Today: Frenzied

Today is the last race of the season.

 

And is you hadn’t have guessed it’s going to be a fight to the finish. Mark Webber starting in 5th with Fernando Alonso stroking his cat in front of him will surely kick up some interesting over-takes (hopefully)

Alonso is using his engine from Monza (as far as i’m aware) so I’m hoping for a minor (major) failure on the straight. or a turn. or on the starting grid.

For all his skill on the race-track it’s a shame that if Alonso wins by less than 7 points, it will be tarnished by the events that happened in Hockenheim. Surely he would have passed Felipe Massa in the coming laps? – Past events.

Lewis Hamilton. Twitter new-boy and it seems he has found the pace this weekend! Granted nobody could remove pole from Sebastian Vettel, but he sure put in the hard work. Only a miracle can allow him the title. But the race win is in his grasp.

Not much needs to be said on the Red Bull Drivers, and if i started having to discuss them i’m sure i could go on for at least a novel. Or a series of them…..

Although the battle at the front is going to be intense, it shouldn’t be forgotton that Vitaly Petrov out-qualified Robert Kubica this weekend. AND didn’t put his car in the wall. which is always a good thing! There is still a battle amongst the mid-field teams for prime positions – battles which could affect the race leaders.

So whilst Martin Brundle goes on about how this is a race for the 4 remaining title challengers, It’s more ofa race for the people behind. Who will not just be fighting for points/a finish, but also for Race seats. – which to be honest, you kind of need to beable to challenge for anything.

Today: A small room, 5 F1 fans, and work to be done

Physics is a rather abstract degree choice for most ‘normal’ people. Infact i wouldn’t say anybody is normal on my course…

As a third year I currently have a project to complete, worth a double module, and I get to do something fancy with a spectrometer, take pretty pictures, then fret about why my image suggests that stars aren’t even hot enough to start fusion. I’m predicting alot of calibration time will be required…..

I have been located on the 5th floor of my building – mainly to protect the rest of the physics department from unfortunate distraction, but also because that’s where pretty much where all the stuff is i’m going to be using. Putting a telescope in the basement isn’t particuarly useful (but a good location to store the broken ones). I am in a room with 5 other people, now out of the 100 or so people in my year, there are a couple of people who like F1 (we’re the wierder of the wierd people, but not the worst) and yes, all but 2 of them are located on the 5th floor, in a tiny room, for 7 hours on a Monday, and 4 hours on a Thursday, every couple of weeks there is at least a 2 hour discussion on anything BUT our projects.

Thankfully our supervisor hasn’t quite figured this out, when i say our supervisor, i mean theirs. Mine leaves me to it most of the time!

What type of things do we like discussing? Well they are all McLaren fans and have all come to the same conclusion that I think most people have: They don’t want Alonso to win, they would prefer Vettel or Webber to take the crown – favourite there is Webber, and they have silently given up any realistic hope on either Button or Hamilton making it to be WDC.

As McLaren fans, i’m going to generalise them into thinking that they still think they have a mathematical chance. They do, but with Hamilton’s current record in finishing his races, al i have to say is “LOL”.

I do feel pretty gutted for Hamilton, he had a good race in Suzuka after suffering that gearbox change, then lost 3rd gear…. I’d check with the supplier Lewis.

Button barely made an impression on the TV, same for Alonso. Infact whenever the tv crew decided to film the front runners, boring doesn’t really describe it.

The beginning was where the action happened, Petrov got away to a good start (as the Renault’s generally do) but then did a Vettel and pulled in just a tad to quick. Bad luck there i say, Stewards say 5 place grid drop. Massa just got most things wrong. Driving incidence yes, but an unfortunate end for Liuzzi. Not what the Italian really needed! Then during the safety car period, poor Kubica who made it past Mark Webber (who had a SHOCKING start again) had a tyre fall off. A fate which would soon be experienced by Rosberg later in the race.

The bonus of Rosberg going out? Lotus have made it to 10th in the constructors championship. Lotus are my adopted new team, most people who have watched F1 have ‘adopted’ a new team to follow, The 5 who reside up on the 5th all have different choices, mainly split between Virgin and Lotus ( I Like green….) with HRT being the team we discuss most about. Confused? yeah… we all are too.

The problem with being 5 scientists talking about F1 is that we all think we’re right, I normally am. It’s the mentality we have been brought up with throughout uni, you have to believe you are right to get anywhere with anybody, when deciding through problems we have to justify what we have done, so we have to talk like we are incredible.

Exhausting.

Korean GP next week, looks like the track is down, and cars can you know… drive round it. They say they just have some ‘landscaping issues’ left to deal with. I think building grandstands and putting places for the fans to watch is pretty important but then again, i’ll be watching from under my duvet as it will be 2am/6am again.  So i won’t really notice anything except the sultry sound of Ant Davidson and Karun Chandhok commentating saying how er… lovely the track is looking!