President’s Column, September 2008

by Bob Morin

Since last month’s column, we had our Do the Brew Party at the Cambridge House in Granby, CT. We had a nice group attend and it was great to meet many new faces as well as see some familiar ones again. Thanks to Sheila Morin for coordinating this event and to all who attended.

Upcoming events at this time include the Humpa Picnic, which should be just around the corner on September 21st, followed closely by the National Oktoberfest in Watkins Glen, September 23 – 27. Shortly after we get home from Oktoberfest, Jim Merriman is organizing a bike trip on October 5th and then October 10th is our final Lime Rock Driver’s School for 2008. We’d love to see you at any or all of these events.

Thanks to the miracles of the DVR and a very understanding wife, I’ve had the opportunity to watch SpeedTV a lot recently. For those of you who do watch SpeedTV, have you noticed how many of the sponsors are either debt consolidation companies or pawn shops? There is several of each and it isn’t that unusual to watch a whole race and not have a single commercial that does not involve one or the other. While I admit that I find these slightly less annoying than the Baby Baby tapes that sponsored F1 in the past (I could never understand that product placement either), I kept thinking about why a pawn shop thought that their target audience was race fans or why they thought race fans had all run their credit cards up to the max. Then it hit me! Racing is expensive, to say the least. So, these sponsors must feel that the only reason you’re home watching and not out there doing, is because you’re, how shall we say it, a little tight on funds. So, dig into “your chest-a-drawers” and gather up all your old broken gold and get on down to Good Ol’ Tom’s and we’ll have you racin’ in no time, yesiree Bob! You might have $50,000 in credit card debt, but if you let us consolidate that debt into one low monthly payment, well, you’ll have you some new race tires in no time. It all makes perfect sense. No wonder they leave the beer and Fritos ads to the stick and ball sports.

Speaking of SpeedTV, the F1 scene is my next topic and here, the boys from Hinwil have been struggling lately. I don’t think the BMW Sauber boys are necessarily having any setbacks as much as they aren’t able to keep up with the torrid pace of improvement in the development of their biggest rivals at Ferrari and McLaren. Last month, we left our heroes in Great Britain and next up was Germany, the home race for the team and for Driver Nick Heidfeld and a among the shorter trips for the Polish supporters of Robert Kubica, so you’d think they’d pull out all the stops to achieve a good result. You’d think that, but after qualifying, you were left hoping they’d score any points at all. Home favorite Heidfeld failed to even get into Q3 and found himself in 12th place on the grid. Kubica could only manage 7th, in what had to be the worst qualifying effort so far this season. Now, you could understand having the two McLarens and the two Ferraris in front of you on the grid, but in Kubica’s case, he was also looking up the tailpipes of Jarno Trulli’s Toyota and Fernando Alonso’s Renault. If that wasn’t bad enough, two Red Bulls (Webber and Coulthard), an STR-Ferrari (Vettel), and the other Toyota (Glock) could all look into their rearview mirrors and see Heidfeld, somewhere back there. The race wasn’t a complete disaster though, as Heidfeld managed to move all the way up to 4th, while Kubica finished where he started, in 7th. Hamilton won from pole, his second straight win and now finds himself alone at the top of the Driver’s Championship, while Kubica fades to 4th, 10 points back and BMW is also fading from the Constructor’s Championship.

Would Hungary be the place to get BMW back on track? Well, Kubica managed a 4th best in qualifying, so that was more promising, but Heidfeld was 15th. Yikes! Now he was being outqualied by all of the above from the previous race, plus Piquet, Button and Rosberg. So basically, at least one car from every team on the grid, except for Force India, had outqualified Heidfeld. That has to be pretty discouraging, especially if there are rumors about your security with the team. This time, the race was worse than the qualifying as Kubica fell down the leader board to 8th, scoring only one point and Heidfeld, while making up some ground, finished 10th, failing to score any points. Even watching the race, I can’t figure out how Kubica fell through the field. In spite of another pole for Hamilton, he wound up 5th, but his teammate Kovalainen won, solidifying BMW’s tumble in the Constructor’s Championship and although Kubica remains 4th and Heidfeld 5th in the Driver’s Championship, there no longer seems much promise that they will finish the season any better than that or that BMW Sauber can finish any better than 3rd in the Constructor’s title.

In News From National, membership stands at 75,655, down .42% from last year. For those who had been thinking about doing any of the Performance Center Driver’s Schools offered by BMW, but were swallowing hard over the tuition charge, National is pleased to announce that members are now entitled to a 20% discount on all schools and services provided by the Performance Center. In the quarterly report of Chapter membership standings, CVC remains in 11th place Nationally.

That about does it for this month.

Bob Morin