‘09 Australian Grand Prix – Sunday Race – Jenson Button scores a memorable victory

Jenson Button and Brawn Mercedes were the first winners of the 2009 F1 season opener at the Australian Grand Prix with the team scoring a fantastic 1-2 with Rubens Barrichello taking the second spot. This is the first time in F1 history that a ‘new’ team had won their first-ever race and scored a 1-2 finish! Tremendous stuff from the team that looked like it won’t even be racing just four weeks ago! Toyota scored a memorable 3rd position with Jarno Trulli as some drama towards the penultimate laps took out the drivers who were in 2nd and 3rd at that point. More on that later though. Lewis Hamilton took a lucky 4th ahead of Timo Glock in 5th, Fernando Alonso in 6th, Nico Rosberg in 7th and debutant Sebastian Buemi scoring the lone point in 8th place.

Update 1: Trulli was later penalised for passing under the Safety Car and had 25s added to his time, dropping him to 12th. Lewis Hamilton, as a consequence is classified 3rd ahead of Timo Glock in 4th, Fernando Alonso in 5th, Nico Rosberg in 6th, debutant Sebastien Buemi in 7th and teammate Sebastien Bourdais in 8th.

Update 2: More drama surfaced later today as McLaren and Lewis Hamilton were stripped off their 3rd place finish and Jarno Trulli was reinstated in 3rd place. The order now reads Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello in 1st and 2nd placed followed by Jarno Trulli in 3rd, Timo Glock in 4th, Fernando Alonso 5th, Nico Rosberg 6th, Sebasien Buemi in 7th and Sbastien Bourdais 8th.

The race start was not as dramatic as last year’s but there was a bit of wheel-banging which saw Mark Webber, Nick Heidfeld, Adrian Sutil and Heikki Kovalainen all get damages on their cars. The others continued but it was retirement for Kovalainen. Both the Toyotas started from the pitlane and Lewis Hamilton started at the back of the grid coz of a gearbox change and they came out relatively unharmed after the first corner. The Ferraris made a bold call of starting on the soft compound tyres which saw them gain a few places but as the race went on, they started graining and ultimately ended up slowing them considerably. So  it was an early pit stop for them as the rest of the field settled down behind race leaders Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel & Nico Rosberg.

‘09 Australian Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Jenson Button on Pole!

The vrooming sound of the engines is back!!! The first race of the 2009 Formula 1 season starts tomorrow at Melbourne’s Albert Park Circuit and the driver on pole position is…hold your breath…Jenson Button of Brawn GP, with teammate Rubens Barrichello on P2. True to pre-quali predictions, the Brawn GP cars were fastest on the track and literally blew everyone away! Wiliiams had held the upper hand in all of the practice sessions but there always was the quiet air of confidence about the Brawn GP cars and that showed at the time of reckoning.  Barrichello’s top lap was usurped by Button on his last time lap and the team that wasn’t sure to be racing just four weeks ago had a 1-2 for the season opener! Heady stuff indeed!

Following them was the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel who showed an improved pace in Q3. Behind him were Robert Kubica, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock, Felipe Massa, Jarno Trulli, Mark Webber with Kimi Raikkonen rounding off the top ten. The fast Williams kinda faded away in Q3, with high fuel loads apparently a cause for concern. McLaren had a disastrous start to the season with Heikki Kovalainen only managing 14th spot with Champion Lewis Hamilton grounded at 15th!

The Formula 1 2009 season started off with the Friday practice sessions yesterday and there were quite a few surprising names on the top of the timesheets. The first practice sessions on Saturday also saw the surprises continue & when the Qualifying Sessions started, all eyes were on the Williams’ and the Brawn GP cars which were the fastest in the previous practice sessions. And true to form, they were the early pace setters. Rubens Barrichello & Jenson Button were P1 and P2 and both Nico Rosberg & Kazuki Nakajima were were once at the top of the timesheets after the first run-ins which also saw Kimi Raikkonen hold P1 before others put in better times until he was pushed down to 11th! McLaren were second fastest at one time but soon slipped down the order until Hamilton was left 15th. By the end of the qualifying first session, the five drivers to drop down were debutant Sebastien Buemi & Sebastian Bourdais of Toro Rosso, Renault’s Nelson Piquet and the two Force India’s of Giancarlo Fisichella & Adrian Sutil.

…and that was when the power went off!!!

Qualifying Grid | Qualifying Report

Happy Ugadi | ఉగాది శుభాకాంక్షలు

Here’s wishing everyone a very Happy Ugadi! May the new year bring with it bounties of joy, peace, prosperity and happiness.

 

For the curious-er of the ppl. out there, this Ugadi marks the advent of the శ్రీ విరోధి నమ సంవత్సరము (Virodhi Nama Samvatsaram). I sure hope that there will be no troublesome virodhis (opponents) in my quest for success this year . There’s some Ugadi Pachchadi  for all of you after the jump…

Photo Post: Silent Sentinels

I usually put in photos over at the PhotoBlog but there’s an exception to every rule, no? [Psst…I bribed the owner of this blog  to put this up here ]

They’re about two pairs of Silent Sentinels…two non-living ones which have stood the test of time and must’ve overseen whole civilizations ebb and flow in front of them. The other two are very living ones which don’t look like they’ll withstand the test of time and have seen civilization come pretty close to encroaching their habitat!

Movie Review: Straight

After a really long time I got to see a movie in the ’plex. Not only that, I got to see back-to-back movies, which was something of a regularity back in college days. The first one was Straight starring Vinay Pathak & Gul Panag alongwith newcomers Anuj Chaudhry & Siddharth Makkar.

Straight is a nice n’ breezy comedy about a confused man who doubts his sexuality after he gets rejected at the altar and has an unfortunate cosy moment with a worker at his restaurant. Pinu Patel (Vinay Pathak) is an NRI settled in London and runs an Indian restaurant. He has recently faced the ignominy of his would-be-bride running away before the wedding and that plants seeds of being unwanted by women in his mind. His professional life is breezed up by the entrance of a stand up comedian cum cook Kamlesh (Anuj Chaudhry) and a caricature artiste cum accountant Renu (Gul Panag). His friendship with both of them blossoms until an unfortunate moment of unforeseen intimacy causes him to have doubts about his sexual preferences. That’s just a brief gist but you can the entire stuff here (beware of spoilers, btw!)

UEFA Champions League QF Draw

The long-awaited draw for the UEFA Champions League Quarter Finals was held earlier today in Nyon and the worst fears have come true for Chelsea! They have been drawn to play on-a-red-hot-streak Liverpool in the QF’s. The other two English clubs have a comparatively easier draw with Arsenal drawing Spain’s Villareal with the English Club having the advantage of a home game in the 2nd leg.

Manchester United will play Porto at home in the first leg but the 2nd leg will be a tricky away affair for the holders. Barcelona will play Bayern Munich in the last of the QF, with the second leg away at Munich. Bayern thumped in 12 goals in their two fourth round matches but face an uphill battle with injuries to key players.

1st leg: 07/08 April; 2nd leg: 14/15 April
1	Villarreal CF (ESP)	v	Arsenal FC (ENG)
2	Manchester United FC (ENG)	v	FC Porto (POR)
3	Liverpool FC (ENG)	v	Chelsea FC (ENG)
4	FC Barcelona (ESP)	v	FC Bayern Munich (GER)

The two Semi Finals will match-up the winners of QF #1 & #2 and winners of #3 & #4. So if the matches go according to the form-book, we may see Man U vs. Arsenal and Liverpool Vs. Barcelona in the Semi Finals. Should be a cracking affair! But hey, let’s not count the chickens before they hatch…the QF’s themselves present a heady prospect and we should be in for some great matches. The one to watch out will indubitably be Liverpool Vs. Chelsea.

Bring-it-on!

UEFA Champions League QF Draw

Random News XI

Some Random news that I’d like to share:

Sports:

• F1 rules amended so that the driver with most wins will be crowned champion…instead of the driver with most wins. (Via Geek Rohit). More…
• Arsenal join Manchester United, Chelsea & Everton in the FA Cup last 4 after they beat Hull. More…
• UEFA Champions League Quarter Final draw is on 20th March (Ppl. have been coming over to my last year’s QF draw post a lot!)
• India let NZ off the hook in their 1st test. NZ were 60/6 before recovering to post 279. India are 29/0 at the end of day 1. More…

Tech:

• IBM in talks to buy SUN?  More… (Via Twitter)

Blogroll (new additions):

• Shripriya
• Vikas Gupta
• Raja Sen

More later…

My Wierd Wired World’s Wordle

Nah! That ain’t a typo. “Wordle”, as I came to know a few days ago, is a kind of word cloud or a tag cloud (IMHO, it stands for word-jumble). It is created by providing some words which are then arranged in a kaleidoscopic manner, all user controlled. In its own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. [Wordle Website]

I’d bookmarked this site sometime ago but took time out to explore it today itself. Was too lazy to type so used the two ‘automatic’ options therein to create a some wordles – one from this blog’s feed and one from moi Technorati tags (click on the images after the jump for the larger version):