Oh, the difference a safety car makes.  THIS is the F1 UPDATE! for the German Grand Prix!

*NIP/TUCK: From the start of the race, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton ran away and hid from the rest of the field.  To be honest, it was quite unexciting, and we here at F1 UPDATE! were giving serious thought to taking a nap.  It didn't even look like we were going to get any rain to make it a little more interesting.  And then, as they say in Heidelberg, "Glock Happens."  Specifically, Timo Glock ran very wide on the last turn  of lap 35.  He jounced over the curb, and his right rear suspension completely collapsed.

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Something weird happened in Q3 today: Kimi Raikkonen gave up on a qual lap after grabbing P2.  2nd sounds pretty good, no?  The problem was, there were still a bunch of other cars on track in the middle of hot laps.  The result?  Well, let's look at the provisional grid:

In case you're wondering, it's to cut down on drag.  Normally, they wouldn't be able to get away with this, because the engine needs to be cooled and the air getting into the vents are the only cooling they can get.  Cutting down on the size of the vents means the engine is going to be running warm, except for one thing: it's been a cool weekend at Hockenheim.  Apparently, they first ran the this during Silverstone testing; again, a cool weather track.  No way they could try this at, say, Bahrain.

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I'd really wanted to write about the today's practice sessions at Hockenheim, but just like last year's German Grand Prix, it was rainy.  As a result, every time I sat down to start typing, I

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Strike Witches is really turning into everything I could have hoped for (and did!).  Lots of good ol' fashioned fun... and the animators have a remarkable eye for details.

For example, take this screenshot:

The red arrow is pointing to a stream of smoke coming from the centerline of the Akagi's flight deck.  Most people probably wouldn't notice this, as it was only on-screen for a second or two, but when I saw it, my jaw dropped.

The IJN used a steam valve set in the fore of their flight decks to help their pilots gauge wind direction and speed on takeoff.  It's the little things that count, and that tiny detail just made me go "wow, they got it right."

Another detail, but one that raised a question in my mind, is in the screenshot below:

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If you've read The Pond over the past couple of years, you've probably realized that I'm quite fond of the production combination of Key Games and Kyoto Animation.  The two companies have combined on the anime versions of the visual novels for AIR, Kanon and Clannad.  While I didn't much care for AIR, the other two are way up on my list of favorite shows. 

But I've never had the chance to actually experience the original source material for the shows, since they were in Japanese and there's never been an English translation... until now.

Baka-Tsuki, TheWaffleHouse, and Sprocket-Hole Subs have been working on an English patch for the game, and while they aren't done with it quite yet, somebody took their translated files (in a 99.9% done state) and released them in a format that works.

So what's it like?

Well, I'm only an hour or so into it, but I am amazed at how well KyoAni manipulated the game to turn it into the anime.  It's all there, and more besides.  Each of the girls have a storyline as full as Nagisa's, and other than quick glimpses, hers was the only one we got to see in the show.  Somewhere, I read that there's well over 300 hours of gameplay in Clannad, and I can easily believe it.

The humor level is still high, though without the moving visuals some of it doesn't translate as well (Sunohara in the garbage chute).  It's way too early, though, for the drama to have begun, though I fully expect that it'll be at least as intense as what was in the show.  The reasons for the successful Key/KyoAni partnership are clearly evident to me now... both sides brought a helluva lot to the table, and the end result is an amazing feast.

Now if only someone would do a translation for Kanon, I'd be the happiest duck around...

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Once upon a time, Hockenhein was one of those courses.  The type that could make a brave driver shuffle his feet around nervously before he got into the car.  The type that made worms out of the less brave.  It was the track that killed the man that may have been the greatest driver F1 had ever seen, Jim Clark, in a worthless Formula 2 race (for those readers who don't know, F2 was essentially a feeder league for F1, much as the Nationwide series is for the NASCAR Sprint Cup series... and, just as in Nationwide today, the guys from The Show often raced in the junior series).  

Then Hermann Tilke got a hold of it.  Now it's just another track, and they don't even race at it every year; the last time F1 visited Hockenheim was 2006.  Still, there are some decent bits to it:

Like most Tilke tracks, it's got fast parts followed by flow-wrecking kanoodling bits.  The main straightaway, aka "Parabolika", isn't really straight at all, which makes drafting a bit of a challenge.  Like Silverstone, the first turn (the Nordkurve) is usually taken close to flat out, which makes turn 2 the real bottleneck on the opening lap.  The Stadium Complex (turns 12-17) requires a lot of grip, which makes getting the balance between low downforce (high speed) and high downforce (high grip) a very tricky thing for the teams to handle.  Turns 16 & 17, while separated by a short chute, are usually treated as one big double-apex turn by the drivers.

The bit that'll make this really interesting is that, other than last week's test session, none of the teams have really run here in the new-spec cars.  In 2006, engines were screaming at 20000 rpms, there was traction control, and so on and so forth.  Now, though, no TC and engine limiters have probably changed the way the teams look at the circuit.  It was tough on tires to begin with, for example, but now?  Well, there's a reason Bridgestone is bringing the Hard and Medium compounds to the track.

On the TV front, this is the last time this season we'll have to suffer through the race being on FOX.  Coverage first begins on Friday, from 7a-840a, with SPEED showing Practice 2 live.  Saturday brings us Quals from 7a-830a, plausibly live on SPEED.

Sunday will be a teeny bit different, however.  SPEED is going to be doing their normal pre-race show from 1130a to Noon.  Then you have to switch over to FOX for the German Grand Prix, from Noon to 2pm.

As is normal for FOX broadcasts, SPEED will be replaying the race on Wednesday from 1130a to 130p.  They may show the pre-race show as well, so tune in at 11a to be sure.

And to see what Hockenheim used to be like before Tilke got his claws into it, click
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Pssssst... hey, buddy!  Yeah, you.  C'mere...

*looks around furtively*

Wanna new episode of Aria: The Origination?  'Course ya do... you'ze a smart guy.  Well, I gots one fer ya... it's called episode 5.5.  That's a strange name, yeah, but dere's a reason fer it: it's one o' dem special DVD-only thingies.  But it's a full 24 minutes of Aria that we didn't expect, y'know?

So howsabout it?  Wanna know more?

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-World Destruction, ep01

Okay, so lets look at this.  We've got a show where the main character is a hawt swordsbabe with the apparent ability to literally destroy the world, and she's not afraid to threaten to use it.  The powers that be are trying to stop her, hijinks occur.

All right, not a bad setup, why wouldn't anybody enjoy that?


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So Thursday night's weather here at The Pond was... oh, let's call it exciting, shall we?  Around 6pm, it went from being bright and sunny in Pond Central's living room to dark and surly, like someone threw a switch on the sun.

I opened the door to the balcony, and got hit in the face with a bucket of water.  It was POURING out there, and the clouds were moving every which way... but just a few miles away, there was blue sky.  A very definite cloudline... and I was on the wrong side of it. 

Lots of lightning, both the traditional air-to-ground ZOT! (for a genuine Pond No-Prize, what comic strip used to use that descriptor?) type and the kind that makes it look like the Mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is hiding behind the clouds.  Very neat, very cool...  and more than a little terrifying, to be honest.  Anyway, I've heard that some parts of Duckford got up to three inches of rain in a couple of hours... just what we need after the flooding of a couple of weeks ago.

Somewhere around 815pm, I noticed something weird... the light from outside seemed to be orange through the curtains.  I stepped outside, and saw that the stormline had just as neatly organized back to it as it did a front... the sun had been revealed!  Since it was almost time for it to set, though, it looked orange, and that color was being reflected off the clouds.  Very weird look to everything... and then I saw it.

A horizon-to-horizon, sharp-edged, DOUBLE RAINBOW!  I'd never seen such a thing before... and particularly not one that looked like it had been drawn with a marker!  I went out to The Pond's parking lot to get a better view of the whole thing...

...meanwhile, The Librarian was in Wal-Mart's parking lot, frantically calling my cellphone to tell me to look out my balcony to see the doublerainbowitsgreatandhugeandwow!

More importantly, though, she had the presence of mind to take a photograph of it with her cellphone's camera:

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saf1-auction.com

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So the new season of Anime has begun to roll out.  Five shows that I was interested in all came down the pipe within a few days of each other, so I decided to marathon 'em.

I have to admit, the Summer certainly holds more promise than the Spring season did (though these shows'll have to work to be as good as Soul Eater)... click below to see What's Wonderduck Watching!

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Break out your slickers and wellies, THIS is F1 UPDATE!

*RAIN:  The race started in the rain.  Then it stopped.  Then it poured.  Then the race got silly.  Only three cars were still on the lead lap when the race ended, and the winner, some bloke named Lewis Hamilton, was 68 seconds ahead of 2nd place.  Yet at times, it was the worst car on track that was turning laps seven seconds faster than the leader, and you had one driver pass two cars for position in one move TWICE.  We've said it before, and we'll say it again in the future, but we love F1 in the wet.

*EVERYONE LOVES A THREE-WAY:  After today's results, there are three drivers with 48 championship points: Hamilton, Raikkonen and Massa.  Kubica has 46.  This one is wiiiiiide open.

*...RIGHT DOWN THEIR LEG:  Massa spun four or five times.  Kimi ended up fourth, but knows he was lucky to be even that high.  Ferrari as a team looked like a bunch of amateurs with their strategies.  And it didn't have to be that way: until the first pitstop, Kimi was only a couple of car-lengths behind Hamilton.  They pitted at the same time, they left the pits at the same time, and two laps later, Raikkonen was seven seconds behind (see Mooooo-ooove of the Race), and it was only a question of "would the cars stay on the track?"  Nightmare fuel for the tifosi, and a shot in the arm for McLaren.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: By all rights, Lewis Hamilton should win this.  It isn't every day a race is won by 68 seconds, y'know.  Any other race, a performance like that would earn him the DotR honors without any questions whatsoever.  But it isn't every day that the worst car on the grid ends up finishing third, too, and a lot of the reason for that is the driver... Rubens Barrichello.  His first podium finish since the 2005 USGP (when only six cars took the green flag), and Honda's first podium since Hungary 2006 (Jenson Button, win)?  Sure, part of it was that they gambled with full-wet tires even though the sun was coming out, but what the heck?  Congrats, Rubens!  If anybody deserves a break, it's you.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren.  1st-5th and you win by over a minute?  Yep, you get the TotR award, but only because everybody else blew chunks. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  While everybody else looked like they were driving on ice (except for Hamilton, of course), Grizzly Nick Heidfeld was zipping around the track like he had studded tires.  Around lap 20, he was in 6th place, behind Toyota's Timo Glock and the Renault of HWMNBN.  Heading into a turn, he banzais himself around Glock to the outside, then zips past HWMNBN to the inside... in the same turn!  Good enough to win the MotR right there, but he wasn't finished yet.  Seven laps later, he was behind the dual Finns of Kovaleinninninnie and Raikkonen (3rd and 2nd, respectively).  Again, Heidfeld disposed of both of them at the same time for his second 2-car pass of the race.  Ballsy stuff from Grizzly Nick, considering the track condition at the time, and the combination should be in the running for Move(s) of the Year.

*MOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  Celebrating the best of the worst of the race, the Moooooo-ooove generally goes to the driver who makes the Art of F1 Driving look more like the Scientology of F1 Driving: a laughingstock, in other words.  Today, though, we can't blame the drivers for their lowing and cud-chewing: the weather caused that.  However, there was one incident that just screamed "Mooo!" in this race.  As the first round of pitstops came near, the rain had stopped but the track was still very wet (Silverstone is very wide, and mostly flat, with no camber at all.  As a result, water on pavement just sits there until it steams off).  A couple of laps later, Smarmy Windsor reported that it was raining in the paddock.  Kimi Raikkonen trailed Lewis Hamilton by about a second as they both came in to pit.  Lewis took fuel and new Intermediate tires.  Ferrari, though, sent Kimi back out with fuel only, leaving him with worn Inters.  A lap or so later, they did the same with Massa, revealing that it was a team strategy, not a driver saying "let's do this."  The gamble was that if it stopped raining and began to dry, the worn Inters would suddenly act like slick tires: no grooves, huge contact patch, and great grip.  BUT IT WAS RAINING!  Within two laps, Kimi was seven seconds behind Hamilton, and his chances of winning were pretty much gone.  The worn tires surely also helped Massa with his imitation of a child's top.  Congratulations, Ferrari!  For screwing up the entire race weekend you deserve the Moooooo-ooove.  No, don't thank us, you deserve it.

*DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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-Hidamari x365, ep01

Yuno, it's good to have you back!

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There's no other way of putting it: this was a weird quals session.  The winds were howling, and some ominous clouds were racing for the track.  Q1 started out dry, then it rained, and then it was bone dry again.  Everybody was out on track to get a time in before the rains came, at which point nobody dared venture out.  The second the rains stopped, though, we saw a few cars head back out, and we saw that the water was completely gone.

Q2 was normal (or as normal as knockout qualifying can be), except for one thing: the Ferraris were both down towards the bottom of the list of advancers.

Then all hell broke loose.  Massa had the slowest time in Q3 of anybody who took to the track, perhaps due to his shunt in Practice 2.  Robert Kubica never turned a lap, having suffered some mysterious problem with the back of the car.  Lewis Hamilton went offroading in sector 3.  Even Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari looked like it was dragging a boat anchor around Silverstone.  Then Mark Webber (MARK WEBBER?!?!?)  in the Red Bull, who must have four ounces of fuel on board, leaped to pole... and held onto it for the last minute or so, which is an eternity in Q3.

But Heikki Kovaleinninninnie, driving like his hair was on fire, snatched the pole away from Webber... by over a half-second!  Even the McLaren pit wall was amazed, getting on the radio and saying "you've got the pole by a mile... or a half second, in real terms."  While it wasn't the Glare With Wheels the British fans wanted to see at the front of the grid, they still went bonkers.

The Provisional Grid:

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For once, a relatively interesting practice session this morning... if for all the wrong reasons.

The most important thing to come out was the dreadful news that, beginning in 2010, the British Grand Prix will no longer be held at Silverstone.  Instead, it'll be held at Donington Park, a track which will need some serious renovation to be ready for F1.  Indeed, the Legendary Announce Team were frankly skeptical that it could be done in time for the race.  They also said that $100 million was earmarked for the renovations... which might be enough to bring the track up to the current level of Silverstone.

Darth Ecclestone has won.

Coming close on the heels of that bombshell came the announcement that David Coulthard's Chin will be hanging up it's helmet at the end of the season. 

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-Top Gear, season 10 episode 09

In honor of the British Grand Prix running this weekend, on Silverstone's 60th year of operation, I decided to use a shot from the Top Gear episode where the lads and The Stig participate in the Britcar 24 Hour race at Silverstone.

Yes, those are sponsor logos: Pearse Biscuits and Peniston Oil.  Or maybe it's referring to Hamster and Clarkston.

I've become a fan of Top Gear.  A big fan.  If only it was shown here in the States, on a station I can get (i.e., no BBC America)...

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-Soul Eater, I don't remember which episode

Funny, Tsubaki sure doesn't look like she's a living weapon.  The full-sized version of this pic is my current wallpaper, actually.

^{(this post is by request of Brickmuppet, who whined that he missed the Random Anime Pictures while I was on hiatus... here ya go, Mr. Muppet!)}

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After the snoozefest of Mangy-Curs, we find ourselves in jolly olde England this week, at one of the truly great F1 tracks: Silverstone.  Like many tracks of long history, Silverstone was built at the site of a WWII air base; in this particular case, the home of No 17 Operational Training Unit flying the Vickers Wellington bomber.  In fact, the runways are still extant and can be made out on the track map quite clearly, and Hangar Straight is called such because it used to run along the row of hangars that serviced the airbase.

Silverstone is a very fast track, even after all the attempts to slow it for safety's sake.  As an example, the original track layout did not have turns 8 and 9 (meaning it was a straight run from a gentler Stowe to Club), and turns 12 thru 18 didn't exist either, meaning Woodcote was run at a much higher speed than it is now. 

Silverstone has my favorite complex of turns, the Maggots-Becketts-Chapel sequence.  If you want to see just how nimble your average F1 car is, this is the place to do it.  They run through it as if they were slotcars, zip-zip-zip! 

Unfortunately, Darth Ecclestone wants to do away with Silverstone, and has been threatening moving the British GP to some other location like Brands Hatch (which is a fine track in it's own right... but it's not Silverstone).  Fortunately, his efforts have thus far come to naught, and we'll enjoy this wonderful circuit for a while yet.

As an humorous aside, on Grand Prix race day Silverstone becomes the UK's busiest airport, as many spectators fly helicopters into Silverstone Heliport.  Indeed, for some time it was touted as the World's Busiest Airport on race day, with flights arriving every 15 seconds.

Well, except for our British readers, the rest of us will have to make do with the telly.  Fortunately, the good folks at SPEED and FOX will be bringing us their usual excellent coverage. 

This coverage begins on Friday, July 4th, from 7a to 840a, with SPEED's live coverage of Friday Practice 2.  Will we see a resurgence of BMW this weekend, or will the Red Team and the Glare On Wheels continue their recent dominance?

If you are to race at Silverstone, you first must qualify, and SPEED will bring it all to us.  Saturday, July 5th, from 7a to 830a, we get plausibly live coverage of the Quals session.  Nine out of the past 10 races have been won by Ferrari (five times) or McLaren (four), and it all starts with the quals.

Finally, the race itself will be shown on FOX in tape-delay, Sunday, July 6th from 12n to 2pm.  Will BMW play the part of Renault (the one team to win here in the past 10 years that isn't Ferrari or McLaren)?  Heck, will RENAULT play the part of Renault?  Will it be a Red Car Walkover?  Will the Glare On Wheels rally on their home track?  Will Lewis Hamilton win his biggest race ever?  This is where and when we find out!

If you can't catch the race on FOX, SPEED will replay it in it's entirety Wednesday, July 9th from 1130a to 130p.  Don't miss it!

^{All times Pond Central; add one hour for East Coast, subtract two for San Francisco, and add 12 kilopascals and a blanket for the South Pole.}

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The type of blogging I'm doing is supposed to be fun.  It's light-hearted, humorous, and occasionally witty.  To be frank, it hasn't been very fun recently.  It's been a lot more like... work, and I do enough of that at the Duck U. Bookstore. 

So I'm going to take a few days off.  I've got other stuff I'm working on right now that's taking a lot of my free time... and you folks will get to be involved soon... and trying to blog coherently takes time I can't begrudge right now. 

So The Pond is going quiet until Monday, June 30th, unless something very important breaks loose between now and then.

Thank you.
-Wonderduck

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