Bernie Eccleston To Keep Dalston Race Slaughter ‘To A Manageable Level’

The Dalston motor racing fraternity has reacted with joy and spontaneous burn-ups to news that Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has been ousted from the position he has held in the sport for the last 117 years.

‘Yeah,’ said Dalston Grand Prix organiser Mr Stirling Testarossa on hearing the news, ‘this is a potentially life saving development for motor racing in the Dalston area, what, with all the recent carnage and everything.’

The starting grid of last year’s Dalston Grand Prix

Mr Testarossa hopes to recruit Mr Ecclestone to the organising committee of the Dalston Grand Prix and its associated events, the Haggerston Festival of Speed and the Stoke Newington-to-Dakar Rally.

‘We think Bernie would be the ideal man to take Dalston motor sports to the next level,’ said Mr Testarossa.

‘Our main problems have always been a lack of funds and a surfeit of horrifying accidents. We can work around the shortage of cash, but the body count is really getting beyond a joke.

‘So we need someone who can raise huge piles of wonga while simultaneously making our sport so dull as to be unwatchable. And nobody does that better than Bernie.’

Mr Testarossa also hopes that Mr Ecclestone will help Dalston GP expand into exciting new overseas territories such as Papua New Guinea, North Korea and the Yemen.

‘Obviously,’ said Mr Testarossa, ‘the days of running events in countries with an established audience for motor racing and long history in the sport are over.

‘The future lies in tin-pot dictatorships that will pony-up so their tyrannical potentates can bask in the reflected glory of global TV coverage. Only Bernie Eccleston and FIFA have really grasped this important point, and we want in.’

Mr Testarossa – who holds a world record for having accumulated over 4000 points on his driving licence – hopes Mr Ecclestone will agree to join the Dalston GP organisation later this week. In anticipation the office is already being refitted with furniture borrowed from a primary school. (Mr Eccleston is 198 years old, two foot three and believed to be part hobbit.)

Race Organisers Pledge to ‘Keep Fatalities to Absolute Minimum’ This Year

Another event is to join Dalston’s already packed summer of sport. The Dalston Grand Prix – which took place on a trial basis last year – is to become an annual event, according to race organiser, Mr Stirling Testarossa.

‘Last year was a great success,’ Mr Testarossa told the Mercury at a glittering event launch at Greggs yesterday lunchtime, ‘although we obviously have a few teething problems to sort out.’

We asked whether organisers were taking added precautions this year, given the exceptional number if fatalities at last year’s event. ‘Oh, yeah, definitely,’ said Mr Testarossa, ‘safety is our number one concern.’

‘So this year we’ve taken the sensible precaution of paying off the Old Bill, like what Bernie Ecclestone does, probably. We’ll all be a lot safer without the rozzers sniffing around, let me tell you.’

Adjustments have also been made to route of the course. The Balls Pond Road will no longer feature as part of the circuit because ‘it borders on Islington, which would mean a whole load of other load of coppers to bribe.’

The new course will involve: ‘burning it up the Kingsland Road, up Stoke Newington, handbrake turn outside Abney Road cemetery then screw the knackers off it down to Shoreditch High Street. Winner is the first one to pull a doughnut outside that kebab shop after the railway bridge.’

‘We feel that we have created a top quality, high-speed motor racing circuit,’ continued Mr Testarossa, ‘something more in the character of Monza, rather than the more technical kind of venue such as Monaco or Suzuka.’

‘In fact, I would say that the stretch of our circuit going from Chicken Cottage to that bit just before Haggerston Overground Station is very much like Imola’s awe-inspiring Tamburello curve, before they ruined it by making it less lethal.’

The Imola circuit, home of the San Marino Grand Prix

Mr Testarossa expects the Dalston Grand Prix to be accepted into the international Formula 1 season ‘next year, probably’ but current race rules differ from those of the FIA.

‘Yeah, in order to make the event as accessible as possible, we’ve had to open it to different classifications of vehicles, much like they do at Le Mans,’ said Mr Testarossa, a bit defensively, we thought.

‘So we have introduced classifications for the following kinds of cars: road legal; cut-and-shut; hire; borrowed from neighbour on spurious grounds; and stolen. There is also a small specialised classification for ‘actually insured’ from which we expect the eventual winner to emerge.’

‘We had intended to include a class for ‘on fire’, but someone pointed out that pretty well everyone ended up in that class last year, so there didn’t seem much point. And we had intended to open up the race to electric vehicles, but they’ve proved unexpectedly hard to nick, apparently.’

Mr Testarossa insisted to us that the race would take place at four o’clock in the morning ‘in order to reproduce the glamour and atmosphere of nighttime racing as experienced at the Singapore Grand Prix,’ and was nothing to do with avoiding the filth.

In other carnage-related news: Mr Testarossa’s brother, Mr Clarkson Testarossa, is said to be holidaying ‘abroad, somewhere without an extradition treaty’, after setting fire to London Fields and blowing up his nephew, Terrence ‘little Tel’ Calhoun, while reaching – inadvisably as it turned out – for the stars.