Category: Sports

Boston seems to be dominating in American sports these days… pretty amazing. I’m hoisting a glass of bubbly in the general direction of the Sox. (Denver or Fenway… it’s all east from here.)

SPEEDtv is reporting that the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council is freezing engine development in Formula 1 for 10 years.

“There will be a total freeze on engine development for a period of 10 years, starting from 2008,” the WMSC’s statement read. “A change can be made after five years but only with the unanimous agreement of all stakeholders and following a further two-year notice period. Total freeze means that there will be no exceptions for development of certain parts of the engine, as is the case under the current regulations.”

This is simply asinine. Imagine trying to do this in computing: can you even buy 10-year old chips today? ((OK, I’m sure that NASA and the DoD do this, but that’s hardly a pattern to emulate.)) And how far does it go? Does it mean that every metal component must be manufactured from exactly the same alloy, shaped, drilled and finished using the same equipment? Or suppose that an engine maker has been trying to perfect a radical design for the last few years, and decides that it can’t be made to work. Reintroducing a more conventional technology would presumably involve “development”, so they’re stuck.
One obvious outcome is that it will be impossible for a new engine manufacturer to break into the club: how can you introduce a new product without doing development? We already have a situation in which a handful of engine makers supply all teams: Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Toyota, Honda, and BMW. But this didn’t imply stasis. Several of them have been making noises about the introduction of new, energy-efficient, low-pollution technologies: diesels, hybrids, new types of fuel.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this decision was made to protect the weaker engine manufacturers who weren’t prepared (or able) to fund innovation. This presumably means Ferrari, possibly supported by Renault. But it sucks.

F1: Raikkonen Wins Race and Title in Brazil:

Fourth on the grid, Alonso pressured Hamilton into the next corner, the Lago dive, and moved past the Brit, who went wide and down to the eighth spot…. Hamilton promptly went into attack mode, moving past Jarno Trulli’s Toyota on the following lap, then engaging in battle against Nick Heidfeld’s BMW for P6, a position the rookie gained on the seventh lap.
The Brit’s joy was short-lived, however: on the following lap, the championship’s deciding moment came about as Hamilton’s gearbox began to balk after the Lago corner. In-car footage showed the McLaren driver repeatedly hitting his shift paddle to no avail, until finally, right after the Laranjinha turn, the car seemingly went back to normal once again, in “mysterious” action eerily similar to what happened to Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari at the same track also on a title decider last year. The malady cost Hamilton 10 spots as he dropped down to 18th.

And that was it. Alonso could do no better than third, Massa gave way to Raikkonen in the pits, the Williams and BMW drivers narrowly failed to take each other out, and Kimi was the improbable champion.
So what will next year be like? Lewis and Kimi will presumably be team leaders at McLaren and Ferrari, but where will Alonso be? BMW? Renault?

This weekend is cool and drizzling, so I think I’m just going to spend it doing chores and watching sports. Today we had Chelsea showing their classic style as they knocked off Middlesborough, then the qualifying for tomorrow’s Brazilian Grand Prix ((Go Hamilton!!)), followed by the Rugby World Cup (close, but no cigar), and finally this evening’s win by the Red Sox to keep their dream alive. Tomorrow is the Grand Prix, and then we’ll see if the Sox can complete their come-back to make it to the World Series. ((And even though I’ve been in the USA for over 26 years, I still think the term “World Series” sounds pompous and silly. Having one team from Canada doesn’t make it an international event. But then when it comes to entertainments of all kinds, the US is choosing to become more and more isolated.))

Poor old Hamilton. Why didn’t he pit immediately when Raikkonen passed him? (Were his crew not ready?) Did he forget that the pit lane would be more slippery than the track? (And did the team remind him?) Oh, well: on to the last race of the season, in Brazil, with three drivers having a shot at the Championship for the first time since Nigel Mansell’s tyre exploded in Australia.
And don’t get me started on Chinese weather forecasters…!

After watching the practice session for the Chinese Grand Prix on SpeedTV, and hearing about:

1. the ridiculous suggestions about penalizing Lewis Hamilton for last Sunday’s race, when the fault clearly lay with Webber for repeatedly getting alongside Hamilton [fortunately resolved with a bit of common sense], and
2. Max Mosely’s unprofessional and borderline-libellous comments concerning Jackie Stewart

I can only conclude that the FIA is, itself, acting to “bring the sport into disrepute”. But since it is the sport’s governing body, who is going to hold them accountable? This is ridiculous…

I wonder if a Grand Prix has ever been run from start to finish behind the safety car, with no passing allowed except when people go off the track or pit… Never mind: they’re finally racing at Fuji.
[Later]
Overheard on Lewis Hamilton’s radio just after he’d taken the chequered flag: his engineer said, “Well, I guess we can tick off ‘driving in the wet’, then?” LOL! What a beautiful drive, even if it was in ridiculous conditions!

After watching how Chelsea and Manchester United performed today, it’s time to dig out my Arsenal shirt. It’s tempting to conclude that the reds and the blues are simply playing worse than before, but it seems more likely that the rest of the league ((with some notable exceptions!)) have simply raised their game, and the teams that used to dominate their opponents haven’t been able to adapt.
The one thing that I can’t understand is what’s happened to Spurs. The fact that Berbatov has only scored one goal so far is obviously part of it, but perhaps it’s more significant that Martin Jol has been under such pressure from the start. When a popular coach loses the support of the owner, team performance suffers. (OK, perhaps that argues against my earlier point. Perhaps Chelsea are simply playing badly right now.)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Formula 1 session held up because of fog, ((Of course back in the 60s the BRDC – or was it the BARC? – used to hold a Boxing Day event at Brands Hatch, and it was frequently misty and even frosty. The main race was always started by a guy in a Father Christmas outfit!)) but the foothills of Mount Fuji have been decidedly murky today. However the qualifying session finally got started, and it was good to see Lewis Hamilton making a perfectly timed run to snatch pole position by 70 ms. from Alonso. Let’s hope he can translate this into a win tomorrow.

None of this makes any sense:

McLaren have been stripped of their points in the 2007 Formula One constructors’ championship after the outcome of the ‘spygate’ row.
The team were also fined a record $100m (£49.2m), which includes any prize and television money they would have earned from the constructors’ championship.
But drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso can keep their points.

Now, nobody but a few racing geeks and PR men care about the constructor’s championship. The title that matters is the World Drivers’ Championship. So if the FIA were really seeking to redress a wrongdoing, they would have stripped the drivers of their points. But they didn’t.
Sir Jackie Stewart makes a plausible case for there being more to this than meets the eye:

“All I can say, without being in full command of all of the information, is that the offence must be considerably larger than has been projected either by the governing body of the sport or within the media,” he told BBC Radio 5live.
“This isn’t murder that has been carried out, this is something that has happened before and there wasn’t even a fine or disciplinary action taken by the same governing body.… And even if they were found guilty of that particular crime, it doesn’t justify this kind of penalty.”

When the season ends, I hope that the World Drivers Championship is headed by Hamilton and Alonso (preferably in that order), and the Constructors’ result will be asterisked and forgotten. The Belgian Grand Prix is this Sunday ((I’ll be in Brookline, MA, but my DVR will watch it for me, just like Douglas Adams’ electric monk.)) and I really hope that the McLaren boys are able to put this nonsense aside and concentrate on winning.
UPDATE: Now that the details have been published, I think I’m going to have to reverse my position on this. The “industrial espionage” (what else can you call it?) went way beyond “two former colleagues chatting in the pub”. There were enough people involved that the McLaren organization itself must be judged as guilty. Even Alonso clearly knew what was going on.