The View from Row Z: Hardly a winning formula

MY EXPERIENCE of top-level motor racing is limited to video games.

Even then, you’re talking Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo rather than one of those super-realistic simulators.

Playing as one of a number of brightly-dressed characters — a succession of plumbers, princesses and sentient mushrooms — you would aim to win each race using a combination of madcap driving and all the skulduggery you could muster.

Oversize banana skins, heat-seeking missiles, lightning bolts that shrink your competitors to a fraction of their usual size . . . that sort of thing.

It was all good, honest, dog-eat-dog fun in those teenage days and everyone knew where they stood.

The only nod to bureaucracy was the bean-like creature who would count down the start while perched atop a small cloud before floating off again to let things take care of themselves.

Had the FIA been involved in the design stages, I reckon the game would have been a very different experience.

No daring moves to break up the procession of cars, all of which have been plastered with adverts. No cutting off corners, even when staying on the track would mean your car is smashed to bits.

And, most certainly, no defeating the game’s undisputed star: the prancing horse in the bright red car.

Any infringements, no matter how petty, would be dealt with decisively.

All wins past and future would be void, the console would self-destruct, and parents would be requested that the player in question gets no supper for a week.

Only the Formula One authorities could have watched the sensational closing stages of the latest grand prix at Spa-Francorchamps and disapproved.

Lewis Hamilton’s thrilling efforts to win in hideous conditions contained an alleged infringement that barely existed even according to every ambitious pen pusher’s most beloved phrase: the letter of the law.

And still he was punished, for daring to race.

It was already withering on a life support machine. But F1 finally passed away on Sunday.

I’ll stick to Nintendo.




MANCHESTER City are supposedly planning a double swoop in January for Steven Gerrard and Michael Essien.

Having already landed Robinho, the obscenely rich new owners from Abu Dhabi are also said to be targeting — among others — Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas and Kaka.

Plenty of attacking promise there. But no word on potential new defenders?

Presumably they will be sticking with Michael Ball, Richard Dunne and the rest.

At the moment too few hard questions are being asked about remote ownership of our top clubs.

How much of the essence of Manchester City FC remains when the team is stuffed full of foreign mercenaries, playing for the reflected glory of an emirate at the other side of the world?

Our football heritage is important. Far more so than a brimming transfer kitty.