Mercedes wins again.Yawn.

Nico Rosberg in a Mercedes won the Bahrain F1 GP last Sunday. No surprises there. F1 has become a one make series.The teams are bored with it-apart from Mercedes that is. The fans are bored with it and now the drivers are bored with it apart from presumably Rosberg and Hamilton.
The ridiculous qualifying format introduced in Melbourne and universally disliked was not abandoned as the teams and drivers had requested for Bahrain. No, it was continued.That is Bernie Ecclestone's way of saying "I run this show.What you want does not matter so f... off,rude letter follows."
Motor sport commentators are saying that F1 is close to meltdown.
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For those of who once loved Formula 1 when it was the absolute pinnacle of motor sport it is very sad. Ecclestone seems addicted to money. It is as if he is on a drug. He is obscenely rich and very old and yet he will do anything to become richer. It is a disgusting spectacle. It's an awful thing to say but he cannot die soon enough.
His comments on women,Putin and other matters put him in the exactly same category as Donald Trump.
Bernie is again talking about taking the F1 Grand Prix away from Italy and Belgium so that he can give it to some tinpot dictatorship or obscenely rich Arab state with no tradition of motor sport but who are prepared to pay the massive licence fee to hold a GP. This year we have the Baku GP in Azebaijan in July. Yes, really.It ticks all Bernie's boxes. Test yourself . Find Baku on a map without using Google.  If that's too difficult try finding Azerbaijan on a map without the aid of Google. 

I recently read,and it was not on 1st April,that there are rumours that Bernie has approached Kim Il Jong about the possibility of holding a North Korean GP around a street circuit in Pyongyang,the capital of N Korea. Kim Il Jong is apparently keen on the idea and has guaranteed a massive crowd-indeed the whole population of the city-as spectators. Bernie and Kim Il Jong would get on famously. The Bernie race licence fee could come from money set aside to buy food aid but I am sure the locals would willingly miss a few meals- they are used to it anyway- just to see a Mercedes procession. They are used to processions.
Wouldn't a Pyongyang GP be great for the sport ?


There are issues of course. Kim Il Jong may not be prepared to let anyone into the country who has an ego as big as his which would reduce Mercedes and Ferrari down to just one driver each and anyway Lewis Hamilton may not be willing to race in a city where there are no nightclubs. Also if he did a burnout in his Mercedes courtesy car on the street outside his hotel-as he did in Melbourne a few years ago- he would probably be arrested and sentenced to 15 years hard labour. Now that really would be great for the sport.

Photo above. Brands Hatch 1968.Jo Siffert in private entrant Rob Walker's Lotus-Ford on way to winning British Grand Prix. The glory days of F1. Photo by me Leica 3A 50mm Elmar lens.Ilford FP3 film.