The Motorsport Power Rankings: No. 34

This week the world of Formula One invented a new party game, well two new party games depending on what kind of parties you like. The first is Musical Italians, where you put some Pavarotti on and all swap your Italians until the music stops, any Italian left without a seat is called Luca.

The second is more complicated, and better suited to more mature parties. It's like a game where you have to guess the murderer, only you have to guess who conspired to make Nelson Piquet Jr. crash, Flav, Pat Symonds, Nelson, Nelson's dad Nelson, or whether is all made up nonsense the PIquet clan have cooked up to get revenge on Renault.

Elsewhere my call for NASCAR Karma was answered by a frisbee, the Australians proved they even plan protests better than anyone else, and Sebastien Bourdais tried to make Superleague Formula racing look respectable.

15 Paul Gentilozzi (ALMS)
Delayed for two months, based on old models, indecisive and probably rubbish. Are we sure it’s not a Jaguar factory effort?

14 Luca Badoer (F1)
He blames the press for outing him from his race drive.

Well, at least we know it wasn’t high speed that caused these hallucinations.

13 Fernando Alonso (F1)
Renault are bringing back KERS for Monza, claiming it will gain then 15 metres off the start. So that’s more positive spin from Renault then.

12 Nelson Piquet Jr. (Criminal Genius)
The only way I could be more suspicious of Piquet’s claims is if Renault pull out of F1 and Piquet Sport take their entry slot.

11 Carl Edwards (NASCAR)
Broken foot from playing Frisbee and engine trouble.

Don’t mess with Karma.

10 Dani Sordo (WRC)
He was leading Rally Australia after day one.

Which clearly means he wasn’t deemed important enough to throw a frozen Koala at.

9 Sebastien Bourdais (Superleague Formula)
Winning on his Superleague Formula debut.

Red Bull claim Seville tapped him up.

8 Sebastien Loeb (WRC)
More cheating Frenchmen!

7 Augusto Farfus (WTCC)
Crash in race one. Check

Win in race two. Check

Yep, just another Farfus weekend.

6 Jorge Lorenzo (Moto GP)
Might need reminding exactly why he’s signed for another year at Yamaha right now.

5 Mikko Hirvonen (WRC)
As if the possibility of him winning the WRC needed to be any less legitimate, he’s now being given wins by FIA stewards.

4 Kasey Kahne (NASCAR)
This week’s NASCAR winner, banking $363,000, so hardly Petty cash.

3 Tonio Liuzzi (F1)
OK, so who’s running the book on Liuzzi taking out Fisichella somewhere on the first lap?

2 Valentino Rossi (Moto GP)
Now, if all Donkey rides were like that we’d all holiday in this country!


1 Giancarlo Fisichella (F1)
Ferrari staff slam Fisichella “he’s too smiley, he’s showing Kimi up.”