’09 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Hamilton takes Pole for season’s last Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton was absolutely unbeatable at each of the three qualifying sessions as he stitched up pole position for the season’s last Grand Prix at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi. Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber will start P2 and P3 with the Brawns of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button P4 and P5 respectively. The Toyota of Jarno Trulli was P6 followed by the two BMW’s of Robert  Kubica and Nick Heidfeld in P7 and P8. Williams’ Nico Rosberg and Toro Rosso’s Sebastian Buemi complete the top ten grid positions for the first-ever race at the desert track of Abu Dhabi.

It was a gobsmacking performance by the McLaren team and Hamilton as he was fastest in each of the three sessions. The team will be slightly disappointed as their second driver Heikki Kovalainen suffered what seemed like a gearbox problem and couldn’t make it out of Q2. Red Bull were very slow in the first session but picked up the pace later on and if it weren’t for the KERS power of the McLaren, would have locked out the front row of the grid. Brawns look to be heavily fuelled and they too seem to be fast around the circuit and could be hoping for a good finish.

Q1 was completely owned by McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton as he set an astonishingly quick time of 1 Min 39.8 and was pretty much unbeatable around the Yas Marina circuit. He seemed to get the maximum out of the KERS system and find an ideal line around the spanking new circuit having two long straights and few tight corners. Newly crowned World Champion Jenson Button set the second fastest time which was still half-a-second behind Hamilton’s time and Jarno Trulli, surprisingly, was third fastest. As the drivers tried to come to terms with the still-dusty track and the low setting sun, there were a few spins and offs but no serious accidents. The drivers to miss out in the firsts session were both the Force Indias of Vitantonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil, both the Renaults of Sebastian Grosjean and Fernando Alonso and the Ferrari of Giancarlo Fisichella.

I Said It…

[Gr/Bl/W]Avatars gone trotting?

See those li’l images beside each commenter’s name? They’re called Gravatar/Blavatar/Wavatar which is WPspeak for user avatars. They are unique to each user – email id, actually – and kinda brighten up the comments around here.

While its a fact that they will be unique for each visitor/email id, for the past few days have been noticing that multiple comments have the same image displayed beside their comments! Their email id’s are different but in spite of that the same purple-y avatar is shown against each. See for yourself:

’09 Brazilian Grand Prix – Sunday Race – Webber wins race, Button crowned World Champion

Mark Webber drove a strong race and took maximum advantage of a perfect strategy to win the Brazilian Grand Prix at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo but the big winner of the day was Jenson Button as he drove magnificently to finish fifth and clinch the 2009 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship in the penultimate race of the season.  He had a touch of good luck as well! Pole sitter Rubens Barrichello first lost out on the race lead to Webber and fell down into third place and then picked up a puncture to fall behind Button and thus spell the end of his title challenge.

BMW’s Robert Kubica also drove beautifully as he finished in 2nd place, having started in eighth place. More satisfying would be the 3rd place finish of Lewis Hamilton, who started down in sixteenth place! Sebastian Vettel also had a good race as he finished 4th having started fifteenth. Button took 5th place ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in 6th with Sebastian Buemi finishing 7th and Rubens Barrichello taking the last point-scoring position in 8th. Button now has 89 points and an unassailable 15 point lead in the championship with just the one race remaining. Sebastian Vettel leapfrogs Barrichello into 2nd place with 74 points compared to Rubens’ 72. Brawn GP also take the Constructors’ Championship and Red Bull will finish second. Hamilton and McLaren leapfrog ahead of Kimi and Ferrari into 5th place in the drivers’ and 3rd place in the constructors race.

The start of the race was a frenetic one as pole sitter Rubens Barrichello managed to pull away clearly with Mark Webber behind but it was a close run for third place as the KERS-powered Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen came close onto the tail of the Force India of Adrian Sutil and there was some wheel banging and wing touching as Sutil had to squeeze between the Ferrari and Red Bull. Kimi lost his front wing as he tagged the back of Webber and had to make an early pit stop to rectify that. At the tail-end of the field, Heikki Kovalainen got caught into a spin and nearly tagged the Ferrari of Giancarlo Fisichella behind him. That also brought him into the pits and there was a scary moment therein as Kovalainen drove off with the fuel rig still attached and the Ferrari of Kimi following behind, managed to light up the spraying fumes and causing a flash fire on the Ferrari!

‘09 Brazilian Grand Prix – Saturday Qualifying – Rubens Barrichello takes pole at home GP

Rubens Barrichello took Pole Position at his home grand prix – the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos in Sao Paulo -  as his championship contenders struggled and didn’t even finish in the top ten! “Jenson Button in P14, Sebastian Vettel in P16, where are you now?” exclaimed Barrichello’s race engineer and the delight was very much apparent in his voice as Barrichello put himself in the best possible position for launching a title challenge by clinching pole position in rainy conditions. Red Bull’s Mark Webber will start in P2 with Force India’s Adrian Sutil in P3. Toyota’s Jarno Trulli, Ferrari of  Kimi Raikkonen, Toro Rosso of Sebastian Buemi, Williams of Nico Rosberg & Kazuki Nakajima, with the BMW of Robert Kubica in between and Renault of Fernando Alonso complete the top ten. That makes it 9 teams in the top ten grid places with just Williams managing to get both their cars in the mix.

Ran dogged the entire session and caused several sizeable delays and saw few red flags as well. But the last ten minutes were played out on a drying track and it made for a spectacular session as no less than 7 drivers exchanged fastest laps – all within just a few minutes! Barrichello ended up with the fastest of them all just as the chequered flag fell and he will be mighty delighted about it; especially with both his championship contenders starting way back on the grid. Mark Webber probably would have took pole if he continued for another flying lap but maybe his tyres were losing the optimum performance levels. It was brilliant drive from Adrian Sutil to post the third fastest time, given Force India’s struggles in the past few races.

Happy Diwali Folks!

Here’s wishing everyone a very Happy and Prosperous Diwali! Be safe, celebrate responsibly and tone down the gaiety a bit, will ya!

Remember to spread cheer and joy, not noise and smoke ☺

Movie Review: Blue

One of the most eagerly awaited movies this year and the first of the three biggies to hit the theatres this Diwali – Blue – has many things that can be said to be its advantages. Two A-listers as the main protagonists, a successful production house behind it, the music of A.R.Rahman, adrenaline-pumping action and above all, the novelty factor of an underwater thriller. In spite of this, the movie borders on mediocrity coz it lacks something that is the backbone of every successful movie – a coherent storyline and a strong script!

Aarav Malhotra (Akshay Kumar) runs what is presumably a fishing business in Bahamas with Sagar Seth (Sanjay Dutt) as his main employee, presumably as a paunchy diver! Sagar’s lady love is Mona who stammers something about conservation and museums so we’ll presume that’s her job. Aarav has one deep-rooted desire: to delve into the blue oceans of Bahamas and retrieve the treasure of a sunken ship – Lady in Blue – and for that he keeps nagging Sagar coz he’s the only one who knows where it is but he steadfastly refuses. Cut to Bangkok and Sagar’s pesky li’l bro Sameer a.k.a. Sam (Zayed Khan) plays Fast and the Furious Bangkok Drift on the streets and cavorts chin-pierced Nikki (Katrina Kaif, Spl. appearance) but ultimately runs into trouble with Gulshan (Rahul Dev) who’s presumably a most dangerous man. Sam escapes into the arms of big bro but events unfold such that the trio have to dive into the blue in search of gold to get out of the red!

As I’ve noted above, there’re too many presumptions in this one and not one character is well-defined and developed properly. Some of the dialogues are authored so as to provide some explanations but that’s sketchy at best. The first half drags on for like eternity and though some action scenes pepper up the narrative, it all starts going downhill. The underwater scenes pose a great challenge in that there can be no dialogues to supplement the happenings and most of the time the viewer is left admiring the marine life – which we’ve seen many a times thanks to Discovery/Nat Geo/Animal Planet – whilst being clueless as to why the lead actors are swimming about a sunken ship! Its hard to emote with an oxygen mask  on your face and a tank on your back and most often, the actors have to resort to tacky body language to convey their expressions.

Poll: I Got the Look?

I rarely receive any negative verbal feedback from people who’ve read my blog (well, that can mean either no one’s reading it or there isn’t any negative stuff to say about it….I prefer the latter to be true ). So I was in a for a surprise when I received a rather jarring jibe about the theme of the blog! I’d changed to the rather broadsheet-like and bluish DePo Squared theme a few days back and thought that it was pretty good overall. But little did I know that it was a put-off for some of the readers…

So before I jump in and revert back to the tried n’ tested themes, I thought let’s solicit some feedback from y’all. Pliss to let me know (after the jump) which look do ya prefer to view this blog . I’ve deliberately desisted from including any er…um…negative options…I’m a sensitive soul and too much negativity can be harmful!