F1: Melbourne

Well it’s that time of year again when the sewing machines attack.  bmaz has his first Formula One Trash Talk up which covers many of the notable points including the political one that the season opener in Bahrain was canceled due to the jackbooted repression of the Sunni elite and their Saudi Arabian mercenaries.

Here is a season preview from The Telegraph and here is another one from the same source focusing on the drivers and teams.

I like Wikipedia for pop culture (since that’s hardly ever controversial).  Their description of the Albert Park course is here.

I can’t claim to have been paying a great deal of attention to last night’s Qualifying (results below) but my take away was that not much has changed.  Vettel qualified almost half a second faster than he did last year (as one commentator quipped- “Thank goodness they made the cars slower”).  The announcers are still way over rating Scudiero Marlboro which shows no sign of having improved at all.  Nor has Team Mercedes or any of the other ‘also rans’ from last year.

It was not known at the end of the broadcast if they would waive the 107% rule so it may be that HRT-Cosworth doesn’t start at all and we proceed with a 22 car field.  My interpretation was that they could start from the pit, but I’m not in a position to enforce that.  Ecclestone and I ceased talking well before his facist friend Mosley got caught with his jackboots on but his pants down.

In March of that year the News of the World, a British tabloid newspaper, released video footage of Mosley engaged in sado-masochistic sexual acts with five sex workers in a scenario that the paper said involved Nazi role-playing, a situation made more controversial by his father’s association with the Nazis.

Speed Racecast

Laps is actually kind of significant because of tire and engine wear.

Grid Driver Team Q-Time Laps
1 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 01:23.529 16
2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 01:24.307 19
3 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 01:24.395 15
4 Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 01:24.779 18
5 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 01:24.974 19
6 Vitaly Petrov Renault 01:25.247 18
7 Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP 01:25.421 17
8 Felipe Massa Ferrari 01:25.599 18
9 Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 01:25.626 17
10 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 01:27.066 15
11 Michael Schumacher Mercedes GP 01:25.971 13
12 Jaime Alguersuari STR-Ferrari 01:26.103 11
13 Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 01:26.108 9
14 Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 01:26.739 16
15 Pastor Maldonado Williams-Cosworth 01:26.768 17
16 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 01:31.407 15
17 Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 01:26.270 12
18 Nick Heidfeld Renault 01:27.239 10
19 Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Renault 01:29.254 10
20 Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 01:29.342 12
21 Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 01:29.858 10
22 Jerome d’ Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth 01:30.822 8
DNQ Vitantonio Liuzzi HRT-Cosworth 01:32.978 11
DNQ Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 01:34.293 11

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