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[killem2]

I instantly thought of these scene when I started reading this thread. Added my own f1 flavor.


[Fernando]: "You know them Smokeys got them CBs in the car now."

[Stephano]"I haven't worked that out yet, but I'm thinkin' about it."

[Fernando]:"I got an idea. Why don't we do this?" "If I say go to channel twenty-one, forget it. We ain't goin' to we're goin' to twenty-one, we're going to nineteen! "If I say go to channel six, forget it." "We go to three."

[Stephano]"I go to three. Perfect."

[Fernando]: "If I say go to channel two, we go to one."

[Stephano]"Two is one."

[Fernando]:"That'll confuse everybody."

[Stephano]"That'll confuse 'em."

[Stephano]"On the other hand,if we stayed on the odd channels, switched every time and started, in the basement, that'd work, too. That'd do it, too, wouldn't it?"

[Fernando]:"Well, yeah, that'd work too, I guess"

[Stephano]"Well, let's haul bottom."

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

On further contemplation, my hunch is the teams are required to speak English on race radio because of the current Concorde Agreement.

I've been through the lion's share of the applicable FIA regs and haven't found it there. And I doubt it would be in the sorts of regs I haven't checked, which is why I didn't bother. In fact, almost anything in the regs dealing with language -- publications and such -- is required to be provided in both English and French.

Full details of the Concorde Agreements are never made public but part of the reason they exist is to give Bernie the binding contractual guarantees he needs from the individual teams to market the sport's broadcast rights and to secure sponsorships. It stands to reason that one of the things it might include is an assurance from the teams that all race radio communications will be in the market's dominant language.

Provided they are speaking in English, even if Andrea should tell Fernando, "The pearl is in the river," the English-speaking audience will pick up on the fact they were communicating "in code." But if "the code" they use happens to be the Italian language, the monoglots in the audience can't be certain his engineer isn't reminding him the woman he'd slept with the night before thinks she left her mobile phone in his kit and wants it back at once, else she'll tell his wife Raquel, who conveniently doesn't speak Italian either.