I really don't understand how anyone could blame Button for the Alonso incident. He was right along side him up to the chicane but Alonso tried to carry more speed in (he clearly released his brakes before Button) and cut ahead mid corner. Nice idea and it might just have worked but it didn't. If he'd have not cut across so hard he could maybe have got him on the exit of the chicane assuming he could get on the throttle and make the corner. I don't think he could have personally, it seemed like Button had the job done and then Alonso tried a last second fight back that ended up with in in the wall. Textbook racing incident but, if anything, more blame should lie with Alonso for misjudging his counter attack.
I don't think Button could of done anything different in that situation and I don't think I would have done anything different to him if I had been in that situation. I think Alonso could have done something different and I think I would have wanted to do something different at the time (though it's easy to know what to do sat in my comfy chair at my computer), though I'd probably have done something similar in the end and then regretted it.
Vettel has consistently made the same (well very similar at least) mistakes time and again. There's no doubt that he can drive a car fast but the learning process appears to have stopped. He should be trying to improve in every area, but he doesn't even seem to realise he has any weaknesses.
He's gaining quite a reputation for being a bit rammy I'd say, even if it is by accident a lot of the time. If he has any sense then he would be going to great lengths to improve and avoid that reputation from building. Swerving around on a track that may or may not be damp and where there is a bump that he must of known about...when is that a good idea? Sure he may have been caught out but plenty of shitter drivers seem to be able to pull off overtakes cleanly. It's very frustrating being as he should be able to get a championship.
He compounds the situation with his attitude towards it all. He really makes himself seem brattish. I used to like him he's steadily becoming an annoyance, I'm actually quite tempted to send him some coupons for a driving lesson or two.
I had a lot more to say about him yesterday but my mother would have been less than proud of the words I was using, though you could sum it up as, 'That foolish man should have his license taken away until he learns how to not ram people'.
Could someone with the PC version let me know if the multiplayer is worth it? I suspect not but I really want to play this game, if the multiplayer is rubbish then I won't be doing so.
Still really annoyed about all this crap Infinity Ward are trying to pull, especially as they pretend that they're doing it for PC gamers.
That's awfully bloody nice of Force India. I expect they got a nice little wedge for it but it's still good of them to let Fisi drive a Ferrari at Monza.
What (I think) he meant was that when you don't reach Q3 taking a gamble on a 3 stopper seems like a bad gamble.
Alonso qualified in 15th due to his problem (I think it was fuel pressure but I can't quite remember) and they decided to go for a very short first stint and 3 stop strategy. Not the kind of strategy you expect from low down on the grid, it makes much more sense to go long and try to get extra laps in after others have pitted. As it happened it did work but only because Piquet put it into the wall and essentially made Alonso's early pitstop a 'free' pitstop.
I guess what I'm saying is that Alonso's qualifying problem is not relevant to the discussion, in my opinion, it is merely the reason he qualified badly.
I'm not fully sure Massa will race again this season let alone in Valencia. It'll be a shame for him if he is out for the rest of the season.
If he does miss out on the rest of the season then it may well weaken his chance of doing well next season due to missing out on time in the car. Missing races combined with limited testing would mean that he'll probably have got a lot less practice in than other drivers by the start of next season.
What is Massa's current condition? I google him up on occasion but haven't seen much said yet about expected recovery time and such like. Is he all clear on eye damage yet? I think I'll open up the google box now and see what it says...
Looking at the photo there are probably another 2 pins hidden by the gc, I only count 22 there and it should be 24. From the photo it doesn't look like there is much clearance (if any) there and if that is the case then a new motherboard is the simplest solution.
Irreducible complexity suggests that some things in nature are so complex that if you take away just one part of it then the whole thing will not work and, thus, complex things cannot come from simple things and evolution is not true. An example would be to look at a mouse trap. Irreducible complexity says that if you take away just a single part of the mousetrap it will no longer be able to perform the function of a mouse trap thus it would be impossible to evolve a mouse trap.
This is poor reasoning to my mind. Firstly, there is some truth here. If you take away a single part of a mousetrap, or a complex biological structure, then it will likely not work as intended. You could easily observe this in enough situations to take it as a general rule. This has nothing what so ever to do with evolution. To comment on the mouse trap example (one I have heard used by a proponent of irreducible complexity), using a man made object to draw conclusions about a natural system is a dubious analogy at best but you can see what they are getting at.
Unfortunately, they're looking at it in reverse. Sure, if you take away parts from a complex system then that system is likely to break down. What bearing does this have on adding parts to, or modifying the parts of, an existent system? A much better analogy that goes in the correct direction would be to take a simple mouse trap and improve it in some small way. For example, adding a slightly stronger spring to the mousetrap so that it is more effective at it's prescribed task. It is easy to imagine that a 'biological mousetrap' could experience a mutation that would lead to it's 'spring' being slightly stronger.
Can you see the difference in those two analogys? That is essentially the difference between evolution and irreducible complexity.
I really don't think that irreducible complexity is wrong because it differs from my opinion, just thinking about it a little is enough (for me anyway) to realise that it doesn't make much sense and seems of very little relevance or consequence to evolution...it's not even talking about the same thing, for a start! It is a strawman argument; it's a situation that seems similar to evolution, but isnt anything to do with it really, and then that situation is used to refute evoution despite being irrelevant.
That's how I see it anyway.
Sorry for straying a bit OT but I wanted to say it.
We've seen it go Button's way from behind already this year. If Button doesn't get ahead but can keep on the back of Vettel then he has more fuel to bang in some fast laps when Vettel pits and leaves him with some clean air. I imagine that, all other things being equal, that's how the race will go. Button will get ahead in T1 or at the first round of stops.
If Button does win this ahead of Vettel in second with Barrichello in third then he goes up to a 20pt lead in the championship, I believe. That would be very good for him.
Having seen the weights it should make for an interesting start. Button is going to have a good chance to stick it up the inside in the first corner assuming both get realtively good starts.
Once you get back towards the Webber/Trulli region of the grid I imagine they will be more worried about keeping ahead of the KERS equipped Ferraris rather than gaining places.
I really don't think you'd get away with it as a civvie. You're still breaking the law regardless of your motive. Assuming you did do this and nothing bad happened then they might go easy on you but I doubt the police/courts would like to set a precedent for vigilante car mobs!
If you were a off duty police driver in such a situation then you might be able to get away with it but I think they may still take a dim view of taking chase in a completely unmarked vehicle without any sirens or any kind of light arrangement.
I thought I'd chip in on the Hamilton thing. To say his drive was exceptional is a bit far fetched. It's too hard to say if it was exceptional or not given that quite a lot of stuff happened in his favour (retirements and safety car periods). It was most certainly a good drive and if not then a great drive. He kept his head, took any places that he could and brought the car home in a good position which was more than he was probably hoping for in the circumstances.
The GP as a whole was one of the best I've seen in a while but I think that's because i've allowed myself to get sucked into the fairytale-ness of it what with BrawnGP getting a (quite lucky) 1-2 after not really being sure if they were going to compete last month. It did make it quite a spectacle and I imagine this race will be talked about for a while for that reason alone, especially so if BrawnGP keep up their pace and keep on getting good results.
I certainly hope they do well, it could help rejuvenate F1 a bit I reckon.
The Kubica and Vettel incident is an interesting one. I don't think either driver drove particularly well there. Vettel went in pretty hot and probably shouldn't have attempted it. Kubica most certainly knew he was there (although maybe that was the glare issue coming into play?) and could quite easily have avoided an accident and maintained track poistion. Vettel wouldn't have had much chance of catching after that, he was struggling with his tires at that point anyway (wasn't he? I seem to remember he was), so Kubica made a pretty big mistake trying to squeeze Vettel IMO. I wouldn't have punished either for it myself, racing incident that both could have avoided and both drivers have been punished for. One piece of tarmac that two drivers really want to be on, or 20 drivers to 1 piece of tarmac in LFS. Having said that driving on with a wheel flapping about is a bit stupid and a pretty good reason for a penalty anyway!
I agree, I fully support the independent AT&T Williams F1 Team. They are there only for racing and not for sponsorship reasons!
As you can tell, i don't agree. I think this is poor reasoning. All of the teams are there to race. There is no question of that. The people who are actually 'at the coalface' are there to try and win races. The sponsors and evil corporate pig dogs are gracious enough to provide the money through which racing can happen.
Don't get me wrong, I see what you are getting at but making out the other teams are just there because of their evil corporate pig dog masters is, quite frankly, insulting. If it weren't for those evil corporate pig dog masters then there would be no F1 in the modern era.
I wouldn't have thought so. Horsepower isn't a measure of fuel used. One car could make 50bhp efficiently and one could make it inefficiently. If one car used the exact amount of fuel required to make the exact amount of energy to get 50bhp and burned it 100% efficiently then it would use less fuel than a car that used more fuel than was required and made the same amount of energy by burning it at less than 100% efficieny.
I agree. They'd probably use them on the new cars if they could because they're limited in what they can do with the main wings.
Though if the rules suddenly changed and they could do whatever the hell they wanted aerodynamically I doubt you'd see too many buggering about with loads of winglets. Maybe winglets for redirecting airflow to make better use of the main wings and various other purposes but mostly I think they'd make the front and rear wing produce the amount of downforce they need without the need for winglets (or other aerodynamic devices) primarily for the purpose of downforce.
They probably wouldn't need them in an ideal design but that isn't why they got rid of them from this years car. That's only one mans unexpert opinion though.
On his keyboard he can type in Russian and English by switching from one to the other. Sometimes he forgets to switch from english characters to russian characters and ends up with:
Ghbdtn! rfr ndjb ltkf&
Instead of:
Привет! как твои дела?
He wants something that will change or transliterate from English characters to Russian characters, so for example, G will be changed to П and r will be changed to к. Rather than him having to type it out again.
I'd say the guy driving in it was doing a pretty good job. Seemed like pretty crap conditions to drive an F1 car in, especially as it seemed to be relatively low speeds, hell there was at least 1 'civilian' looking person crossing the street in front of him so he wouldn't of been allowed to spank it that hard. I doubt his tyres were anywhere near a decent temperature for most of it!
This must be one of the longest arguments between people who seem to agree on something (at the heart of it there is an agreement here that has spilled out into an argument over terminology I think) that I've ever witnessed...not really...but it has gone on for a while now.
Are we all agreed that under certain conditions, including but not limited to a very small radius corner, 'drfiting' is quicker than 'gripping'? Yes? Good.
Right.
Then let us move on and maybe start a whole new thread about motorsports terminology then release a book for motorsports fans called 'The LFS Forum Guide to Motorsports Terminology', including all kinds of cools graphs and diagrams, and use the profits to fund further development of LFS.
If there are any other silly threads that need to be turned into profit making ideas then you'll have to figure them out yourselves because this one was a fluke.
You seem to imply that nothing that happens in sport should be considered for prosecution. Obviously you don't mean that because that would be a silly situation to be in.
I admit Speed probably shouldn't go to court for this incident but what happens if he does it again and someone else dies? Do we just say, 'It's motorsport, he knew there was a chance he'd die so we'll just ignore it, oh, BTW, good revenge wrecking Scott!'
Of course it's an area you have to be careful with because you don't want to be prosecuting people for being involved in fatal accidents resulting from racing incidents when that is an accepted risk of the sport but you can't give people carte blanche to do stupid things that could easily result in loss of life.