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Showing posts from September, 2013

Rush to watch ‘RUSH’

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Filmmakingis a chance to live many lifetimes.                                                                                        - RobertAltman   Ever since the Monaco GP, when Ron Howard andhis team played the movie for all the drivers and team members, my foot hasbeen tapping worse than Christian Horner’s, intolerantly waiting for the movie to hit the big screens. F1 fans obviously wanted to see the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, the unforgettable and golden memories of 1976.While, the other non-racing fans, wanted to watch the movie for heartthrob Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth. Just as Robert Altman pointed out, filmmaking is the chance to live many lifetimes, Ron Howard’s movie ‘RUSH’ gives a chance to all F1 fans to re-live the 1976 season with his brilliant work of art. NikiLauda and James Hunt were two characters who had totally opposite, yet beautiful insights on life itself, and Howard did a phenomenal job to try and bring out the versatile contrast betw

FIA vs Mark Webber - who is right?

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Mark Webber has been reprimanded for the third time this season resulting in his 10 place grid penalty in Korea for hitching a ride back to the pitlane along with Fernando Alonso at the Singapore Grand Prix. Though the FIA hasn’t ‘banned’ this procedure as such, it was thoroughly discouraged as it lead to life threatening incidents in its previous occurrences. Ever since Ayrton Senna rode on the side pod of Nigel Mansell’s Williams at Silverstone in 1991, the FIA has made it clear to the drivers that their safety is priority and cannot be compromised at any point in time. History repeated itself when Fernando gave Webber a lift last Sunday. (Probably, also to repay Webber for the same act he did in 2011). Derek Warwick, a steward at the Grand Prix and also an ex-F1 driver agreed: "It is not health and safety gone mad. (But) a driver could easily have been hurt.” Under further investigation and publically available CCTV footage of the incident showed that Mark Webber ra

Loved, hated and booed: Sebastian Vettel

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Formula One fans of the 80’s and 90’s will not go one day without raving to you about the greatness of Senna or Schumacher. But there are also fans who will tell you otherwise about these drivers when you’d think ’Senna and Schumacher? That’s just not possible’ . Michael Schumacher was a class act. True, he was in the right team and Ferrari had all the possible resources to produce a world championship winning car. But the charisma and passion that he had made him a stand out. He was a 7 time world champion and his dominance of the sport from 2000-2004 erased the element of his brilliance and wrote the ‘over-achiever’ tagline on him, which gained him more so called ‘haters’. Remember when Ayrton Senna won a race after another? He stamped his mark at every circuit no matter what the weather and temperature. And of course! The fierce Senna and Prost rivalries, which remain etched in every formula one fan’s mind.  Senna is now undoubtedly the greatest driver of all time, bec

The perfect team

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A dream team: a team with perfect synergy in terms of capabilities, a team with each and every member with their highest potential being  harnessed for the best performance. Moreover, it’s a team that can never fail. Talking about Formula 1, it’s all about the coming together of strategy, skill, speed, accuracy and aggression which should create a dream team. A team comprising of the best performing drivers, an unbeatable  technical designer, a strategist team principal , and a test driver for all the crucial work behind the scenes. The drivers I’ve chosen are absolutely mind-blowing racers who drive fast, flawlessly and make a move stick even if it seems impossible. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are two drivers who not only drive hard, but also drive smart. It’s easy to say that these two drivers in a team can lead to what happened at McLaren in 2007, but it’s also justifiable to say that if these two racers were to drive flat out, and in their own will, they’ll probably

Pictures from the Belgian Grand Prix

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The infamous Eau Rouge. The sweeping right hander which can play with a driver's mind. Old is gold, this is the Spa Froncorchamps we know today, taken many soever years back!  Green peace protesters displaying banners against Belgian GP sponsors Shell against the usage of Arctic oil. That's why we saw boos on the podium. Not for Seb. Sebastian Vettel, winning his 5th race of this season and en route to his 4th title. Can anybody put an end to his dominance? I don't see that happening this year! Had to put this one because he has demonstrated this weekend, that dying your hair with peroxide because you lost a bet can get you better straight line speed to bravely move across Hamilton in P1 to take the lead. Are they in the making of the strongest team in F1? Champagne spray on DC.

BELGIAN GRAND PRIX REVIEW

The silly season of F1 came to a halt in the month of August, when the drivers went off to Narnia and spent their time on the moon. But it wasn’t forever, before all of them returned back onto the asphalt to burn Pirelli tires and screech past at 300kph around the Spa Francorchamps. After three weeks of isolation, the beats of the air guns and the power of the V8’s roared around the locality for the last time, for after this year, the high pitched lower powered V6’s come into play.  Pirelli brought the hard and the medium compounds to the race, but the allocations were never used until the 2 nd practice. Once again, the Spa weekend started off with a bang from the cumulus keeping its eye all over the track, which played into the hands of Fernando Alonso. But only 2 hours later, did the track dry up, and make a dry line for Sebastian Vettel to breeze past the corners to settle at P1, despite a tire blow. Worried much? No, the problem was caused by some pieces of metal on the tr

Has his return to F1 tarnished his legacy?

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“I needed a driver, and they rang me up and said this guy, he is amazing and so I asked him ‘have you been to Spa before?’ and he said ‘yes’” – Eddie Jordan Michael Schumacher A career started by a fib told to his boss, Michael Schumacher turned out to be the most successful racer in the history of the sport. Right from his debut at the Spa Francorchamps, he has been the master of his equipment. He would drive a car around the circuit with flamboyance and precision, he’ll find time when others would have thought ‘that’s all, that’s for pole’. Benetton marked the start of his real career where he had a car that could get him wins and podiums. And taking absolute advantage of the privilege he had been to given to drive that kind of car, he pushed it to the limits to win a championship in 1994. Though his very first championship winning season was marred by controversy, he kept his title at the end of the season. But 1994 was just the beginning of the making of Michael