wood

Yeah I think you're probably right. Alonso said he didn't get it quite the way he wanted it, too. I'm still blown away watching the onboard from George's car. In terms of what we see all the time in F1, he just had plenty of time to react to that, but George has shown us before that he doesn't exactly have catlike reflexes.

Guess he was wrong then. The stewards said Alonso lifted more than he had previously and touched his brake so briefly and slightly that it wasn't a significant factor in slowing the car.

Nailed it? The stewards said the telemetry didn't show a brake check. So I guess not. I also didn't hear Brundle say Alonso 'brake-checked' George, at least not during the race, but maybe I missed it. He did say Alonso slowed more than George was probably expecting. There's no rule against that and no rule, as Alonso points out, that you have to take every corner the same way all race long. Alonso made a strategic move that caught the following car off guard. Changing a setup into a corner is textbook race craft. In terms of driving at that speed Russell was well behind Alonso. George didn't anticipate the move and was caught out by the increased dirty air. Just because 1 driver didn't predict the movement of another driver doesn't make it erratic. George had more than enough time to avoid a crash, but we've seen mistakes just as silly from George before. His onboard ...

Yeah I don't think he was trying to wreck Russell or do anything nefarious. He said he was trying to go a little slower in to get a better exit and speed on the following stretch. He said it's a normal defensive move he's done and had done to him numerous times over more than 20 years in F1. Even the stewards didn't seem to think it was really intentional but seemed to think they just had to give some kind of penalty, so gave him a drivethrough that converted to 20s. I don't agree with it, but it's not terrible. Oh well. I don't think there's anything that indicates he was trying to induce a lockup. Fernando made great points after the race that ...

Got free tickets from a friend who also got them for free and decided not to go. NASCAR provided free parking in lots F and H. Everyone was waiting in line for lot F and we just cruised right passed 'em and rolled right into lot H all alone. So that was cool. Race was pretty unremarkable. The stages really kill much chance for strategy to have any effect on the order at a road circuit (and maybe anywhere, I guess). We left with 20 to go and were ordering burgers near the house by the time the race ended. And yeah, Pretty small crowd. Maybe 25K ish, despite NASCAR doing a good job running the show (and about 2000 of those people entered with tickets donated to Del Valle school district employees). I'm not sure the NASCAR crowd and Austin are a good fit. I'm one of the people who said NASCAR would be great racing at COTA. I gotta say I swung and missed on that call. It's not great, for some reason.

70F too warm? Maybe Saturday attendance just isn't a big thing for NASCAR the way it is in sportscar and other racing. This is nuts. There might be 5K people out there if they're lucky. Brutal for NASCAR and ISC. And yeah, definitely. Go SVG!!

Oh my. There is noooobody at COTA for the XFinity race.

I bet Andretti - Cadillac would have shown up in Melbourne with a spare chassis or two. Maybe it's actually the reverse of what FOM suggests. Perhaps it's F1 that's not healthy enough to be worth a serious 11th team's time, money, and effort

Re: Williams, the important bit of this imho is that they showed up to the 3rd race of the season without a spare chassis. How in the actual fuck does that happen in an F1 that's rejecting Andretti on the grounds that they aren't a serious enough entry? Me three. Jim McKay was the face of F1, and the only race we got to see (portions of) was Monaco. I guess we're showing our age ...

Still better than watching live on NBC though!

Second best music video ever made, right after Dick in a Box.

Yep and then there's the rumor of Aramco buying out Aston Martin and going after Max and Newey. There's a rumor out there right now for pretty much every scenario. They mostly read like the wish-lists of whomever starts them.

Yep if it's in the sun and out of the wind, it can get hot af. Add to that how got damn deep it is, and you got your work cut out for ya. Still never experienced hotter sand than Aussie's in August, surrounded by buildings blocking the wind and reflecting/radiating sun and heat on the courts all day. We'd have never made it through a mid-late summer tournament there without the water hoses and the stinky outdoor shower.

This reminds me of a time I was sitting watching a men's match at an AVP tournament. I was watching a very young Phil & Nick and the guy behind me starts talking to me about the match. It was a good one, and I was pretty engrossed in the battle on the court, so I chatted along but hadn't turned around to make eye contact yet. The guy started talking about how the rule changes were really catered to the bigger players and it was forcing the average-sized and smaller - but extremely athletic - players out of the game, like Lewy, E Fonoi, and lots of others. I turned around. It was Karch, just chillin' under a tree talking to me (also a BB/A guy) about the state of the game during a great match. He then said that despite having blocked quite a bit in his life, he wasn't really even big enough to be the back row guy in the 'new' (at the time) AVP, and we went on for another 15-20 minutes. Such a cool guy and a cool experience that's representative of several others I've had with people in the top levels of the sport - AJ, Sinjin, Stein, Jose Loiola, Kerri Walsh, Phil, Nick, Albert Hanneman, Dain Blanton, Scott Ayakatubby, & a bunch more. A lot of people at the lower levels are much bigger assholes than the folks higher up. The Beach Volleyball world is a small one. It's cool to be welcomed into it so graciously by some of the best ever. /csb

BTW, did y'all know there's a Baywatch channel? All Baywatch, all the time. It's glorious. And then there's ...

Ha, yeah. I do what I can ... esp when what I'd like to do costs an amount of money I can't justify. DKR will be full and loud though. So we got that goin' for us. Which is nice.

These SEC games are gonna look pretty nice on the big-ass screen I'ma buy with the money I'm not spending on tickets, and I get the bonus of knowing I helped 4 waitlist people get the seats I won't be using!

nm ...

I saw someone on Quora saying F1 cars are heavier than FE and FE's “handling capabilities on the same road course are generally comparable”. That's cute, but naw, man. Now, I know F1 cars, even as bloated and heavy as they are, are still lighter than FE, and I know that even the Gen 3 FE cars are still way slower than F1, so I decided to do a little digging and find out just how slow they are. FE has never run on the same circuits F1 runs on until recently, and there’s a reason for that - the same reason they choose small, narrow street courses - so they don’t look so slow. The one F1 circuit that FE has raced without changing away from the F1 layout is Monaco. Even on F1’s slowest track, F1 cars were miles ahead of FE in 2023. So were the F2 cars. And the F3 cars. Current FE cars are comparable to 50 year old F1 cars from the early 1970s, but not new ones. Fastest Qualifying Laps: F1: 1:11.3 F2: 1:21.05 F3: 1:23.2 FE: 1:28.9 Fastest laps in the race: F1: 1:15.6 F2: 1:21.7 F3: 1:25.1 FE: 1:31.1 I'm not all that surprised that F2 & F3 are quicker than FE, but the size of those gaps are a little surprising imho. At that time differential, F1 would lap FE about every 5 or 6 laps. F2 would take 9 or so laps, & F3 something like 16 laps. The closest time that I could find to an FE 2023 car for a top runner at Monaco was the 2022 Monaco Historique Serie E winner, in a 1973 McLaren M23. Stuart Hall put it on pole with a 1:29.4. He also won Serie D that year, in a 1971 McLaren M19A, with a pole time of 1:30.1.

Wow. That escalated quickly. You mad about me laughing at a cybertruck? So mad it drove you to necrophelia?