Yahoo Autos Bill Burr Is the Commentator F1 Needs and Deserves
Move over Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs, Steve Matchett, and Will Buxton: America has a new Formula 1 superstar commentator in the making. That's right, Boston's favorite son and my favorite comedian, Bill Burr, is a must-have voice for all F1 races going forward.
I've been behind on episodes of Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast and to my delight during a recent catch-up listening binge, I came across his take on the Austrian Grand Prix-the one where Mercedes teammates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton made contact on the season's most thrilling final lap.
Burr is an avid car and auto racing fan, and like most things in life, he rarely claims to be an expert on the subjects he covers in his stand-up or on the Monday Morning Podcast. His lack of knowledge with the nerdy nuances of F1 only serve to enhance his observations, and with Burr's keen views on race and other social intersections, having F1 processed through his brain makes for an awful lot of unfiltered fun.
For those with sensitive eyes (or ears), read (or listen, starting around 23 minutes in) at your own peril:
Did anyone watch-did you watch the Austrian Grand Prix? If that didn't make you a fucking Formula 1 racing fan. Holy shit. That was like fucking Days of Thunder. Actually Tweeted that yesterday. Dude, it's like. . . okay, this is the deal. The German team. The Mercedes-Benz. Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Nico Rosberg is a German, right? Lewis Hamilton is from England. And evidently from the Isle of Man from what people were Tweeting me the other day. (He's from Isle of England, FWIW.)
Nico is ahead, he is beating everyone in the points and in the standings and Lewis is like a fucking upstart guy. I guess, I don't know. (He's not.) He wears a big fucking diamond chain. He is from England. I don't know what his race is, I don't know if he is mixed, I don't know what his deal is. He has the bling going on and all this shit.
So all the old fucking traditional fans of the sport, traditional, wink, wink-I like the old school Formula 1, wink, wink. You know what that fucking means. They don't like this guy evidently. They don't like his bling, they don't like his, you know, I don't know, I don't want to fucking throw the ugliness in there but it seems like there's a little issue there, right?
Anyway, earlier this year I guess in the Spanish Grand Prix, I didn't see that one, they both fucking, they banged into each other. Nico was coming around the corner and he's pushing buttons on the PlayStation steering wheel, whatever the fuck that is. You used to just have a fucking steering wheel, then it was a steering wheel with the paddles, now it looks like a little Game Boy and they are pushing shit to fucking conserve energy. I don't know what the fuck it is.
But they somehow do this, going like 180 miles an hour which is amazing to me. 120 miles an hour in a fucking turn. As if they are dealing with the G forces of slowing down and taking a turn well over a hundred miles an hour, they're sitting there fucking pushing buttons. Like texting while driving. Fucking doing this shit.
So earlier in the year they had one-Hamilton tried to pass him on the inside and the Nico was defending his position, or whatever the fuck he said, he came over, he put Lewis on the fucking grass. He spun out, he clipped the back of Nico's car, they slammed into each other. And they both got the old right there, the DNC, did not complete (It's actually DNF, Did Not Finish) the race which cost Mercedes a bunch of fucking points.
Evidently, they probably sat him down and said, hey, fuckheads, you are on the same team here, let's say you don't knock each other out of the race. So whatever, they got this whole rivalry going. It seems like Nico thinks he is the fucking guy. And Lewis is just like, well, I respect that you are the guy but I'm trying to be the guy too, so go fuck yourself. (Actually, Lewis is the man, based on his 3-0 lead on F1 championships over Nico.)
So yesterday they're fucking racing and, I don't know much about the sport, but evidently the soft tires, and if the soft tires aren't soft enough they've got supersoft tires but I guess the softer your tires are, depending on the weather conditions, the faster your car is. So whatever fucking reason, they give Nico the supersoft ones and they give Lewis just the soft ones. So they're fucking him over with each lap.
So Nico is obviously the golden child that the corporate guys like and Lewis is the fucking upstart. He's the Tom Cruise. The other guy is the fucking established c*** who is winning. I am just guessing all of this shit. I don't know, something about the pit stop, Lewis's was slower than Nico's.
They give all the fucking advantage to Nico because Nico is winning in the points, I think they want him to win the fucking race because they want to win the fucking championship. And Lewis wasn't fucking having it. So he's driving like a fucking maniac on soft tires when Nico's got the supersoft. Next thing you know he's right on his fucking ass, it's the last lap of the fucking race.
Lewis goes to pass him on the outside of the turn, taking the long way around. His fucking tires are on the white line so he can't get over any farther and he's going to pass him. You see he's going to overtake him on the final lap. The fucking announcers are going nuts. And fucking Nico just drove right into him.
He said he had a braking problem. Oh yeah, did you have a steering problem too? You fucking drove right into him. Oh my God, they're going to knock each other out of the race again.
They get out of it and then they come back together, and fucking, I think the back of Hamilton's car clipped the front of Rosberg's and took the fin things off the front so now he can't drive fast. When your car is damaged like that you are blowing debris all over the track-I'd didn't realize all this-evidently you are supposed to pull over. You are supposed to hit the old rest area and be like, I guess we're going to call it a day because all the shit you are putting on the track can blow out somebody's tire, cause them to crash, they could get injured and they're not going to fucking finish. It is not their fault that you fucking drove into your teammate.
But this cunt keeps driving his car, shrapnel all over the track and he finished. You get penalized. Long story short, Lewis Hamilton ended up winning the fucking race. And they were cutting to the … whatever, the owners of the Mercedes team and they're all fucking pissed. And one of the guys on the Mercedes team is the guy that, for that movie Rush, I should really have the guy's name here. I'm new to this sport so forgive me for not knowing his name. The guy that had that horrific crash on the Ferrari team in 1976, and he had the fire, they showed it in that movie Rush, it was absolutely terrifying. (Niki Lauda.)
What is more terrifying than being alive on fire? I mean, what, would you rather be alive on fire or in the ocean watching a great white shark approaching, knowing it is going to fucking take your leg off? I actually think you have to go with the shark. Just fucking bite my leg off, there's a major artery right there. I'm going to be fucking like, "Ahhhhh," and then the dopamine's going to come out and I'm going to have that goofy smile on my face as the hammerhead comes into finish me off. Right? (Thanks, Bill.)
Anyways they were talking afterwards. Nico said he had a braking problem. I don't know. I don't fucking know. Now there's all these conspiracy theorists out there going, it's the German team, Nico is a German. All right. Fucking Hamilton's from England and he doesn't look like your fucking English guy, meaning he's not a white dude. Maybe there is some racism going there. I don't know. But I just became a Lewis Hamilton fan.
I still like Rosberg, he is racing, he is out there. Can't fucking handle it. He's one of those-he seems like one of those guys … You ever go out and play pickup hoop or pickup hockey and he's just some fucking nice guy and all of the sudden the game starts and they get that fucking look on their face like they will blow out a knee just to score a goal? You know these lunatics? You're just sitting there going like I'm fucking going to steer clear/try to annoy the shit out of this person. I'm going to try to make sure this guy doesn't fall on my fucking leg.
They talk to him and I'm looking at this guy, looking like the old racing guy, like one of his ears is mostly burned off and shit, he's got the scars on the side of his face. To be honest with you, he looked pretty fucking badass. Do you know what I mean? Another guy's name, I swear to God, Toto Wolff. Toto, like the band…
And that's Bill Burr's stream-of-consciousness take on a single F1 race. Imagine Burr, wired on coffee at 3:30 a.m., in the NBCSN booth with Diffey and Company, to cover every round. Between the constant beeps from the censors, I bet it would triple their ratings overnight.
Sign me up.
STROLLING
We chronicled the progress of young American grand prix hopeful Santino Ferrucci a few weeks ago after his first test with the Haas F1 team, and I'm happy to report he isn't the only hope we have in European open-wheel racing. Widening the net to north of the border, 17-year-old Canadian Lance Stroll has also been showing his potential in European Formula 3 where he leads the championship as a result of capturing seven wins through the latest round at Spa. With three events left on the calendar, it would take an epic collapse for Stroll to relinquish the title, and thanks to a budding relationship with the Williams Grand Prix team, the Montreal native could be headed for bigger things.
"It has been a great season up to now," Stroll told RoadandTrack.com. "We won a lot of races, lead the championship by a good margin, and we have been strong all year. And about the future, definitely I'm looking for bigger and better things next year. Greater things. But I don't know exactly what they will be. I'm just focused on finishing this year strong. Once that is done, we will see about the coming years."
The son of investor and renowned Ferrari enthusiast Lawrence Stroll says he will look to complete the F3 season before concentrating on his next destination.
"The team I am speaking to at the moment is Williams," he added. "They are the ones that are watching me right now. I'm fully committed to being with them at the moment. Yeah, I mean, those details can be distracting, there's always a lot of rumors and people talking, especially at this level being in Formula 3 and knowing you are getting closer and closer to F1.
"I am trying not to really focus on that. I don't know the specific details. I think Williams as well just wants me to finish properly. And once the end of the season finishes, I will start talking further on next year."
SILENT LUCIDITY
Every race team has come away from an event with poor results and a desire to go silent. Sean Heckman, who's responsible for the most fun racing PR outbursts in the sport, found the perfect communication vehicle to marry the bad day+nothing to say feeling in his post-race press release for the Black Swan Racing sports car team after a crappy day in Lime Rock.
Am I the only one praying for Black Swan to have another bad day+nothing weekend just so we can see which new emojis Heckman will use?
