The Ramble

Later this month the insurance policy for my 2000 Mini Classic Cooper Sport is due for renewal. I’ve received my renewal quotation from my current insurers and they want to charge me £430 for 1000 miles. This is roughly the same amount as last year. One reason the price is high is that in August 2005 I was involved in an accident that wrote of my previous Classic. It went head on with a combine harvester and lost.  Now having shopped around for an alternative, the only quote cheaper than the current insurer is the one that wrote off the previous one, they’re quoting £280 which is quite a saving. The only drawback of this is it took them six months to payout after the last claim. Is the saving worth the hassle if I have another claim? Probably.

On top of this it has been day of cars. This morning started off watching the Grand Prix from Malaysia. I’ve then washed and polished my MINI. This evening I’ll be trying to watch the opening round of the Champ Car World Series where hopefully Justin Wilson can get going with a victory.

So the Formula 1 circus woke from its winter slumber overnight. New drivers. New colour schemes. New rules. Goodbye Michael Schumacher. Goodbye Michelin.
Yet again the season is being hyped up as most open/unpredictable/surprising in recent times. What this usually means is that one of the top teams drops of the pace a little to be replaced by one of the upper-middle teams. Will Alonso regain his title? Recent history points against this with the last three World Champions to move teams (Nelson Piquet from Williams to Lotus in 1988), Michael Schumacher (Benetton to Ferrari for 1996) and Damon Hill’s move to Arrows in 1997 all failing to do so. Although of the teams, only Williams were able to take back the No1 spot the following season with McLaren’s Senna(88) and Williams Damon Hill(97) taking the honours.

The initial Practice times show us little difference with the end of last season with perhaps the biggest surprises being the customer teams outpacing there factory rivals - Williams with their new Toyota engines being faster than the Toyota works team and Supa-Aguri ahead of Honda. With engine development frozen its could take lots of wind-tunnel-time to reverse this.

So who will come out on top, I don’t really have a clue, but suspect the car may well be red.