Get In There, Lewis
In which I get all patriotic about an F1 weekend to remember, find endings are tricky, join something, and wonder how Bats and Bruce could both be in the same place at the same time.
In the 75 years of Formula One history:
No one had ever won a Grand Prix after passing the 300 starts mark.
No one had won a Grand Prix 17 years after their first win.
No one had won 9 times at the same circuit.
Until last weekend. When Sir Lewis Hamilton achieved all of those with a brilliantly driven, emotional, and well-deserved win in a tense British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
I’ve watched Lewis Hamilton even before he was in F1, knowing that his was an exceptional talent. Since arriving in F1 he set record after record. Winning 7 world championships, and for 15 years winning at least one race in every season. But it all seemed to come to a halt when he lost the chance of his 8th Championship in controversial circumstances at the end of 2021.
Since then he hadn’t won another race, and many (including as it turns out Lewis himself) began to wonder if he’d ever win again. At almost aged 40 was he now too old?
His performance at Silverstone proved otherwise with a combination of track craft, tire management, strategic thinking, and his wealth of experience in tricky conditions. This may have been his 104th career win, but in many ways it was his best.
Overall it was a good weekend for British drivers as George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, and Lando Norris, took the top three spots in qualifying. It was the first time in 56 years that 3 British drivers have taken the top three positions, the last time was the 1968 South African GP. All three also led the race at various points. Unfortunately, a mechanical issue forced George Russell to retire, and a bad strategy call and comparatively slow pit-stop dropped Norris to third.
But there was no denying that the weekend belonged to Lewis Hamilton.
In some ways, it was also appropriate that the teaser for the upcoming F1 movie, with Brad Pitt as an aging driver trying to return to old glories, was released during the British Grand Prix festivities. They were also at the event still filming some of the trackside scenes.
The teaser trailer looks fun and the on-track action is very convincing as they had the actors driving the race cars. But opening the trailer with Brad Pitt mansplaining to the team’s female technical director/designer how to do her job and to ignore the safety aspects, something F1 is really serious about, is not a good look.
The whole F1 community is now waiting to see if this will rank alongside Ron Howards’ excellent RUSH (2013) or Sylvester Stallone’s risible attempt at a racing movie, DRIVEN (2001)?
But for me the big question is can it match John Frankenhiemer’s 1966 classic GRAND PRIX, which was also shot on location at races and had the actors behind the wheel?
Alan
Other Stuff
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Brabazon Bits
All I can say this week is that endings are tricky. I have the last main chapter left to revise and the epilogue to write. For that last chapter I know the structure I want to achieve yet despite several tries I haven’t found a lead in that works.
Hopefully, by the time that this newsletter goes out I’ll have solved that little conundrum.
Word Slinging
Moving to a new state means that I also need to build a new network of local folks who also spend their time throwing words around. The first step this week was to sign up for the Maryland Writers’ Association. At first glance, it looks like they have a pretty robust program of events and ways to connect. I’ll be digging into their website, forums, etc. more over the next few weeks to see what looks interesting.
I also spent some of this week reading through an early version of the manuscript for a friend’s upcoming non-fiction project and providing a few notes along the way. Can’t say much more than that at the moment, beyond it was a fascinating read. I’ll share more on this as and when I’m allowed.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 - “The Great SF Stories 6 (1944)” by Ed. Issac Asimov & Martin Greenberg
Like any anthology, this selection of classic SF stories all first published in 1944 serves up a range of tales that vary from engaging to interesting to what-did-I-just-read?
Martin Greenberg’s introductions to each story do an excellent job of placing them, and their author’s careers in context, unfortunately, Asimov’s contributions come across as little more than self-congratulatory name-dropping that adds little value.
Not surprisingly you can feel the influence of the then-current world events impacting many of the stories, which places them in an interesting position of being both speculative about the future while at the same time being historical artifacts.
Historically one of the most interesting stories is one that got so many facts about how to build an atomic bomb right that both the author and publishers received visits from the FBI.
It’s from this perspective that I found the collection more intriguing than entertaining.
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Bond Briefings
In the latest edition of our James Bond Lexicon newsletter, we discuss recent encounters with the numbers, 0, 0 and 7.
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Before They Were Beatles Updates
The latest issue of the Before They Were Beatles newsletter in which we take a sidebar and look at the history of the Liverpool suburbs that John, Paul, & George called home.
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Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues this week as we move on to April 1969 with new issues of Detective Comics and Brave & The Bold.
My pick this week has to be Detective Comics #386 with another powerful cover by Irv Novick. I was always fascinated by any ‘Batman and Bruce Wayne together’ type stories. I think this cover is a great example of that sort of teaser that would make me want to immediately pick up this issue to see how would they resolve the dual appearance aspect.
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See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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