‘09 Belgian Grand Prix – Sunday Race – Kimi Raikkonen wins race, Force India finishes 2nd

Kimi Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix for a fourth time as he scored his and Ferrari’s first victory of the season at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit – one he rates as his favourite. Force India had a memorable outing as well as Giancarlo Fisichella lost the lead of the race to a KERS-equipped Ferrari but nevertheless hounded him throughout the 44 laps and eventually finished 2nd – his and Force India’s first-ever podium finish and first-ever points – all 8 of them! Well done Fisico!

Third place went to the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel as he made up a place in the drivers’ championship, with one of his title contender finishing low down in the points, one outside of the points and one did not finish at all! BMW also had a great race as Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld finished 4th and 5th with the McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen in 6th and the Brawn of Rubens Barrichello in 7th. The Williams of Nico Rosberg took the final point in 8th position.

I missed the most exciting part of the race – the start, as I was thinking it was a 6:20 PM start instead of a 5:20 one and hence was busy with other chores! And what do you think happened on the laps I missed? Well, nothing much except that Championship leader Jenson Button alongwith Lewis Hamilton, Jaime Algersuari and Romain Grosjean were all involved in an opening lap melee and crashed out of the race! And the Safety Car was out and on the restart, Kimi Raikkonen used his KERS to good effect and jumped pole sitter Giancarlo Fisichella to wrest the lead of the race.

‘09 Belgian Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Giancarlo Fisichella scores Force India’s first Pole Position

Giancarlo Fisichella scored Force India’s first-ever Pole position of their F1 career as he drove a superlative lap to take P1 at the Qualifying session for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. It sure was a long time in coming and despite the steady improvements the team has been bringing into each of the last few races, no one expected a pole position for the team! Getting into Q2 and score points were their targets and they sure did better on the first one, can tomorrow’s race see them achieve their second target! I sure hope they do…

Toyota’s Jarno Trulli will start second on the grid as the Toyotas finally came good. So did the BMW’s who have Nick Heidfeld starting on P3. Rubens Barrichello will start fourth on the grid with Robert Kubica and Kimi Raikkonen behind him. Timo Glock, Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber & Nico Rosberg make up the top ten on the grid.

Q1 was a very good session for Force India as Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil were 1-2 atop the timesheets as the chequered flag fell and even though it was just the first session, it bode well for the team. A good way to impress the bosses at Ferrari since Fisichella’s being rumoured to fill-in for Felipe Massa for the last five races of the season! Luca Badoer again propped up the rear of the grid and to add insult to injury, he span out on his last flying lap and that was that! The ones to be relegated were Sebastien Buemi, Jaime Algersuari, Kazuki Nakajima, Romain Grosjean and Luca Badoer. Fernando Alonso escaped relegation by the skin of his teeth as he made a mistake on his flying lap and just scraped through another run just as the flag fell and so did Hamilton, who was teetering on 15th and must be thanking the heavens that no one went any faster!

‘09 European Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Lewis Hamilton puts McLaren on Pole

McLaren announced their revival in style as they locked out the front row of the grid for the European Grand Prix at the street circuit of Valencia. It was Lewis Hamilton on Pole position with teammate Heikki Kovalainen on P2. The Brawn of Rubens Barrichello is on P3 with teammate Jenson Button on P4. Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Robert Kubica complete the top ten. In a slightly less-than-hectic Qualifying session, the true race pace of McLaren was showcased as early as the first session itself as neither the Brawns nor the Red Bulls could challenge them. Lewis was atop the timesheets for most of the first session and also for most of the second. In both sessions, he was pipped by the Brawns – first by Jenson in Q1 and then by Rubens in Q2 but when it mattered, the Brawns just could not better the McLaren’s times.

Q1 started with long time practice driver for Ferrari, Luca Badoer being amongst the first ones to go round the street circuit at Valencia but his time was not fast enough and he steadily dropped down the charts. Most of the drivers posted their times in the high 1 Min 40s bracket and Heikki Kovalainen was the first one to dip into the 1 Min 39s timeframe which was bettered by Kimi Raikkonen and then by Sebastian Vettel and also by Nico Rosberg. Subsequently Lewis Hamilton clocked the fastest time but was immediately eclipsed by Rubens Barrichello but Lewis again clawed back to P1 but not for long as Jenson Button went quicker still. The ones to drop out of Q1 were Giancarlo Fisichella, Kazuki Nakajima, Jarno Trulli, Jaime Alguersuari & Luca Badoer. Yep, a Ferrari at the back of the grid!

What’s your Persona?

Persona: A persona is the mask or appearance one presents to the world. Importantly, the persona, used in this sense, is not a pose or some other intentional misrepresentation of the self to others. Rather, it is the self as self-construed, and may change according to situation and context.

In case you’re wondering what’s all that psychological mumbo jumbo was about, let me introduce you to the Personas Project from MIT. Built by Aaron Zinman, the project, in its online avatar, is a website that takes your name as an input and scours the internet for its traces. Out of the sites and pages that it finds, it picks the keywords best describing them and presents in a ‘weighted image’ – which is your (name’s) persona on the web!

It actually helps if your name is a unique one and you’ve used the same name across different places on the internet. If like me, you’re in the habit of using different monikers at different sites, your profile will be a stunted one! Some of my er…um…aliases threw up rather confusing results:

WordPress’ Inbuilt URL Shortener – WP.ME

Just noticed a feature on my WordPress.com blog that I’m not sure if it has been there before or not! The feature in question is the WordPress In-built URL Shortener…WP.ME

And no, I’m not talking about the URL shortening of the kind that WP does with blog surfer – the one where post links are given as http://ychittaranjan.wordpress.com/?p=2155, the number after p usually the Post Id.

The one I noticed was built into the edit post page wherein one can edit the permalink of an older post. There is a new button there that will generate a new shortlink for your post – one in the form of http://wp.me/p4bL-yL

Nifty, no? Here’s how you can do it too…

Ahem… Announcement of a Milestone

And know what happened when the media got whiff of this milestone?