Where else do you see drivers having a technicolour yawn into their helmets live and in 4K? Where else do you see drivers taking a nap at 310kmh? Where else can the kiddies hear a $12m-a-year athlete use the magic word, repeatedly?
Who said Australia was boring?
Where else can you buy slightly used cars, ready to go, to immediately add to your friskie powder home delivery fleet; your look-at-me notice to fiscal fiend Chris Jordan and to demonstrate the benefits of the cash economy to friends still stuck in the rut of asking for receipts?
But first: are you embarrassed on Zoom calls when all your colleagues can see behind you are the bunny ears desert cactus made from real high-grade PE foam ($199 on special this week) and the photos of Luna the dog before he got wet eczema and all his fur fell off?
Do you think the man/woman that you have the secret crush on in the accounts department thinks you are a brown cardigan-wearing bean counter who is an awkward teen stunted in time?
Well go no further. In just 14 days, RM Sotheby’s is selling the ultimate look-good package suitable for Zoom/Teams/ Google Workspace or Fax.
Yup, it’s the Graham Hill Collection of trophies. Like the Sultan of Stepney, triple crown winner Graham Hill redefined the term “sporting legend”, a man almost as well-known for his personality as his record-breaking career, and a character who possessed endless charm and spectacular ability.
Hill (114 of Hertfordshire, soap-dodger land) told me he wants you to hook up with that person in the accounts department and spending a lazy $347,000 on his gear will do that for you.
There’s Gazza’s 1962 FIA Driver’s World Champion trophy, his 1969 Monaco Grand Prix 1st place trophy, the 1968 Mexican Grand Prix 1st place trophy and the beautiful glass,
1972 24 Hours of Le Mans winner’s Moët & Chandon trophy.
But wait. No one on the next call is going to intimate you are less than manly or womanly when you appear on screen with a bookcase full of trophies and dressed in Gazza’s racing overalls – and to cap it all off (excuse the pun) his very own blue and white racing helmet in the London Rowing Club colours.
OK. Want something that’s a little less subtle? Well Monday week is the Pickles National Luxury Car Auction (national if you live near Belmore in Sydney) where there’s the Bianco white 2019 Lamborghini Aventador MY20 SVJ Roadster with the embroidered Lamborghini Shield on the headrest.
Now, as you know, our readers who deal in illicit substances and cash usually prefer the pink or yellow Lambos but with only 292km on the clock, if you could pick this up for under $700,000 you’d be doing well.
The sleek grey, 2021 Ferrari 812 GTS F152M Spider DCT convertible doesn’t shout Italian marching powder for sale but will fit in well around the leafy suburbs of Vaucluse, South Brisbane and Fanny Bay – and in the background on your Zoom call. Again, Pickles will tell you more but I reckon $700,000.
There are also some Porkers, Mercs, a heap of Audis and a couple of really lovely Bentley Continentals and a McLaren.
But I’ll be bidding on the 2016 Holden Maloo with 410kW under the bonnet and only 50,000km on the clock. Under $90k would be a buy.
Talking of Ferraris, RM Sotheby’s has the only factory-owned 1962 Ferrari 330 LM/250 GTO coming up for auction the week after Pickles. New York not Belmore.
Thirty-six 250 GTOs were made for the road costing about $40,000 new but about $100m today. It is the only GTO Tipo 1962 raced by Scuderia Ferrari. A class win and 2nd overall finish at the 1962 Nurburgring 1000km, raced and crashed at the 1962 24 hours of Le Mans, in the same collection for the past 38 years and good buying at $100m-plus.
Talking of Holdens, none at Bathurst last week, but our favourite Australasian driver, the hirsute Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway from Tauranga in our most eastern state, won convincingly in a Chev, from Brodie Kostecki and David Russell in another Chev followed by Anton De Pasquale and Tony Alberto in a Mustang.
If you’re not a petrol head, then you won’t know that Richie Stanaway is a very serious driver with a sensational record in open wheelers in Europe.
Let’s move on to Qatar where the racing was hot, except for Mad Max who won the 2023 championship and the race.
Hamo collided with Georgie Russell on the first lap, Georgie said the f-word, Hamo retired, Esteban Ocon vomited in his helmet and liked it so much he went and did it again, Lance Stroll passed out twice while racing, Sargeant and Albon also had kips and needed medical attention for severe heat exposure.
Last weekend, drivers were at real risk of dying. Of course, the dinosaurs say they should just man up and get on with it. These are the same people that would have thought that drivers in the late 1960s and early ’70s, continuously racing in F1, had a two out of three chance of dying should have not worried about it.
Seatbelts in race cars were not made mandatory until 1972. It was Jackie Stewart’s campaigning and the death of Ayrton Senna that finally got F1 safe.
Talking of F1, the 73rd richest soap dodger, Bernard Charles Ecclestone, 92, has a number of houses including the “Le Lion” chalet in Gstaad and the Celebrity Coffee farm in Amparo.
Our correspondents at The Sun, tell us that the farm is bigger than Monaco and has 600 cows and cattle, 18 horses, six ponies, eight dogs and several dozen chickens and swans.
Anyway, a beak in London, this week ordered Bernard to pay $1.2bn after he pleaded guilty to trust fund tax fraud.
According to The Times he was due to stand trial next month but changed his plea after a judge dismissed his claim that it was unfair to prosecute him because he had a greater chance of dying than surviving the case.
Ecclestone’s lawyers claimed at an earlier hearing that the former racing driver was only being prosecuted because he said during a television interview that he would “take a bullet” for President Putin of Russia, who he described as a “first-class person”.
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