If Mika Hakkinen becomes World Champion, will anyone really notice the difference? Click to download the .avi version.

Maranello - the F1 soap opera

Episode Nine

The one about the brake problems!

Scene 1 - The motorhome of a well-known auto racing team, a short while before the beginning of the Grand Prix of Luxembourg.

A petite figure is typing away on a keyboard when there's a knock on the door and a tall blonde figure in black overalls comes in.

(Giggling, MIKA retreats and there is silence. JACQUES leaves the PC and strolls over to the couch, curling up for a quick catnap. The screen goes all swirly, as we enter the world of his dream...)

DREAM SEQUENCE 1: We are standing in a garage painted mostly white, unusual in the fact that it has a red carpet. There is a strange, bright light bathing the scene. Within the garage, a man in a bright blue shirt bawls into a mobile, whilst at the back, there is a large throne draped in ermine with several mechanics kneeling before it. One other mechanic is stationed at the entrance as look-out.

There is a tense silence as a petite but regal figure totters down the red carpet towards the throne.

(JACQUES takes the laptop from the mechanic, but his hand slips and he drops it on his toe.)

(The hapless MECHANIC is dragged to the pitlane and hung from the awning with a length of electrical wire.)

(A medical car screams into the pit and three paramedics leap out to examine JACQUES. But before they can reach him, he catches a glimpse of MIKA sitting in the back of the car, waving a Band-Aided index finger in triumph.)

(Suddenly a slight dark-haired figure, clad in red Nomex with Daffy Duck on the front, barges into the garage.)

(The screen goes all swirly again and we return to real life, where HEINZ is shaking JACQUES by the shoulder.)

Scene 2 - The next garage down, where the mechanics of a well-known Italian marque are lined up and ready, alongside their drivers.

(All is action, as they get the two red cars on to the front row of the grid. But the representative from Goodyear doesn't seem to know what they are doing, and is more interested in getting close to MICHAEL than in checking tyre pressures...)

Suddenly, the 'Goovyear representative' produces a tyre iron from nowhere and MICHAEL is clonked on the helmet! He reels from the shock!

(Fifty red-clad mechanics swoop on the 'Goodyear representative' and bear him/her off to the pits.)

(Meanwhile, inside MICHAEL's helmet, the world has gone all snowy and swirly again...)

DREAM SEQUENCE 2: The pitlane before the Grand Prix of Luxembourg. Strangely, the cars actually out on the track are going round the circuit in the opposite direction.

In the red-liveried garage, a spare figure has his head in his hands as he is berated by a number of red-suited mechanics.

(EDDIE prods the despairing figure with his toe in distaste.)

(Two gorgeous, scantily-clad pitlane babes wander past, pitpasses bouncing between curvaceous mammaries.)

Down in the silver-liveried garage, the press are crowding round a garrulous figure, hands waving in the air.

Suddenly, a hooter goes off and everyone makes for the starting grid. The press run for their commentary boxes and we shift our attention to the commentary box of a well-known British television station.

(There is a commercial break during which nothing at all happens.)

(The screen goes all blurry and swirly again and we are back in the real universe.)

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