Thrilling climax to 2007 F1 season

The final two races of the 2006 season promised to be a thrilling end to
a hard fought season, but that evaporated in smoke along with Michael
Schumacher's engine. When the circus moved to Brazil, Alonso's title was
a formality. That did not stop Michael Schumacher from producing one of
his virtuoso performances for which he is well known for.

This year, there was no such expectation. Lewis Hamilton came into the
Chinese grand prix with a 10/17 point lead over Alonso/Kimi, expecting
to wrap things up over the weekend. He did his chances no harm by
bagging pole (albeit, as we found out later, with a much lighter car)
and built up a 9 second lead in the first stint. At that time, I thought
it was just a formality, as even if Kimi caught him, he was well ahead
of the rest of the pack and would finish 4th at worst. It all started to
go wrong after the first pit stop as the advertised rain never came down
hard enough and the track started drying up. The front runners who did
not change their tyres after the first stop started going slower and
slower and lost upto 12 seconds a lap to those who took the gamble of
going on to dry tyres. Lewis was the worst hit as he had pushed a lot in
the opening stages and his tyres were in bad shape. Kimi caught and
overtook him easily (I think, as the power went off just when this
happened) and Fernando started catching him at 6-7 seconds a lap.
Instead of bringing him in, Mclaren asked him to stay out for another
lap and by the time they came to the long back straight, Fernando was
right on his rear. Lewis kept him off and headed into the pits but went
in too fast and instead of making the right turn onto the pit lane, got
stuck in the gravel trap and that was the end of his race.

Kimi won and Fernando came 2nd and in doing so, cut Lewis's lead down to
7 and 4 points. This leaves us with a mouthwatering possibility of any
of the three being crowned champions.

Kimi needs to win and hope Fernando finishes 3rd or lower and Lewis
finishes 6th or lower to become champion. If not, he needs to finish
second and hope that Lewis finishes 8th or lower AND Fernando is 4th or
lower. IMO, this is a very slim chance as even if Ferrari are
comfortably faster and Massa covers his rear, Mclaren should be ahead of
the rest

Fernando needs to score 4 points more than Lewis. If he wins, Lewis must
be lower than 4th, if he's second, Lewis must finish 5th or lower. If
he's third, Lewis must finish 7th or lower and if he's 4th, Lewis must
finish 8th or lower for him to be champion. If he finishes 5th or lower,
he is out of the championship.

Lewis is in the best position as he doesn't need to go all out for the
win. However, one could turn that on its head and say that he has the
most pressure as it is all his to lose. In fact, Kimi and Fernando
started their mind games right at the post race press conference by
setting the expectations very low for themselves and putting all the
pressure on Lewis.

It promises to be very exciting weekend in Brazil. I wish the next two
weeks goes off very very quickly.

Commute to office

For long, I've been advising everyone who would listen that there is no
better solution to beat the traffic stress than to drop our cars and
start using public transport. I have been guilty of not following my own
advice, always justifying it with the "my office is so close, I don't
think I am contributing to the mess" argument.

I finally decided to do something about it. I decided that I will start
taking the Volvo bus to work at least once a week. I have been doing it for
the last two weeks. It's a lot more expensive than driving, very crowded
and inconvenient (with a wait time of upto 30 minutes), but I have the
satisfaction of contributing to the greater good.

And who knows, if more people start doing this, the traffic in Bangalore
may start getting better.

Fuji Grand Prix

It was an amazing race yesterday, after 2-3 processional races. Every time there is a rain race, we seem to have such drama and I wonder if Formula One should have artificial flooding of the track every weekend to make things interesting!!! Lewis won, Alonso crashed and the Ferrari drivers came from the back of the grid to finish 3rd and 6th.

Finally, it looks like Lewis Hamilton is pulling clear in the race to the World drivers championship. Kimi is in with a mathematical chance, but to gain 17 points in 2 races is virtually impossible unless Hamilton retires in both. Alonso is 5 points closer, but it's still a tough ask. Hamilton can easily play it cool, settle for 4th and still win the championship. With the kind of advantage that Ferrari and Mclaren have over the other teams, that wouldn't be too hard.

Cash awards for Indian team

I am appalled to hear about the cash awards announced by politicians of
various states to our cricketers. Cricket is a self sustaining sport
with large amount of sponsorship. The players have contracts that
guarantee them big bucks. Where is the need to spend public money on
them?

If the politicians wanted to get their name in the papers and go one-up
on each other, couldn't they just restrict it to a felicitation
ceremony? With people like this ruling, we are condemned to forever be a
second rate nation.

A moment of madness

Misbah-ul-Haq lost the Twenty20 world cup for Pakistan in a single moment of thoughtlessness.

Today, on my way to work, I saw a ghastly accident just outside my office gate. A motorcyclist was lying on the road, dead, his skull smashed. He had skidded and lost control. Unfortunately for him, a truck was coming at that very moment and it ran over him. If only, he reached that place a few seconds later.

Almost everyone in my office saw this on the way to work. The euphoria of the World Cup victory was gone.

All that work...

...and still no real results to show for it. I started keeping tab of my exercise details since Feb 18, 2007 through the website Traineo. Since, then, I've exercised 153 days out of 217 burning a total of 71814 calories!!! Sadly, my weight which was 78-79 kg at the start of the year is still at the same level. I think its time for me to seriously start looking at my diet:-)

An inspiring story

Sometimes, you come across an inspiring story just when you least expect it. I had gone to an engineering college for campus interviews. Given that we are late going to campuses this year and the colleges that we are going are not in the top echelon, I wasn't expecting too much.

Then, I came across a candidate who simply blew me away. It was not because he was brilliant. It was because of his background and what he had achieved. His father was a daily wage worker, who delivers bricks on a bullock cart. He has realized that education is the only way out and borrowed through his nose to get his son through college. We found that this guy was easily the best of the lot and offered him a job.

This reinforced to me the point that India has so much of talent, which goes unnoticed due to a lack of opportunity. Instead of opening up and providing everyone equal access to opportunities to improve the life, our politicians seem intent on shutting them out further.