Free Born to Be Riled by Jeremy Clarkson Page A

Eurosport has isthat it covers post-race press conferences, whereas
Grandstand
switches immediately to cricket as the chequered flag falls.
    But is this worth £168 a year, when you get the BBC for half that? Plus, the BBC doesn’t dig up your road, sever all your essential services, cut off your telephone for two days or send cheesy salesmen round wearing awful clothes.

Mystic Clarkson’s hopeless F1 predictions
    Before giving the result of a football match which is to be televised later, news readers usually invite us to put our fingers in our ears and hum.
    But this morning, as you lay in the bath listening to the radio, I bet it went something like this. ‘In Northern Ireland today, Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, likened the situation to… Hill won… the conflict in Israel…’
    Bang. There was no warning and those two little words took all the suspense from the subsequent televisual feast. Plus, with Grand Prix, knowing who won the first race means you have a pretty good idea of who’s going to win the world championship.
    Furthermore, when you know who’s won, there is little to be gained from finding out how he did it. He simply drove faster than everyone else.
    But if I take my cynical trousers off for a moment, and slip into a nice pair of sensible slacks, in beige, from Marks & Spencer, it’s worth having a little look at what might happen in 1996.
    The experts are suggesting that Michael Schumacher stands no chance in his all-new Ferrari. They point to the winter testing programme, saying that the car arrived too late to be shaken down properly, and that first indications suggest its new V10 engine is too gutless and too unreliable.
    Well I’ve met enough racing drivers to know they don’t choose to lose. Michael Schumacher could have stayed with Benetton, a team he knows and enjoys, and very probably won the crown for the third year in succession.
    No one with a ‘need to win’ like his is going to throw the chance of another trophy away because he feels like a change. He’s gone to Ferrari because he knows something we don’t. I have no idea how the car performed in Australia because I wrote this before the event but, mark my words, Schumacher – a man I hate more than butter beans and Jeffrey Archer – is my tip for 1996.
    Damon Hill, we are told, has spent the winter psyching himself up for the battles that lie ahead. He is now a lean, mean fighting machine who will slice through the field in what everyone says is the best car.
    Well Damon’s a nice chap and that’s where his problems start. Nice chaps with wives and children do not go wheel to wheel at 160mph in a fight to the death. To do that, you must be a berk, and Damon is not at all berkish, which is why he is destined to be the runner-up. Again.
    Some are saying his new team mate, Jacques Villeneuve, is a more realistic bet. He, after all, is the son of possibly the greatest entertainer of them all – Gilles Villeneuve. Yes, well my dad understood how to do his VAT returns but that doesn’t make me a chartered accountant.
    Damon’s fans hit back, saying he has trounced all-comersin the American Indycar series. Oh for heaven’s sake, that’s like saying you can be a Red Arrows pilot because you’re good at Monopoly.
    We’ve seen these Indycar boys come over to F1 before – Michael Andretti was the last – and they make complete and utter fools of themselves. Look at Nigel Mansell. In America he became used to duelling with fat has-beens like Mario Andretti, so when he came back to F1 last year he looked as stupid as his facial topiary.
    But back to F1 and Benetton. My sources suggest they do have some reliability problems and that Berger and Alesi are finding the car’s twitchiness a nightmare. And anyway, the likeable Gerhard Berger seems more interested these days in putting a plastic dog turd under your pillow than actually winning a race.
    I hear that McLaren is now back as a force to be reckoned with. David Coulthard has