Formula 1 Drinking Criteria

At the start of this year's Formula 1 season, I set about investigating the waning popularity of F1 as a televised sport. I ended up identifying a selection of the things that people most want to see when they watch F1.

If there was more of this sort of thing F1 would, I reckoned, be much more popular. But as it stands, these things come up preciously rarely. So, I concluded, you might as well make the most of them when they do.

Now: you should never get drunk and drive a car—that much is clear. But it is OK to get drunk whilst watching other people drive cars, quickly, on a television. (Only when you're watching it using a television—if their cars are actually on top of the television, you have bigger problems.)

From the conjunction of these two ideas sprang the following scheme to enliven lacklustre Grands Prix, in the absence of more of the excitement from which we're now deprived and that we so dreadfully crave:

Imbibe a mouthful—or other convenient unit—of your favourite alcoholic beverage upon each occurrence of each of the following:

1. Crashing
2. Overtaking
3. Fire
4. The Safety Car
5. Michael Schumacher
6. Spinning out
7. Explosions
8. Bits falling off cars
9. Cars leaving the ground
10. Murray Walker

For competitive play, you could each choose a couple of different criteria, and the winner is the first person to get the hiccups.

Of course, adding Lewis Hamilton to that list would just be silly. So only do that if you have plenty of booze.