The first even night race in Formula1. Wow. A part of history now and I'm glad I could be at the race in person :)

It was great fun walking the track with teemus on thursday and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday just flew by with loads of F1 and loads more of Zouk.

This was my second F1 race and if I was asked to pick between Sepang and Marina Bay, I think the latter wins hands down. Cheaper food, cheaper merchandise, lovely atmosphere, amazing music, giant screens that were actually viewable to name some. I think the very fact that the race happens in the middle of a city is a win. In Sepang, there was nothing to do after the race, but head back into the city...which wasn't all that much fun in retrospect ;)

I'm sure the organizers will iron out the kinks for the next edition and it will be even more fun overall.

Way to go Singapore, you've given F1 a truly wonderful twist in the tale.

Last set of pics, Raceday - http://flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607704772359/

X-posted to f1

Pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607640807934/

X-posted to f1

Pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607538474392/

Sorry! No time to describe in detail, but to summarize :

If you're every coming to Asia to see a GP, Singapore is THE place to be :) Awesome event so far, amazing organization and great fun!!

X-posted to f1

In a week from now, Formula1 cars will line up along this very stretch to kick off the Singtel Singapore Grand Prix and create history.

I spent around 2 hours walking around the circuit yesterday and took a few snaps.

All the photos are handheld. No tripod or monopod. The lights are really quite bright as you can see :)

A few interesting things : BMW Sauber stuff, Turn 19 - where the cars go under the grandstands, Digiflags and concrete protective barriers.

For the rest of the snaps, clicky!

I can hardly wait :) 24 days to go for FP1 and that'll kick off the world's first night race. I got these 3 day walkabout tickets back in June, and took the pics back then too, just been lazy to upload them.

Of course, these are commemorative tickets, and hence plastic. They're damn cool :)

The circuit is almost done, lights are up, protective barriers are up and they're some very strong concrete barriers...will be interesting to see where the tyre walls will come up, if any. I'll try to walk around this weekend and get some shots of the circuit

Few more pics : http://flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607054264156/

In a 100 days, if all goes well, I'll be watching the world's first F1 night race at the Singtel Singapore Grand Prix. w00t!

I was out with some friends yesterday evening when I found out that Mika Hakkinen was in town for a little promo and there was a McLaren F1 car involved in the picture...

On digging around the internet, we found out that it was a promo for Johnnie Walker's new do not drink and drive campaign called Join the Pact (http://jointhepact.com/).

The only thing we (roomie and I) did today was head over to the place where the event was happening and catch a glimpse of the McLaren MP4-22, Mika, Paula Malai Ali and Steve Dawson (covering the event for Star Sports).

Woohoo! I managed to get some pretty decent shots ;)

Of course, the car never did anything more than 2nd or 3rd gear and the ear plugs they handed out weren't really needed, but it was fun. Mika did a total of 4 runs in the MP4-22, with the 3rd and 4th being longer than the first two along with some spins and the like.

The place where the event happened is actually a part of the street circuit where the GP will take place in September. Rest of the snaps - http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157604312769276/

and for code_martial (in response to http://code-martial.livejournal.com/183623.html), a little statement :)



I'm not going to be able to sleep now.

So, finding a place these days are made easier by using Google Maps and/or Wikimapia. I found a couple of places I needed to go to in Bangalore using Wikimapia. Although there is significant noise thanks to the numerous people who seem to love marking out their houses, it still works. I successfully plotted a driving route to a place using both and well, managed to reach it fine. The route back wasn't as easy (thanks to a zillion one-ways) but that worked out as well. w00t!

In other news, Ferrari finally managed their first 1-2 of the season today at what is touted to be the last race ever at Magny-Cours. Seems the new aerodynamics package that both Kimi and Massa were confident about really turned the tables on McLaren this weekend. w00t!

A close friend got engaged and another got married and I was lucky enough to make it to both :)

Had a lazy weekend, looking forward to the week ahead....

The best part of all the 3 days, was raceday. Why? Because that's when you realise that you're normal and you see how many other people are atleast just as crazy or even more crazy that you are about the sport. The whole atmosphere was awesome. So many motorsport fans in one place....

I was wearing my Ferrari shirt as I came down for breakfast that day at the hotel and everyone looked at me like I was part of the team. Hah, felt good ;) The same thing on the monorail, random people would smile...a fellow Ferrari fan from some corner of the globe would nod or wave. And everyone in general knew what the deal was all about.

The rest of the snaps are being uploaded, a few hundred more to go...I'm off to sleep now.

Just as I thought I'd gotten over Sepang, vyshnavi kindly sends in an email with this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi1EQBVA2Lc

And the memories came rushing back. As did the sounds. I still can't get over the V8s.

I'm going to own a Ferrari someday. That's a promise to myself that I really intend to keep.

Christijan Albers during Practice on Saturday. Rest of the Day 2 snaps : http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157600077941245/

That's Nico Rosberg being pushed back in after his first practice session on Friday. I reached Sepang only by 1100 on the first day, so I caught 30 mins of the first session. The KLIA Ekspress is a very affordable + fast way to get to the Sepang Circuit which is about 80 Kms outside KL. For RM 100 (Around US$30 approx) this train takes you from the main train station in KL to the Airport from where AC buses ferry you to Sepang which is about 7-10 Kms away and return you back to the station from where you catch the train back. The RM 100 is for 3 days, it's RM 80 for raceday only. The train is amazing, makes 3 stops and covers 80 Kms is about 35 mins or so. Compared to a one way fare of RM 70 if you take a cab from the city, it's a killer deal.

Rest of the photos from Day 1. Some interesting ones :

1) Mika Hakkinen.
2) Robert Kubica, 1, 2 and 3.
3) Lewis Hamilton (only got his back though...)
4) Jarno Trulli (looking right ahead...seems like he was looking at the cam heh)
5) Marshals cleaning the track after Sutil's tyre blew up.

More pics soon :)

I wandered into the SIC on the 6^th of April around 1100 and heard an amazingly loud roar followed by 4 bangs...and that's when it hit me...those were the V8s downshifting from 6th to 2nd gear at the end of the start-finish straight to take turn 1 on the circuit. The first thing I probably screamed out was something not very nice, but then no one could hear me :D Here I was...on an F1 circuit and it really hadn't sunk in at that point. I just stood there and grinned like an idiot for 5 minutes before calling my dad and screaming into the phone (over the sound of the engines...).

No words can describe the scream of the V8s down the start-finish straight and the bangs as they shift gears. The cars move so fast that you can barely make out the drivers. Photographing them isn't an easy task, simply because of the speed :D The above is prolly the best shot of Massa I got across the 3 days and this was taken during the race (and he was doing over 300 Kmph..since the shot was taken down the start-finish straight).

If you're an F1 fan, you absolutely should go to a Grand Prix in your lifetime, simply because the TV doesn't quite cut it. The sounds of the engine are one I will never forget for a long time to come. Awesome. Amazing. Brilliant.

As I went to sleep on saturday, I could still hear the V8s...that's the impact they leave on you..the distict Rrrurrrrrrrrrr, bang, bang, bang...

Ferrari didn't win, and that was a disappointment but I'm sure they'll bounce back. This season should be very interesting to watch.

PS : Tons more pics to come, I managed to get shots of Kimi, Alonso, Mika (yes, Hakkinen...god bless the 70-300 :p), Nico, Trulli, Rubeno....it'll take a while to upload them all and I'll make a few more posts regarding the trip later.

Like teemus said, after watching F1 on TV since 1999, I'll be in Malaysia over the weekend for this year's GP. Awesome. And yeah, I blew up some money on Grandstand seats right on the start-finish straight.

Looking forward to doing some catching up with teemus and code_martial there.

Sepang, here I come :D

The moment he crossed the finish line, he didn't celebrate as much as he always does. The moment the race was over, Jean Todt was almost in tears. The moment he got out of the car, he was subdued, but made it a point to go over to almost every cluster of Ferrari team members and hug/shake hands with them. He didn't jump on the podium until he received his trophy. And just when the anthems started, he probably told Kimi (he spoke a few words in his ear) "The next year, I'd like to see you on the top step at Monza."

And then Micheal Schumacher just when into the press conference and in his new "drift off the question" style, announced that he was leaving Formula 1 for good at the end of the season.

God damn it. He could have been there for one more year. First Agassi and now Schumi. I've always wanted to see Agassi play a grand slam match and Schumi in an F1 race. Neither of that is going to happen now.

Bye Schumi, F1 will never be the same without you. And when you leave, take the championship since no one deserves it as much as you do.

Lots of life updates in the pipeline, will let you all know in a day or two.

Wow, what a race. I guess it ended up being fair to both Schumi and Alonso in funny ways...with both of them being penalised before the start.and then both of them adding nothing to their respective tallies. Since Kubica was disqualifed, both Schumi and Ferrari scored points.

Did nothing much over the weekend.

Oh and yeah, OpenTTD is nice.

1) England Vs Ecuador : All I can say is blah. England know they're not playing as well as they can (Beckham said so himself, post-match) and yesterday...they just scraped through. If they're going to play like this...they're going out. I so want them to win this time. Let's hope the pick their game up a few notches. Beckham scoring off a free-kick with his precision was something nice to watch, after a long time.

2) Canadian GP : Missed the first 10 laps or so because of Football. Actually, forgot there was a GP going on. I think this was a really exciting race. Everyone was having braking issues and sliding around, touching walls and whatnot. Thanks to Ralf and good ole Jacques as well as Kimi, Schumi managed to go up to 2nd place. Yay. It was fun to see some really close overtaking. Nice. More F1 analysis in a seperate post.

3) Portugal Vs Netherlands : If you missed this match, you've missed the most violent match in a Fifa World Cup in recent history. Stupid players (on both sides), Stupidest of refs. "Fair play" that Fifa is so particularly interested in promoting was one of the things that were non existant in the match (mostly in the second half) apart from a goal for Netherlands. Everyone was diving, acting and whatnot and cards were flying all over the place. It's a pity that Netherlands didn't convert any of their good chances into a goal...and so it will be England Vs Portugal in the Quarters with Portugal unable to play Costinha and Deco since they're both suspended and a host of other players including Luis "Give him an Oscar damnit!!!" Figo with yellow cards. That said, Maniche's goal was a real beauty and Van Der Sar as well as Ricardo made a couple of really awesome saves.

Ah well, the World Cup is truly alive and kicking now :)

It's been a long time since anything disturbed me as much as the F1 Perished Heros video from YouTube.

prashanthks had sent this link along quite sometime back and I watched it only today. Sad. The worst ones were those where the fuel ignites and the car burns with the driver still inside...the marshals are unable to stop it since the flames are simply too much to fight with fire extinguishers.

I still remember Senna...the others I was too young to know about but Senna is etched forever in my head.

12 years down the line, I'm extremely thankful to those who made Formula 1 as safe as it is today. No driver's life has been threatened post 1994 although there have been some very nasty accidents.

I hope it continues to be this way. No one should die racing in F1 again.

Awesome race. The Ferrari was the faster car through the weekend and well, although Alonso managed to steal P1 from Schumi, I guess he's been shown who the boss is. It was nice to see the old Ferrari pit-stop trick work to perfection after quite sometime. And they've now done it twice in a row...which is good. Massa drove a decent race and did well to keep Kimi off his back towards the end.

The joy on Schumi's face after the race explains why he's still in F1. I'm sure he'll continue to be here as long as he feels he can win, or as long as he's fit. I think it'll be the former more than the latter and as it is right now, I don't see him getting "tired" of winning at all. In fact, I guess 2005 was just the kind of break he needed...a year with one win to get his zest back for this season. Excellent.

This season is really starting to get all exciting now. Go Ferrari!!

A quick follow-up to the last post...

So you're stuck somewhere and badly need to help your dad with something on the computer at home. I've been in this situation quite a bit and well, I've usually ended up trying to troubleshoot over the phone with minimal success. Enter x11vnc. Here's a quick guide on getting it working on Gentoo.

remote denotes the box I'm using to reach my desktop on the machine home.

1. emerge x11vnc tightvnc. Substituting tightvnc with vnc will do as well, but I like some security, which is made slightly easier using tightvnc.


2. Run vncpasswd in your home directory. This creates a /home/shyam/.vnc/passwd and you will have to enter a password not longer than 8 characters in length, which I found a little surprising. Oh well.
   
3. On home, run x11vnc -rfbauth /home/shyam/.vnc/passwd -display :0. Adjust display as required (0 or 1..)


4. From remote run vncviewer home and enter the password you setup when prompted. Voila, you're in and seeing the desktop now.

A couple of points:

• For VNC to work correctly, home has to have the X Display active. From what I've seen, when I vnc into home with X running but I'm on the console, the vnc display is all distorted.


• By default, VNC traffic is not secure. It is advisable to tunnel it over ssh if you're using it from an insecure network/across the internet. With tightvnc it becomes very simple. All you need to do is vncviewer -via remote home and tightvnc sets up the ssh tunnel automatically.

Missed Barcamp, but had a relaxing weekend for the most part. Schumi showed Alonso who the boss is and I'm extremely happy for him :)

OMG, the F1 Season begins in like 30 mins with qualifying in Bahrain. Schumi baby, go kick some ass & show them who da b0ss is :D

Fernando Alonso takes over the place that was Schumi's for a few years running. The McLarens were awesome in the Brazilian GP and had they had this car/setup in the beginning of the season, I guess we'd have seen a Kimikrieg throughout. Heck, if they didn't have the number of engine failures that pushed him down 10 places...he'd still be there and fighting. Ah well.

As an ardent Ferrari fan, it does feel kinda odd to not be winning :D It also gives you a perspective on what the "others" felt all along...which is sad...to say the least. I'm looking forward to 2006, I'm sure the F2006 will come back to kick some arse and hard. The ideal scenario would be to have 3-4 teams say Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and BAR with awesome cars and fighting it out till the last race.

JPM's finally broke his "one race a year only" jinx by winning at Interlagos. His new helmet design is cool :)

Note : As code_martial pointed out, Interlagos was JPM's 3rd title this year.

Okay, so there will be a GP @ Indy in 2006. Clicky!. This is good news!

My Question has been answered I guess :)

TDF first. Lance Armstrong rocks. Words cannot express how far he's come after winning his battle with Cancer. Way to go Lance, you are an inspiration for the millions out there.

F1. In the years Ferrari + Michael were champions (consecutively, 1999-2004) how many mechanical failures did the car have? Probably less than 10 on the day of the race, across both cars. 15 at most. Now that is consistency. No wonder they were able to hold on as champs for the period they did. Personally, I feel that if Rory Bryne had designed the F2005 and had Bridgestone done a wee bit more homework, Ferrari would be really competing for the title this year as well. Mclaren/Mercedes really need to take a leaf out of Ferrari's consistency book if they ever want to win another title in F1. The Mclarens have the pace, the aerodynamics, the tyres, the drivers. Everything but an engine that won't run the full race or blow up in practice. Wake up dudes. Fast.

Schumi did all he could with an underperforming car, holding back Giancarlo as long as he could :)

Yes, I jumped again when Kimi's car went kaput. Only for a second, but I had to celebrate.

Let's start with Saturday. Venus Willams made an amazing comeback (as much as I hate to accept it) to win her first title after 2001. The way she went beserk after winning was amazing. Live 8 was truly awesome, and is something that I'll never forget. The cause is really important too and the ads showing how people suffer due to poverty were heart-wrenching. Lots of sleep happened somewhere in between.

Sunday was the Men's final, Federer making short work of Roddick, yet again. Was wonderful to watch. The French GP was nice, after the screw up at Indianapolis, it was nice to see a proper race. Alonso seems to be inching away with the championship.

I just realised that this isn't that long an update, it still is late. Ah well.

That's the question on the minds of the most ardent fans of the sport I guess as it is on mine. Indy's chiefs will "evaluate their position" with regards to the future of F1 racing there. Sad. I've seen countless entries on blogs all over, here's my viewpoint.

Michelin needs to take the brunt of the blame/they are the primary reason for everything that happened. Why? Because they are world class tyre manufacturers and they didn't take into account that the section at Turn 13 had been re-laid so as to provide more grip for the Indy cars and hence their tyres could not handle the G-Forces caused at that turn. Boo-Boo. Michelin did do the sensible thing asking the teams they supply to not run the race due to safety reasons and the teams in turn were perfectly right in pulling out their cars because we can't afford to have 14 "Ralf Schumacher style" horrible crashes on turn 13. As the commentators mentioned, the tyres are built to handle punctures to a certain extent, not sudden deflation when the car is going at 300+ Kmph.

Next, Ferrari. They played spoilsport by blocking the chicane that could have made the race possible, but then...all they saw was the 19 + 19 points in the driver's and constructor's championships. That said, they've always been ruthless and selfish, they weren't the favorites of the American crowd and although their decision to race can't be held entirely against them, they've lost a little more after Sunday. Barrichello was right in the press conference when he said : "It wasn’t our problem, people probably won’t understand that because they seem to be sad… you know, there were a lot of people out there still watching us but they will think that we had the problem, but obviously Bridgestone has been working very hard, they brought the right tyre here and we were feeling very good.". Kudos to Brigdestone for not fubarring the way Michelin did....

Jordan were apparently supposed to *not* run, expressing solidarity with the rest of the teams and Minardi would follow suit. Apparently, they stayed out and Paul Stoddart was forced to keep his cars out as he later revealed in his press release. We're only competing with Jordan and when they stayed out, I can't keep my cars from racing....

So who's the biggest loser? Not Michelin, Not Ferrari. F1 and its fans are. As a Formula 1 fan for the last 7 years or so, I feel extremely disappointed to have watched an Indy GP with 6 cars. My respect for David Coulthard shot up by a zillion points when he said on his pit to car radio during the warm-up lap something to the effect of "If the team hasn't decided by the end of this lap, I'm racing." Hats off to you Coulthard. You're not a Sucker anymore.