can last no longer than 4 hours, you’ll be delighted to hear.”
“British F3 helps you get used to the wet conditions, that’s for sure.”
“Do you know, I’ve been racing for 40 years, and that red flag countback situation, I’ve never got my head round it.”
Martin: “Ferrari…”
Crofty: “They’ve found a gazebo!”
Martin: “Bit slow with the gazebo. Bit like the car this year, unfortunately.”
“I wonder if we’re facing a half-points situation like in 2009? Makes the table really messy for the rest of the year.”
“You’re living on your wits when you can’t really see out of the front of the car. It’s like passing a truck on the motorway when your wipers have failed and your windscreen’s obliterated. And what happens, you start listening for the car in front and your peripheral vision heightens and you start finding new reference points.”
“That was a classic shot, wasn’t it? Felipe Massa’s dad with a cardboard cut-out of Felipe Massa, wasn’t it, in the middle!”
Crofty: “We had one person tweet us @SkySportsF1 with the #skyf1 saying is this now the most expensive car boot sale in history?
Martin: “I think it would be if a few more of them had run into each other, but impressively, there’s not too much carbon fibre laying around to sell off cheaply.”
“The five half-points races in history: two of them in 1975, Spain and Austria; ’84 in Monaco, a race I watched because I crashed heavily in qualifying and that was the one where Senna was going to beat Prost, wasn’t it, and they stopped the race a little bit early and they had Stefan Bellof chasing them as well, I think he would have won frankly it in the Tyrrell; in Australia ’91, oh that’s another race I was in, where I spun down the back straight just by myself five times, put it in first gear and drove off and didn’t know whether I was going against the traffic, there was so little visibility, or with the traffic, absolutely terrifying. It’s bringing back a lot of bad memories, reading that list out.”
[The two Force India drivers are standing next to each other]
“STILL they’re side-by-side!”
“[Vergne’s] boots won’t be wet, because obviously he walks on water.”
“Rob [Smedley] looks decidedly unimpressed with this weather, doesn’t he?”
[Discussing visibility]
“There’s no mud guards on these things, of course.”
“No wonder you can’t see an awful lot if somebody’s throwing 60 litres a second at you and you’re trying to do a couple of hundred miles an hour.”
[Talking about driving the 2010 Ferrari]
“I sat in Alonso’s seat, surprisingly… no it wasn’t, it was a Raikkonen seat. I couldn’t get in Alonso’s seat, his hips were too girly.”
Martin: “DRS disenabled… disabled is the word I was looking for!”
Crofty: “”Not working.””
“He’s a heating engineer right now and he’s not able to keep his front tyres warm.”
“Second consecutive Sunday he’s seen Sebastian Vettel go round the outside of him.”
“Senna passes Schumacher. There’s something to be saying.”
“Massa won’t be able to turn in, but chooses to do so anyway.”
“His teammate’s leading the Grand Prix; Massa’s now dropped down to 18th place!”
“Golden rule number 1… 1A… always be on the right tyres at the right time.”
“… as we watch Massa passing the Caterham of Petrov for, er… [through gritted teeth] 17th…”
“If you’re going to let the leader through, let him positively through. Don’t loiter on the racing line like that.”
“If only they’d pitted him when they should, he’d be in the lead.”
Martin: “We have some new heroes in Formula One. Sergio Perez, Bruno Senna, I’m adding to that list as well, driving a tremendous Grand Prix.”
Crofty: “Spoilt for choice for the driver of the day today. To be honest, Fernando Alonso’s not been too shabby in the Ferrari out front either.”
Martin: “No, that’s a fact… he was a hero already though, wasn’t he?”
“That puts Michael into the points. I half expected Michael to win this race today, if I’m honest.”
“I’m really happy for Sauber, but I think it’s the race they should have won.”
“Sergio Perez has established himself – fully, with all the right credentials – as a star of the future.”
Andrea Stella: “This is one of the most beautiful. This is one of the most, most beautiful. We are so proud of you. So proud of you and of the team.”
Martin: “If ever a team needed a victory, it was Ferrari today.”
“There’s that controversial pullrod front suspension. Didn’t seem to be too bad today, did it?”
“Suddenly those ugly noses don’t look quite so ugly when they’re in the winners’ circle.”
“Don’t know how Felipe Massa will feel about this. He finished 97 seconds behind in 15th place in the other Ferrari.”
“Stefano Domenicali, there. I think he’ll be even more relieved than Fernando Alonso, frankly.”
CHINA
“For the third consecutive year, Nico Rosberg leads the Chinese Grand Prix.”
“A few broken bits here and there.”
Tom McCullough: “We need to get through Massa.”
Crofty: “Round Massa, probably.”
Martin: “[Senna] tried “through”, didn’t he?”
“Vettel, last year, the year before, he was perfect off the starts, perfect in qualifying, what is going on!?”
“It’s turning into exactly the Grand Prix we expected!”
[Schumacher retires]
“Noooo! I haven’t been this disappointed since Shrek 2! That is such a shame.”
“That’s such a shame for Mercedes-Benz. And Michael Schumacher. And us, watching this race.”
“We thought they were slow to pit him in Malaysia and it cost him the Grand Prix, frankly, and they’ve been slow again here.”
“Aldente Pasta there, wasn’t he?”
[As in Pastor Maldonado…]
“We’re not even halfway through the race yet and he’s on his third set of tyres!”
“The strategists, their brains will be smoking; smoke coming out of their ears.”
“Maldonado was having none of it, and why should he?”
“They’re all over the show! The cars we were expecting to win this race, they’re all spread out through the field at the moment!”
Rob Smedley: “OK, so Fernando on a different strategy, Fernando on a different strategy, so let the other car past, different strategy.”
[Massa duly obliges]
Martin: “I can hear you saying at home “well what’s the difference then when they told him to move over and Alonso went on to win the German Grand Prix [in 2010]?” Well, there’s a big difference, because Massa had the pace and strategy to win the race on that day.”
[Perez has several huge lock-ups]
“Perez, the man we say is always so kind on his tyres, was rather brutal under pressure.”
“Maldonado does the fastest lap. That just about sums this Grand Prix up, doesn’t it?”
“You don’t wear your tyres out when you’re flying through the air!”
Martin: “Let’s assume then, that Button pits now…”
[McLaren come out into the pit lane for Button]
Crofty: “Which I think is a fair assumption!”
“What I love about this race is everybody in the paddock thought Mercedes were going to destroy their tyres, and they’re 2-stopping and McLaren are 3-stopping!”
“Looks like we’ve got 30 cars on the track, doesn’t it?”
“I’m surprised at Alonso, he must knows there’s a carpet of marbles out there. It is literally like being on marbles. He’s tried to stay with it and I was watching it thinking “well that’s not going to stay on the race track!””
“Perez and Alonso together, we saw that, didn’t we, three weeks ago?”
“What a difference a year makes. I mean, last year, in a Red Bull your only decision would have been “which side shall I pass this Lotus in front of me?” And now, they haven’t got an answer for it.”
Crofty: “Nico Rosberg hadn’t scored a point before today.”
Martin: “Well, he hasn’t yet, either.”
Crofty: “Quite right there. 4 laps remaining…”
“Red Bull side-by-side. We’ve seen this a few times, haven’t we?”
“Don’t think it’s the prettiest trophy I’ve ever seen, but it’s pretty memorable, isn’t it?”
BAHRAIN
“We know that Alonso’s on used tyres as well, because he’s got no new ones left.”
“Massa driving like a man possessed!”
“Don’t forget, these cars full of fuel since you last saw them, that’s like putting two passengers in the car.”
[Replay of Massa’s start]
“Now we’re gonna see something!”
“He’s just done the fastest first sector of the Grand Prix – includes a tow and a nice bit of DRS down towards turn one, of course…”
[Onboard with Button, with Raikkonen ahead of us]
Crofty: “He’s already four tenths of a second behind [Button] at the end of the last lap, Kimi Raikkonen.”
Martin: (dryly) “I think he might have passed him, actually.”
“THAT was braze. Slightly crazy. Effective.”
[Hamilton, who’s been delayed in a pit stop, passes Alonso]
“Mr Angry passes the matador.”
“I hope he wasn’t a day late and a dollar short on that pit stop.”
“The DRS is definitely more effective here than last weekend in China. Whether it’s too effective is a point to argue.”
Paul di Resta: “Maldonado’s weaving all over the place!” (in an amusingly heavy Scottish accent!)
Gianpiero Lambiase: “Understood, Paul.”
Martin: “A message to transmit to the stewards, but the stewards are busy at the moment.”
[Hamilton has yet another awful pit stop]
“He was pretty unhappy first time around, wasn’t he? I can’t IMAGINE the mood in that cockpit now.”
“Just like China, you think there’s 30 cars out there!”
[A replay of Rosberg defending against Alonso as Maldonado spins simultaneously]
“And this is Nico Rosberg’s party trick up the hill, and it was so exciting… [that Maldonado spins].”
“Fernando, Felipe is faster than you.”
“Maldonado then came through, minus his left rear tyre.”
[Rosberg vs Hamilton and Alonso will be investigated after the race]
“Don’t know what time Rosberg’s plane is. He might need to delay it a little bit.”
“Raikkonen apparently always beats Vettel at table tennis. Will he beat him today?”
[Hamilton pits, and it goes OK]
“And we have four wheels on our wagon!”
“They were Toleman, Benetton, Renault, and now Lotus. Was there anything else in the middle somewhere?”
“People ask you for predictions always in sport. It’s just a guess this year, isn’t it? There’s no such thing as a prediction in Formula One.”
“Romain Grosjean. His second visit to Formula One. And this one’s going an awful lot better.”
SPAIN
[Alonso’s start onboard]
“This is going to be a great view. I’m looking forward to this! So watch Maldonado gently come over and gives him the width of a Ferrari plus a sheet of A4 basically, and Alonso says “that’s more than enough for me”.”
“Vergne another man who made 4 places from his grid position, and here’s Mark Webber, who didn’t.”
“Their arm is up their back.”
[Webber nearly hits Karthikeyan]
“I think he just completely underestimated how slow the HRT is!”
Crofty: “Romain Grosjean gets past Nico Rosberg into that first corner. Easily”
Martin: “Passed him? He absolutely left him for dead!”
“Nico went to defend some fresh air on the inside.”
Crofty: “Lewis Hamilton manages to get past Nico Hulkenberg into turn four.”
Martin: “Again.”
“I don’t know if that’s a problem, whether I’m talking sense.”
“Vergne trying to go around the outside and getting unceremoniously shoved off the race track there by Paul di Resta. Bit of DTM-styley driving there.”
[Kobayashi barges past Button]
“You know when you’ve been KK’d.”
“[Kobayashi says] “just in case I run wide, I’ll lean on you.””
“It means drive through the pits, not drive through the garage.”
“Vintage Hamilton, you have to say, zig-zagging through the pack.”
“I really, honestly, believed [Lotus] were going to win this race.”
“What a difference a year makes, doesn’t it? Red Bull won this race at will last year, didn’t they? At the moment, they’re 10th and 12th.”
Martin: “Alonso is sitting there like a shark just waiting, isn’t he?”
Crofty: “[sings Jaws theme]”
“It’s going to be an easy pass, unless Maldonado runs him out to the grass again.”
“An important day for: Frank Williams; Patrick Head; Nick Rose, the new CEO; Toto Wolff, part owner of the team; Mike Coughlin; Mark Gillan; and so many people that are new or back to Williams, new to Williams, established at Williams, and this is going to make so many people in the paddock happy.”
“He’s lapped – he’s lapped! – a Red Bull there with Mark Webber behind him.”
“His first crash there of the day, he’s just crashed into the cameraman.”
[A phone noise in the cool-down room]
“Somebody’s switched his phone off.”
MONACO
[start of the formation lap]
“We’ve got yellow flags waving unnecessarily.”
“First corner always had “incident” written all over it.”
“Safety car deployed. Classic. Incidents at Monaco, first lap.”
“[Hamilton] was pretty slow away, and that was why the Ferraris were bunched up behind him, tremendous start and they popped out like a cork from behind him.”
“Kobayashi has rejoined the race, amazingly, after that little aerial act.”
“They tend to keep what they call “dirty downforce” on the car.”
“… on a straight that’s as curved as a banana, anyway.”
“Look at Massa hustling Alonso, how much will he be enjoying that!”
[on Schumacher, who hit Grosjean in turn one]
“After a whack like that, I’d be thinking “78 laps of Monaco, will that front suspension go…?” Every time I hit the brakes into the seafront chicane, I’d be, like, grimacing, I think, but you have to park it in your mind.”
“Give him a little nerf! Let him know you’re there!”
“How many times have we heard that, Crofty, “it’s gonna rain”?”
“All’s fair in love, war, and Formula One, they say.”
Crofty: “As we watch Narain Karthikeyan get the wrong line.”
Martin: “Having an incident all by himself, there. Feeling a bit lonely, no doubt, down at the hairpin.”
“You sure they’re not burning €50 notes out there or something on the boats to keep themselves warm?
[Hulkenberg does the fastest lap]
“That’s how bizarre 2012 is. A 1:18.4? That’s a second quicker than the leader Vettel and two seconds quicker than Webber and Rosberg!”
“They’ll be grimacing on the McLaren pit wall.”
Crofty: “Red Bull have just said on their team radio no more rain forecast.”
Martin: “Make your mind up, boys!”
“Lewis giving an early-warning-system there.”
“It’s a very basic system in this hi-tech world of sticking little plastic numbers on a board.”
[Hamilton cocks a wheel over the kerb]
“Three wheels on his wagon.”
“I’ve been hanging around these things all my life.”
Simon Rennie: “OK Kimi, the rain has disappeared, we expect no rain, so we need to go to the end.”
Martin: “How often do we hear that? It never seems to quite work out as those graphs show them, the rain, how many times have we seen this, it’s either raining a lot harder or a lot less than expected.”
“Well, they were throwing bits of his pit board at him!”
[debris on track]
Martin: “Does that look Mercedes Benz-coloured?”
Crofty: “It looked like a piece of front wing endplate from a Mercedes Benz to me.”
[…]
Martin: “OK Sherlock, I think you might be right on that, but we’ll find out in a minute.”
[…]
Crofty: “Trust me, if that is a piece of Mercedes front wing endplate that’s be the luckiest guess I’ve ever had.”
[replay: the culprit was Pic]
Martin: “Oh well, nearly right.”
“Back in the day if you were running P10 at half distance and you finished you were virtually guaranteed to be in the points, and they only went down to P6 for World Championship points.”
“Seeing a few tweets saying it’s a bit of a procession, but that’s Monaco.”
“The wheels are only 13 inch wheels, a bit like an early Mini Metro.”
Crofty: “Got to feel sorry for Damon Hill as well, who told you yesterday, Martin, when you walked the track, he confidently predicts that this man, Lewis Hamilton, to take pole and win the race, and if he didn’t, he’d eat his microphone. He’s had his first course, now he’s after seconds, I think.”
Martin: “He’s got another microphone to eat, has he? Well, predicting Formula One in 2012 is not a clever idea at all, nor is locking your right front into Saint Devote.”
“I think Michael knows his days are numbered… his laps are numbered in this race, anyway.”
(Freudian slip?)
Martin: “Vettel’s been told “the only thing we see on the radar is isolated drops”.”
Crofty: “One drop spaced 3 metres apart?”
Martin: “Definition of “isolated”…”
“Catching is one thing, passing is quite another, of course.”
[Martin speculates that Webber is attempting to back the pack up to get Vettel on the podium]
“Just a wild guess, really.”
CANADA
“I sat with Ross Brawn this morning, and with a big piece of paper and a pen, he drew me lots of graphs and gave me a 20-minute explanation.”
“Wasn’t it impressive that he [Maldonado] hit the wall [in qualifying], more or less knocked his right rear wheel off, and still he has hit foot hard on the throttle, as “if I can get one piece of this Williams over the line, they can still give me the lap time”.”
“They’ll both be looking in their mirrors for something bright red and in a hurry.”
“Plenty of water around here, but it’s all in the St Lawrence seaway, and the boating lake.”
“Here’s the man that starts everybody, the man with so many horsepower under his thumb.”
[Massa minces Rosberg at the end of lap 2]
“[The DRS] almost seemed to come in a lap early, to me.”
[Massa spins, then a few laps later…]
Felipe Massa: “I’ve got some vibrations on the tyres.”
Rob Smedley: “OK, understood, let’s have a look at what the pace is like with the people around you first.”
[…]
Martin: “Surprised Rob Smedley didn’t say “serves you right! Look after them a bit better!””
“This is where the real race is going on, isn’t it?”
Crofty: “Paul di Resta is told “your window is open”. Come in if you like, #11.”
Martin: “Yep. Don’t have too many windows on these things.”
[Di Resta and Schumacher pit]
“This is going to work out brilliantly for Paul di Resta, but not for Michael Schumacher unless he can get round the outside of that Caterham and he can’t! He’s just not lucky this year at all, is he?”
“Button slow off the corner and slow down the pit straight. Hardly last year, is it?”
“Hamilton vs Alonso. I love saying that, it always means fireworks.”
“There used to be a tree right there, used to scare the living daylights out of you.”
“… yet to stop. Nor is Perez, the man who likes to save tyres.”
[De La Rosa retires with brake dust pouring from the brakes]
Crofty: “Brake issue, do you think?”
Martin: “(sarcastically) I think it’s quite possible, isn’t it? Looks like a coal mine.”
Crofty: “This time last year, with 30 laps to go, he [Button] was plumb last and he went on to win the race. I know it’s a bit drier here, but…”
Martin: “That would impress me, today.”
“He’ll be invited to talk at the Fleet Managers’ Christmas event and telling everybody how to save tyres, Sergio Perez, it’s certainly his speciality.”
“That’s like waiting at the door of a pub to open when you’re desperately thirsty, isn’t it? You’re going to start kicking on the door a little bit and letting them know you’re there, shortly.”
“That’s a terrifying thought when you’re driving around, missing your braking points, locking your right front, that there are 40 people cleverer than you watching it and they know before you do!”
“What you’re saying is this bit’s a bit boring compared to how it was a few minutes ago when it was really exciting […] patience! Patience, young man!”
“Which door is going to open then, when he gets there?”
“The only person in the world who won’t care about that is Kimi Raikkonen.”
“Now they’ll see if that particular chess move works out.”
“Great trust between two great drivers there.”
Martin: “Did he [Schumacher] have all his luck in his first part of his career?”
Crofty: “He could be leading the World Championship if it wasn’t for that [bad luck].”
“Nobody intentionally makes the car go wrong.”
[Hamilton has yet another awful pit stop and Nicole Scherzinger bangs the table in frustration]
“Nicole Scherzinger, there saying “what on earth is going on”, I believe. And well, she’s very upset about 1.6 seconds, but she may well be right.”
“This race is absolutely going to come alive. Do not move away!”
Crofty: “Given that Hamilton, Grojsean, and Perez haven’t won a race this season, Martin, you reckon we might get a new winner?”
Martin: “I think we’ll put money on that, shall we?”
“What a thrilling end to this Grand Prix.”
“Poor old Jenson in the second McLaren, down there in 16th place.”
Driver of the Day
“My driver of the race is Grosjean.”
“Yeah, he’ll [Hamilton] take off now.”
[Hamilton jumps into his mechanics]
“Literally.”
EUROPE
(a shot of girls standing in a pool, as Crofty rambles on about tyres)
Crofty: “A one-stop is possible but it is a major, major risk, because it leaves you so exposed in the latter stages of the race.”
Martin: “”So exposed?” You’re not still thinking of that shot, are you?”
“Fastest in qualifying, until Vettel and Hamilton worked their magic.”
“Maldonado’s a full metre behind his yellow line here.”
“Grosjean having a run… (surprised) at Lewis Hamilton!! For second place!!”
“I couldn’t believe how much purchase and traction that Raikkonen got completely off the road: nearly came past him anyway! Maldonado just shoving him out the way.”
“Great shot, that was, with the helicopter shadow in there as well. Look at that, love that.”
“Gave him a little love kiss, and made it stick.”
“Bit silly, fighting like that over last place. […] Pic is doing similar lap times; it’s a bit worrying when bits fall off the car and you don’t slow down.”
“He’s [Grosjean] turning into a class Formula One driver, isn’t he, second time around? He was hopeless first time, always seemed to be spinning around and getting it wrong, but now that was a world class overtake. You don’t see many people putting manners on Lewis Hamilton. […] I mean it theoretically wasn’t on!”
“Button pits for McLaren. He’s had enough of those tyres.”
“Perez started on the primes and went to the option, and Button started on the options and went to the prime, so… there’s not a lot of clarity out there, is there!?”
“Who said you can’t overtake in Valencia!?”
“I’m so massively impressed by the skill we’ve seen this afternoon.”
Crofty: “And that’s someone’s straw hat that has been blown, maybe from the back of the grandstand, on to the track.”
Martin: “I’ve never seen that before in all the years I’ve covered this sport, somebody’s hat getting involved in a Formula One incident!”
Crofty: “It’s a fashion faux pas that has no place at a Grand Prix track!”
Martin: “It’s certainly been dispatched with disdain now!”
“As Hamilton starts to make his way through… bit odd to call it “the slower traffic” when it’s Michael Schumacher in a Mercedes, but that’s what it is. […] I stopped myself there, “Lewis makes his way through the slower traffic” – it’s Schumacher.”
“Vettel’s got nothing behind him, nothing ahead of him, he’ll be wondering if he’s in a race by himself.”
“This is looking so last year, isn’t it?”
“Webber pits. He’s had enough of that silliness.”
“Webber will be delighted to see Michael Schumacher out ahead of him(!)”
(in the train, Senna and Kobayashi collide)
“It was going to go wrong in there somewhere, wasn’t it… I’m amazed it got that far.”
(Onboard replay as Alonso passes Webber)
“Oh… that could have been flying through the air in a heartbeat.”
“Vettel leads Grosjean… or “Gross-jean”, as some people seem to call him.”
(Ricciardo passes Perez around the outside of Turn 12)
“That’s the fashionable move of the day.”
“They’re either smarter than all the others, or they’re out of step.”
“Lots of different ideas going on and they’re all roughly giving them the same amount of speed and grip.”
(Vergne’s tyre disintegrates)
“Slow down! […] You’ve got to go a third of that speed. Maybe less.”
“That’s Formula Ford style, isn’t it? You can’t do that in F1.”
“That looked as deliberate as some of the things we’ve seen Maldonado do.”
“Jenson Button, after that stop, back down in 15th, it’s just not worked out kindly for Jenson at all. We seem to say that every weekend at the moment, don’t we?”
“I hope you kept the minibar locked when you left those girls in the swimming pool in your room, there, Crofty, otherwise you’ll be getting a big bill.”
“Yellow flags are still flying out there, but so are the Spanish flags! Fernando Alonso, you cannot keep this man down!”
“He’s got to stop again yet, but he’s not finished having fun up at the front of the field.”
“Toro Rosso have not been kind to Red Bull today.”
“The race is always rubbish in Valencia(!) Hate coming here(!)”
“Double waved yellows means “slow down and be prepared to stop”. It does not mean “overtake the guy in front”.”
“I can hear the fans at home going “you what? Lewis under investigation? You’re kidding me(!)””
Simon Rennie: “Kimi, Fernando is 3 seconds ahead of Hamilton. We expect his tyres to go off at the end of the race. If you get past Hamilton, we think we’ve got a chance of a win.”
[…]
Martin: “I wouldn’t be able to be that calm, I’d be like “ifyoucanjustgetpasthim, IthinkwecouldWINTHIS!!!!””
“Jenson absolutely helpless there. No grip at all. His season is just a misery.”
Crofty: “A conclusion that’s going to have this lot [the Spanish fans] keeping you awake all night, Martin Brundle.”
Martin: “Hope so. I have to say– well, I’m going back to England tonight, so they’ll have to cheer pretty loud.”
Andrea Stella: “Giornata fantastica. Giornata fantastica.”
Martin: “Great day. Indeed.”
Michael Schumacher: “I don’t know who to donate on this one. Super well done guys. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. So great.”
[…]
Martin: “It’s his 155th podium finish, Michael Schumacher. His 92nd… sorry, no, his 69th…”
Crofty: “155th podium.”
Martin: “[I was looking for] number of third places, but I haven’t actually got it, so I’ll shut up.”
(Alonso cries on the team radio)
“Crying there, was he? The big man?”
“Will there be another European Grand Prix before Europe implodes on itself?”
(Alonso fights his way through a media scrum on his way to the podium)
“Not quite the protocol the FIA like to have!”
Driver of the Day
“Fernando Alonso, very much the driver of the day.”
UNITED KINGDOM
“Sadly for Petrov, there are no spare cars these days.”
(on the formation lap)
“Frankie Dettori, still on the grid. I don’t think he should be there, frankly. He might jump the fence or something.”
“Awful first lap for Force India. One’s in the fence and the other one’s going backwards!”
“How that front wing didn’t whistle off, I don’t know.”
“Settled down a little bit now. We’re only on lap 5! What a manic first few laps that was.”
(discussing a new directive on overtaking)
“If you shove your car up the inside, the other car’s got to let you through? I don’t see that one working, frankly.”
“If they’re supposed to slow down under yellows, they don’t like them having the DRS open and trying to go even faster.”
(the “team radio” graphic comes up but no audio plays)
“Perez speechless there, according to that team radio. And I’m not surprised.”
“This wonderful Maggots and Becketts section, which is very much one-at-a-time.”
(Alonso and Hamilton have a great battle for the lead)
“The crowd, you can hear them over the Formula One cars! They love all of that!”
“STILL Lewis steamed up the inside. He nearly made it into the BRDC clubhouse.”
“I’ll tell you who’s wasting a fast car today, and that is Sauber.”
“Six new parts in that swivel jack. Talk about evolution in Formula One!”
“Lewis double-shuffles him and comes up the inside instead.”
Michael Schumacher: “How many more laps have we got with these tyres?”
Pete Bonnington: “OK Michael, target +8, target +8.”
Martin: “That was a “are we nearly there yet” kind of comment from the kids in the back, wasn’t it?”
“Lewis is really having to earn his positions today, that’s for sure.”
“Grosjean put so much faith on Nico Rosberg not to turn in at 190mph […] that would have been an airplane [sic] crash.”
[Ed: You’re British, Martin. Shouldn’t that be “aeroplane”?]
“Red Bull have got to react to each other!”
“He just coasted past him! And that is not going to improve Lewis Hamilton’s demeanour inside the cockpit of that McLaren, he was already angry about Grosjean hustling him and chasing him through the corners.”
“Lotus have got tremendous pace. They just can’t turn it into a victory, can they?”
(Kobayashi wipes out most of his mechanics)
“He’s missed his grid slot by a team’s worth! It’s like he was stopping at the next team! Unless he had a problem in the car, that’s just rubbish driving!”
“To answer my own rhetorical question…”
“Once again, he [Grosjean] had a car underneath him that could win the race.”
(after a discussion about how awful McLaren have been today)
“Button’s just done the fastest first sector […] just to confuse that.”
“We could do with a bit of spice at the end of the race.”
Pete Bonnington: “So that’s a good lap, Michael, another seven tenths, so gap is down to 3 seconds.”
Martin: “On Lewis Hamilton. He’s catching Lewis Hamilton, who I think is going to get out of that McLaren cockpit… not a happy man.”
(a glum-faced Rowan Atkinson)
“Mr Bean there, looking ecstatic about the whole thing.”
“That’s what I don’t understand – if your front wing’s beyond their rear wheel they’ve got to let you go – what happens if you’re on the outside? There’s no way Senna had to yield there to Button, nor would Button have expected him to. Don’t understand that new rule. It’s too convenient. It’s like that penalty we saw with Massa and Hamilton in India last year. You know, you’ve got to take a view as to whether the driver’s in a reasonable, fair chance of overtaking you, and then you’ve got to turn your car into the corner at some point. Especially if he’s trying to go round the outside of you.”
Crofty: “One thing is for sure, whenever we see these two lock horns we get some great moves. Remember Eau Rouge last year?”
Martin: “We’ll never forget that!”
“He knows he can trust Fernando Alonso not to drive into him, as Maldonado did on Perez.”
“Not bad for a #2 driver, is he?”
“I think he’ll [Webber] be adopted as an honorary Brit today by the crowd. They’ve not got much else to cheer about!”
(Alonso sticks his bottom lip out at his 2nd place.)
“Oh dear. Big bottom lip.”
“I had a few second places in Formula One I was very happy with, but I don’t think “happy” will be a word that crosses that big sad bottom lip any time soon, even in Italian. Or Spanish. Or English.”
(Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke MP presents the trophy)
“That’s the man who our Prime Minister [David Cameron] said he was going to put in a racing car earlier on!”
“They came, they nearly drowned, they dried out, and they’ve seen a great race.”
GERMANY
(di Resta is told that several drivers are “soft”)
“It sounded like a breakfast order in America, didn’t it, “how do you like your eggs?””
“You should never believe computers.”
(Perez passes Kobayashi)
“Looked a bit like synchronised swimming to me.”
“We’ve got rubbish in the middle of the track, which unfortunately Maldonado went over.”
“They’re doing completely different things! It’s like they don’t know out there!”
(Schumacher passes Hulkenberg, brilliantly)
“Really feisty today, isn’t he, the old man?? Might be in his 40s, but that’s incredible!! Incredibly aggressive driving there from Michael Schumacher!”
“They reckon they can do a 2-second stop, some of these teams. We’re going to have slo-mo the pit stops, otherwise we won’t see – they’re just going to be a blur!”
Andy Latham: “OK Lewis, pace still looking strong, pace still looking strong, we may be able to make a 1-stop work here, we can keep going at this pace, looking good.”
[…]
Martin: “Did he mean a 1-stop over and above the emergency stop?”
Simon Rennie: “We are the quickest car on track.”
[…]
Martin: “He’s looking at a different computer to what I am!”
“Where is this imaginary Lotus pace we keep talking about?”
“Alonso coming under increasing pressure. Doesn’t normally bother him too much.”
“It’s a pity they couldn’t use him [Hamilton] to steady the two leaders up!”
(Prophetic words indeed!)
“This is a highly unusual situation, Crofty, where a lapped driver appears to be faster than the leaders.”
“Hamilton does a 20.0, on tyres he’s hoping to eek out until the end of the race.”
“It’ll be part devilment from Alonso, not wanting him [Hamilton] to come through.”
Andrea Stella: “Siamo in una zona in cui Button è 4 secondi dietro di noi, potrebbe fare un undercut, quindi adesso 2-3 giri fino allo stop tutto quello che c’è.”
Martin: “Indeed.”
Crofty: “Yeah. Totally agree.”
“Great race!”
“Top three covered by 2.5 seconds, that’s as close as they’ve been since they sat on the grid, isn’t it?”
“Mark [Webber] occasionally has days when he goes missing in action.”
“I wonder what language Alonso dreams in?”
“Dan dare, banzai, “I’ll win it or bin it”, on the last lap.”
“It sounds like he’s slightly late for a plane, isn’t it, rather than doing 200mph?”
“I’ve given up second-guessing what the stewards are going to say, to be honest.”
“Christian Horner saying on the radio “[…] shame we got held up by Lewis”. I don’t think they got held up by Lewis. Lewis was perfectly entitled to make his way back through the field.”
“One legend to another, Hans Stuck to Jenson Button. His season back on track. Thank goodness.”
“Big party tonight, according to Fernando Alonso.”
HUNGARY
“This is Button. This should be exciting to watch! […] He’s about to see Grosjean run Vettel out of space. He’ll love that.”
“If you’d ever driven a Formula One car knowing how clumsy they are when you’re going quite slowly, I don’t think you’d be a front jack man or sit there with confidence with a wheel gun in your hand.”
“This is going to be quite fascinating to see if Perez will yield to his potential future employers.”
“Perez, then, nearly frightening himself off the road.”
(Perez is passed by Senna on replay)
“He’s got no grip!”
(Cuts back live to Perez pit-stopping)
“And he thought the same.”
“Look at the debris! There’s one goat track now through the tyre rubber. We’re nowhere near half distance.”
Martin: “The problem is for Grosjean his car will be understeering like a cross-channel ferry now that he’s in the turbulent air, I’m afraid, of the McLaren. So it’s all relative of course, the amount but it’ll start to hurt his front tyres.”
Crofty: “You ever steered a cross-channel ferry?”
Martin: “They seem like they take a long time to turn around!”
“And that’s the day your car won’t break, when you really fancy going home early. I had that once in Austria, in a car that was terrifying me, and it had been so unreliable all season, the one race it wouldn’t break down is the one I wish it had have!”
(Austria 1987, I think?)
“You’ve always got to pass someone on a 3-stopper. We know how difficult that can be.”
“He [Button] might have a real shock in a minute when Raikkonen pops out ahead of him!”
“Romain Grosjean was too… er, elegant going into his pit.”
“5 laps less his tyres will have to do […] you’re looking at 8% of the Grand Prix.”
“Every time I’ve looked up, he’s [Maldonado] been P12.”
(Schumacher, who’s been trailing at the back all day, retires)
Martin: “They don’t get a free pass for a gearbox change unless they can prove something was actually wrong with the car. They can’t just retire it for the sake of it and go “OK, I’ll claim all the goodies then, please”.
Crofty: “They’ll be taking out the biggest hammer they can find now to put a dent in it.”
Martin: “Yep. Or a bit of data might help them as well.”
“He’s so smooth around the rest of the track, which you can’t always say about Lewis…!”
(The trophy is presented by Lászlóné Németh)
Crofty: “For some reason, Martin Brundle, you didn’t want to read the name[s] of those giving out the trophy.”
Martin: “It’s your big moment, Crofty…”
“Olympic gold for Great Britain, do you think, there?”
Crofty: “And we wait for Placido Domingo to come out onto the podium and conduct the interviews, something I never thought I’d say.”
Martin: “Yeah, that’s gonna be must-watch, actually! Kimi looking fairly underwhelmed by the whole thing. Maybe his interest will grow slightly now.”
BELGIUM
“The drivers are going to find a very different racetrack to the one they qualified on.”
“They all needed to be wearing that hard hat, didn’t they?”
“Surely Maldonado jumped the start? That was too good a start.”
“It just kept going on, didn’t it, like ten-pin bowling? The incident just kept rolling along.”
“Hulkenberg up to third. Di Resta fourth. That worked out brilliantly for Force India, didn’t it?”
Crofty: “Lewis Hamilton picking up a piece of car to take back to the garage. Not the first time he’s finished on the first lap in Spa.”
Martin: “A WAG in the team might be saying “is that all that’s left of it?””
“I don’t know if it was a jump start, but my suspicions are quite deep on that. It’s difficult to pass two rows of Formula One cars.”
“Grosjean comes across to cover Hamilton who can’t and won’t yield.”
“The two Saubers minding their own businesses [sic] get completely wiped out.”
“You brake and you grimace every time into that La Source hairpin at the start.”
(Replay)
“There’s Maldonado scampering off, way ahead of time.”
“That could have been a very, very nasty accident in terms of injury. The Americans would call that a “yard sale”, because it’s just all laid out, isn’t it?”
(Replay from onboard Alonso)
“I don’t really want to see this. This frightens me.”
(Hamilton points at his helmet making “crazy” signals)
Crofty: “Now, what’s that? Lewis Hamilton, who’s he talking to?”
Martin: “Grosjean, no doubt.”
“Hopefully we’ll get a replay of what happened to Maldonado yet again.”
“Charlie [Whiting] shaking his head, going like “you’re kidding me, aren’t you!” Got that one spotted a mile off!”
“We’ve still got a motor race on our hands, thank goodness.”
“Mark Webber said to me this morning (Australian accent) “we’re nowhere, mate”.”
(Schumacher passes Raikkonen)
“Great stuff! Shoved him up against the kerb. Take that! Life in the old dog yet!”
Crofty: “Remember, Michael Schumacher started 16th on the grid here in 1995, went on and won the Belgian Grand Prix.”
Martin: “Yeah, I was one of the people he passed, down into La Source, actually!”
Crofty: “You were in good company that day!”
“Interesting how the Red Bulls can pass the Toro Rossos without too much difficulty(!)”
“If Massa is replaced at Ferrari, which is – let’s be honest – highly likely…”
(Ouch!)
“Even a Mercedes seat [could be available] if Michael Schumacher decides he’s going to stop. And why would he be doing that? He’s currently running second!”
(Vettel and Schumacher almost trip over each other)
“I imagine there’s a few choice German words going on there – in both crash helmets!”
“No sign they’re going to investigate the airplane crash that was the start.”
[Ed: Again, Martin, shouldn’t that be “aeroplane”?]
Martin: “I guess they [the stewards] need to make sure their hotel rooms are booked tonight because they’ve got plenty going on, haven’t they?”
[…]
Crofty: “Can I kip on your floor tonight?”
“I remember going so well in, say, a Ligier or something like that where you’re having a great day and you just didn’t get the service with the blue flags or the backmarkers because you weren’t an established front runner, like the Toro Rossos are right now.”
“He put Jessica’s wetsuit on, because he forgot his, to do a triathlon, and he’s been so fast since that tightened up on him in the water, hasn’t he? Maybe that’s the secret.”
Crofty: “Don’t want to say too much because you don’t want to put the mockers on him!”
Martin: “That’s why I went quiet.”
“Did you hear Daddy Button there – “right, where are they?””
“Mr Grumpy, Kimi Raikkonen.”
“Interestingly, the fastest lap of the race was done by Bruno Senna in the Williams after that late tyre stop. Last time a Senna did a fastest lap was 1993 Donington, European Grand Prix.”
Driver of the Day
“If it wasn’t for Button‘s domination, Hulkenberg surely would be the driver of the day.”
ITALY
“Never ceases to amaze me how much information a Formula One driver can take in. That’s Mark Webber being read out all the cars around him, what tyres they’re on, as well as going into a clutch start procedure […] it’s a bit like just before somebody kicked off in the centre circle reading out what colour socks all the other players have got on and trying to remember it.”
“How must it feel for Sebastian Vettel, chasing down Michael Schumacher?”
“”Failing to lose a place” is the same as “gaining a place” in my opinion in those zones and Rosberg clearly thinks so too, even if he did shove Senna off the road.”
“If you’re new to Formula One – and we all were once…”
“… one of those GP2 bandits who were racing through there earlier…”
Tony Ross: “Box. Box. Box.”
Martin: “Box – that’s the old name for a pit that’s really sort of become the language of Formula One, hasn’t it? Pit would normally cover it, but box seems extremely easy to hear.”
“It’s a 4.1. Not spectacular.”
“Terminal understeer on the Ferrari as he always seems to have every time we go onboard. He rings a time out of it.”
(Vettel pushes Alonso onto the grass at Curva Grande)
“We’ll have another look at it, no doubt. For about a year, I would think.”
“I don’t think we’ll hear any more about that. Certainly not from the stewards, anyway.”
(Wrong.)
“It’s exactly what happened last year, but the other way round.”
“You can’t no-stop in a Grand Prix, in a dry Grand Prix.”
(5 VET; 6 ALO; 7 MSC; 8 RAI)
“We’re just awash with World Champions trying to pass each other, aren’t we? Four in a row, there.”
Marco Schuepbach: “Target extended, target extended, four laps or more, target extended, four laps or more.”
Martin: “Sounded a bit Dalek-like, that one, didn’t it? That would frighten me, I think, if I got that.”
“I think the Red Bull is too slow in a straight line to pull that stunt, frankly.”
“I can hear the phone conversation – excuse me, is that Ferrari, yeah, it’s your customer here, we’d just like to pass through, if we may.”
“It’s 8.4 [seconds between Hamilton and Perez] now they’ve crossed the line again – (gleefully and childishly) it’s going to be oh so close…”
“I’m not shy of walking up to drivers and having a word with them, but I wouldn’t approach him [Vettel] right now, that’s for sure.”
“If you could reach out and push these cars when they’re on the limit of grip like that, they would spin around.”
SINGAPORE
“I just hope there’s not some big first corner carnage.”
“Charlie Whiting there, the man with so many thousands of horsepower underneath his thumb.”
“When I sat in that Ferrari, we did the pieces earlier on in the year, I counted 42 controls on the steering wheel or on the dashboard, some of which had sub-menus.”
“There’s Katy Perry looking on. Somebody forgot to give her some earplugs, by the looks of it, but I guess she’s used to pretty loud noises.”
“Isn’t that his [Massa’s] job in life, to collect data for Fernando Alonso?”
“You get a flat spot, you get vibration at high speed which is thoroughly annoying, you can’t see where you’re going if it’s bad enough: everything rattles, including your eyeballs.”
“Sorry Crofty, I was peering out of the window when you were talking.”
“Never believe a computer.”
(Senna somewhat accidentally overtakes Kovalainen)
“I think he’d given up on the move, there, frankly, but Kovalainen gave him space and he had to take it!”
“You have to be careful in this city – you get arrested for throwing litter around.”
(Webber comes out right behind Pic)
“That’ll be a miserable few laps for him. […] There must be a better logic to that than first appears from standing up here.”
(2-stopping Hulkenberg lets through 3-stopping Di Resta)
“When you see that happening, it sort of starts to tell you you’re on the wrong strategy, doesn’t it?”
“It’s about now when they hang you out a pit board that says “41 laps to go” and you really can’t believe it because it all seems pretty hot and sweaty in there and you feel like you’ve been racing a long time and you’re not even a third of a way through the race.”
“They’re talking about changing […] that Turn 10 chicane and it will be a shame in many respects, because it’s quite unique and gives us […] the occasional flood of tears when somebody gets it wrong!”
Pete Bonnington: “OK Michael, suggest diff magic, diff magic, for Turn 18 to the end of the lap.”
Crofty: “So it’s the Paul Daniels factor now, then?”
(awkward pause)
Martin: “Yep.”
Crofty: “I wouldn’t even like to speculate what the magic is.”
Martin: (changing the subject) “I think the reason why the drivers don’t like that Turn 10 chicane…”
(Hamilton retires)
“We talked about this being a pivotal race for the Championship. It certainly is now.”
Crofty: “Little lock-up there from Sergio Perez over the Anderson Bridge.”
Martin: “Exciting place to be a cameraman, by the looks of it.”
Crofty: “It’s a very nice place to go for lunch as well down there, I’ll take you for lunch in that part of the world tomorrow.”
Martin: “You’re a gentleman!”
“Since Mark re-signed with Red Bull, when he had a sniff of the World Championship, it’s just not happened, has it?”
“It’s very interesting from Williams to choose that option, or “the options”, as they call them.”
(landscape shot of the settings)
“It’s not quite Northampton, is it?”
(Alonso bounces heavily over Turn 10)
Martin: “Pretty brutal through there, isn’t it?”
Crofty: “It’s torture!”
“Fernando Alonso thinking his moves – it’s like he’s playing chess, isn’t it? – two or three corners ahead, where can he pass the Williams?”
(Safety Car)
“That’s put the cat amongst the pigeons, hasn’t it?”
Narain Karthikeyan: “I hit the wall. Front is broken.”
Martin: (dryly) “Correct.”
Crofty: “I suppose only fitting that the safety car came out […] today being the 39th anniversary of the first safety car deployment in Formula One, the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix, it’s only right that Bernd Maylander gets a chance to celebrate that big anniversary and show everyone what he can do.”
Martin: “If you want a stat fight… Bernd Maylander’s the 4th-highest leader of the Singapore Grand Prix, he’d led 23 laps coming into this race […] beaten only by Alonso, Vettel, and Hamilton.”
“Is lucky his [Alonso’s] middle name, do you think?”
Xevi Pujolar: “OK Pastor, we have got a hydraulic problem, we have a hydraulic problem, we need to retire now.”
[…]
Martin: “I was expecting a response of “ha ha, yeah, funny, I’ll see you later.””
(Maldonado doesn’t pit)
Martin: “Or he didn’t understand the message. It was a fairly clear message, wasn’t it?”
“There’s the debris […] it’s on the crashing line; it’s off the racing line, though.”
“Ali Quack has tweeted in – “Fernando Alonso is rather partial to the Singapore safety car.” (gritted teeth) Ooh. Yes. In days gone past.”
Martin: “I’ll have had enough after 2 hours. That’ll do me. 2 hours of Grand Prix racing, that’s great, but I don’t think we need to extend that. I remember that 4-hour race, was it at Canada last year?”
Crofty: “You earned your money that day.”
“Karthikeyan lost a battle with the wall.”
“You’re going straight to the scene of the accident at that point […] no ABS on these cars […] there’s nothing you can do.”
(Discussion on whether the MSC/VER incident was as a result of Michael getting too old and losing his eyesight)
“Look out there, it looks like a sunny day out there. […] Senna hit me in Monza once like that – I was driving for Ligier, he was driving for McLaren – in the second chicane, where he was adjusting his brake bias, looked up, and just knocked me clean off the road – and himself.”
[…]
“He has had some great races [in 2012], but he has had some fairly big blunders […] montage of those for the next race!”
“It’s all getting a bit ragged out there, isn’t it?”
Martin: “This wasn’t an overtake, he was just trying not to crash, and ended up in front of Senna.”
[…]
Crofty: “Another shake of the head from Rob Smedley.”
Martin: “I wonder what he thought of that one!?”
“The Turn 10 chicane, very much one-at-a-time, although that doesn’t seem to have stopped Felipe earlier.”
(Massa overtakes Ricciardo)
“Belissimo!”
“If Alonso’s tyres are getting tired…”
“Nice touch from the team. You can see the other mechanics down there looking up and thinking “ooh, that might be me one day!””
JAPAN
Crofty: “There is only one thing that moves faster than Sebastian Vettel, it seems, here at Suzuka, and that’s Martin Brundle, who has made a very swift manoeuvre from the grid to the commentary box, and he’s even got his breath back.”
Martin: “Yep – feeling good.”
Crofty: “In 2012, when a Sauber started in the top 5, their highest finishing position so far has been a lowly 10th.”
Martin: “They do tend to have a few adventures, don’t they?”
“He looked mighty fast for a 43-year-old on a scooter! […] He must have been doing 30mph as he went into the back of the Mercedes garage, I thought “if you meet Ross Brawn now, it’s going to be messy.””
“Alonso will be trying for one of his mega starts today, that’s for sure.”
(Commentator’s curse… less than 20 seconds after this, Alonso was out!)
“Hamilton up to 6th, making the most of Perez’s… bravery around the outside of Turn 1 that turned into… stupidity, I think, if I’m really honest.”
(Perez overtakes Hamilton at the hairpin)
“He did the Kobayashi trick […] that was opportunistic, and as clumsy as it was […] that was pure brilliance! […] We’ll see how Lewis responds to that; that’s the sort of move he’s used to putting on other people.”
“It’s happened too many times to be a coincidence, hasn’t it, now, for Romain.”
(Back to Perez on Hamilton)
“That was good Formula 3, Formula Ford stuff that he’s learned in the UK.”
Pete Bonnington: “OK Michael, we’ve lost telemetry, we have lost telemetry, so no information.”
[…]
Martin: “It’s been a week of communication difficulties, from what we understand: Mercedes didn’t tell Michael they were about to announce Lewis, we’re told; Michael didn’t tell Mercedes he was about to retire; now they can’t tell him anything about his car.”
“At least we’ve got 22 of them out there, Crofty!”
“They [gearboxes] don’t often go wrong in a small way.”
(Perez retires after a poor move around the outside of Hamilton)
“Getting a bit punchy with that McLaren contract in his briefcase.”
“Every time we go onboard a car, I think it looks a bit… pedestrian.”
“It shifts gear 50 times faster than you can blink your eye, it’s why they call it “seamless shift”, but “imperceptible shift” is what it should be, I think.”
“It’s a downbeat Lewis Hamilton, don’t you think? […] You wouldn’t normally see Lewis Hamilton passed at the hairpin in Suzuka, that’s what he normally does. […] He expected nothing from today, and that’s about what’s happened so far.”
“Romain Grosjean, 18th place after that 10-second stop and go penalty, fastest man in the first sector… which sort of rubs salt in the wounds, in a way.”
“The cliff, as they call it, when you fall off the edge of grip, and did he ever!?”
“Doesn’t look like a man who’s about to retire. Still got plenty of speed, has our Michael. […] Maybe night-time vision didn’t seem to be his speciality.”
Martin: “Massa’s last podium?”
Crofty: “Korea 2010, I would think.”
Martin: “36 races ago, I’m hearing in my ear, so I’m not going to claim that one for myself.”
(in 130R)
“That was a lift! […] They say it’s dead easy flat, but clearly not in race trim!”
Martin: “Only two Japanese drivers have ever been on the podium before. That’s Aguri Suzuki here – I remember that race – in 1990, and Takuma Sato in Indianapolis. That was when all the Michelin runners pulled out of the race, wasn’t it?”
Crofty: “No, no, no, that was 2005.”
Martin: “Oh, was it? So Sato then, in the BAR Honda, Indianapolis anyway, 2004.”
Crofty: “I only remember, it was only my birthday, 19 June 2005, I sat down to watch the Grand Prix and there were only six cars on the grid! Piece of cake for you, of course.”
Martin: “It was a great gridwalk that day!”
“THAT’S the Lewis we expect to see!”
“Watch this front jack man, I hope he gets danger money. That’s every stop we’ve seen Sauber do, the front jack man has nearly been part of the following action.”
(Massa bounces over a kerb)
“So we do that to our tyres, then we say “tyres are going away from me!””
“It only took 2.6 seconds for the whole thing to happen. It must have been a blur.”
“Jenson’s got a Japanese girlfriend, loves spending time in Japan, but he’s about to break their hearts!”
(singing) “We’re coming to get youuuu!”
“Tough for Jessica [Michibata], she can’t be sitting there like “go, go get that Japanese driver!”, can she? […] Demure. Balanced.”
“I would think Petrov’s got water in his eyes from having gone wide in 130R.”
Guillaume Rocquelin: “Everybody’s done their stops and pushing hard and they’re nowhere near, OK?”
Martin: (finishing the sentence) “…so stop doing new fastest laps.”
Rob Smedley: “Smashed it. Well done. Great. Drive. Well done, mate. From all of the boys on the wall for you. Well done, that’s a great drive. Fantastic drive.”
[…]
Martin: “Rob Smedley in hyperactive mode, wasn’t it(?)”
“It’s all looking so last year, isn’t it?”
“Do you think that’s given Sauber a bit of a headache, actually? He’s given them a magnificent podium, but I’m not sure that was in their plans!”
“It had to be Hamilton and Perez, didn’t it, that particular saga?”
“When things are not right, he [Vettel] jumps and screams and shouts, but he won’t be doing that today.”
SOUTH KOREA
Crofty: “What must be going through Romain Grosjean’s mind as he approaches the start?”
Martin: “Hopefully, nothing.”
“As soon as you have a plan off the grid, it goes wrong.”
“Kobayashi way, way too late on the anchors.”
“No quarter asked and no quarter given.”
(Vettel vs Webber at the start on replay)
“Now he’s got the high ground; you’d almost say “shouldn’t pole position be on the inside on this track?””
“Formation flying up front from the Red Bulls.”
(Yellow flags for Rosberg’s Mercedes have been flying for 6 laps now)
“They can’t hold off corner 3 for the entire race!?”
[…]
(Lap 8)
“We’ve also got a Mercedes parked that right now is changing the face of the race, because it’s no DRS, it’s in the primary overtaking zone, and I can’t see anything down there that looks willing and able to get that Merc out of the way.”
[…]
(Lap 9 | Vergne pulls out alongside Senna in the yellow flag zone)
“You can’t do that!”
(Onboard with Grosjean through Turn 11)
“That’s the right front tyre killer.”
“Michael frightens-strokes-pushes him off the track.”
(we cut away from a replay unexpectedly)
“Oh. Obviously we had enough of that.”
“That’ll have all the grip of oiled oak when he gets going.”
“As soon as he [Grosjean] has any damage, people will be on his back again.”
“I would imagine a few choice Finnish words coming out there.”
“They’re 1.5 seconds off the leaders’ pace whilst they’re squabbling like a couple of brothers.”
“If you watch Grand Prix racing since 2007 I think – well, he [Raikkonen] was rallying through a lot of that, wasn’t he, running into trees…”
(Ted somehow manages to shout over Hamilton stopping in front of him)
“Your voice is officially more loud than a McLaren engine, Ted!”
Lewis Hamilton: “The car is becoming very nervous.”
[…]
Crofty: “When he says “nervous” – loose on the rear?”
Martin: “That’s what I’d normally take “nervous” to mean.”
“Looks like a jumbo jet in a bit of turbulence on take-off.”
“Massa’s only 13 seconds off the lead and homing in – that’ll be funny, won’t it, I’m looking forward to that – homing in on Fernando Alonso.”
“Anticlockwise track, so inevitably there’s going to be more lefts than rights to get you back to the beginning.”
(Grosjean nearly hits the wall at 170mph)
“If Grosjean thinks he’s been unlucky this year in some of those incidents, he’s just got some of that back, hasn’t he?”
Rob Smedley: “You’re a bit too close to Fernando, a bit too close to Fernando. I think you can back off at least another second and then just stay 2.5, 3 seconds behind, that’s no problem.”
Crofty: “I’ll try and say this with my tongue firmly in my cheek: obviously, they’re concerned about Felipe Massa’s tyre wear there, Martin, don’t want to get too close?”
Martin: “Must be. Yeah. Or he likes them to have a better view of the track or something.”
Mark Temple: “OK Lewis, we think we’re going to have to stop again. Push now, push now, then box.”
Martin: “That’s going to go down well.”
“Poor old Romain Grosjean, he has to jump off the track every time someone shows him a wheel!”
“Mystery location, but this is a great racetrack.”
(discussing the pit exit)
Crofty: “They do it well in Abu Dhabi, with that tunnel […]”
Martin: “Until somebody shunts in the tunnel and blocks the pits.”
“It’s gone full circle… that call was effectively “Fernando is slower than you”. He’s had the “Fernando is faster than you”.”
(to Massa)
“Gwan!”
Crofty: “Very much doing the teamwork rather than the me-work for Felipe Massa at the moment.”
Martin: “Good line.”
“That McLaren won’t work with any tyres on, will it?”
(PSY is wearing a black jacket with gold-stoned lapels)
Crofty: “Fancy borrowing that jacket, Martin? You can have it before me.”
Martin: “I’ve got one at home, actually(!)”
“They’ve got to come up with some goodies for that Ferrari if he’s to stop Vettel.”
INDIA
“Ferrari have played a blinder!”
(Replay: Alonso vs Button vs Hamilton)
“Only three drivers of this quality would not then have an accident on the exit of turn four.”
“It seems virtually guaranteed now, doesn’t it – a front wing endfence into your sidewall, you’re going to the pits with a puncture.”
Crofty: “So after running into the back of Jean-Eric Vergne in Singapore, Michael Schumacher has now run into the front of Jean-Eric Vergne here in India. Three more races to try to run into the side.”
Martin: “Well, maybe he ran into the back of Michael…!”
“It was all getting a bit tight down there, wasn’t it, but that’s why we all love the start of a Grand Prix.”
(Hulkenberg to Sauber? Staying at Force India?)
“They wouldn’t lie to us, would they(?)”
“Sauber pitting first. Have we ever said that?”
“Senna’s been a top 10 runner all weekend until it really mattered and he blew it in qualifying.”
“You’re kind of always slightly on edge when those two [Grosjean and Maldonado] are side-by-side.”
Crofty: “What about the state of Jenson Button’s tyres?”
Martin: “I’m more worried about his visor; looks like they’ve forgotten to take the dust cover off!”
“The tyres are… (slightly disparagingly) very durable here, shall we say.”
“A carbon copy of Michael: he even shed the carcass […] it was really truly a carbon copy of the Schumacher incident: it was down into turn one, shed the carcass at 5, creep back to the pits, say goodbye to any kind of points-scoring finish.”
Crofty: (jokingly) “They’ve stuck a few spikes on it [the Toro Rosso front wing].”
Martin: “Or horns, being a Toro Rosso.”
“He was almost holding a spinning wheel there, was the left rear wheel man.”
(onboard, as Senna nearly rear-ends Maldonado)
“Oof. Thought we were going to lose our nose there.”
(another puncture)
“You almost feel you can put your thumb through those.”
“At the end of the day, if you’re on a motorway and you pull in too early, it’s your fault.”
“Sebastian Vettel’s in this lap, so he does a fastest middle sector just for fun.”
(Schumacher is under investigation for ignoring blue flags)
“That’s embarrassing. […] Poor old Michael.”
Crofty: “Looking forward to the podium. I heard they found someone good to do the interviews.”
Martin: “Don’t know about that(!)”
(De La Rosa hits the barrier at Turn 4)
“You have to try quite hard to hit something here.”
“His rear wheels are locked, and his front wheels were still happily turning.”
“Short of a stuck throttle, brake failure [is] second on the list of most scary things.”
“Give me my KERS back!”
“I wonder where Alonso would be in a Red Bull?”
“I wonder what Kimi Raikkonen would say – “explain what the back of a Ferrari looks like”: (atrocious Raikkonen impression) “a little bit red and white”.”
Andrea Stella: “When he is in DRS zone, with the plank on the ground, sparkling like hell, so let’s keep pushing, let’s put him under pressure.”
Martin: “It’s a storybook: (Italian accent) “sparkling like hell!”
(Webber practically pushes Vettel down the pit lane)
“He’s getting a little shove, look, down the pit lane. Maybe he’s run out of fuel(!)”
ABU DHABI
“I’ve seen a few tweets from fans saying “don’t penalise the driver when the team make a mistake”. You cannot separate the two. You can’t give the team theoretical World Championship points when the driver sticks it in the gravel trap. They are one and the same thing.”
(the camera cuts to the Ferrari rollercoaster)
“Is Alonso on for a rollercoaster ride today?”
“Vettel, of course, in the naughty corner in the pit lane.”
“You’ve got to assume the Toro Rosso drivers – the sister team to Red Bull – have been read the riot act.”
“That was a bold move from Alonso and his eyes must have been on stalks […] Alonso must have thought “ugh, please do not let me run into the side of that Williams of Maldonado.””
“Yeah, four into one doesn’t go.”
(Replay of Alonso passing Webber)
“… and that’s the point where I would have had my heart in my mouth. […] Look at this for a camera angle, superb! […] Almost giving him a little love tap as he went through.”
“Definitely cold tyres [for Hamilton], he’s already reported that in, so I’m not trying to be clever on that one.”
“Karthikeyan was in the middle of blowing up.”
(Karthikeyan and Rosberg wait for a lift back to the pits)
“Taxi!”
“… the origami that is a Formula One front wing…”
“There’s no brake lights on these things.”
Crofty: “Bit drier, of course, than Fuji in 2007 when someone in a Toro Rosso went into the back of a Red Bull?
Martin: “Who was that(?)”
Crofty: “Ooh, I can’t quite think – some young German driver, some older Australian driver?”
Martin: “Yeah, he did, didn’t he? It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”
“Was that pass made with all four wheels off the track? You’ve got two white lines there and a bit of… blue sea in between, it seems.”
“Grosjean’s got a bit of a pincer movement going on there… Vettel last of the late brakers, realises Grosjean might come back up the inside, which Grosjean didn’t when it came to a fight earlier on.”
(Ed: 3 in 1!)
“As we saw with Rosberg’s shunt, the firing line can be anywhere.”
“I wouldn’t try and out-muscle Maldonado when I wasn’t a good way past him.”
“We’re just over half distance, what a race we’re having here!”
“He [Vettel] lost a battle with a polystyrene board.”
(Vettel is 2nd on Lap 35, with everyone now having stopped once)
“You know the irony here? Whacking that piece of polystyrene forced them into that pit stop!”
“They [the parties at this track] finish at about 7:30 in the morning, so you get two hours’ sleep before the Aussie V8s go out there.”
“I think Mark will be a little bit angry in that car because I’m pretty sure the team pitted him just to get him out of the way.”
“I think Vettel’s middle name is lucky tonight, I have to say. I mean, he’s whacked the front wing twice, the safety car’s played into his hands twice, and the rest of the pack around him seem to self-destruct at every opportunity.”
Simon Rennie: “OK Kimi, we need to keep working all four tyres please, keep working all four tyres–
Kimi Raikkonen: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, I’m doing [it] all the time. You don’t have to remind me every second.”
Simon Rennie: “OK.”
[…]
Martin: “Imagine telling Kimi when he was young it’s time to do his homework, or time to brush his teeth and go to bed?”
“One sixth of the grid tripped over themselves in one corner.”
(Raikkonen nearly passes the safety car)
Crofty: “The safety car comes in..”
Martin: “Just.”
“Look at that lap from Raikkonen! He does know what he’s doing!”
(Alonso vs Button vs Vettel)
“You’ve got to feel this will end in tears somewhere, this little trio.”
“If Vettel sees Alonso– or knows Alonso’s taken the lead, he’ll go crazy in that car.”
“Valencia and Abu Dhabi, they’re always at the top, aren’t they, for great races of the year?”
“Vettel wiped the DRS board out, so where’s the line?”
“This was Lewis Hamilton’s race to lose, and sadly they have lost it with that reliability issue.”
(Vettel signals to Raikkonen on the slowing-down lap)
“”Thank you for beating Alonso”, I think that’s what that was!”
“Last time Lotus won a race was the 1987 Detroit Grand Prix. I was in it.”
(the rosewater is sprayed)
“Pointless exercise, but fun nonetheless.”
UNITED STATES
“According to this fancy computer we have here, only Button and Rosberg are on the silver-marked – well, hardly-marked-at-all – hard tyre.”
“There’s only two pedals on these cars – a stop and a go.”
“Ferrari will take [a] huge amount of stick for the trick they played to get Alonso up the field, but it’s worked beautifully!”
(Grosjean with a divebomb on Hulkenberg)
“If you do it half-heartedly, it’s like a hospital pass, I think they call it in rugby, and you’re going to be in trouble.”
“Ricciardo’s been off backwards somewhere.”
(after Massa out-qualified Alonso and Ferrari deliberately broke the gearbox, so as to put Alonso on the “clean” side of the grid and dropping Massa 5 places...)
“That new seal on the gearbox doing an amazing job for him(!)”
“Do not leave this motor race. You’re seeing some world class driving up front.”
Rob Smedley: “Kimi’s being held up by Hulkenberg, so Hulkenberg 5th, Kimi 6th, you’re really killing them with the lap time, you’re really catching them very, very quickly.”
Martin: “You can tell Felipe Massa that message but you wouldn’t want to tell Raikkonen, would you?”
“He [Raikkonen] had two years away hitting trees in a rally car.”
Ciaron Pilbeam: “Three clicks rearwards. KERS has failed.”
Martin: “Oh, not again!”
“It’s about 19 seconds for a decent stop, and that doesn’t look like a decent stop.”
“What’s Glock doing with the blue flags? Goes and parks it on the apex.”
“JB, he’s the man you’d want to drive your Fleet cars, isn’t he?”
“That is one grandstand seat I wouldn’t want. I bet it’s a great view but I don’t like heights. Despite flying helicopters, I don’t like heights.”
(Martin gets the observation tower mixed up for a helicopter)
“Idiot!”
Crofty: “You can ride on board with Lewis Hamilton and the backward-facing camera from the rear wing of Sebastian Vettel if you want to go to Sky Race Control and press your red button now.”
Martin: “Can we do that?”
Crofty: “We can do anything!”
Martin: “I’d like to do that! That’d be brilliant!”
“Bring the wrong tyres is the answer!”
“The Red Bull can barely get out of its own way in a straight line.”
“There was about the width of Button’s lycra between those two.”
“Alonso’s free-wheeling now until the end of the Grand Prix.”
“Hamilton, Vettel, [and] Alonso have never been on the podium at the same time.”
“There’s no such thing as “the spirit of the regulations”. […] To keep the championship alive, they had to pull that stroke [dropping Massa down the grid].”
“You know you’ve had a great race when you look up and you see it’s the closing laps!”
“It’s always been a wild race in Brazil, hasn’t it? It’s always been a crazy, crazy race. Alonso knows that. He was the one who stuffed it in the wall there, 2006 was it, or 5? 5, wasn’t it? 3! 2003!”
(third time lucky, Martin…)
“Why couldn’t they ever put Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Newey together, as McLaren could have done if they hadn’t let both of them go?”
“What a great Grand Prix this has been.”
Driver of the Day
“You have to say Hamilton, for me, has been the driver of the day, against a Red Bull that has pretty much dominated this weekend.”
“Little bit of rallycrossing there on the way in for Lewis.”
BRAZIL | (One of my top five races of all time)
“I know what a nervous driver looks like. I’ve seen one in the mirror many times.”
“To watch it, for us, it’s brilliant, but I’m not sure I’d like to be out there.”
“Raikkonen, I think it was, warming his tyres up. He definitely does know what he’s doing.”
“The lights come on. Look but never stare.”
“Fastest lap of the race so far: Sebastian Vettel, in 20th place! Stay tuned, this is FAR from over!!”
“The Ferrari, as ever, just leaps off the line – that’s both of them.”
“This is Romain Grosjean. We’re about to go on a trip straight to the scene of the accident.”
“Ah, you need so much skill in these conditions, you just don’t know how much grip there’s going to be in the braking zone, when you turn in, in the middle of the corner or when you touch the throttle – like that. It’s really an adventure. Every lap it changes.”
“Next up the road for Sebastian Vettel: Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso…!”
Crofty: “Second time in the race he’s [Alonso] gone off through the Senna esses.”
Martin: “Favourite line through there today!”
Jenson Button: “It’s stopped raining, it’s stopped raining.”
[…]
Martin: “Old twinkletoes in these conditions.”
“I bet Caterham would like to stop the race now – Kovalainen P6 at the moment! And in fact, then you’ve get Petrov, Glock, De La Rosa, and Pic all in the points as well!”
“It’s Massa who’s really struggling, so he’s come in and put some inters on. I think he might have left that a day late and a dollar short.”
“The need to run both compounds of tyre falls away if you’ve been – if you’ve been – on a wet tyre.”
“Jenson’s going to have get brave on the brakes, chooses not to do so – HULKENBERG TAKES THE LEAD!!!“
(this one is perhaps more in the delivery)
“I don’t think I’ve ever commentated on 20 laps like that in my life! It’s just going off everywhere, isn’t it? Incredible!”
Fernando Alonso: “There is too much debris on the track.”
[…]
Martin: “Fernando fancies a safety car at this stage of the proceedings. He’s 65 seconds off the lead.”
“Look. Some spots of rain again! Whatever’s going to happen next?”
“It definitely suited Alonso to have a safety car […] but frankly, he was right.”
Fernando Alonso: “Avviamento por aqua la quattro nuovamente pronti.” [??]
(a translation appears on the bottom of the screen)
Martin (reading the translation): “”Starting to rain again in turn four.” New service we have this weekend… (deadpan) of translation.”
Crofty: “About time too!”
“City of drizzle, they call this, actually, officially, and it certainly is today.”
“He [Hulkenberg] certainly likes this place when there’s a questionable amount of grip.”
Crofty: “Right then, Martin, got your breath back now?”
Martin: “I have. Little interlude.”
“I don’t quite know what Mark Webber thought he was doing going down there alongside his teammate, but he fancied passing him. Presumably he’d only have to let him re-pass.”
(Massa closes in on Vettel)
“Look who’s coming up behind him: arch enemy number two!”
“Frightens the life out of me when I did it and it frightens the life out of me to watch: ducking in to the pit lane.”
(next man behind Vettel is Ricciardo)
“Now he’s got one of his stablemates coming up behind him as well.”
“7th. Not exactly supremely comfortable, is it?”
“Is he [Massa] back on form or what!?”
“We’re not long through half distance. Plenty of action to come, I suspect!”
“Might be the old boy’s last race, but he’s not going to yield to Kimi Raikkonen.”
Crofty: “… that’s that graining you’re talking about, like a smooth ball of mozzarella cheese that’s been broken open and you get all the rough inside.”
Martin: “You’re making me hungry.”
“This feels very 2008, doesn’t it?”
Crofty: “Do we believe the radar?”
Martin: “Well, it said 40% chance of rain, which means 60% chance of no rain, of course, but that was wrong.”
(Raikkonen has his famous getting-lost moment)
“Excuse me, does anyone know the way back to the racetrack?”
Crofty: “… but as the light, damp drizzle comes down–
Martin: “Oh, he’s gone, woah!”
Crofty: (simultaneously) “Oh, Alonso’s squirming!”
(“The most beautiful sound uttered by both Sky commentators at the same time”)
“Intermediates look like they are very much in demand right now.”
(Vettel passes Kobayashi)
“Not playing around, is he? […] Kobayashi goes wide initially and Vettel sort of mugs him on the inside, and he’s then going to go completely wide.”
“A lucky boy that there’s not bumpy grass there and the old drainage channels there used to be. He’d have been skywards at that point.”
“It’s amazing that the Force India is still going, isn’t it, having been at 45 degrees at one point flying through the air there.”
Guillaume Rocquelin: “Sebastian, you’re a second faster than the next fastest car. There’s a big gap to the car ahead. Just keep it on the black stuff.”
Martin: “Not sure he can hear that, but if he can, he’s ignoring it.”
“Keep an eye on Ricciardo, he might just wreck Caterham’s… life, frankly.”
(Kobayashi has yet another incident at turn four)
“Had a few adventures down there, hasn’t he?”
“You don’t see an awful lot in your mirrors in these conditions. Michael certainly didn’t see Kobayashi coming but I think it was just about a bone fide overtake, but no grip when he got there: ambition well ahead of adhesion.”
(3-in-1!)
“Extraordinary. It won’t come any harder than that, will it?”
“What a race. What an extraordinary sporting event that was.”
“The pain, and the moment.”
“Bet they’re jumping up and down nearly as much at Caterham too.”
“Not the first time we’ve seen Felipe Massa crying on this podium!”