April 14, 2011
Internet Is Down
Just a quick post before my workday begins... the internet provider for The Pond and its surrounding environs reports that there is a general failure in the area. As a result, there is zero internet at The Pond, the apartment complex Pond Central is part of, and indeed, a not-insignifigant part of Duckford that is serviced by said provider.
Blogging may be non-existent for a while... or it may be back up when I get home. We'll see.
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April 11, 2011
F1 on SPEED!: China 2011
From Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Shanghai, China is 2307 miles, or roughly a six hour flight. That's just a hop, skip and a jump for the F1 Circus, and that's why we've only got our first back-to-back races of the season. This weekend sees them racing at Shanghai International Circuit, yet another of the interminable Tilke tracks. Let's take a look at the map, shall we?
Last year, I was somewhat... rude during the "F1 on SPEED" entry, but was forced to eat my words (or lack of them) after the actual race, a chaotic affair that earned the honorable mention for Race of the Year in the 2010 F1U! Awards. It brought us both the Move of the Year and the Mooooo-oove of the Year as well. Amazing what a little rain can do... it can turn even a Tilke track into one of the most exciting layouts!
Okay, I'm done gushing. The last three races here have all been run in the wet; this made them exciting, but that's in spite of the track, not because of it. Fortunately, the forecast is for rain this time around, too... just like Malaysia. *sigh* I dunno, flip a coin and let me know how it turns up, okay?
Of course, the good people of SPEED will be providing all LIVE coverage for this race... no more "plausibly live" coverage of Quals anymore! It all starts Thursday night from 9pm to 1030pm, with streaming coverage of 1st Practice... maybe we'll get another locked wheel or something exciting like that! P2 comes along from 1am to 240am Friday morning on SPEED itself. P3 is streaming from 10pm to 11pm Friday night, in preparation for Saturday's Quals session from 1am to 230am.
Then comes the big one, the 2011 Grand Prix of China, live from 130am to 4am Sunday morning! There's probably a replay, but I can't be arsed to find out when it is. Heh.
Of course, all times are Pond Central. Add an hour if you're in Atlanta, subtract two if you're in San Francisco, and if you're on the Moon, add 1.29 seconds (assuming your base is directly over either The Pond), more or less. Hope you have a lot of oxygen bottles. Drop me a line, will ya, I'd like to hear from The Pond's first off-planet reader!
Last year, I was somewhat... rude during the "F1 on SPEED" entry, but was forced to eat my words (or lack of them) after the actual race, a chaotic affair that earned the honorable mention for Race of the Year in the 2010 F1U! Awards. It brought us both the Move of the Year and the Mooooo-oove of the Year as well. Amazing what a little rain can do... it can turn even a Tilke track into one of the most exciting layouts!
Okay, I'm done gushing. The last three races here have all been run in the wet; this made them exciting, but that's in spite of the track, not because of it. Fortunately, the forecast is for rain this time around, too... just like Malaysia. *sigh* I dunno, flip a coin and let me know how it turns up, okay?
Of course, the good people of SPEED will be providing all LIVE coverage for this race... no more "plausibly live" coverage of Quals anymore! It all starts Thursday night from 9pm to 1030pm, with streaming coverage of 1st Practice... maybe we'll get another locked wheel or something exciting like that! P2 comes along from 1am to 240am Friday morning on SPEED itself. P3 is streaming from 10pm to 11pm Friday night, in preparation for Saturday's Quals session from 1am to 230am.
Then comes the big one, the 2011 Grand Prix of China, live from 130am to 4am Sunday morning! There's probably a replay, but I can't be arsed to find out when it is. Heh.
Of course, all times are Pond Central. Add an hour if you're in Atlanta, subtract two if you're in San Francisco, and if you're on the Moon, add 1.29 seconds (assuming your base is directly over either The Pond), more or less. Hope you have a lot of oxygen bottles. Drop me a line, will ya, I'd like to hear from The Pond's first off-planet reader!
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April 10, 2011
F1 Update!: Malaysia 2011
The skies overhead were dark gray, heavy and humid, the ambient temperatures around 90 F... thoroughly unpleasant conditions for man and machine both. But would the rain come and throw the race into a tizzy? Or would tires, short-lived and prone to failure, prove to be defining aspect of the race? You're about to find out, because THIS is your F1U! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Malaysia.
*THE WEATHER: Surprisingly, the leaden skies never opened up. Other than a brief sprinkle right around the first pitstops, the race was run entirely in the dry. Of course, the timing of the sprinkles made for some tense moments up and down the pit lane. If a car came in for Inters and it stayed dry, that would be a wasted stop and a few laps run on slow slow tires. However, if a car stayed on slick tires and it began to rain, you're going to be turning laps 45 seconds slower than everybody else... if you can keep it on the track in the first place. Lots of crossed fingers, dice rolling, and coin flipping later, everybody made the right guess.
*THE TIRES: The combination of high temperatures and abrasive track surface made life hell on the Pirelli tires. Three stops were the norm today, four stops were not unheard of... though Gandalf Kobayashi managed to do the race on a two-stopper.
That's what the track looked like around Lap 40. That black stuff is known in the business as "clag," and it's what comes off the tires as they wear. You can see there's a clean line, but get off that you're taking your life in your own hands... literally. Your traction goes away fast when you're driving on little balls of rolled-up rubber. Unfortunately, it only took a few laps for the clag to build up to problem levels. While passing did occur today, it was mostly at the end of the back straight where there was no clag to speak of.
*THE RACE: Once the lights went out, Seb Vettel ran away and hid. Again. By the end of a very busy first lap that saw Grizzly Nick Heidfeld jump into second place, Mark Webber drop to 10th, and everybody else jumbled up, Vettel had a two second lead. However, he never got farther ahead than nine seconds during his cruise to victory, and spent most of it about five seconds in front of second place. That's good... except some of that might have been because neither Red Bull had a working KERS system; Vettel had overheating batteries and couldn't use his after Lap 25, while Webber's went into shutdown mode on the recon lap. Explains his horrid start. Behind Vettel, the race was one of the more confusing things we here at F1U! had ever seen. The multitude of pitstops made keeping accurate track of what was going on nigh impossible.
*AFTER THE RACE: McLaren's Lewis Hamilton had a bad day. Starting in second position, he got stuck behind Grizzly Nick Heidfeld for some 14 laps, ran out of soft tires at the halfway point, spent half of the contest on the slower hard tires and stumbled all the way down to seventh. At one point though, he was in third, being harried by Ferrari's HWMNBN, who was faster at that point in the race. Hamilton made two defensive moves to protect his position against a passing attempt by the Spaniard, who then clipped the McLaren coming out of the next turn. This sent the Ferrari to the pits for a new nose. Both drivers were brought before the Stewards post-race and handed 20sec. time penalties... HWMNBN for hitting Hamilton, Hamilton for his swerves. This penalty kicked Hamilton from seventh to eighth, while HWMNBN did not lose a position. F1U! thinks the penalties, while awfully ticky-tack, were both legit. We have yet to see Hamilton's swerving, though we've looked at the video a number of times, and the contact between the two sure looked like a racing incident to us. So it goes.
*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Grizzly Nick Heidfeld had a heck of a start, jumping from sixth to second by the second turn. He then grimly held off all comers for most of the race while Seb Vettel could never quite get away from him. In the end, he wound up on the third step of the podium after holding back a hard-charging Mark Webber for four laps at the end of the race. Good job, Griz!
*TEAM OF THE RACE: Red Bull. The death of their KERS unit made Webber's start understandable. His fight back up the order to finish fourth was impressive, and Vettel's runaway victory despite the lack of KERS had to have cold chills running down the back of every team in the pit lane. Honorable mention to Renault for their second podium in two races.
*MOVE OF THE RACE: After Lewis Hamilton pitted on Lap 14, he returned to the race in 7th position, right behind Seb Buemi's Toro Rosso in 6th and the Mercedes of Slappy Schumacher. With fresh tires, he was surely faster than either, but approaching the long final straight, he had a decision to make. Would he hang back, protect his tires, and get past them when they pitted? Or did he risk burning his last set of soft tires off the rims by asking them to help him pass both cars? Since this is Lewis Hamilton we're talking about, the answer should be obvious.
Using the aerodynamic tow of the two cars ahead, he slingshotted past Buemi, pulling even with Slappy. However, neither driver really wanted to give up their positions without a fight.
Slappy moved to the right to push Hamilton onto the dusty side of the circuit. This let Buemi, also slipsteaming, attack to the other side of the Silver Arrow. Three abreast they came down to the final turn... who would blink first?
As it turned out, the seven-time World Champion, pinched between two drivers young enough to be his sons, backed out, then dove into the pits. Hamilton gained two positions, Buemi one, and all three impressed by not turning their cars into smoking piles of carbon fiber. Hamilton gets the MotR, but all three could share it.
*MOOOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: Here's something you don't see every day...
That's right, the steering column of The Red Menace's Renault is completely disconnected from the car. Fortunately his brakes still worked so he could bring his car to a relatively safe halt off-track. But what caused his steering to break?
*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:
more...
*THE WEATHER: Surprisingly, the leaden skies never opened up. Other than a brief sprinkle right around the first pitstops, the race was run entirely in the dry. Of course, the timing of the sprinkles made for some tense moments up and down the pit lane. If a car came in for Inters and it stayed dry, that would be a wasted stop and a few laps run on slow slow tires. However, if a car stayed on slick tires and it began to rain, you're going to be turning laps 45 seconds slower than everybody else... if you can keep it on the track in the first place. Lots of crossed fingers, dice rolling, and coin flipping later, everybody made the right guess.
*THE TIRES: The combination of high temperatures and abrasive track surface made life hell on the Pirelli tires. Three stops were the norm today, four stops were not unheard of... though Gandalf Kobayashi managed to do the race on a two-stopper.
That's what the track looked like around Lap 40. That black stuff is known in the business as "clag," and it's what comes off the tires as they wear. You can see there's a clean line, but get off that you're taking your life in your own hands... literally. Your traction goes away fast when you're driving on little balls of rolled-up rubber. Unfortunately, it only took a few laps for the clag to build up to problem levels. While passing did occur today, it was mostly at the end of the back straight where there was no clag to speak of.
*THE RACE: Once the lights went out, Seb Vettel ran away and hid. Again. By the end of a very busy first lap that saw Grizzly Nick Heidfeld jump into second place, Mark Webber drop to 10th, and everybody else jumbled up, Vettel had a two second lead. However, he never got farther ahead than nine seconds during his cruise to victory, and spent most of it about five seconds in front of second place. That's good... except some of that might have been because neither Red Bull had a working KERS system; Vettel had overheating batteries and couldn't use his after Lap 25, while Webber's went into shutdown mode on the recon lap. Explains his horrid start. Behind Vettel, the race was one of the more confusing things we here at F1U! had ever seen. The multitude of pitstops made keeping accurate track of what was going on nigh impossible.
*AFTER THE RACE: McLaren's Lewis Hamilton had a bad day. Starting in second position, he got stuck behind Grizzly Nick Heidfeld for some 14 laps, ran out of soft tires at the halfway point, spent half of the contest on the slower hard tires and stumbled all the way down to seventh. At one point though, he was in third, being harried by Ferrari's HWMNBN, who was faster at that point in the race. Hamilton made two defensive moves to protect his position against a passing attempt by the Spaniard, who then clipped the McLaren coming out of the next turn. This sent the Ferrari to the pits for a new nose. Both drivers were brought before the Stewards post-race and handed 20sec. time penalties... HWMNBN for hitting Hamilton, Hamilton for his swerves. This penalty kicked Hamilton from seventh to eighth, while HWMNBN did not lose a position. F1U! thinks the penalties, while awfully ticky-tack, were both legit. We have yet to see Hamilton's swerving, though we've looked at the video a number of times, and the contact between the two sure looked like a racing incident to us. So it goes.
*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Grizzly Nick Heidfeld had a heck of a start, jumping from sixth to second by the second turn. He then grimly held off all comers for most of the race while Seb Vettel could never quite get away from him. In the end, he wound up on the third step of the podium after holding back a hard-charging Mark Webber for four laps at the end of the race. Good job, Griz!
*TEAM OF THE RACE: Red Bull. The death of their KERS unit made Webber's start understandable. His fight back up the order to finish fourth was impressive, and Vettel's runaway victory despite the lack of KERS had to have cold chills running down the back of every team in the pit lane. Honorable mention to Renault for their second podium in two races.
*MOVE OF THE RACE: After Lewis Hamilton pitted on Lap 14, he returned to the race in 7th position, right behind Seb Buemi's Toro Rosso in 6th and the Mercedes of Slappy Schumacher. With fresh tires, he was surely faster than either, but approaching the long final straight, he had a decision to make. Would he hang back, protect his tires, and get past them when they pitted? Or did he risk burning his last set of soft tires off the rims by asking them to help him pass both cars? Since this is Lewis Hamilton we're talking about, the answer should be obvious.
Using the aerodynamic tow of the two cars ahead, he slingshotted past Buemi, pulling even with Slappy. However, neither driver really wanted to give up their positions without a fight.
Slappy moved to the right to push Hamilton onto the dusty side of the circuit. This let Buemi, also slipsteaming, attack to the other side of the Silver Arrow. Three abreast they came down to the final turn... who would blink first?
As it turned out, the seven-time World Champion, pinched between two drivers young enough to be his sons, backed out, then dove into the pits. Hamilton gained two positions, Buemi one, and all three impressed by not turning their cars into smoking piles of carbon fiber. Hamilton gets the MotR, but all three could share it.
*MOOOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: Here's something you don't see every day...
That's right, the steering column of The Red Menace's Renault is completely disconnected from the car. Fortunately his brakes still worked so he could bring his car to a relatively safe halt off-track. But what caused his steering to break?
Wheeeeeee!
Yeah, that'll do it. Petrov ran wide into a turn and wound up going agricultural. He thought he could keep going at full speed across the grass... he was wrong. Remember, F1 cars are totally unsprung, and the driver doesn't have a seat; they sit on the floor of the cockpit. The landing must have really, really hurt... maybe the Mooooooo-ooootR will ease the pain.*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:
more...
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April 09, 2011
F1 Quals: Malaysia 2011
In Australia, Seb Vettel and Red Bull blew the rest of the field away on his pole lap to the tune of 8/10ths of a second. He then went on to run away and hide from everybody during the race. But could he continue that dominance in Malaysia, or could McLaren, Ferrari or even the resurgent Renaults kick the World Champion in the shins? Let's look at the provisional grid for Sunday's Grand Prix of Malaysia:
All Skate, ladies and gentlemen, everybody All Skate! Not only did HRT make the field, but even Kittylitter made it with nearly a second to spare. Vitantonio Liuzzi was actually closer to the Virgins than he was to his own teammate. A rousing round of applause to the tiny team from Murcia, everybody... HRT has officially joined the 2011 F1 season! This bodes well for the rest of the season, at least as far as having a full grid goes.
Now for the important stuff. Yes, Seb Vettel took pole position, but the difference has been much reduced. .104 of a second is a much more manageable margin to deal with for the rest of the field to deal with in comparison to the sound thrashing handed out at Australia. I think we're seeing a repeat of the Red Bull RB6 with this year's RB7: great in the corners, great under braking, but not quite as fast on the straights. For you WWII buffs out there, the RB6 was the Mitsubishi A6M Zero of the F1 world: nimble, but not as fast as, say, the F6F Hellcat. Australia isn't the fastest circuit in the world with no true high-speed zones to speak of, and so would play right into the RB7's strengths. Malaysia, with its two gigantically long straights, would be more to the favor of the McLarens of the world.
However, there is an ominous side to all of this for the rest of the field. Vettel only put in 12 laps for the entirety of Quals. In comparison, Hamilton did 19, Webber 17, Button 15, and HWMNBN 14. On a circuit that's proving to be murder on the new Pirellis, those laps not turned on his tire allotment might make a small but crucial difference in the race.
Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, the top five spots on the grid fall exactly the same way they did in Australia. Heck, even the sixth spot is held by a Renault, just like in the first race of the year, though this time driven by Grizzly Nick Heidfeld rather than The Red Menace.
So there you have it, folks. We might just have ourselves a race tomorrow, depending on who makes it to Turn 1 first, and how much of a lead he has. F1 Update! will be here Sunday... see you then!
All Skate, ladies and gentlemen, everybody All Skate! Not only did HRT make the field, but even Kittylitter made it with nearly a second to spare. Vitantonio Liuzzi was actually closer to the Virgins than he was to his own teammate. A rousing round of applause to the tiny team from Murcia, everybody... HRT has officially joined the 2011 F1 season! This bodes well for the rest of the season, at least as far as having a full grid goes.
Now for the important stuff. Yes, Seb Vettel took pole position, but the difference has been much reduced. .104 of a second is a much more manageable margin to deal with for the rest of the field to deal with in comparison to the sound thrashing handed out at Australia. I think we're seeing a repeat of the Red Bull RB6 with this year's RB7: great in the corners, great under braking, but not quite as fast on the straights. For you WWII buffs out there, the RB6 was the Mitsubishi A6M Zero of the F1 world: nimble, but not as fast as, say, the F6F Hellcat. Australia isn't the fastest circuit in the world with no true high-speed zones to speak of, and so would play right into the RB7's strengths. Malaysia, with its two gigantically long straights, would be more to the favor of the McLarens of the world.
However, there is an ominous side to all of this for the rest of the field. Vettel only put in 12 laps for the entirety of Quals. In comparison, Hamilton did 19, Webber 17, Button 15, and HWMNBN 14. On a circuit that's proving to be murder on the new Pirellis, those laps not turned on his tire allotment might make a small but crucial difference in the race.
Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, the top five spots on the grid fall exactly the same way they did in Australia. Heck, even the sixth spot is held by a Renault, just like in the first race of the year, though this time driven by Grizzly Nick Heidfeld rather than The Red Menace.
So there you have it, folks. We might just have ourselves a race tomorrow, depending on who makes it to Turn 1 first, and how much of a lead he has. F1 Update! will be here Sunday... see you then!
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April 08, 2011
F1 Practice: Malaysia 2011
Nothing particularly exciting to report from the 2nd Practice session, to be honest, so it's time to discuss some goings-on in the F1 world while I wait for P3 to begin streaming.
First up, if you didn't believe your eyes when you saw the picture of Renault's massive flat spot, when Grizzly Nick Heidfeld had a brake lock-up on him, here's more proof:
Would have ground the tire down even farther if the bottom of the car hadn't've stopped it. It turns out that the both Renaults had the same problem: defective uprights. The upright is the part that lets the wheel assembly attach to the suspension. It's what the brakes mount to, it's where the wheel hub sits, etc etc etc. On a street car, the wheels mount to the axle; on a F1 car, the point of contact is the upright. Renault thinks they had a bad manufacturing batch, which is why both cars had the same type of failure on the same day. It manifested itself differently, of course (Heidfeld's caused the brake to lock, Petrov's was more severe, causing a high-speed failure of the suspension), but the same part was to blame. Replacements were tested, installed, and both cars were back on track late in P2.
Custard d'Ambrosio's suspension failure was tracked to a clevis bracket that attached one of the suspension's rods to the body of the car. The damage done was severe enough that he never got into P2.
What I thought was a transmission problem for Ferrari early in P1 turned out to not be so. The team was doing aerodynamic testing of some piece or another, and required the cars to circulate at a specific speed all the way around the track... ergo, no upshifting. Allegedly.
Narain Kittylitter's smoking HRT turned out to be nothing more than a really bad oil leak. No blown engine, which is good news for the team. When Vitantonio Liuzzi's car came to a halt on track in P2, nobody was quite sure why. Turns out his gearbox got a little cornfuzzled when he took a curb a little too enthusiastically. That sort of thing can happen to any car at any time... the shock transmitted itself to the gear selector and in lieu of trying to engage two gears at once (bad, leads to a gearbox full of neutrals) it decided to engage nothing and go into petulant child mode (not great, but a lot better than a handful of metal shavings).
The tires really are having problems at this track. At one point during P2 track temps were well above 120°F, which improved grip but accelerated wear. The abrasive surface at Sepang is also causing the tires to wear faster; look for three stops for sure, barring weather. Speaking of weather, everybody is expressing surprise at the lack of rain so far, while commenting that every day the teams have been in Malaysia, it has rained at 4pm local time. Both quals and the race will be in progress at 4pm on their respective days.
Quals tomorrow morning, see you then!
First up, if you didn't believe your eyes when you saw the picture of Renault's massive flat spot, when Grizzly Nick Heidfeld had a brake lock-up on him, here's more proof:
Would have ground the tire down even farther if the bottom of the car hadn't've stopped it. It turns out that the both Renaults had the same problem: defective uprights. The upright is the part that lets the wheel assembly attach to the suspension. It's what the brakes mount to, it's where the wheel hub sits, etc etc etc. On a street car, the wheels mount to the axle; on a F1 car, the point of contact is the upright. Renault thinks they had a bad manufacturing batch, which is why both cars had the same type of failure on the same day. It manifested itself differently, of course (Heidfeld's caused the brake to lock, Petrov's was more severe, causing a high-speed failure of the suspension), but the same part was to blame. Replacements were tested, installed, and both cars were back on track late in P2.
Custard d'Ambrosio's suspension failure was tracked to a clevis bracket that attached one of the suspension's rods to the body of the car. The damage done was severe enough that he never got into P2.
What I thought was a transmission problem for Ferrari early in P1 turned out to not be so. The team was doing aerodynamic testing of some piece or another, and required the cars to circulate at a specific speed all the way around the track... ergo, no upshifting. Allegedly.
Narain Kittylitter's smoking HRT turned out to be nothing more than a really bad oil leak. No blown engine, which is good news for the team. When Vitantonio Liuzzi's car came to a halt on track in P2, nobody was quite sure why. Turns out his gearbox got a little cornfuzzled when he took a curb a little too enthusiastically. That sort of thing can happen to any car at any time... the shock transmitted itself to the gear selector and in lieu of trying to engage two gears at once (bad, leads to a gearbox full of neutrals) it decided to engage nothing and go into petulant child mode (not great, but a lot better than a handful of metal shavings).
The tires really are having problems at this track. At one point during P2 track temps were well above 120°F, which improved grip but accelerated wear. The abrasive surface at Sepang is also causing the tires to wear faster; look for three stops for sure, barring weather. Speaking of weather, everybody is expressing surprise at the lack of rain so far, while commenting that every day the teams have been in Malaysia, it has rained at 4pm local time. Both quals and the race will be in progress at 4pm on their respective days.
Quals tomorrow morning, see you then!
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April 07, 2011
F1 Practice 1: Malaysia 2011 (LIVE)
Well, this is turning out to be more exciting that I thought! I brought up speedtv.com's live streaming feed of Practice 1 from Malaysia, wanting to get reacquainted with the circuit and hoping to catch a glimpse of the HRTs maybe making their first laps of the 2011 season. And indeed, HRT brought out Narain Kittylitter 19 minutes into the session.
That went well.
Okay, oops, blown engine, right? It's worse than that: the engine was smoking like it had just elected a Pope as he pulled out of his pit stall. Now, it's not uncommon for a F1 engine to squirt a little oil onto the exhaust or some other hot thing in the back of the car, particularly at the start of a session (Mark Webber's Red Bull did just that at... the Aussie GP? in 2010, for example... race began, he began to move, and poof! Big cloud of smoke.). But this time, the HRT kept on smoking as it rolled down the pit lane, into Turn 1, through Turn 2, around Turn 3... you get the picture. Eventually, Kittylitter called back to the pit wall: "There's a lot of smoke." Pit wall, sounding depressed: "Switch it off, Narain." A few minutes later, Vitantonio Liuzzi came out, put in an installation lap (to make sure everything worked), then went right back in. So we might be seeing a HRT in Quals, and the chances are good that there won't be a single insect anywhere near the track afterward!
Then Felipe Massa brought out his Ferrari. It all sounded fine until he hit fourth gear (maybe 5th)... then he started bouncing off the rev limiter and couldn't shift up. Into the pits he went, and out came HWMNBN... who had the same thing happen, in the exact same place on the track. As of this writing, with 33 minutes left in the session, neither has re-emerged from the pits.
Then Grizzly Nick Heidfeld brought his Renault out onto the circuit.
"Okay," I hear you saying, "he locked up a tire going into a turn, so what?" One little problem: that's not a braking zone he's in. There's no commentary from the Legendary Announce Team (or anybody else, for that matter), so I can only speculate, but it sure looked like one of his brakes just decided to clamp on unbidden... and stay on. For almost an entire lap.
Yup, now that's a flat spot. That screencap is from towards the end of the lap, after a good portion of the tire has been ground away. Note the position of the "R" and "NH" on the sidewall in the two pictures... that tire hasn't moved a whit. By the time The Grizzly One made it into the pits, he was leaving a trail of sparks and debris behind him as the FIA legality plank was quickly rendered into its component atoms and carbon fiber began to be shed. Eesh.
Vitantonio Liuzzi just posted a timed lap in his HRT! Okay, yes, it was seven seconds slower than the fastest of the session, but he put in a timed lap! Actually, seven seconds off the pace isn't so terribly bad, all things considered...
More tomorrow evening.
UPDATE: No sooner had I typed that last sentence than Renault's Vitaly Petrov set off on a hot lap... and had a little tire problem of his own.
He did say on the radio that "the suspension, it was break (sic)," so take that for what it's worth.
More if someone else has something go bad.
ANOTHER UPDATE: No sooner had I typed that sentence than Virgin's Custard d'Ambrosio had a suspension failure of his own.
One begins to notice a trend occurring, doesn't one? I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with this batch of Pirellis... I suppose an imbalanced tire could cause suspension damage, but you'd think the teams would have noticed that. Guess we'll have to wait on that one.
The session is over now, so I won't have the chance to cause any more incidents by saying "I'll have more tomorrow." Yeesh...
That went well.
Okay, oops, blown engine, right? It's worse than that: the engine was smoking like it had just elected a Pope as he pulled out of his pit stall. Now, it's not uncommon for a F1 engine to squirt a little oil onto the exhaust or some other hot thing in the back of the car, particularly at the start of a session (Mark Webber's Red Bull did just that at... the Aussie GP? in 2010, for example... race began, he began to move, and poof! Big cloud of smoke.). But this time, the HRT kept on smoking as it rolled down the pit lane, into Turn 1, through Turn 2, around Turn 3... you get the picture. Eventually, Kittylitter called back to the pit wall: "There's a lot of smoke." Pit wall, sounding depressed: "Switch it off, Narain." A few minutes later, Vitantonio Liuzzi came out, put in an installation lap (to make sure everything worked), then went right back in. So we might be seeing a HRT in Quals, and the chances are good that there won't be a single insect anywhere near the track afterward!
Then Felipe Massa brought out his Ferrari. It all sounded fine until he hit fourth gear (maybe 5th)... then he started bouncing off the rev limiter and couldn't shift up. Into the pits he went, and out came HWMNBN... who had the same thing happen, in the exact same place on the track. As of this writing, with 33 minutes left in the session, neither has re-emerged from the pits.
Then Grizzly Nick Heidfeld brought his Renault out onto the circuit.
"Okay," I hear you saying, "he locked up a tire going into a turn, so what?" One little problem: that's not a braking zone he's in. There's no commentary from the Legendary Announce Team (or anybody else, for that matter), so I can only speculate, but it sure looked like one of his brakes just decided to clamp on unbidden... and stay on. For almost an entire lap.
Yup, now that's a flat spot. That screencap is from towards the end of the lap, after a good portion of the tire has been ground away. Note the position of the "R" and "NH" on the sidewall in the two pictures... that tire hasn't moved a whit. By the time The Grizzly One made it into the pits, he was leaving a trail of sparks and debris behind him as the FIA legality plank was quickly rendered into its component atoms and carbon fiber began to be shed. Eesh.
Vitantonio Liuzzi just posted a timed lap in his HRT! Okay, yes, it was seven seconds slower than the fastest of the session, but he put in a timed lap! Actually, seven seconds off the pace isn't so terribly bad, all things considered...
More tomorrow evening.
UPDATE: No sooner had I typed that last sentence than Renault's Vitaly Petrov set off on a hot lap... and had a little tire problem of his own.
He did say on the radio that "the suspension, it was break (sic)," so take that for what it's worth.
More if someone else has something go bad.
ANOTHER UPDATE: No sooner had I typed that sentence than Virgin's Custard d'Ambrosio had a suspension failure of his own.
One begins to notice a trend occurring, doesn't one? I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with this batch of Pirellis... I suppose an imbalanced tire could cause suspension damage, but you'd think the teams would have noticed that. Guess we'll have to wait on that one.
The session is over now, so I won't have the chance to cause any more incidents by saying "I'll have more tomorrow." Yeesh...
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April 06, 2011
Random Anime Picture #61: Not Looking Good
It isn't every day an anime tells you what it thinks about itself in the first minute of the first episode...
-Sengoku Otome Momoiro Paradox, Ep01
I'd love to tell you what's going on in SOMP, but I came to the first eyecatch and realized I expected the show to be ending at that point. When 12 minutes feels like 24, that is not a good sign. There's a movement afoot to make this show the next RRG!-esque Bad Anime Reviews. I don't think I can take that right now... let me have some time to regrow the dead brain cells, huh?
-Sengoku Otome Momoiro Paradox, Ep01
I'd love to tell you what's going on in SOMP, but I came to the first eyecatch and realized I expected the show to be ending at that point. When 12 minutes feels like 24, that is not a good sign. There's a movement afoot to make this show the next RRG!-esque Bad Anime Reviews. I don't think I can take that right now... let me have some time to regrow the dead brain cells, huh?
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April 05, 2011
Rio Rainbow Gate! Final Thoughts
Before I get started, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Rio Rainbow Gate! is not a good anime series. I don't even think I can manipulate things in a way to even make it "average." It's just not good. That's all there is to it.
Having said that, let me try and explain just exactly why I not only watched all thirteen episodes, but spent hours on episodic reviews for each one. This is going to come as quite the shock to anybody who's read those writeups, but I gotta admit... I think I actually liked RRG!. In my review of the first episode, I described a concept known as "fun-bad." Fun-bad is a point in which something is so terrible that it's fun to experience. I used the 2010 Chicago Cubs as an example; losing a pop fly in the sun is bad. Losing a pop fly in a gatorade bucket is fun-bad. I also said that RRG! blew past fun-bad so quickly that it never acknowledged the existence of such a possibility. In that, I was wrong.
RRG! has a sense of the ridiculous about it that it seemed to embrace, intentionally or otherwise, as the show went on. Stupidly over-the-top card games were just the beginning. Supernatural possession, holographic space sharks, flying hotels, magical spells that only affect things made in China, giant water slides as casino games, headless androids, tentacle monsters, and many many things more... all of this is not only not uncommon in Rio's World, but not even thought of as strange. It's a world where people can walk around in a shrimp costume and not be looked at twice.
As much as I joked about how the show didn't have a plot and any attempt to add one should result in extreme measures being taken against the Production Staff, there actually was one... and an evolving one at that. What started out as a "gotta-catch-em-all/monster-of-the-week" thing with the Gate battles (each one more over-the-top that the preceding) turned into a story of revenge, betrayal and redemption with the inclusion of Rina. To be sure, it wasn't a deep plot by any means, but it did become something slightly thicker than your average sheet of paper. Praising with faint damns, I know, but there you are.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really have a reason for liking RRG! other than the awe-inspiring level of stupid that pervades every frame of the series. Anime, like everything else in life, doesn't have to be Art to be entertaining. In fact, I'd place RRG! as my second-favorite series of the Winter anime season, behind only Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It certainly ranks far above shows like Fractale and Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka, two series that had a lot of promise that flamed out spectacularly. RRG! had no such pretensions, and rose above my expectations. To be fair, I had nothing but disdain for RRG! so that's no great achievement, but it's better than a kick in the teeth.
Oh, who am I kidding?
more...
Having said that, let me try and explain just exactly why I not only watched all thirteen episodes, but spent hours on episodic reviews for each one. This is going to come as quite the shock to anybody who's read those writeups, but I gotta admit... I think I actually liked RRG!. In my review of the first episode, I described a concept known as "fun-bad." Fun-bad is a point in which something is so terrible that it's fun to experience. I used the 2010 Chicago Cubs as an example; losing a pop fly in the sun is bad. Losing a pop fly in a gatorade bucket is fun-bad. I also said that RRG! blew past fun-bad so quickly that it never acknowledged the existence of such a possibility. In that, I was wrong.
RRG! has a sense of the ridiculous about it that it seemed to embrace, intentionally or otherwise, as the show went on. Stupidly over-the-top card games were just the beginning. Supernatural possession, holographic space sharks, flying hotels, magical spells that only affect things made in China, giant water slides as casino games, headless androids, tentacle monsters, and many many things more... all of this is not only not uncommon in Rio's World, but not even thought of as strange. It's a world where people can walk around in a shrimp costume and not be looked at twice.
As much as I joked about how the show didn't have a plot and any attempt to add one should result in extreme measures being taken against the Production Staff, there actually was one... and an evolving one at that. What started out as a "gotta-catch-em-all/monster-of-the-week" thing with the Gate battles (each one more over-the-top that the preceding) turned into a story of revenge, betrayal and redemption with the inclusion of Rina. To be sure, it wasn't a deep plot by any means, but it did become something slightly thicker than your average sheet of paper. Praising with faint damns, I know, but there you are.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really have a reason for liking RRG! other than the awe-inspiring level of stupid that pervades every frame of the series. Anime, like everything else in life, doesn't have to be Art to be entertaining. In fact, I'd place RRG! as my second-favorite series of the Winter anime season, behind only Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It certainly ranks far above shows like Fractale and Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka, two series that had a lot of promise that flamed out spectacularly. RRG! had no such pretensions, and rose above my expectations. To be fair, I had nothing but disdain for RRG! so that's no great achievement, but it's better than a kick in the teeth.
Oh, who am I kidding?
more...
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April 04, 2011
F1 on SPEED!: Malaysia 2011
Leaving the season opener in Australia in the rear-view mirror, we head northwest a couple thousand miles to Malaysia this weekend. Let us take a look at the track map before we get to the good stuff:
As one can see, the Sepang International Circuit is dominated by two massive straightaways that should allow the Drag Reduction System to really show what it can do, unlike Australia's too-short straight. There is one factor that is even more important to any race here than the track layout itself, and that's the weather.
For Australia, the weather was surprisingly cool, sunny but only around 65°F. The forecast for the race weekend in Malaysia is temperatures around 90°F, very humid, and a lot of rain every day. The heat and track surface will cause the Pirelli tires to wear faster. Indeed, the tire manufacturer is predicting four stops, instead of three for Australia. Of course, they didn't exactly get that right in some cases, so who knows? And then there's the weather. If indeed it's raining during the race, just how will the Inters and Wets hold up? Earlier this year, "the rain in Spain falls mainly on test days" was the mantra, but the number of laps turned were rather low... nobody really knows what the wear will be. They might be longer-lived than the dry tires for all we know.
Another thing we don't know is what will happen if we get rain during Quals. Throw everybody into a cocked hat, pick a name at random, and there's your polesitter. Well, except for Virgin and HRT, of course. One thing we did learn during practice at Australia is that, if anybody is on-track with wet weather tires, the DRS is turned off and nobody can use it. Probably won't mean anything, but you never know if that'll make a difference.
Fortunately, we've got our usual sterling coverage coming from the good folks at SPEED. To start with, we get Friday's first practice session, streaming live at speedtv.com, from 9pm to 1030pm on Thursday night. Practice 2 will also be live, though that'll be on SPEED itself, from 1am to 240am Friday morning. P3 will be streamed live on Friday night, from 11pm to 12midnight. Will HRT make an appearance this time around, or will they merely be spectators again? They say they'll be on-track, but they said that two weeks ago, too.
The all-important Quals session will be plausibly live from 3am to 430am on Saturday morning... no way the F1U! crew will be awake for that, uh-uh. Finally, it all comes down to the Grand Prix of Malaysia, live from 230am to 5am on Sunday morning. There will be two replays, from 130pm to 4pm on Sunday afternoon, and from 11am to 130pm on Tuesday, April 12th.
Of course, F1 Update! will be all over it as much as we are physically able! See you then!
As one can see, the Sepang International Circuit is dominated by two massive straightaways that should allow the Drag Reduction System to really show what it can do, unlike Australia's too-short straight. There is one factor that is even more important to any race here than the track layout itself, and that's the weather.
For Australia, the weather was surprisingly cool, sunny but only around 65°F. The forecast for the race weekend in Malaysia is temperatures around 90°F, very humid, and a lot of rain every day. The heat and track surface will cause the Pirelli tires to wear faster. Indeed, the tire manufacturer is predicting four stops, instead of three for Australia. Of course, they didn't exactly get that right in some cases, so who knows? And then there's the weather. If indeed it's raining during the race, just how will the Inters and Wets hold up? Earlier this year, "the rain in Spain falls mainly on test days" was the mantra, but the number of laps turned were rather low... nobody really knows what the wear will be. They might be longer-lived than the dry tires for all we know.
Another thing we don't know is what will happen if we get rain during Quals. Throw everybody into a cocked hat, pick a name at random, and there's your polesitter. Well, except for Virgin and HRT, of course. One thing we did learn during practice at Australia is that, if anybody is on-track with wet weather tires, the DRS is turned off and nobody can use it. Probably won't mean anything, but you never know if that'll make a difference.
Fortunately, we've got our usual sterling coverage coming from the good folks at SPEED. To start with, we get Friday's first practice session, streaming live at speedtv.com, from 9pm to 1030pm on Thursday night. Practice 2 will also be live, though that'll be on SPEED itself, from 1am to 240am Friday morning. P3 will be streamed live on Friday night, from 11pm to 12midnight. Will HRT make an appearance this time around, or will they merely be spectators again? They say they'll be on-track, but they said that two weeks ago, too.
The all-important Quals session will be plausibly live from 3am to 430am on Saturday morning... no way the F1U! crew will be awake for that, uh-uh. Finally, it all comes down to the Grand Prix of Malaysia, live from 230am to 5am on Sunday morning. There will be two replays, from 130pm to 4pm on Sunday afternoon, and from 11am to 130pm on Tuesday, April 12th.
Of course, F1 Update! will be all over it as much as we are physically able! See you then!
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April 03, 2011
Rio Rainbow Gate! ep13
Captive's Log Day 89: It's been nearly three months since I was last free. Nearly three months since the torture began. Nearly three months since my sanity began to fade. Nearly three months since I was first subjected to the nightmare that is Rio Rainbow Gate!. How was I to know what that first viewing would do to me, both short- and long-term? At first I resisted... I knew what the Production Staff was trying to do, and I refused to let them break me. Slowly, however, they weaseled their way under my barriers and I began to... care. Care about the show. Care about the characters. Care about the ultimate outcome. It was Stockholm Syndrome, a classic case if there ever was one. The bastards nearly had me then. Somehow, I got through it with some shreds of sanity and human decency left. Then I began to hate. I nurtured that hate and rage and anger as a way to get me through whatever they decided to do to me. It worked. I've managed to make it to the end. One last episode to go and then I'm a free man. There's nothing they can do to me that'll make the pain any worse, for I can see the end. I've done it. I'll have survived Rio Rainbow Gate!. Come, Production Staff, one last dance... for old time's sake. Then I'll quit you forever.
We pick up mere minutes after the end of Ep12, with the final Gate Battle still in progress. Our Heroine and her sister are locked in a cutthroat game of poker, the first to win fifteen hands is victorious. The winner gets all 13 Gates, becomes only the second Most Valuable Card Dealer ever, and will get to "see the rainbow," whatever that means. The loser? We'd rather not think about that, but it probably involves holographic flying sharks. When we last saw the game, Rina was up two games to zero. The situation has changed somewhat.
The looks on the faces of the Usual Suspects says it all. Stunned disbelief. Growing despair. A sense of loss, a sense of failure. Depression. Sadness. Hopelessness. In short, the entire Rio Rainbow Gate! experience, all in one screenshot. Our Heroine has lost thirteen hands in a row, and as we watch, the fourteenth goes to Rina as well.
The amount of raw smug coming off of Rina is amazing as she mocks her sister's performance. The culmination of her life's ambition is at hand, her vengeance nearly complete.
And yet, for someone about to be completely embarrassed, Rio seems to be remarkably unconcerned... almost like she knows something nobody else does. In fact, her attitude begins to rankle Rina, who actually gets angry. The Owner yells from the crowd that Rio doesn't need to throw the game to make up for her past transgressions against her sister, that it's all right to win... and Rina goes full psycho, screaming accusations across the table. Rio just smiles and says something to the effect of "it's just the way the cards are falling. Isn't that the way casino games are supposed to work?" The final hand is dealt.
more...
We pick up mere minutes after the end of Ep12, with the final Gate Battle still in progress. Our Heroine and her sister are locked in a cutthroat game of poker, the first to win fifteen hands is victorious. The winner gets all 13 Gates, becomes only the second Most Valuable Card Dealer ever, and will get to "see the rainbow," whatever that means. The loser? We'd rather not think about that, but it probably involves holographic flying sharks. When we last saw the game, Rina was up two games to zero. The situation has changed somewhat.
The looks on the faces of the Usual Suspects says it all. Stunned disbelief. Growing despair. A sense of loss, a sense of failure. Depression. Sadness. Hopelessness. In short, the entire Rio Rainbow Gate! experience, all in one screenshot. Our Heroine has lost thirteen hands in a row, and as we watch, the fourteenth goes to Rina as well.
The amount of raw smug coming off of Rina is amazing as she mocks her sister's performance. The culmination of her life's ambition is at hand, her vengeance nearly complete.
And yet, for someone about to be completely embarrassed, Rio seems to be remarkably unconcerned... almost like she knows something nobody else does. In fact, her attitude begins to rankle Rina, who actually gets angry. The Owner yells from the crowd that Rio doesn't need to throw the game to make up for her past transgressions against her sister, that it's all right to win... and Rina goes full psycho, screaming accusations across the table. Rio just smiles and says something to the effect of "it's just the way the cards are falling. Isn't that the way casino games are supposed to work?" The final hand is dealt.
more...
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April 02, 2011
बतखों from India
As readers of The Pond may be aware, Ph.Duck was in India for a couple of weeks not too long ago. After a fruitless search for any promotional materials for the upcoming Grand Prix of India (aside: nobody he spoke to had any idea what he was talking about), he brought me back these:
They're made out of papier-mâché, would you believe? They had one previous owner, for they were also Momzerduck's. The first time she visited Ph.Duck in India, she was there for a month and decided to lend a bit of her decorating touch to his abode. These two ducks became a tradition... each time she visited the Subcontinent (two times? Three? I don't remember...), they were placed on a shelf in the domicile. When she left, they stayed behind, in a storage box until she returned.
Now they've made the long trip to Pond Central.
They're made out of papier-mâché, would you believe? They had one previous owner, for they were also Momzerduck's. The first time she visited Ph.Duck in India, she was there for a month and decided to lend a bit of her decorating touch to his abode. These two ducks became a tradition... each time she visited the Subcontinent (two times? Three? I don't remember...), they were placed on a shelf in the domicile. When she left, they stayed behind, in a storage box until she returned.
Now they've made the long trip to Pond Central.
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April 01, 2011
A Visitor To The U
I was on break at the University of Chicken this afternoon, pecking away at my meal of seeds, corn, oats and wheat, with a side of pizza, when I decided to step outside for a while. The weather wasn't particularly nice, but acceptable enough. At least it wasn't snowing like they said it was going to do, right? And me with my warm feathers in the bookstore, no less. Anyway, as I wandered around I found that the U Chicken had a special visitor!
Mr Thomas A Turkey, esq., was a guest lecturer today, it seems. Not every day one of our cousins drop by... I was hoping for a visit by some potatoes, cranberries, and a plate of stuffing, but no such luck I'm afraid. I'm somewhat torn: on one wing, he's quite the ugly thing, but on the other, its plumage was fairly colorful. Odd dichotomy there.
Well, I'm no philosopher, I'm just a chicken. I'll let the ducks figure it out.
Mr Thomas A Turkey, esq., was a guest lecturer today, it seems. Not every day one of our cousins drop by... I was hoping for a visit by some potatoes, cranberries, and a plate of stuffing, but no such luck I'm afraid. I'm somewhat torn: on one wing, he's quite the ugly thing, but on the other, its plumage was fairly colorful. Odd dichotomy there.
Well, I'm no philosopher, I'm just a chicken. I'll let the ducks figure it out.
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March 30, 2011
Iowa's Bathtub
The USS Iowa was the namesake for what was arguably the best class of battleships ever built. Launched in 1942, she was commissioned in 1943. Displacing 45000 tons, her engine rooms could still move her through the water at a blistering 33kts. Her main armor belt was 12" thick, while her three main turrets were armored to nearly 20" in thickness. Those turrets carried three 16"/50cal rifles each, and each of those guns could fire a 2700lb shell over 23 miles. Twenty 5"/38cal guns formed her secondary battery, and could be used for both anti-aircraft or anti-surface work. Four of the mammoth warships were built.
But only one had a bathtub.
Late in 1943, the heads of state for the three major Allied countries, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt, were to meet in Tehran for a strategy conference. The US Navy choose the USS Iowa to take President Roosevelt on the first leg of the journey to Iran, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. But there was a small snag. President Roosevelt had developed an illness in 1921, at the time diagnosed as polio, that had paralyzed him from the waist down. He could only walk by swinging his legs laboriously via a twist of his torso, and leg braces and crutches were mandatory. FDR was also pretty much incapable of standing without assistance from one or two individuals. This ruled out his use of a shower, at the time the only form of bathing available on US warships. As the trip would take quite some time, something had to be installed for his use. That something was Iowa's Bathtub.
Who knew?
The USS Iowa was the namesake for what was arguably the best class of battleships ever built. Launched in 1942, she was commissioned in 1943. Displacing 45000 tons, her engine rooms could still move her through the water at a blistering 33kts. Her main armor belt was 12" thick, while her three main turrets were armored to nearly 20" in thickness. Those turrets carried three 16"/50cal rifles each, and each of those guns could fire a 2700lb shell over 23 miles. Twenty 5"/38cal guns formed her secondary battery, and could be used for both anti-aircraft or anti-surface work. Four of the mammoth warships were built.
But only one had a bathtub.
Late in 1943, the heads of state for the three major Allied countries, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt, were to meet in Tehran for a strategy conference. The US Navy choose the USS Iowa to take President Roosevelt on the first leg of the journey to Iran, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. But there was a small snag. President Roosevelt had developed an illness in 1921, at the time diagnosed as polio, that had paralyzed him from the waist down. He could only walk by swinging his legs laboriously via a twist of his torso, and leg braces and crutches were mandatory. FDR was also pretty much incapable of standing without assistance from one or two individuals. This ruled out his use of a shower, at the time the only form of bathing available on US warships. As the trip would take quite some time, something had to be installed for his use. That something was Iowa's Bathtub.
Who knew?
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March 28, 2011
Rio Rainbow Gate! ep12
There are times when I question my own sanity. Like tonight, for instance. It's the last night of a mini-vacation for me, four days away from the Duck U Bookstore. On my DVR are three movies I really want to watch, I've got laundry to fold, and all in all there's plenty of things I could be doing. Instead, I find myself watching Episode 12 of Rio Rainbow Gate!, a show which is really quite bad. So this is one of those times when I question my obviously tenuous grasp on what remains of my sanity. Why in the world do I subject myself to this?
The virtuous answer would be "so you, my readers, don't have to," but honestly I'd prefer company in my misery. Near as I can tell, I'm the only blogger regularly covering RRG!; certainly I've looked hither and yon for another and come up empty. The selfish answer would be "to inflict this misery on others," but I try to avoid being sadistic usually. The frightening answer is "I secretly enjoy this drek." While there might be some kernel of truth to this one, there have been plenty of shows I like more that I've written about less... or at all, for that matter. There's the historical answer: "I'm recording this for posterity, for the chance that future generations will see it and not make the same mistake," which, while admirable, is just bull hockey. I'd hate to think that we're the only ones in history stupid enough to create a RRG!. No, I believe there is only one true correct answer.
We open sometime after the end of Episode 11, with a formal contract being signed by The Owner, evil Cartia, Our Heroine and Rina. There's to be a final Gate Battle, winner takes all. If Rio wins, she gets the Gates, The Owner gets Casino Island back and all is cotton candy and unicorn farts. If Rina wins, she gets the Gates, her revenge on those who ruined her family, and evil Cartia gets to "see the Rainbow," whatever that means.
But first, The Owner takes Rio and The Usual Suspects on a vacation. Everybody wonders about the timing of this, and to be fair it does seem somewhat strange. I mean, it's not like Rio is on the top of her game, even though she's managed a good comeback from her devastating loss some episodes ago. Well, maybe this will refresh her. My guess is that The Owner just wanted to see everybody in swimsuits.
Yes, just like that. But the island they're headed to has a dark secret behind it...
more...
The virtuous answer would be "so you, my readers, don't have to," but honestly I'd prefer company in my misery. Near as I can tell, I'm the only blogger regularly covering RRG!; certainly I've looked hither and yon for another and come up empty. The selfish answer would be "to inflict this misery on others," but I try to avoid being sadistic usually. The frightening answer is "I secretly enjoy this drek." While there might be some kernel of truth to this one, there have been plenty of shows I like more that I've written about less... or at all, for that matter. There's the historical answer: "I'm recording this for posterity, for the chance that future generations will see it and not make the same mistake," which, while admirable, is just bull hockey. I'd hate to think that we're the only ones in history stupid enough to create a RRG!. No, I believe there is only one true correct answer.
Two, actually.
Nobody is as saddened by this revelation as me. I liked to think I had come somewhat farther than that in my thinking as I've gotten older, but apparently maturity has evaded me. Sad, really... particularly because RRG! is pretty tame as far as fanservice shows go. But yet, here I am, spending hours blogging about it. Lord knows it isn't for the plot, the characterization, the action, the artwork or the humor. So what's left?We open sometime after the end of Episode 11, with a formal contract being signed by The Owner, evil Cartia, Our Heroine and Rina. There's to be a final Gate Battle, winner takes all. If Rio wins, she gets the Gates, The Owner gets Casino Island back and all is cotton candy and unicorn farts. If Rina wins, she gets the Gates, her revenge on those who ruined her family, and evil Cartia gets to "see the Rainbow," whatever that means.
But first, The Owner takes Rio and The Usual Suspects on a vacation. Everybody wonders about the timing of this, and to be fair it does seem somewhat strange. I mean, it's not like Rio is on the top of her game, even though she's managed a good comeback from her devastating loss some episodes ago. Well, maybe this will refresh her. My guess is that The Owner just wanted to see everybody in swimsuits.
Yes, just like that. But the island they're headed to has a dark secret behind it...
more...
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March 27, 2011
F1 Update!: Australia 2011
The 2011 season picked up where the 2010 season left off, with Red Bull ascendant. Seb Vettel had dominated Qualifying, and his teammate was directly behind him on the grid, but the surprisingly quick McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were right next to them. Behind those four stalked the prancing horse, the Ferraris of HWMNBN and Felipe Massa, and the resurgent Renault of Vitaly Petrov. Could we be seeing a repeat of Red Bull's astounding year, or could one of the others knock them off their drinks cart? THIS is your F1Update! for the first race of the 2011 season, the Grand Prix of Australia!
*BEFORE: The weather in Melbourne was glorious. The sun, low in the sky with the 5pm local start, shined in the clear blue sky. All of Albert Park seemed to glitter on the television screen, the gray skies of the past two days gone. Even the traditional flyby of the Qantas 747 seemed more spectacular than normal.
There may be a large percentage of the population of Melbourne that doesn't want Formula 1 in their city anymore, but that doesn't stop them from turning out in droves and putting on a show, I'll give them that. On the grid, there was a minute of silence in memory and support of those lost and suffering from the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Traditionally there has been deep ties between Formula 1 and Japan. Many, if not all, of the drivers have raced there at one time or another in lower Formula (not to mention the Japanese Grand Prix), and of course Sauber's Gandalf Kobayashi and Virgin's reserve driver Sakon Yamamoto are from Japan. Honda and Toyota have only recently left the sport, and of course last year's tiremaker Bridgestone is based in Japan, so this was a nice gesture for the sport to their fans in that country.
And then it was time to race.
*DURING: The strategies up at the front of the grid were all pretty clear. For polesitter Vettel, it was to stay in front, despite the handicap of a non-functional KERS system, turned off in the Red Bull cars for unreliability reasons. For Hamilton, get past the 2010 Driver's Champion and keep him there. For Mark Webber, Vettel's Red Bull teammate, it was a little more complex: get past Hamilton, keep Button behind him, and do well in front of his home nation's fans, something he has not managed to do very well in the past. For HWMNBN, the goal was to get past the McLarens and stay in touch with the Red Bulls... and for god's sake stay in front of the Renault of Vitaly Petrov, lest there be a repeat (however unlikely) of the race at Abu Dhabi last year. For those further back in the horde, the goals were infinitely more simple: survive the first turns with the car in one piece, then get on with racing. When the lights went out, Vettel made it clear that this was going to be a long race by easily keeping everybody behind him, and indeed, pulling out a six or seven car-length lead by the end of the second turn. Try as he might, Hamilton had no answer for Vettel's start, and indeed had his hands full keeping Webber behind him. Vitaly Petrov served notice that he was to be reckoned with by leaping into fourth and watching his Spanish rival drop all the way to ninth as he got squeezed by the Thundering Herd. Button dropped to sixth, caught between the two Ferraris in the first couple of corners, one sliding back in the field, the other, Felipe Massa, making a start for the ages jumping up to fifth.
*AND THEN...: As Vettel and Hamilton streaked away from Webber, and Webber pulled away from the rest of the field, Button and Massa began a most entertaining duel, one that played up both the strengths of the new technological marvels (KERS and the Drag Reduction System, aka the movable rear wing) on F1 cars these days and the weaknesses. Massa was clearly slower than the McLaren driver, but judicious use of KERS in a defensive posture mixed with good driving kept the silver car behind him, though close on his tail. Lap after lap the DRS, which could only be used on the front straight, allowed Button to nearly get past, but not quite. Must have been frustrating for the 2009 Driver's Champion. Eventually, Button made a slightly unlikely attempt at a pass. He got alongside Massa, but was pushed off-track onto an escape road. The escape road allowed Button to get past the Ferrari, but in a way that was clearly a violation of the rules and he should have relinquished the position. Instead, he did nothing of the sort, claiming that he was ahead of Massa when he was forced off-circuit and that he had right of position. The matter went to the Race Stewards. Meanwhile, two things occurred that showed that Ferrari are, depending on your point of view, either master strategists or conniving bastards. First, Massa let his teammate HWMNBN, who had managed to claw his way back up towards the front after his awful start, past him. This would mean, in effect, that Button would have to give up two positions when the Stewards invariably ruled against him, for he would have to let Massa get by, not the car behind him. Then, while the Stewards continued their review of the situation, Ferrari called Massa into the pits for new tires. This forced the Stewards' hands, giving them no choice but to give Button a drive-through penalty, thereby effectively ending any chance he may have had at a podium. After the race, Button accused the Red Team of playing underhandedly. Though it pains us here at F1U!, we completely disagree with Button and applaud the quick thinking of the Ferrari planners.
*MEANWHILE: Up and down the field, the DRS/KERS combination showed that they could be used to pass, making the battles down in the midfield quite entertaining. Towards the front though, it became painfully clear that Vettel was having a field day. The biggest surprise was the tires. There was an immense performance gap between the faster soft tires which wore faster and the slower hard tires which lasted longer. The problem was that the gap was so large that, at least amongst the top runners, the hards were completely unusable. As an example, Mark Webber pitted from third, changing from soft to hard tires. This put Vitaly Petrov into third. As Webber exited the pits, he slipped and slided his way around Turn 1, then put in a few hideously slow laps before coming back in for new soft tires. All the while, HWMNBN hacked the Red Bull driver's lead over him into tiny bits and indeed, passed him while Webber was in the pits for the second time. When the Ferrari came in for new tires, you would have expected him to return to the track behind the Aussie, but it didn't happen that way at all. In fact, he retained a decent lead over the Red Bull driver, all because of a few laps on the hard tires. Some drivers could make the hards work, however. Sauber's rookie Sergio Perez managed to pull off a one-stop strategy, starting on the hards and staying with them for around 40 laps. He finished in seventh, and only the drop-off of the soft's grip happening a couple of laps earlier than expected kept him from giving Button a run for sixth.
*FINALLY: Really, it was no contest. Vettel cruised home with an easy 15 second victory over Hamilton, who had a 15 second lead over the Renault of Vitaly Petrov, who was closely followed by HWMNBN and Webber. If this is any indication of how the season is going to play out, we're looking at a battle for second place in the Championship.
*AFTERWARD: It had been a great race for the two Saubers. Sergio Perez managed to pull off something of a coup with his one-stop strategy, finishing his very first F1 race in seventh, while Gandalf Kobayashi came in just behind him in eighth. After the post-race scrutineering, however, both cars were disqualified for irregularities in their rear wings that violated Articles 3.10.1 and 3.10.2 of the technical regulations. The team has filed an appeal, but is investigating in-house how the wings failed to meet spec, and may drop the appeal.
*DRIVER OF THE RACE: In the last race of 2010, HWMNBN needed to get past Renault's Vitaly Petrov if he was to have any chance at winning the Driver's Championship. This shouldn't've been much of a problem, as Petrov was prone to making mistakes under pressure, or even without pressure at all. Instead, with a two-time world champion all over him, he drove smoothly, made no mistakes, and prevented the Ferrari driver from getting by him for position. He showed that there was quite a bit of skill under his error-prone skin. Today, with a good car under him, Petrov had a fabulous drive, showing that, at least on this day, he had shed his error-prone skin. A well-deserved podium for The Red Menace.
*TEAM OF THE RACE: McLaren. The team finished second and sixth, decent enough. But what pushed them into "Team of the Race" status the admission by Lewis Hamilton after the race: "That's the longest the car's lasted!" Of all the heavy hitters, McLaren put in the fewest laps in testing, dealing with reliability issues, and when they were on-track, they reportedly looked slow. They got something right in the time since the final test at Barcalounger, and that earns them TotR.
*MOVE OF THE RACE: On lap 22, Rubens Barrichello was closing in on Gandalf Kobayashi for 9th place. Normally this would be challenging, since Gandalf has a knack for keeping cars behind him, but it was going to be downright hard this time as there was a limping Slappy Schumacher in the mix at the same time.
When a narrow gap opened between the Sauber and the Mercedes, the ever-brave Brazilian made a run for it.
Slotting his Williams between the Sauber and Slappy, he found himself to the inside coming into the turn, braked late and crossed his fingers.
It got close, but Rubens held his line, forced Gandalf wide, and took the place in a nifty little bit of driving. Well done, Rubens!
*MOOOOOOOO-OOVE OF THE RACE: One lap later, Rubens Barrichello got the bit between his teeth and made a run at the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. At the same turn as his MotR, he tried much the same pass as before... except this time, it was from farther back and his opponent had the better line. It could only end in tears.
Barrichello ended up spinning and losing a handful of places. Rosberg ended up by the side of the track, unable to make it back to the pits, with either his radiator crushed or his oil cooler broken, smoke pouring from the rear of his Mercedes. Nice job, Rubens... you might be the first to earn both the MotR and the MoootR in the same race!
*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:
more...
*BEFORE: The weather in Melbourne was glorious. The sun, low in the sky with the 5pm local start, shined in the clear blue sky. All of Albert Park seemed to glitter on the television screen, the gray skies of the past two days gone. Even the traditional flyby of the Qantas 747 seemed more spectacular than normal.
There may be a large percentage of the population of Melbourne that doesn't want Formula 1 in their city anymore, but that doesn't stop them from turning out in droves and putting on a show, I'll give them that. On the grid, there was a minute of silence in memory and support of those lost and suffering from the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Traditionally there has been deep ties between Formula 1 and Japan. Many, if not all, of the drivers have raced there at one time or another in lower Formula (not to mention the Japanese Grand Prix), and of course Sauber's Gandalf Kobayashi and Virgin's reserve driver Sakon Yamamoto are from Japan. Honda and Toyota have only recently left the sport, and of course last year's tiremaker Bridgestone is based in Japan, so this was a nice gesture for the sport to their fans in that country.
And then it was time to race.
*DURING: The strategies up at the front of the grid were all pretty clear. For polesitter Vettel, it was to stay in front, despite the handicap of a non-functional KERS system, turned off in the Red Bull cars for unreliability reasons. For Hamilton, get past the 2010 Driver's Champion and keep him there. For Mark Webber, Vettel's Red Bull teammate, it was a little more complex: get past Hamilton, keep Button behind him, and do well in front of his home nation's fans, something he has not managed to do very well in the past. For HWMNBN, the goal was to get past the McLarens and stay in touch with the Red Bulls... and for god's sake stay in front of the Renault of Vitaly Petrov, lest there be a repeat (however unlikely) of the race at Abu Dhabi last year. For those further back in the horde, the goals were infinitely more simple: survive the first turns with the car in one piece, then get on with racing. When the lights went out, Vettel made it clear that this was going to be a long race by easily keeping everybody behind him, and indeed, pulling out a six or seven car-length lead by the end of the second turn. Try as he might, Hamilton had no answer for Vettel's start, and indeed had his hands full keeping Webber behind him. Vitaly Petrov served notice that he was to be reckoned with by leaping into fourth and watching his Spanish rival drop all the way to ninth as he got squeezed by the Thundering Herd. Button dropped to sixth, caught between the two Ferraris in the first couple of corners, one sliding back in the field, the other, Felipe Massa, making a start for the ages jumping up to fifth.
*AND THEN...: As Vettel and Hamilton streaked away from Webber, and Webber pulled away from the rest of the field, Button and Massa began a most entertaining duel, one that played up both the strengths of the new technological marvels (KERS and the Drag Reduction System, aka the movable rear wing) on F1 cars these days and the weaknesses. Massa was clearly slower than the McLaren driver, but judicious use of KERS in a defensive posture mixed with good driving kept the silver car behind him, though close on his tail. Lap after lap the DRS, which could only be used on the front straight, allowed Button to nearly get past, but not quite. Must have been frustrating for the 2009 Driver's Champion. Eventually, Button made a slightly unlikely attempt at a pass. He got alongside Massa, but was pushed off-track onto an escape road. The escape road allowed Button to get past the Ferrari, but in a way that was clearly a violation of the rules and he should have relinquished the position. Instead, he did nothing of the sort, claiming that he was ahead of Massa when he was forced off-circuit and that he had right of position. The matter went to the Race Stewards. Meanwhile, two things occurred that showed that Ferrari are, depending on your point of view, either master strategists or conniving bastards. First, Massa let his teammate HWMNBN, who had managed to claw his way back up towards the front after his awful start, past him. This would mean, in effect, that Button would have to give up two positions when the Stewards invariably ruled against him, for he would have to let Massa get by, not the car behind him. Then, while the Stewards continued their review of the situation, Ferrari called Massa into the pits for new tires. This forced the Stewards' hands, giving them no choice but to give Button a drive-through penalty, thereby effectively ending any chance he may have had at a podium. After the race, Button accused the Red Team of playing underhandedly. Though it pains us here at F1U!, we completely disagree with Button and applaud the quick thinking of the Ferrari planners.
*MEANWHILE: Up and down the field, the DRS/KERS combination showed that they could be used to pass, making the battles down in the midfield quite entertaining. Towards the front though, it became painfully clear that Vettel was having a field day. The biggest surprise was the tires. There was an immense performance gap between the faster soft tires which wore faster and the slower hard tires which lasted longer. The problem was that the gap was so large that, at least amongst the top runners, the hards were completely unusable. As an example, Mark Webber pitted from third, changing from soft to hard tires. This put Vitaly Petrov into third. As Webber exited the pits, he slipped and slided his way around Turn 1, then put in a few hideously slow laps before coming back in for new soft tires. All the while, HWMNBN hacked the Red Bull driver's lead over him into tiny bits and indeed, passed him while Webber was in the pits for the second time. When the Ferrari came in for new tires, you would have expected him to return to the track behind the Aussie, but it didn't happen that way at all. In fact, he retained a decent lead over the Red Bull driver, all because of a few laps on the hard tires. Some drivers could make the hards work, however. Sauber's rookie Sergio Perez managed to pull off a one-stop strategy, starting on the hards and staying with them for around 40 laps. He finished in seventh, and only the drop-off of the soft's grip happening a couple of laps earlier than expected kept him from giving Button a run for sixth.
*FINALLY: Really, it was no contest. Vettel cruised home with an easy 15 second victory over Hamilton, who had a 15 second lead over the Renault of Vitaly Petrov, who was closely followed by HWMNBN and Webber. If this is any indication of how the season is going to play out, we're looking at a battle for second place in the Championship.
*AFTERWARD: It had been a great race for the two Saubers. Sergio Perez managed to pull off something of a coup with his one-stop strategy, finishing his very first F1 race in seventh, while Gandalf Kobayashi came in just behind him in eighth. After the post-race scrutineering, however, both cars were disqualified for irregularities in their rear wings that violated Articles 3.10.1 and 3.10.2 of the technical regulations. The team has filed an appeal, but is investigating in-house how the wings failed to meet spec, and may drop the appeal.
*DRIVER OF THE RACE: In the last race of 2010, HWMNBN needed to get past Renault's Vitaly Petrov if he was to have any chance at winning the Driver's Championship. This shouldn't've been much of a problem, as Petrov was prone to making mistakes under pressure, or even without pressure at all. Instead, with a two-time world champion all over him, he drove smoothly, made no mistakes, and prevented the Ferrari driver from getting by him for position. He showed that there was quite a bit of skill under his error-prone skin. Today, with a good car under him, Petrov had a fabulous drive, showing that, at least on this day, he had shed his error-prone skin. A well-deserved podium for The Red Menace.
*TEAM OF THE RACE: McLaren. The team finished second and sixth, decent enough. But what pushed them into "Team of the Race" status the admission by Lewis Hamilton after the race: "That's the longest the car's lasted!" Of all the heavy hitters, McLaren put in the fewest laps in testing, dealing with reliability issues, and when they were on-track, they reportedly looked slow. They got something right in the time since the final test at Barcalounger, and that earns them TotR.
*MOVE OF THE RACE: On lap 22, Rubens Barrichello was closing in on Gandalf Kobayashi for 9th place. Normally this would be challenging, since Gandalf has a knack for keeping cars behind him, but it was going to be downright hard this time as there was a limping Slappy Schumacher in the mix at the same time.
When a narrow gap opened between the Sauber and the Mercedes, the ever-brave Brazilian made a run for it.
Slotting his Williams between the Sauber and Slappy, he found himself to the inside coming into the turn, braked late and crossed his fingers.
It got close, but Rubens held his line, forced Gandalf wide, and took the place in a nifty little bit of driving. Well done, Rubens!
*MOOOOOOOO-OOVE OF THE RACE: One lap later, Rubens Barrichello got the bit between his teeth and made a run at the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. At the same turn as his MotR, he tried much the same pass as before... except this time, it was from farther back and his opponent had the better line. It could only end in tears.
Barrichello ended up spinning and losing a handful of places. Rosberg ended up by the side of the track, unable to make it back to the pits, with either his radiator crushed or his oil cooler broken, smoke pouring from the rear of his Mercedes. Nice job, Rubens... you might be the first to earn both the MotR and the MoootR in the same race!
*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:
more...
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Programming Note #2
All right, here's how this is going to work. The F1Update! for the Grand Prix of Australia will go up this evening. The writeup for Rio Rainbow Gate! Episode 12 will be up on Monday.
Ph.Duck has returned to Duckford after his two weeks in India. Between watching the race last night and getting up on (mutters quiet obscenities) hours of sleep to get him back home after his 17.5 hour flight afterwards, all of which came on the heels of my Fantasy Baseball League auction (and quals earlier) on Saturday, your host is very tired, very headachy, and just not up to writing right now.
So I'm going to take a nap. THEN I'll start writing.
All right, here's how this is going to work. The F1Update! for the Grand Prix of Australia will go up this evening. The writeup for Rio Rainbow Gate! Episode 12 will be up on Monday.
Ph.Duck has returned to Duckford after his two weeks in India. Between watching the race last night and getting up on (mutters quiet obscenities) hours of sleep to get him back home after his 17.5 hour flight afterwards, all of which came on the heels of my Fantasy Baseball League auction (and quals earlier) on Saturday, your host is very tired, very headachy, and just not up to writing right now.
So I'm going to take a nap. THEN I'll start writing.
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Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.
March 26, 2011
F1 Quals: Australia 2011
The gloves are off. The field is now level. We'll finally get to see the true pace of the cars on similar setups: low fuel and soft tires, no-holds barred. Throw in the stresses of the knockout format and the "new" 107% rule, and we're about to discover who's fast and who's not. It's 2011's first Quals, and it's for the Grand Prix of Australia. Let's take a look at the provisional results:
Red Bull's Seb Vettel simply blew away the field in quals, never putting a foot wrong and taking a half-second off his pole time from last year. This is even more amazing when you consider that the teams had been saying that the new Pirelli tires were trending around two seconds a lap slower than the 2010 Bridgestones. It becomes flat-out astonishing when you realize that he had a KERS failure and couldn't use the power boost on his fastest lap! He's nearly a full second faster than McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who will be second on the grid. He's nearly 1.3 seconds ahead of Hamilton's teammate Jenson Button, who'll be starting fourth. Australian Mark Webber, also of Red Bull, slotted into third.
Ferrari's Felipe Massa has never been fond of the track at Melbourne, and his discomfort showed quite clearly in Q3, managing only 8th while his teammate, HWMNBN, managed a stout 5th. Indeed, as he rolled out for his first hot laps with two minutes or so left in the session, he immediately spun coming out of the pits, doing a lovely job of flatspotting all four tires in the process. While others also had problems with grip, the diminutive Brazilian (try saying that three times fast) looked as if his racing line had been coated with teflon all day.
You'll note that Rubens Barrichello has a "No Time" next to his name in Q2. Before he could get a timed lap in the books, he got a tire onto the grass, spun out and beached himself in a gravel trap. Towards the end of the session, Adrian F'n Sutil had the Exciting Moment Of The Dayâ„¢ when he hooked a tire off the pavement on the exit of the final turn. His Force India immediately snapped hard right, sending him diving for the inside wall of the front straight. Just as quickly, Sutil gathered the car up in a cloud of tire smoke and got it rotating the other way. He wound up rotating a couple of times as the car progressed down the straight, but he kept it out of the walls. As the L.A.T. mentioned, NASCAR announcer Darryl Waltrip calls that "crashing without hitting anything." Indeed.
You'll also note that the times for the two HRTs of Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Kittylitter are in a dark green, as opposed to red. That means that they've run afoul of the 107% rule and are therefore to be excluded from the race. The race stewards do have the option of giving one or both cars a dispensation, thereby allowing them to run in the race, but that would probably only happen if the other teams agreed... not likely. It'd be a shame if they couldn't run, particularly considering their financial troubles and the immense effort the team put in to getting the cars ready to race, but the rules are on the books.
We'll find out soon enough. The race is early Sunday morning, Pond time. The F1Update! will be up... sometime on Sunday. Ph.Duck is returning from two weeks in India sometime around 8am or so, and I'll be picking him up, maybe taking him to breakfast if he has the energy, that sort of thing. So I'm not sure when I'll write the F1U! but it'll happen Sunday for sure. See ya then!
Red Bull's Seb Vettel simply blew away the field in quals, never putting a foot wrong and taking a half-second off his pole time from last year. This is even more amazing when you consider that the teams had been saying that the new Pirelli tires were trending around two seconds a lap slower than the 2010 Bridgestones. It becomes flat-out astonishing when you realize that he had a KERS failure and couldn't use the power boost on his fastest lap! He's nearly a full second faster than McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who will be second on the grid. He's nearly 1.3 seconds ahead of Hamilton's teammate Jenson Button, who'll be starting fourth. Australian Mark Webber, also of Red Bull, slotted into third.
Ferrari's Felipe Massa has never been fond of the track at Melbourne, and his discomfort showed quite clearly in Q3, managing only 8th while his teammate, HWMNBN, managed a stout 5th. Indeed, as he rolled out for his first hot laps with two minutes or so left in the session, he immediately spun coming out of the pits, doing a lovely job of flatspotting all four tires in the process. While others also had problems with grip, the diminutive Brazilian (try saying that three times fast) looked as if his racing line had been coated with teflon all day.
You'll note that Rubens Barrichello has a "No Time" next to his name in Q2. Before he could get a timed lap in the books, he got a tire onto the grass, spun out and beached himself in a gravel trap. Towards the end of the session, Adrian F'n Sutil had the Exciting Moment Of The Dayâ„¢ when he hooked a tire off the pavement on the exit of the final turn. His Force India immediately snapped hard right, sending him diving for the inside wall of the front straight. Just as quickly, Sutil gathered the car up in a cloud of tire smoke and got it rotating the other way. He wound up rotating a couple of times as the car progressed down the straight, but he kept it out of the walls. As the L.A.T. mentioned, NASCAR announcer Darryl Waltrip calls that "crashing without hitting anything." Indeed.
You'll also note that the times for the two HRTs of Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Kittylitter are in a dark green, as opposed to red. That means that they've run afoul of the 107% rule and are therefore to be excluded from the race. The race stewards do have the option of giving one or both cars a dispensation, thereby allowing them to run in the race, but that would probably only happen if the other teams agreed... not likely. It'd be a shame if they couldn't run, particularly considering their financial troubles and the immense effort the team put in to getting the cars ready to race, but the rules are on the books.
We'll find out soon enough. The race is early Sunday morning, Pond time. The F1Update! will be up... sometime on Sunday. Ph.Duck is returning from two weeks in India sometime around 8am or so, and I'll be picking him up, maybe taking him to breakfast if he has the energy, that sort of thing. So I'm not sure when I'll write the F1U! but it'll happen Sunday for sure. See ya then!
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March 25, 2011
F1 Practice: Australia 2011
It's been a long wait, but F1 cars have finally returned to the track to begin the 2011 season! I think we can officially say "Yay!" now.
As is usual with Practice sessions you can't take any of the times set as gospel, but the usual teams were up at the top and the usual teams were down at the bottom. The more things change...
It's looking like the biggest factor in Sunday's race may not be the cars, nor the drivers, but the tires. Both the Powers That Be in F1 and the teams asked new tire manufacturer Pirelli to create a larger difference in tire wear between compounds of rubber. This shortens the life of the tire, making for more pit stops. Well, be careful what you ask for, because Pirelli has come through in spades. Using the soft tires as an example, reports are that it wears in a predictable fashion... until it completely drops off the table at a completely unpredictable point. Once it does that, the tire is totally worthless. You might get 10 or 12 laps of performance out of the rubber, but that's it. Last year, you'd go for 12 laps, then if you took care of your tires, get another 20 laps of decent performance out of them. Not now... now when the tires go off, a car can expect to lose five or six seconds per lap or even more. If you're lucky, the tire hits that point when you're near the pit-in. If you're not.... Even better, and I say that completely unsarcastically, the boffins on the pit wall won't be able to tell the drivers when that fail point is coming. The driver will have to feel it themselves, and make the call on the fly. THAT's good for the sport.
What isn't so good is that the new Pirellis appear to be somewhat fragile. I don't mean in the way it wears, but in the base construction of the tire altogether. Take a look at this:
This tire was the front-left of Seb Vettel's Red Bull. All he did was run over a curb and it ripped a big chunk off the surface, revealing the canvas backing underneath. Before you say something like "this must be an isolated case," one of the Virgin drivers had the same problem... on the back-right, and he didn't run over anything. They're saying that these things shed rubber like a longhaired cat sheds fur in the summertime. Something to watch for, that.
Speaking of Virgin, they and HRT seem to be in serious jeopardy of not qualifying for the race due to the return of the 107% rule. Virgin was setting times fourteen seconds off the pace of the leaders. HRT didn't get a car on track until there was around 1m45s left in the 90 minute second practice session. They were too busy putting the car together in the garage and getting it into running shape to even hope to get a timed lap in. They weren't even thinking about getting the second car into Practice 2, and everybody in the garage, from team principal Colin Kolles to the guy who sweeps up, looked exhausted. According to SPEED's pit-lane reporter, the mechanics had been working on the car around the clock since Tuesday, and by the looks on the faces of the team members, he wasn't exaggerating. I suspect that we'll be looking at a 20-car race on Sunday, maybe 22. We almost certainly won't be seeing HRT.
Qualifying early Saturday morning.
As is usual with Practice sessions you can't take any of the times set as gospel, but the usual teams were up at the top and the usual teams were down at the bottom. The more things change...
It's looking like the biggest factor in Sunday's race may not be the cars, nor the drivers, but the tires. Both the Powers That Be in F1 and the teams asked new tire manufacturer Pirelli to create a larger difference in tire wear between compounds of rubber. This shortens the life of the tire, making for more pit stops. Well, be careful what you ask for, because Pirelli has come through in spades. Using the soft tires as an example, reports are that it wears in a predictable fashion... until it completely drops off the table at a completely unpredictable point. Once it does that, the tire is totally worthless. You might get 10 or 12 laps of performance out of the rubber, but that's it. Last year, you'd go for 12 laps, then if you took care of your tires, get another 20 laps of decent performance out of them. Not now... now when the tires go off, a car can expect to lose five or six seconds per lap or even more. If you're lucky, the tire hits that point when you're near the pit-in. If you're not.... Even better, and I say that completely unsarcastically, the boffins on the pit wall won't be able to tell the drivers when that fail point is coming. The driver will have to feel it themselves, and make the call on the fly. THAT's good for the sport.
What isn't so good is that the new Pirellis appear to be somewhat fragile. I don't mean in the way it wears, but in the base construction of the tire altogether. Take a look at this:
This tire was the front-left of Seb Vettel's Red Bull. All he did was run over a curb and it ripped a big chunk off the surface, revealing the canvas backing underneath. Before you say something like "this must be an isolated case," one of the Virgin drivers had the same problem... on the back-right, and he didn't run over anything. They're saying that these things shed rubber like a longhaired cat sheds fur in the summertime. Something to watch for, that.
Speaking of Virgin, they and HRT seem to be in serious jeopardy of not qualifying for the race due to the return of the 107% rule. Virgin was setting times fourteen seconds off the pace of the leaders. HRT didn't get a car on track until there was around 1m45s left in the 90 minute second practice session. They were too busy putting the car together in the garage and getting it into running shape to even hope to get a timed lap in. They weren't even thinking about getting the second car into Practice 2, and everybody in the garage, from team principal Colin Kolles to the guy who sweeps up, looked exhausted. According to SPEED's pit-lane reporter, the mechanics had been working on the car around the clock since Tuesday, and by the looks on the faces of the team members, he wasn't exaggerating. I suspect that we'll be looking at a 20-car race on Sunday, maybe 22. We almost certainly won't be seeing HRT.
Qualifying early Saturday morning.
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March 23, 2011
The Greatest F1 Picture... EVER. And This Time I Mean It.
Earlier today, I was trying to figure out what I was going to post upon tonight. Really, I had no idea...I was all set to just say "eh" and leave it at that. Then the Official First Friend of The Pond, Vaucaunson's Duck, saw a comment from reader Dkallen99 and e-mailed me.
The contents of the letter were, essentially, "I dunno, I see the duck."
MUCH better.
The contents of the letter were, essentially, "I dunno, I see the duck."
MUCH better.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
05:08 PM
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Post contains 78 words, total size 1 kb.
March 22, 2011
The Greatest F1 Picture... EVER.
Earlier today, I was trying to figure out what I was going to post upon tonight. Really, I had no idea... nothing is going on as everybody gets ready for the first F1 race of the year, or more correctly, nothing interesting is going on. Rio Rainbow Gate! episode 12 hasn't appeared on the intertubes yet. I don't have a burning passion to post on a WWII vessel or plane at the moment. I was all set to just say "eh" and leave it at that.
Then I found The Greatest F1 Picture... EVER.
Short of everything being on fire, there is no possible way to improve upon the perfection of this shot. Really.
In case anybody is wondering, that's Jenson Button driving the 2008 McLaren around the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst, Australia. And a helicopter. I'm assuming that corner is Skyline.
Bathurst is a circuit that's pretty much unknown to US audiences. That's a shame, because it's truly amazing. Take a look:
Almost 200 meters of elevation change. Crikey. You go up the mountain, run around the top, then come down again. The two V8 Supercars races here are a 1000km event... and a 12 hour endurance race. I've seen a couple of the 1000s, and it's like nothing here. Hopefully SPEED will pick up the 2011 race... I don't see why they wouldn't, they're showing the V8S series anyway.
Ah, but if F1 cars were to race there... we can but dream.
Then I found The Greatest F1 Picture... EVER.
Short of everything being on fire, there is no possible way to improve upon the perfection of this shot. Really.
In case anybody is wondering, that's Jenson Button driving the 2008 McLaren around the Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst, Australia. And a helicopter. I'm assuming that corner is Skyline.
Bathurst is a circuit that's pretty much unknown to US audiences. That's a shame, because it's truly amazing. Take a look:
Ah, but if F1 cars were to race there... we can but dream.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
06:33 PM
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