Good day there I’m Emma O’Rouge and welcome to the Badgerometer, where I will be regularly countdown the heroes and villains of F1, be that teams, drivers, tracks, brolly dolly’s mechanical mishaps or anything else F1 related.  So as we all begin quivering at the impending start of the new season here is my current top five and bottom one of F1:

In at one is Lewis Hamilton, I know not a particularly inspiring choice and completely predictable but it had to be done for the simple reasons; he won, he’s young and he’s British.  Plus he didn’t just walk it, no instead he kept us nail biting, fighting palpitations and on the edge of our seats until the last seconds of the season making the post race champagne celebrations much needed and deserved.

There is room for improvement though, and cause for investigations into whether robotics really has come this far and the man isn’t even real.  His lack of personality and inability at post race press conferences to do anything but describe the race in detail and thank the team is frustrating and dull.  Not to mention he looks like a waxwork and the jury’s still out on his relationship with Nicole ‘pussycat doll’ Scherzinger.  This season, c’mon Lewis take a leaf out of Coulthard or even Schumacher’s books, you’re a great driver I can’t fault you on that but inject some passion, some anger, some… something.

Next is Jenson Button, I admit this is a bit of a girly entry and yes he does feature so highly because he’s easy on the eye.  ‘Jense’, as he is known to his friends, is definitely the coolest, hippest driver on the grid with his designer stubble, rough and ready but lets face it highly styled just got out of bed hair and penchant for facial furniture.  Frankly never has anyone looked this good in sunglasses and every time it’s a different pair.

Third is Singapore and the first night race.  It’s ridiculous really, ok so on paper a race at night sounds amazing and the race was spectacularly enjoyable, enhanced perhaps slightly by the hilarious Ferrari fuel hose fiasco.  But actually when they said night race my initial thoughts were that the race would be in the pitch black and the cars would use their headlights to see the way, obviously I quickly realised this could be a bit problematic when travelling at F1 speeds so I pondered if perhaps the drivers would get night vision or radar thus leading me to the conclusion I have an overactive imagination and a blatant disregard for driver safety.

In fact and rather sensibly all things considered a huge amount of streetlights and floodlights made the race brighter than some that have been held during the day in bad weather.  But even with floodlights I still loved this track and can’t wait for it again this season.

Fourth is Torro Rosso.  I don’t know why, perhaps because their name is Italian and exotic sounding, perhaps it’s the angry, smudgy ‘go faster’ looking bull on the cars, or maybe because of Vettel’s incredible win at Monza despite being on the ‘B’ team but for me Torro Rosso are the coolest team.  In fact if TR were a person he’d be best mates with Jens and probably even better at wearing sunglasses and having effortlessly trendy hair and stubble.

Fifth is another obvious one, and only features so far down because I didn’t want to be accused of favouritism but it’s F1 Badger. Finally, an F1 site that tells me what I want to know, makes me laugh and doesn’t drown me in statistics or mechanical jargon I can’t understand.  What’s more it has a prancing badger on it, a prancing badger….complete genius.

And finally I am miffed with – Honda.  I know I know its not their fault there’s a credit crunch etc, but I have spent much of the off season mourning that Button may be without a team, then there was a LOT of faff about who would take over and now they have a stupid name, all in all a bit of a furore!