Brake Point

♫ "Already Home" (feat. Kid Cudi) - Jay-Z on the music system

Season review time. If you are indeed an F1 fan, I don't expect you to be reading this. Go read the season reviews written by James Allen or Peter Windsor or just listen to Sir Jackie Stewart in his tweed coat banging on about what he feels about the way things panned out.

I just felt weird when the lighting systems at the Abu Dhabi circuit died out and left behind a stark darkness as opposed to the brilliantly illuminated giant jellyfish skin they had swathed the entire main grandstand complex with. Jenson Button and Brawn were already champions and they didn’t really have to…

No. I didn’t feel weird. I felt disgusted at that moment because my brain stopped being absorbed in the race and I gradually felt my olfactory senses pick up the most revolting stench that I’d been oblivious to thus far - I'd been too busy drinking in the visuals.

What else do you expect from a room that has no air-conditioning, no proper ventilation, unwashed and un-disinfected ancient carpets, and is generally occupied by those hordes from that state between Tamil Nadu and the pointless Orissa? Oh, and the monkeys occasionally pop in for a dump. And then leave.

I mean, this season shook it all up for the sport. Or the entertainment show(as the honourable Government of India likes to see it). Ferrari and McLaren, the ‘big boys’ could only whimper with their tails ‘twixt their legs while Brawn and later Red Bull brawn-ed and bull-ed their way to an eventual contest between each other for the titles. I’m sure all the Ferrari and McLaren haters(there seem to be some) were overjoyed that this year had been a nice little kick up their backsides. Truth be told, yes, it was really good to see someone else do the winning for a while.

But the novelty factor soon wore off, because Brawn had been blitzing everyone else for the first one-third of the season. Yes, the double diffuser thing helped, but Williams and Toyota had it too – that didn’t make them that awesome. So, we should give credit where it’s due. Ross Brawn, Nick Fry to a certain extent and the exiting Honda management to a small yet no less significant extent.

And of course, the new Brit hero, Jenson Button. Finally. After that promising start to his career with Benetton and Williams, nobody had bet against him not winning a championship before he turned 29. And yet, that’s what happened with him languishing at the luckless Honda pitwall for over 6 years. If people say he doesn’t deserve the championship, well, they should just shut up. There have been a few such champions in the past, and there will be such champions in the future – a champion is a champion is a champion. And Button deserves it, as much as anyone of his other challengers did. After all these years of frustration and anger, it almost seems poetically apt that Button won the title he so badly wanted in this dramatic fashion. Senna had once appropriately remarked, “Every year, there is a winner of the World Championship, but not necessarily a champion.” However, the record books think otherwise and so we should just shut our mouths and move on.

I was totally crushed for Sebastian Vettel. I’ve been looking out for him ever since he set those blinding times during the free practice for the 2006 Italian GP, and 2009 was the year he should have won that title. I won’t go on and on about how some errors, from himself and from Red Bull, and plain old bad luck conspired to deny him what would have been a stupendous achievement. And he just goes hard at it all the time – he can’t just think of getting the car home and bagging a few points. That’s not his style. And I love his attitude. He wasn’t like, “I’ll be stronger because I have learned to lose” or “Losing is part of the game” or “I have grown as an individual” or any of that regular drivel all these smooth-talkers say when they lose. Instead, he said:

“I wish I didn’t have to say it, but I hate losing. I think I knew it all along, but now I am definitely sure. But somehow that doesn’t only go for racing - I’m afraid I hate losing in anything I am doing - whether it is playing a silly game, or football, I obviously simply hate to lose.”

That’s definitely the guy I see as one whose side I am on. Ah, you’re wondering why? Who’s that dude I worship?

And who is that person we are not talking about? Yes, mister, you. You should stop saying “I have never accepted that I wasn’t as good as Michael.” About time.

Oh, and watch out for yet another young German in the immediate future, Nico Hulkenberg. He will probably turn out to be as good as Vettel. Yes.

Anyway, I’m mega-pissed at Ferrari for letting Kimi Vodkanen go, by terminating his contract that would have expired in 2010, all because President Montezemolo wanted Fernando Teflonso in the team. And that’s the reason I am going to be a Mercedes supporter in case, IN CASE Schumi decides to haul his ass into their racecar for the next season. Ferrari and Schumacher fans shouldn’t see him as a traitor who’s ‘forsaken his loyalty to the team with which he’s spent the golden years of his illustrious career’. If Ferrari can hire Alonso, then without an iota of doubt, Michael occupies a higher moral ground if he decides to get himself released from the ‘Consultant’ position at Maranello and drive for the German company who funded his rise through the junior classes and the DTM. So the Ferraristi in Michael’s camp, shut your miserable whining traps and scream for the Silver Arrows henceforth. My reverence for Ferrari the Manufacturer remains undiminished, but Ferrari the Formula 1 Team? They’d have to do something special to win me back. Hah. Like they need to, or like they ever will. They’ll just ask me to go f**k myself.

So, as a pre-emptive measure, I shall hit ‘Publish’, re-enable μ Torrent, rise from this chair I’m sitting on…

…and do just that.

See you later, infected crimson pustules.

RIP Lusk, Surtees, and all the others who've left us. And SHUT UP, YOU HEALTH AND SAFETY RETARDS.

It’s been a tough year for motorsport – chiefly because of the high-profile deaths that have brought back into sharp focus the proximity to death these superstars face every time they put their machines into gear and gun their engines.

Chief among the casualties have been Jeremy Lusk - Metal Mulisha rider, Freestyle Motocross superstar and Henry Surtees – F2 driver, son of the legendary John Surtees. Another recent headline-grabbing incident was Felipe Massa’s crash during the qualifying session of the Hungarian Grand Prix. And there must be several others I've missed.

These superstars who straddle the worlds of adventure sport and motorsport have come on board and given the best years of their lives to their chosen sport, knowing full well that their next stunt or race could turn out to be their last.

Which is why this stupid furore that’s been raised by these armchair ‘experts’ over the safety protocols existing in these sporting disciplines and whether they are enough to ensure the absolute safety of the people involved in it, right from the drivers and riders to the girls serving beer in the hospitality areas is totally infuriating. However, not for a moment am I suggesting that a Robbie Maddison should wear a fluffy magenta tutu while performing his backflip.

All I am saying is, ‘LEAVE THESE PEOPLE ALONE’. What more can the FIA do? Limit speeds in Formula One to 2.2287 km/h? Make the X-Games a video-game contest? Mistakes are made. Shit just happens. There is no way one can protect himself against the fickle ways of chance. Each of the people involved in these high-risk sporting events are the best out there. And they are certainly not irrational or stupid or unreasonable. If they think about doing something, it’s because they think and, more importantly they know they can. Whether they will, or whether they go out in a fireball of metal and glory is something they just have to check out for themselves. And they also have to perform the onerous task of filling out gazillons of health and safety forms.

An accident is something that is always waiting to pounce on even the most benign of human endeavours. You can slip in your bathroom while taking a bath and singing ‘Start me up’, bang your head on the faucet and be as dead as a doornail instantly. If you want to protect yourself against this eventuality, don’t take a bath. Ever. But in that case you will end up choking people around you to their deaths, your body is going to be infested with all micro-organisms known to man and you’ll die a slow, painful and, worst of all, malodorous death. And nobody will be applauding you as you go out with a whimper.

Take the bathroom option instead. In the tribute show put together by ESPN for Lusk, a segment talked about the kind of injuries these athletes have had to endure during the course of their career, and some of the responses were – “I had the entire left side of my torso ripped off”, “The handlebar went through my gut”, “I lost my kidney”, “One of my testicles was ripped off”.

So why do they still do it? These guys also have families – Jeremy is survived by his wife, Lauren. Is it worth risking it all when you can lose the people you love the most?

Of course it effing is. These people risk it because they don't know how to do anything else. They tread the fine line between daredevilry and lunacy day in and day out because they have to. And they aren’t endorphin-addled teenagers going mental with all the horsepower under their right foot or wrist. They are supremely skilled, extremely meticulous in their preparation, and they have a support team that does everything to ensure their safety. But they can’t accident-proof themselves. And I also think they don’t mind dying while doing something they love doing. It’s all worth it.

So, the next time you hear of such a death due to a horrific accident, feel a little sad for the dude who screwed up, and all the people who were behind him. But don’t, for a moment insult his memory by thinking he’d been stupid. He was being perfectly rational. It’s not like he had a choice. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to change anything he’s done in his life, if he were given a chance.

RIP Lusk, Surtees and everyone else who’s no longer with us. We’ll miss you guys. The loss is ours, and only ours.




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While I'm eagerly waiting for 'Relapse 2' and 'Detox', I'm listening to 'The Marshall Mathers LP' and 'The Chronic'. Fall Out Boy is also good fun to listen to. All this peppered with the occasional Aerosmith, U2, Springsteen, Sting, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam song.

Medley I

Aaiye dukaan kholta hoon:

1. Re-vive: Coming along pretty nicely. I’ve now sort of realized what I had been missing for quite some time. The ubiquitous adda session that happens every day from sunset till 11 o’ clock has become very, very essential to my daily existence. Pausing to think, I also realize that earlier, we never ever had to call each other to a specific place just so we can have this – we had the tuitions which served the purpose. Commendably. And Mukherjee hasn’t changed. Not. One. Bit. And that keeps things jazzed up all the time, although we sometimes go a little overboard! The Polo Ground is perfect for this kind of timepass. Made my second trip to school with Babai, Souvik and Roy. And we ended up singing a plaintive - and pathetic - rendition of ‘Winds of Change’(Or...did we?). School school naa raha(sob). Siddhant ‘Choos-Lee’ Bhartia came down all the way from Calcutta to meet up with us. We appreciate it, Sidd – it’s a pity our plans to get smashed together in Bangalore never really materialized, and now you're no longer in Bangalore. Now it’s Calcutta for the next 3 years, pucca. Right then. We’ll get smashed in Calcutta one of these days :D
And I still can't decide whether I want to go for that reunion party in school. Most of us are undecided - we're unsure of the crowd... what if the grand old men of SPS Alumni take centrestage and we newbies are summarily ignored? Wisely, the organisers are dangling the bait of having ex-students from AG Church and Loreto on board for the '3 day extravaganza' :D We shall see!

2. Brit GP, Silverstone: So the Brawns finally came unstuck. Low temperatures weren’t letting their tyres warm up properly, and Button was undone (*smirks*) and Barrichello wasn’t exactly giving a great account of himself (Massa and Rosberg almost jumped him). But I’m dribbling on about a mere bagatelle. Why don’t we sidestep this issue and yell ‘SEBASTIAN!!’ - What a performance. What a thundering performance. Granted that the Red Bull car was flattered a little by the nature of the circuit and the air and track temperatures, but you simply can’t gloss over the fact that Vettel, on a heavier fuel load, first put in a stonker of a qualifying lap to take pole, and then pulled away from the two old goats on the grid at over a second a lap consistently during the first stint of the race. That was the day he did a Schumacher. Fab job!

3. Wimbledon: It’s no secret which camp I belong to. And yes, Wimbledon without its defending champion feels a bit like showing up for a college prom night and having to dance with Bablu the channawallah. OK, that was monumentally asinine of me, but you shall, at this juncture, have mercy on this mentally challenged individual and get the drift. And, much as I don’t mind Roger Effing Federer and really, really respect him, the Savile-Row bedecked tennis-racket swinging Rolex commercial really gets on my nerves. The other one with footage from his matches is OK – I mean, Rolex has being doing that sort of ads for years, but this one is, well, phhbbbt.

4. Shantaram(the book): I won't say anything except describing it in one word : 'staggering'.

More later. Run along.

The edge of tolerance

The obvious place to start would be !@#$?@#$ !

I mean, what can you say about things that look like they have completely spiraled out of control for a team that is supposed to be representative of the greatest, most enigmatic and undoubtedly the most evocative name in automotive history?

Imagine how fucking frustrating it must be for their army of fans around the world. The Tifosi. Me. Us. Probably you. And this is before we get to the predicament of their two drivers - Mr. rapid-yet-unlucky Massa and Mr. chocobar-ze-vodka Raikkonen. How bad can things get before they start to get better?

They started out with a car that wasn’t exactly at the forefront of innovation and development. We can understand that. Seeing McLaren in the same situation, it is obvious that these 2 powerhouses who were rabidly dueling for the 2008 world championship had to let some slack as far as the development of their ‘09 machines was concerned. Their drivers, as a direct consequence have had to endure a hellish time on track trying to battle erstwhile midfield no-hopers who have ultimately ended up in front of them.

Moreover, it is really, I mean, really tough to make up lost ground in the course of a single season. Even with the mega resource strength of Ferrari (and McLaren and Renault and BMW), it will be a Herculean task for them to outperform Brawn and Red Bull, because every team on the grid is in a constant state of evolution - everybody is taking steps forward all the time. So, for every one step that the teams in front take, Ferrari and the others will have to take two steps, even three, because what they are doing has to be cumulatively greater than the developmental steps taken by the teams in front if they have to gain on them. That's difficult. Very difficult.

The sad part is, they somehow managed to make that big step forward - as was evident on the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix. They had the pace to at least stay with the front runners, if not slay them. That was a start! And then Ferrari's mechanical gremlins and slapdash errors that the crew have repeatedly been making took over. It's not just bad luck any more. It is sheer madness, and dare I say, indifference. They probably have made more tactical mistakes in the first quarter of this season than they have made in all of the last decade - the overconfident and irrational decision to keep their driver back in the pits in order to 'preserve the car and its tyres for the future runs in Q2 and Q3’ (for which they eventually failed to make the cut). Twice! It happened to Massa earlier and it happened to Kimi today. And poor Felipe didn't have enough gas to even get him to the Parc Ferme! In all probablility, the Fezza's crew has become the laughing stock of the F1 paddock. And I haven't even started talking about the mechanical failures that have now become as much a part of Ferrari as their infallible reliability once used to be.

The KERS. Again one question. Why? The teams who invested heavily in this ‘curse’ are the worst off - cases in point Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and BMW. Does the handicap of the extra weight of the system outweigh its benefits of a 90HP boost for a fixed duration of the lap? Oh yes it does. BMW and Renault decided to junk it for this particular race, because quite frankly, with the staggering performance of the KERS-free teams in the front of the pack, these four factory-backed biggies were starting to look a bit like dorks. In modern F1, I guess, the best way to find a gain in performance is to give a lot of importance to aero-development. Credit here has to go to Adrian Newey of Red Bull Racing – they still don’t have that naff double-decked diffuser, and yet they are snapping at Brawn’s heels. Plus, theirs is the only car than looks exquisite, if you exclude the snowplough in front and the scaffolding at the back. Poor Sebastian Vettel – he’d probably have challenged for the victory had Massa not held him up for almost the entire duration of the race. Thoo.

So, what’s it going to be? Ferrari seem to have found some pace, but without reliability and shabby crew-work, it doesn’t look like it’s going to improve a great deal this season.

Clearly, the Schumacher-Todt-Brawn-Byrne combine is being missed. Badly so.