The need to beat the others away from the traffic lights are further proof that our emotional attachment to the car hasn?t moved out of the playground. Photo: Darren Pateman
When I was in my late teens there was a TV advertisement for Martini that used to trigger a powerfully nagging, yearning impulse in me. For 30 seconds, it opened up a world of sophistication, wealth, success and happiness, where I knew I must be destined to belong.
I hope that reading that paragraph made you squirm. It certainly made me squirm to write it. Not just because the thought of Martini makes me queasy with memories of youthful excess.
Of course that advertisement drew that response from me when the sap was rising. I was a self-obsessed young person, like all the rest who just knew that I had to ...
In the desiccated cynicism of middle age I know responses like that for the fleeting phantasms they really are. Advertisers continue to try to evoke them, and the reason it's a bit embarrassing to contemplate the effect they aim for is that they do it by reaching into our subconscious and reflecting back fantasies that are there. The manipulation is obvious, its effectiveness the source of endless research and debate.
The advertisers don't create the dreams, they merely dig them out and externalise them. They may not show our more admirable characteristics but in themselves could be seen as relatively harmless .
Where cars are concerned though, they suggest we're in thrall to infantile fantasies that blind us to appalling realities.
In the news business, I often feel like a man on the bank of a river, downstream from some terrible massacre. We barely look up when the latest police media release bobs past bearing details of the P-plater who died on an empty road at 3am, the pedestrian knocked down in a suburban street. Only when the victims are especially young or numerous do we point and talk for a bit — and then we lose interest and look away.
We look misty eyed at the fantasies: a woman who watches the other mums stare at her in slow motion envy as she arrives outside school in her four-wheel-drive; the couple whose off-road choice turns their neighbours into social inadequates, drained of colour; the boy who papers over his family car to make it look like next door's.
Advertisements don't cause fatal crashes. But they do reveal that our emotional attachment to the car hasn't moved out of the playground. We're too willing to accept the relentless deaths, fight each other over who should be first at the lights, and bastardise our domestic architecture to give our cars bedroom space.
Cars are fantastically useful. But we need to think about them rationally, as adults with some iron in our soul, not imprisoned by dreams of steel and chrome.
Cars can be beautiful. Whenever I see a Ferrari, an Aston Martin or a Maserati — all design marvels — I point it out to my kids.
But I know that one day they have to grow out of the infatuation. We all need to.
Source: theage.com.au
Felipe Massa is happy with Ferrari's preparation for the 2010 Formula 1 season, but does not believe it heads for Bahrain with any advantage over its rivals.
Q. How did the first day at Barcelona go? Were there any problems? Vitantonio Liuzzi: Today, once we realised in the morning that the track was really green and slippery, we concentrated on different work, not about understanding the car, but about getting the team up to speed with pitstops and race preparation. Tomorrow we'll concentrate on putting the car together regarding set-ups and race pace. Q. Do you feel the car has made the step forward from last year that you wanted? VL: We believe we've made a really big step forward for this year. That's not a question mark, that's for sure. The only thing we have to see is what others have done over the winter - looking at the times it's difficult to judge where the other teams are � you see other cars become competitive and then on other days they are off the pace. We know we have made big progress. Last year we were maybe the strongest team in development during the season and I think they kept doing a really good job in the wind tunnel and the factory. To say we have a winning car would be an exaggeration � it is difficult, but our target is to be consistently points scoring. I think, from what we understand from the three tests, we are not that far from that region. Q. The team has changed technical director just weeks before the start of the season � does that affect the way things are going. VL: No, I don't think so. James Key has been a big support for the team in the past and it's a shame he left because I liked to work with him. But there is change in every team and I think we have a really good structure with Mark Smith and everyone at the windtunnel and technicial side, who are not just working on the 2010 car but on 2011.Everybody thinks we are such a small team, but in the end we have big people working in the background so I don't think we will suffer that much. I wish him good luck, but this is part of the business. It is a small paddock and this sort of move often happens. Q. In the past Force India was the bottom team on the grid. Do you think now that the gap between the new teams and the other teams is similar to the gap you had to the others in the past? VL: I don't think so. You say Force India was at the bottom team, but everybody at Toro Rosso was at Red Bull at the beginning. Everybody when they begin they has to start from zero. If you don't have a strong base or strong past it's difficult to start and be a winning team.
Pininfarina 
Q. This is the first time you have seen the new VR-01 in the flesh. How are you feeling?
Nico Hulkenberg topped the times for Williams on the second day of this week's final pre-season Formula 1 test at Barcelona on Friday.
