Archive for July, 2008

Whilst the BRDC continues to act as if it isn’t annoyed by Bernard Ecclestone’s pretend plans to move the British Grand Prix to Donington or Brands Hatch or the Birmingham Superprix circuit or something, the Silverstone circuit itself is about to undergo an exciting revamp that will surely make it the best Formula 1 facility in Northamptonshire.

The new developments won’t be ready for this year’s British GP of course, but work will start on them the very second the last car has left the circuit’s car parks after this year’s race. And when those bulldozers kick into action in September, they’ll have quite a job on because Sniff Petrol has seen the new Silverstone plans and they’re certainly ambitious, whilst retaining the character of the probably-loved circuit and building on its strengths.

One of the first areas for attention is bleakness. For years, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been famed for the flat, unremitting miserableness of its views and the facelift scheme seeks to capitalise on that by levelling many of the surrounding fields and building over them with huge expanses of grey, slightly cracked concrete. In the original redevelopment plans, these areas could have been used for race day parking but in fact the planners have been much more canny than that, carefully securing an addition 30 acres of damp, muddy field in which people can lose their cars.

Other facilities haven’t been forgotten either because the new Silverstone will boast a 124 percent increase in the amount of space devoted to stalls selling cheaply made F1 related crap, including 216 percent increase in the areas devoted to stands hawking ghastly Ferrari branded clothing. There will also be a threefold increase in the number of rusty and unnerving fairground rides and, for more privileged F1 fans, a huge increase in the amount of helicopters that can’t take off because there are somehow too many helicopters already in the air.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Silverstone on Grand Prix weekend without the overpowering smell of chips and, under the new plans, that disgusting stench will be more all-consuming than ever thanks to a massive increase in chips stalls and a state-of-the-art fan system which will mean almost no part of the circuit will go without a vile greasy smell getting into the back of everyone’s throats.

The exciting new Silverstone facilities are expected to be ready just around the time Bernard Ecclestone decides he can’t be bothered having a Grand Prix in Britain at all any more.

There was excitement amongst fans of Web 2.0i Ghia last night with news that Sniff Petrol is to become an online magazine. Older readers may remember Sniff Petrol’s previous attempt to reinvent itself as a blog, and also recall that it was shit. However, there are no such worries this time around as the neterweb’s orangiest car-based nonsense site hurtles headlong into the rush to be the latest new automotive webzine that is claiming to be the first even though it probably isn’t.

“These are very exciting times,” said Sniff Petrol marketing director, Thisisa Madeupname. “Old school paper magazines are dead, webzines are the future. Of course, Sniff Petrol has never actually been a paper magazine but we did print off some old editions from the website and make them into a magazine just so we could have a meeting with some design consultants from Shoreditch and decide that it was dead”.

The beauty of the webzine according to Madeupname is that, using the latest computer technology, it can replicate many of the features of an old fashioned print publication. “Technology has thankfully got to the point where it can at last pointlessly replicate old fashioned things instead of looking forward,” he says. “What we’re going to offer here is things like page numbers on the bottom and, most excitingly, a graphical interface that looks like the pages of a magazine turning. It was developed by the same company that worked out how to put cassette hiss onto MP3s. We’re also very excited by a new feature that will exactly replicate the first time you open a new print magazine by allowing a big virtual pile of annoying adverts for car loans to fall out onto your desktop”.

However, new Sniff Petrol won’t be all about just inexplicably trying to make your computer look like a magazine. Madeupname promises some radical innovations too. “How many times have you been reading a magazine and thought, I’m enjoying listening to some of my own music in the background, but what I really wish is that the magazine itself would play me some repetitive tune that I don’t really like? We can provide the solution to that. And, without wishing to give too much away, I think we’ll have a pleasant surprise for anyone who’s ever thought, Damn, I wish it took longer to turn the pages of this paper magazine, and if only some of the content didn’t appear properly on the page and I had to leave the magazine for five minutes whilst it re-loaded”.

The new Sniff Petrol webzine will be completely free, until we have to start charging for something that basically no one’s going to pay for because it’s on a computer.

STOP PRESS: Sniff Petrol isn’t going to be a webzine after all. It was a bollocks idea.