Shekel Racing
Shekel Racing is an Israeli Formula One team active in the Formula One Rejects Microprose Grand Prix Series from the 2015 season onwards.
Background and formation
2011 was not a good year for perennial GP2 backmarkers David Price Racing. Frozen out of the series for their history of underperforming, the team regrouped after three barren years and entered the 2014 F1RMGP season. It was not a happy hunting ground as Bulgaria's "Fire King", Plamen Kralev, qualified the car only once in Monaco, becoming the first retirement after only six laps, and for second driver Christophe Hurni, not coming last in qualifying was a major achievement. Needless to say, he never once made it to race day. The only glimmer of hope for the team was in the mid-season Grand Reversal, when regular Viking Racing driver Jan Magnussen dragged the reticent DPR to sixth on the grid, and a sensational fourth in the race. (Hurni, meanwhile, came last in qualifying again - in Þorvaldur Einarsson's Viking, the car that had already won three races that year! Rejectful or what...) Nevertheless, after The Grand Reversal, the DPR cars never came anywhere near race day again, and the team was widely tipped to be the first to hit the wall at the end of the year.
Salvation, if such a word could ever be considered appropriate, came in the form of six-inch stilettos, a pinstripe pencil skirt, shoulder pads that would have put the cast of Wall Street to shame, and a bouffant hairstyle not seen since Peg Bundy graced American TV screens. The piercing shriek of "DADDY! I WANT IT! I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!" might have been resisted by more resilient teams, but DPR were hardly in a position to argue. Yes, it was Tallulah Shekelslike, eldest daughter of F1RMGP's ringmaster, and long-term wannabe-businesswoman with more failed businesses behind her than DPR had failures to qualify that season. She had been known to want her own racing team since she was still in nappies, but only now had she been able to get her way. Apparently, it was the car's hideous paint-job, applied by some stoned students with paintball guns, that had attracted her attention. Paying massively over the odds for the team with vast wads of her famous father's never-ending supply of cash, David Price and André Herck high-fived each other, took the money and scarpered. David Price Racing was now Shekel Racing, run under the flag of Israel to honour the Shekelslike family's origins, and the search for drivers began...
F1RMGP seasons
2015
One driver sprang instantly to mind: "Israel's first Formula One driver", who had only ever taken part in a practice session in a Minardi and was so slow as to be overtaken by stationary objects - that's right, it's Chanoch Nissany. The other was rather more obscure: he submitted his CV personally to Sir Bernard Shekelslike, practically demanding a drive in the series due to his great success in motor racing that had been even better than his cricket career. Sir Bernie could not be bothered with such arrogance and gave the CV to Tallulah, who obligingly swallowed the publicocrap about how this great man had immense success in Formula Ford, then had to turn down a GP2 drive because it clashed with his cricket matches, then spent a week at Rudskogen Motorsenter, beating all the Norwegian recruits and personally thrashing 2014 F1RMGP champion Þorvaldur Einarsson in a one-on-one race. Then there's some random rallies, the Andros Ice Racing Trophy, the Dakar, some previously unknown Touring Car championships - he'd won them all. A look at Cricinfo would soon have revealed the truth that all was not as it seemed, but she who says that her business sense is as sharp as her dress sense - which it isn't - would not be told otherwise. And that is how Adrian Shankar became Shekel's second driver for the 2015 season.
Prepare for mirth.
