Italians Rule Magny Cours

With Ferrari 1-2 and surprise podium finisher Jarno Trulli, it was a wonderful day for Italian fans at French GP. See the results

Kimi Räikkönen managed to secure 200th pole for Ferrari on an uneventful Saturday. He was leading the race comfortably until his F2008 lost an exhaust manifold midrace. The hot exhaust from engine burned some part of the engine cover. The situation looked dangerous, but Ferrari crew looked unworried. ( I practiced some hardcore cursing when Star Sports took a commercial break just as Kimi entered pits with a blown exhaust ) But this was Kimi’s 1st race on this engine so he has to use the same one at Silverstone two weeks later. Ultimately Kimi had to give up his position to speeding Massa, as he was losing tremendous power.

The ‘Uselessness’ of some of the FIA rules was proven here also as Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty for ‘Overtaking outside racing line’. Isn’t it FIA’s job to make sure that driver loses time if he drives off racing line? Starting 13th after a 10 stop penalty because of pit lane incident in Canada, Hamilton struggled very hard to finish 10th.

According to me, Trulli was the most impressive driver. He held back a clearly faster Hekki Kovalainen for more than 20 laps. It was a classic example of Experience vs Speed. He ‘truly’ deserved his place on the podium.

BMWs lacked pace and did not look like a team that finished 1-2 in Canada. Both the Force-India cars finished the race, for a change. Nelson Piquet Jr. overtook Alonso on a very last lap to finish 7th and opened his championship points account.

Massa leads Driver’s championship by 2 points from Kubica. The championship is wide open!

Kubica makes the breakthrough

Kubica recorded his maiden win in Canada at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. BMW had a magical weekend, registering their first ever 1-2. With 2 stop strategy for Kubica, and 1 stop for Heidfeld, there was no stopping them after Kimi and Hamilton were forced out. Coulthard was seen on podium after quite a while. So we had an unusual finish to an exiting race. Long time since a race without Ferrari or Mclaren on Podium

Ferrari had a disappointing weekend. Massa managed 5th place. Championship contender Kimi could not finish the race. Kimi stopped his car in front of the red light coming out of pits during 2^nd safety car period, as any sane driver would. Hamilton apparently, did not see the red light and hit Kimi from behind, only to send both of them out. So did Roseberg. As both the commentators mentioned (Chris Goodwin was back just for this race), this red light during safety car period rule is a stupid one, but you HAVE to follow the rules.

Naturally, action was taken against both of them, so Hamilton and Roseberg will suffer a punishment of 10 places in next race at Magny-Cours. Many people would be tempted to apply the same logic to accident involving Sutil and Kimi at Monaco. But they are totally different. Kimi, though drove aggressively, did not break any rule. Losing control at 200 kmph on a wet track is one thing and hitting a stationary car at pitlane speed limit , jumping the red light, is another. So FIA did a good job here.

Both the Force India drivers disappointed Mallya yet again. Tough luck for them!

Futile statistics

Reportedly, Harvard students are going to take IPL as case study. Add one more member to that… ‘Sakal’..the newspaper has dissected the whole event to a such a low level..it cannot sink any lower.

Their parameters-

• Price of the player
• Number of runs scored
• Rs/run

Formula-

Rs/run = (Price of player)/(Number of runs scored)

By this calculation, Chennai SuperKings owners were screwed as Dhoni cost Rs 1.5 lacs/run and Shaun Marsh got a shoddy deal as he got only Rs 1100/ run.

So apparently the franchises bought the players because they are just run making machines. Fielding, bowling, captaincy is for free and T-20 is all about batting.

I think this was a project of some 1st yr Statistics students who wanted to see if they can divide two numbers.