Formula One legend Michael Schumacher has sensationally signed to the new Mercedes team - formerly champion constructors Braun F1 - three years after retiring because there were no more records left to break, in a move which desperate motor-racing publicists are frantically trying to portray as exciting in some way or other.
"Look, Michael Schumacher is really very, very old and decrepit," said a spokesman for Mercedes. "It's touch-and-go whether he'll be able to remember where the starter is, it's been so long since he drove a cutting-edge F1 car."
"Well, not in a proper Formula One race, as such, anyway," he admitted when it was pointed out that Schumacher has spent the intervening years as a consultant and test driver for Ferrari.
Many of the championship's current drivers are young enough to be Schumacher's children, leading the more delusional pundits to claim that the venerable old man of high-speed racing will probably crawl along at a resolute 30mph and not a mite faster, stop at every corner to examine a dog-eared AA map and eventually exit the pits from the entry lane and drive the wrong way around the track until the chase car pulls him over.
But it is the completely unpredictable pairing of Formula One's most successful driver with a world-beating chassis/engine combination which expert PR liars say will add tension and excitement to the flagging championship series.
"It would be a brave man indeed who rushed off down to the bookies and slapped a couple of grand on Schumacher running away with the 2010 title," said motorsport fan and owner Bernie Ecclestone. "Believe me, I've just tried and the odds are bloody atrocious. Even I'd soon bankrupt myself at 500-1 on."
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