The Awards Show feat. Murray Walker

Well what a year it's been. We've had Ferrari wiping the floor with all "competitors" and Yoongy being, well... Yoongy. Montoya has been his passionate Latino self, both in an out of the cockpit, and our guest reporter was as upset as anyone when he heard JPM was getting married. You may remember some of this guest reporter's classic sayings such as "You know Formula One spelt backwards is if", or "Anything can happen in grand prix racing, and usually does", or maybe "And Damon's really going for it"... that's right it's Murray Walker. So I'll hand the pen over to Murray...

First of all I would like to thank everyone at underSteer for inviting me to review the 2002 season for this prestigious tipping competition. I hope to join next year and I would like to deny all rumours from the outset that I have anything to do with the Murray is a legend team. My main responsibility here today is to announce the inaugural underSteer awards, but before that I would like to relive a few timely comments from key players throughout the season:

Sules in the San Marino Early Edition:
"This round turned out to be the backmarkers friend with Big Red (105) and Mr Halfwit Inc (102) taking the nails out of the coffins... "
It's this sort of remark that makes me think back to Canada many years ago when I was quoted as saying:
"And ... Nigel Mansell is going to win the Canadian Grand Prix... and... he's going rather slow... HE'S STOPPING, HE'S STOPPING!"
It took me a few years to get over that one, I can tell you.

An anonymous comment about "The Chatter", aka Kimi Raikkonen:
"Now we've seen Kimi behind the microphone it's true to say that Mika was clearly Finland's answer to Eddie Irvine, he could talk the hind leg off a moose."

And of course Alan Jones' classic:
"Yoong couldn't drive out of sight on a dark night"
It's good to see AJ hasn't lost any wit in his old age.

But without any further adieu... the Awards, and first up is:

The Outrageous Tip Award

The winner is... it's a tie between WB 253 and The Big Red Car.
The Big Red Car gets it for tipping Webber to qualify 6th in Australia
WB 253 gets it for tipping Frentzen to qualify 2nd in Australia

next is The Triple M Award

This radio award is awarded to the punter who has the highest score for tipping the three em's : Massa, McNish and Montoya, and the winner is: BMW 2002 by one point over Sennamental Favourite. BMW 2002 got 26 points in this award in Japan to come from nowhere to steal this award from the deserved winner.

now to The Boring Award

This award is for the punter who has the least guts. The one who never tips Yoong to finish in the top ten, or never picks anyone from the top teams to have a non-finish, and the winner is: Mr Halwit Inc... Not only did Mr Halfwit have the top three teams finishing every event, he always had Heidfeld as a finisher. So, he had car numbers 1 through 7 finishing every event.

and now The Yoong Appreciation Award

There were many contenders for this award but the winner is Paul. Many punters always had Yoongy not finishing, and many had him towards the end of the non-finishers, but Paul had Yoongy last in every race, even when it became common knowledge that Arrows weren't racing, Paul still had Yoongy last, and Paul wasn't getting tips generated.... which is more than enough to take out the most prestigious of all awards, The Yoong Appreciation Award.

and finally The Steven Bradbury Award

This has been traditionally awarded to the team that wins by doing nothing and I think it's clear for all to see that the deserved winner of this award is EatMyShorts for winning the comp without doing anything since France. If anyone knows where EatMyShorts is, please let him know he's won. As it turned out EatMyShorts did a Steven Bradbury while Big Red did the Troy Bayliss choke, after being the only punter to win three rounds this season.

Just to give you a few stats before leaving, the highest round score of the season was a balanced 131 by Abarth Racing in Austria. Only two teams in the final top ten never stood atop the championship standings: DNF - Dead Near Fence, and Mr Halwit Inc and no team outside the final top ten ever lead the championship.

That's it from the awards and in fact the entire F1 circus for another season. Make sure you join us next year for another year of fun and antics, and oh yes, it looks as if Sules has signed up for another year, so Ralfy, LOOK OUT!!!!

PS: Like the FIA, underSteer will be releasing a ten point plan to improve the series. Point one will be to add a subsidiary tipping contest, where you tip about the results of punters in the main underSteer tipping contest. It's bound to go gangbusters, so stay tuned for that one.