How can abandoning the old be risky?

Richard Williams must be an old doddering fool who enjoys open fires and decrepit leather armchairs while he orders his maid around to get another scotch just to keep up “traditions” rather than get up off his fat arse to serve himself or even open his eyes and recognise that the juggernaut of the future has come close to crushing his life breath away. He is like a guy reminiscing about the “old days” of the Empire and berates anyone who now calls the UK anything but Great Britain. Refusing categorically to believe that the world has left his dearly beloved GB behind and that its former colony now called the United States of America is the king of the hill.

He’s also one of those old goats who ignores the present and the future for the sake of the past. The honourable gentleman had the temerity to call Bahrain’s Formula One circuit as resembling a “computer game” as if that – in this day and age – is the height of an insult, rather than being a paramount compliment! Using this analogy alone demonstrates what an old fogey he is and how unconnected with the times he has become.

Mr. Williams conveniently forgets that the great inventors have always been castigated as heretics, and that their ideas would never fly as hey, the world is really flat! How dare anyone believe “in this modern age” that it is really an odd-shaped sphere? Further, he also forgets that the definition of tradition is getting used to something “as is,” sans change?

Sir, to you the Bahrain International Circuit might have looked like a modern computer game (thank you!) and that only between 30,000 to 40,000 spectators have attended race Sunday, and that 82,000 attended the funereal procession at Imola, I personally can happily guarantee that there will be more than double the Bahrain attendance the next time the circus rolls into the desert, and a tradition will be borne in the sands of the windy arena. The difference is that this particular tradition is driven by a need to succeed and does not rest on its ancient laurels as being the “home of GP” but finds ways every single year to prove to the world that we are better, bigger and faster abetted by sheer willpower and passion. The passion and vigour of youth, rather than flaccid old men.

To hell with Silverstone and Imola. Welcome to Bahrain, Malaysia and China. We do represent the future regardless of Mr. Williams’ sentiments. Motor cars in any case only have a history of some one hundred years, what gives Silverstone, Imola or any other archaic race circuit the exclusive right to hold a race there ad-infinitum? Without the need to modernise and spend to become at par with the facilities offered by modern circuits? Should Mr. Eccelstone and Mr. Mosely now base their business on sentiment alone? Should they ignore the huge opportunities and fans who inhabit most of the planet just because of Europe? Does he conveniently forget that most cars in the world now are manufactured by countries “who have no motor sports heritage” and that today’s bright star the British Jensen Button is sitting millimeters away from a Japanese engine that has rightly put the flames up Ferrari’s nether regions? I suggest he wakes up from his dream and removes his sentimentally coloured pink shades.

Mr. Williams: the whole world has left your beloved Great Britain and lethargic Europe behind and have ventured unequivocally forth into a modern era unhindered by your admirable sentiment of flogging a dead horse, just in case it twitches for another few seconds before it finally succumbs to reality.

And welcome to the modern world, ably demonstrated by this little minnow of a collection of islands we call collectively as the sparkling future of motor sports.