Sun 14th Sep 2008 @ 00:08 2008: Kimi vs Lewis : Spa 2008

Lewis's move against Kimi towards the end of last weekend's Spa Grand Prix has been rather controversial; it is claimed that Lewis gained a place by cutting a corner:



The circuit had been wet, but drying out throughout the race; in the final few laps, the rain started again (Heidfeld stopped with 4 laps to go, to change to wet tyres; by doing so he improved from 7th to 3rd position, passing 4 cars in the final few laps just by having more suitable tyres).

Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari (in the lead) was coping less well than Lewis Hamilton's McLaren; Hamilton was gaining on Raikkonen by a few tenths of a second each corner. Eventually, Lewis had caught up with Kimi, when Kimi (struggling more than Lewis in the wet) braked very early for the corner, forcing Lewis to take avoiding action: He had to duck out of the suddenly-stopping Ferrari's way, but by the time they got to the corner, there wasn't enough room for both cars to get through. The only thing that Lewis could do was to take the escape road (cutting the left-hand corner). By doing so, he came out back on to the race circuit ahead of Kimi; the regulations state quite clearly that he must yield that advantage back to Kimi, so he did, and went behind Kimi from left to right, demonstrating that his car was entirely behind Kimi's car. McLaren's telemetry showed that as they crossed the start/finish line, Lewis was going 6kph slower than Kimi. With equal mass, his momentum was also lower than Kimi's.

Lewis then out-braked Kimi once more, into the right-hand corner, taking (and then keeping) the lead of the race. Kimi crashed his car a few minutes later.

Here is the onboard footage from Lewis Hamilton's McLaren, showing that he had to take the avoiding action, and that he let the Ferrari pass him before outbraking Kimi into the next corner - It's 18 seconds into the clip:



Instead of being congratulated on a bold move (and his more intelligent driving around the beleaguered Williams a few corners later, and in managing to drive to the end of the race, none of which Kimi managed to do), Lewis was penalised the equivalent of a drive-through penalty (25 seconds) which demoted his 1st place (10-point) finish to 3rd place (7 points). At this stage in the championship, that meant that his lead over Massa is now only 2 points, not 8 points.

Justified? I think that this footage shows that Hamilton took evasive action which was necessary due to Kimi's early braking (his car being so unsuited to the conditions that Kimi had to brake early), and that - having been perceived to have gained an advantage, that Lewis gave it back to Kimi, only to pass him again (legitimately this time - on the track), at the next corner.

At 1m40 we see both cars go wide; Lewis is now in front, and we can see from Kimi's position that Kimi goes much further off-track than Lewis has to (of course, neither gain position from going off-track at this stage, so this is not controversial).

Then at 1m55, we see the Williams; Lewis takes to the grass to avoid him, whilst Kimi takes advantage by passing Hamilton but narrowly avoiding the Williams. Hamilton regains the lead when Kimi finally loses all control of the car (2m37).

The rightful winner is clearly Lewis Hamilton; instead, Kimi's teammate Fellipe Massa, who drove a strong 2nd place, was promoted to the win.

Tue 9th Sep 2008 @ 23:09 2008: Stephen Fry wishes GNU a happy 25th Birthday

http://www.gnu.org/fry/

Recommended viewing.

Thu 4th Sep 2008 @ 00:56 2008: Oh dear... well can she eat wafer-thin ham?

Or if they're out of vegetarian Sushi, can I have a veggie Steak and Kidney Pudding, a bottle of non-alcoholic Vodka, some non-dairy milk, and a bowl of WTF?!!

"Contains Gluten, Egg, Soya & Mustard. Suitable for a vegetarian diet."

That is... how can I put this?

That is NOT SUSHI

That is Gluten, Egg, Soya and Mustard. It's what you get with Sushi without the Sushi.

ObQuote: The Royle Family