"At the Jaguar press briefing in Malaysia, someone asked Luciano Burti what he had been doing since Australia. Well, he said, he'd been to Bali where he had trained hard to get used to the humidity.

'What about you, Eddie?' someone asked. 'Have you done any training?'

'No, I've been down the pub every night having six pints and eight whisky chasers!' Eddie replied, ironically. Then, turning to Bobby Rahal, he muttered casually, 'bunch of tossers, aren't they!'"
Tony Dodgins, OnTrackOnline.com

Eddie Irvine, may the earth be his playground, always has a place in The Backyard. That probably lumps me in with other "tossers", but things could be worse.

Always willing to give a colorful quote to the very people he despises, Irvine has built a cottage industry on the backs of "tossers". Needless to say, it is a two-way street.

Irvine isn't worth the reported $10 million a year he gets from Jaguar. Teams should only pay for potential when it's in its infancy. He's funny, but not THAT funny. At 35 years old, and toiling around the wrong end of the grid, Irvine has little choice but to bicker with journalists. How else is he going to stay in the news?

First off, let's preface with the obvious: it is early, traction control is on deck, and, well, it was only one race. With that out of the way, it will not be lost on the rest of the front-runners, Ralf's brother included, that the "little" Schumacher, and his Williams/BMW team could be ripe for a championship run.

Ralf Schumacher is now a veteran F1 driver. Lack of experience is not an excuse that will work for him. After Imola, however, Schumacher demonstrated, handily, that he needs no excuses. I've said it before, and I think it still carries a lot of merit: Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya appreciate each other more than anyone knows, perhaps even than they realize. Sunday, the dividends were cashed in.

From where I stood, Ralf Schumacher's drive was perfect, from start to finish. Few will doubt the potency of the Williams/BMW combination. On the eve of traction control - the legal version - it is hard to fathom Williams, with their history, being left out in the cold. Should Schumacher continue his blistering qualifying performances, and the BMW powerplant remain powerful and reliable, Michael's "little" brother will have his best chance, ever, of grabbing a piece of the pie that his older brother has fattened up on.

One final note about Ralf Schumacher, Juan Montoya, and the Williams team. It is striking, the similarities between this year, and the year Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve were employed together at Williams.

During those years, of course, the Williams/Renault duo was the pick of the litter. Consider the following:

*For 1996, Villeneuve joined the Williams team, making the switch from America, and IndyCars, where he won the CART championship and the Indy 500.

*Montoya accomplished those same things, before coming aboard at Williams.

*Villeneuve was 25 years old in his first season with Williams.

*Montoya is 25, right now.

*Villeneuve nearly bagged his first F1 race before mechanical gremlins let his teammate, Hill, take the win.

*It took Montoya three races before he nearly won his first F1 race.

*Villeneuve won four races during his first year.

*While it is not impossible that Montoya could win four times this year, it is unlikely. Then again, the 2001 Williams isn't the dominating force that the '96 Williams was. Not yet, anyway.

*Montoya, like Villeneuve before him, had a veteran teammate. In '96, Damon Hill finally took advantage of driving the best car, and took the championship.

*In 2001, Ralf Schumacher, finally, has a car that appears to be on the verge of great things. It is not outside the realm of possibility, seeing Ralf Schumacher in a Williams, winning the championship this year.

*Villeneuve won the championship in his second year.

*Montoya? His chances increase immediately, with a year of experience - and a dominating car.

Do you believe in karma? I don't. None of this means much. This is the type of thing that goes through my mind, while I drive a truck for a living. Mental ramblings. Still, the similarities are striking.

"I definitely think it (TC) is a very positive thing for Formula 1. It definitely brings more safety, because coming out of the corners with traction control does much more to control the back end in wet conditions."
Mika Hakkinen

"I see it like this: it gives us more freedom to drive a bit faster. And the ability to take the car permanently to the limit is what makes a good driver. It will increase the whole level [of the grid], but at this new higher level, you will see the good drivers remaining the good ones."
Michael Schumacher

After all of the bickering, after all the cries from the purists, traction control is back. In typical F1 style, it is introduced at the fourth race of the year. Not the first, but the fourth. Go figure.

On Sunday, despite what Schumacher says, the World Driving Championship lost a bit of its lustre. Saying nothing of its heart. Men like Patrick Head and Michael Schumacher have won a large battle. Surely, and not so subtlety, traction control has, like it or not, become a player again.

Automatic transmissions, launch software, zero wheelspin - I mean, is this what racing is all about? One of the absolute beauties of Grand Prix racing is the variable weather conditions. As thrilling as it is to see Formula One cars race in the dry at Spa, the wet Spa is where a real champion shines. Or so it was.

Mika Hakinnen claims that TC will make the cars safer in wet conditions. He may be right, but at what cost? Now, in the wet, a driver will simply keep his foot to the floor, eliminating a chief factor in determining the skill and bravado of those involved. Men like Hakinnen and Schumacher, it might be argued, might well be safer with TC, but when did safety become a more important tangent than driver skill and awareness? This is progress?

The teams and their engineers will say TC is nothing more than a natural progression of racing technology, in the quest for a faster car - a car that will rely on the available electronics, rather than the skill of the man. Perhaps that is all true, and surely, the lap times will fall. But the line between driver skill and engineering excellence will become smaller and smaller.

It is understandable, to an extent that teams want to have a bigger role in determining the actions of their racecars. But when does it become too much? When does racing stop being racing, and become merely a technical achievement for the engineers?

If a driver gets off the line quicker than his opponent, due to better launch control, and wins the race, whom really wins? If a driver can take a corner faster than his rival because his wheelspin is less, is he a better driver than his opponent? I don't think so, just like I didn't in 1992, when Nigel Mansell was afforded a car that let him run circles around Ayrton Senna. Not to take anything away from Mansell's driving skills, but Senna never stood a chance. The following year, when Alain Prost took Mansell's seat, Senna was equally outmatched.

I know, over the years, the best teams have always had some sort of technical advantage over their rivals. But it seems as if F1 is taking the worst applications of that fact, to the detriment of the very thing that draws us to Formula One racing.

It is a shame, in its best season in years, F1 has taken a huge portion of the driver out of the equation. It is equally as offensive, that we only had the chance to see a driver like Juan Pablo Montoya show his true skills for four races. Put yourself in his shoes. You're in F1 on your terms, in a competitive car, where the difference between yourself and a majority of the others is uncompromising bravery. Now that advantage is history.

Welcome to Barcelona; grab your training wheels at the gate. In my opinion, Michael Schumacher is full of crap. Since there is little argument, right now, that Schumacher is the best driver in the paddock, why would he prefer to rely more on driver aids than his own skills? After all, those skills are what separates him from the men below him. Why would he want to undercut his natural abilities, to the benefit of the rest of the field? That's exactly what he is saying, when he approves of TC for everyone.

Welcome to Barcelona, indeed......