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Archive: turkey

What’s going on with the F1 calendar?

7 June 2011 22:01

Categories: Current affairs, Formula 1

What a tangle Formula 1 has found itself in, again. The sport has ended up on the front pages for the wrong reasons yet again.

The problems with rescheduling Bahrain

The reinstatement of the Bahrain Grand Prix is somewhat of a surprise. Clearly the situation in Bahrain is not the sort of circumstance where you can reasonably expect to hold a major international sporting event in complete security.

Employees of Pirelli were in Bahrain when trouble first flared up, when the GP2 Asia race had to be cancelled at the last minute. According to Adam Cooper, they are “not keen to return”.

Then there are the morals of holding the grand prix when the spotlight is on Bahrain’s human rights record. (Not that regularly holding grands prix in China seem to make many people bat an eyelid.) If Bahrain’s problems are temporary, as some maintain, then let them prove it and return next year.

If holding the grand prix will be a “unifying force” for Bahrain, as others claim, take a look at the planned “day of action” for 30 October, the rescheduled date for the grand prix.

30 October. That brings me on to the logistics of this. It is clear that holding the race even in a perfectly peaceful situation would involve a logistical mountain to climb. Not only does it involve moving the Bahrain Grand Prix. It also involves moving the inaugural Indian Grand Prix to the end of the year, which in turn stretches the length of the season to breaking point.

The teams are not happy about the prospect of racing just a couple of weeks before Christmas. By that time, their workers will be overdue a holiday. If the season gets much longer, teams would have to contemplate hiring extra staff. But with everyone involved in Formula 1 desperately trying to keep a lid on costs, this would be a painful step to take.

All of this makes me think, what is really going on here? Is it feasible? What is the real story?

Why move the Indian Grand Prix?

30 October was whispered as a potential date for a rescheduled Bahrain Grand Prix a few weeks ago. My very first thought was, “Why move the Indian Grand Prix?”

Last year there were high-profile troubles with the new Korea International Circuit. The circuit was barely finished in time, as it failed inspection after inspection. In the end, the race could be held — just. But it was marred by a dreadful spray problem in rainy conditions, which some attributed to the type of tarmac that had to be used to lay it in a hurry.

Fernando Alonso recently said, “It was completely dark and it was so wet. It was one hour delayed because of the wet. We could not follow the safety car because of the spray. There were so many things in one race that it remains quite shocking what we did in Korea.”

As far as I’m aware, there is no serious suggestion that the Buddh International Circuit in India is in danger of not being completed in time. But it is not complete yet, with just a few months before the original October slot.

Has the Indian Grand Prix been moved to give the circuit constructors a bit more breathing space to ensure that the circuit is completed properly? To have another Korea-style embarrassment for a second year running is clearly to be avoided.

Perhaps the main aim was to move the Indian Grand Prix, and use Bahrain as the pawn to do it. If the FIA decide that the Bahrain Grand Prix cannot be held after all, they will simply cancel it and keep India in its new 11 December slot.

What’s going on with the 2012 calendar?

On the same day, the provisional 2012 calendar was published. It also had a couple of surprises. Bahrain and India are both in the calendar in the positions you would expect, the same as the original 2011 calendar.

What is a surprise is that Turkey is included — albeit with one of those infamous asterisks. All previous indications were that the 2011 Turkish Grand Prix would be the last one.

With the addition of the United States Grand Prix, this nudges the calendar up to 21 grands prix. This has always been a big no-no. Even 20 races is pushing the limit of what the teams are in favour of. Bernie Ecclestone claims his aim is for a 20 race calendar. Jean Todt says that there will “absolutely not” be as many as 21 races next season, despite the provisional calendar.

So what’s going on? It seems to me like the powers that be are trying to cover all the bases. If Bahrain can’t take place next year, Turkey is ready to go and Bernie has his 20 races. Similarly, if India can’t take place, or the USA, or indeed any other race, the backup plan is there.

With one extra race in the calendar anyway, this looks like a way for Bernie Ecclestone to be sure that, after this year’s hiccups, 2012 will have 20 races.

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Fanpedia

27 August 2007 01:36

Categories: Entertainment, Formula 1, Internet, Music, Technology, Television

The internet is teeming with information. Sort of. Thanks to things like blogs, Wikipedia and even plain MSM news sites, everything that has happened since the mid-1990s is covered in minute, sometimes anal detail. But anything that happened before then? It’s almost as if it’s neo-prehistoric.

In a way you can understand the lack of information from before the 1990s on the web. After all, the web didn’t exist until 1989. But the meticulous recording of events since the invention of the web is dizzying. It’s good in some ways, but sometimes I come across a piece of useless information that makes me think, “Really, what is the point of that? Who thought it was worth their while to put this on the internet?”

A home for a large proportion of this useless information is Wikipedia. I should point out that I am generally in favour of Wikipedia as a quick and easy way to plug embarrassing gaps in your knowledge. And I think a lot of the criticisms some people make of Wikipedia are quite wide of the mark.

Wikipedia churns out astonishingly mind-bending articles like 0.999…, Architecture of Windows NT and Equipartition theorem. But Wikipedia also contains masses of articles concerning contemporary popular culture.

I do not at all mind Wikipedia carrying such articles (I read many of them myself), but it has to be said that the quality decreases pretty rapidly. Sometimes I read something in Wikipedia and can’t believe that I actually spent time reading it.

This evening I was innocently reading up on Bonde do Rolê because I have just bought their album, With Lasers. Overall it is an adequate encyclopedia entry. It delivers the facts in a fairly straight manner. But from the middle of nowhere, some way through the article, I was bombarded with this:

Rodrigo Gorky [is] the DJ/producer who, when combined with the powers of MC Marina Ribatski and MC/producer Pedro D’eyrot, create the hellish firestorm of beats and thunderous bass that is…Bonde do Rolê.

Someone has been reading too much music journalism. As if describing something as a “hellish firestorm of beats and thunderous bass” on a website that is meant to be a reasonably reliable source of reasonably impartial information wasn’t bad enough, they go and add an ellipsis to signify mock suspense. Do they think Wikipedia is just one long cheesy film trailer? It is such an irritating sentence. I would understand if somebody wrote it for the NME, but not Wikipedia.

But it is not the fawning that annoys me the most about pop culture articles on Wikipedia. It is a sometimes unbelievably anal focus on inconsequential information. Take this section from the article about Fonejacker.

The end of the show [Fonejacker's Christmas Message] displayed Fonejacker: Coming April 2007 – Don’t Pick Up The Phone.

In March, a teaser trailer started to air on Channel 4 and E4, which consisted of clips of the pilot put together into a thirty second advert, ending with e4.com/fonejacker, which redirected users to the Fonejacker MySpace page. [1]. However, for undisclosed reasons, the show was put on hold, and wasn’t aired in April. After this, a rumour spread that the show would start on June 7, 2007, but this also proved to be incorrect. Whilst fans thought there was no hope for the show, new trailers aired in June which saw the Fonejacker in his own flat performing various calls, and a television tuned into the news reporting “new sightings of the Fonejacker”. The advert ended with the catchphrase Don’t Pick Up The Phone and finished with the same E4 website. This was followed a couple of days after by a newer alternative advert.

This is a paragraph and a bit entirely dedicated to the different dates that the first proper series of Fonejacker was supposed to start. It is really just an incredibly long-winded way of saying, “The first series was delayed by a couple of months.” I mean, really. Big deal!

It’s just topped off by the phrase “fans thought there was no hope for the show”. I have images of some socially inept Fonejacker fan rushing to update Wikipedia with “useful information” about the latest teaser trail or even plain hearsay about possible transmission dates about a television series that he feared for the life of.

Then there are the articles which clunkily add news into an article with absolutely no regard given to the overall flow of the article. The following paragraph appears at the end of a section about the 2007 season in the article about Felipe Massa:

On 24 August 2007, Felipe Massa stated that he is a fan of Fenerbahçe [2] . Massa said: “Zico was idol of my childhood, Roberto Carlos is my best friend. I am a Fenerbahçe fan, because it is just like Brazilian team. I love Turkey, as I won my first championship in Turkey, it has special value for me.”

The whole paragraph is spew-worthy trivia which is placed in a section about Felipe Massa’s 2007 season. I don’t mind the inclusion of information like this, but it should be in a separate ‘Trivia’ section. It is jarring to be reading about Felipe Massa’s on-track events in one sentence and about his footballer pals in the next.

And don’t get me started on the sometimes cringeworthy articles about Boards of Canada. Just check out this one about Old Tunes which reports happenings on a messageboard as though it was as serious a situation as Watergate.

The thing is, though, I can understand why people put such information in Wikipedia pages, and even that there might be demand for such information. I would be interested in this kind of information if it was about a topic that I was really interested in. But it does make some Wikipedia articles look rather ragged and untidy, with a sometimes obsessive focus on inconsequential details.

I know I could edit the articles myself, but it would probably be fruitless. I don’t want to risk upsetting the obsessive Fonejacker fan. Besides, it would probably be reverted back anyway. Plus, I think the information is of value. Just, maybe not on Wikipedia.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a Fanpedia? A wiki site where people are allowed to be disgustingly obsessed with the minutiae of their hobbies. This could leave Wikipedia to focus on information that has proved to be important over a period of time.

I guess Wikimedia would not be too keen to provide a ‘Fanpedia’ service. I wonder who would actually be prepared to fund one? Then we might find out the real value of this trivial information is not so great after all.

1 comment

2006 Turkish Grand Prix review — at last!

30 August 2006 19:18

Categories: Current affairs, Formula 1, Politics

I’ve finally got round to writing a proper review of the Turkish Grand Prix. In the end, it turned out that I didn’t actually miss all that much of it (if the highlights programme was anything to go by), although there were a couple of bits that I missed. I think I was mostly just confused by James Allen saying, “It’s been a cracker of race,” and I just woke up thinking, “I missed it all!” But I didn’t.

Anyway, first of all it was great to see Felipe Massa winning a Grand Prix for the first time. I am not a big fan of Massa — I don’t think he has necessarily earned a drive in the most prestigious motor racing team in the world on merit. But anybody who plays the role of subservient second-fiddle to Schumacher deserves to stand on that top of the podium, and it was good to see a win mean so much to somebody.

Of course, were it not for the Safety Car situation it would have been Michael Schumacher crossing the finish line, but instead we were lined up for a classic on-track battle between him and Fernando Alonso. Thankfully, these battles are becoming a more regular occurrence.

Alonso once again showed plenty of skill in keeping Schumacher at bay for the full 15 laps of the battle. The end was very exciting. The two were separated at the finish line by just 0.8 seconds. It’s difficult to imagine them being any closer at the finish, and it’s probable that if the finish line was a bit further down the road we would have seen the opposite outcome.

As it is, Alonso has extended his lead to 12 points. Considering that the Ferrari is clearly superior to the Renault at the moment, Alonso is doing an absolutely fantastic job. If Alonso wins the championship, he will definitely have deserved it.

Another driver who impressed in Turkey was Ralf Schumacher, who cleverly saw a point in the circuit — turn 12 — where he was particularly strong enough to overtake — on the outside. Sometimes it is easy to dismiss Ralf Schumacher, but yesterday he proved that he still has talent (even if he doesn’t quite have his brother’s talent).

Jenson Button had another strong, although anonymous, performance, finishing 4th. Kimi Räikkönen was unfortunate to be crashed into at the hectic start of the race.

Martin Brundle noted how Nico Rosberg showed that he has his wits about him after he got out of the way of a faster car in the pitlane entrance. Rosberg famously scored very high marks in a written exam used by Williams to assess their drivers. But it’s one thing to sit a written test, and quite another to race quickly. After a promising start to the season, Rosberg has completely fizzled out for me. A lot of this is down to his uncompetitive car, but Rosberg needs to shine more in order to justify the hype.

Another winner his Hermann Tilke, the designer of the Istanbul Park circuit. Tilke has a lot of critics, but I quite like most of his circuits. They may be formulaic, but you have to admit that they usually work. Istanbul Park is a particularly excellent track though. Drivers seem to have a lot of room to experiment with different lines, and a lot of drivers are getting caught out, particularly at turn 8 — a real rarity in Formula 1.

What a shame that the race has been jeopardised by some petty political propaganda. Shame on the Turkish organisers, and to everybody at the FIA and FOM who let this happen.

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Hello, my name is… Engin?

3 August 2006 16:33

Categories: General, Personal

Hello, my name is... Engin? Despite having been working at Woolworths for almost a month now, I still haven’t been given my own name. Unlike some shops where nametags are essentially made out of a bit of paper put inside a plastic case, Woolworths seem to have to specially engrave one in a top-secret time-consuming procedure.

So while we wait for my proper nametag to arrive, I have been told to use another male nametag from the drawer. Of course, I was to be given a male nametag because I am obviously not female. But the fact that I am obviously not Asian didn’t seem to put them off when they decided to make me Engin.

I had never heard the name before I worked at Woolworths, but inside Woolies it is a name I’ve heard a lot. Infact, on my first day on the tills (before I even had Engin as a name badge), I was asked, “Does Engin still work here?” At first I thought it sounded like it might be a Welsh name, but apparently the real Engin is Asian.

At first I found the whole thing quite funny, kind of poking fun at the whole need for sales assistants to wear name badges. But I have had to endure three or four weeks of the same old cracks. For instance: “Engin’s looking awfy peely-wally today.” Amusing the first time, boring the fifth time.

Of course, I also get loads of customers asking me how I say my name. I have to explain the whole situation, that my name is actually Duncan, I’m new here, I still haven’t got my nametag yet, this is somebody else’s nametag, but it’s pronounced /’É›n.ɡɪn/.

This explanation doesn’t please everyone. Yesterday I had a group of boys who looked like they might be troublemakers but turned out just to be playfully cheeky. “What’s your name?” Once I had given my explanation the boy replied, “Your name’s engine, isn’t it?” About an hour later they came back, shouting, “Alright, engine?” on their way past me.

I should just say that my name is pronounced like ‘Duncan’, but I just use a really avant-garde spelling.

There is one plus point to it all though. If I get the mystery shopper and I mess it up by failing to ask him twenty questions about what he hasn’t bought, Engin gets the blame.

Update: A clue to the origin of the name? meeshy meesh left a comment on Flickr:

Means “vast” in Turkish.

7 comments

The big World Cup debate

31 May 2006 22:21

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Food and drink, General, Newspapers, Nostalgia, Personal, Politics, Radio, Scotland, Sport, Television

I always quite look forward to the World Cup, but when it actually comes along I usually don’t pay as much attention to it as I expected. But on the 31st of May 2006, I can say that I am looking forward to the World Cup.

Of course, here in Scotland the big debate is: Who should Scots support? And is it wrong not to support England?

Once, a few years ago, my brother said something like, “There is nothing better than England getting beaten, but there is nothing worse than all the crowing about it at school the next day.”

I’m a bit of the opposite. I don’t really mind to see England win, but the media is just unbearable. Even the most tenuous link to 1966 is pounced upon by smug commentators from every angle. It is very tedious, especially when they are referring to England as “we” when there is no “we” about it for anybody who happens to be living in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, which is roughly 20% of the entire population. And the wall-to-wall coverage of Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal really is not needed!

The recent case with Mars is a prime example. Digbeth explains here. I didn’t believe it at first, but I have seen two of these billboards in Kirkcaldy. It really is terrible. They have clearly considered Scotland as an afterthought. Shoddy. It would have been better for them to just not advertise north of the border at all. Have they done the same in Wales?

STV’s trailers for the World Cup are also tragic. STV, the Scottish ITV broadcaster, has obviously taken the ITV network’s promo and slapped the STV logo on the end. This efficient tactic works with most programmes, but there is a slight problem in this instance: every single player featured in the promo is English! Honestly! Did they not think it through?! What would people in England be saying if a broadcaster produced a promo featuring nothing but German players?

When England is shoved down your throat all the time even when you don’t live there, it shouldn’t be a surprise. It is probably fair to say that the majority of Scots will not be supporting England in the World Cup. This year, the trendy team for Scots to support is Trinidad and Tobago, who have four players based in Scotland, one of whom happens to be called Scotland. Oh, and there is the small matter that they are in England’s group as well.

Jack McConnell got himself into a wee bit of hot water when he said that he wouldn’t be supporting England at the World Cup. But when Gordon Brown said he’d be supporting England he got even more stick from it, particularly from the SNP (who else?).

English people have been known to complain about the rivalry between Scotland and England. They protest that they are happy enough to support Scotland, so why shouldn’t Scots support England? Well, as David Farrer excellently points out in this post, that is completely missing the point.

Because, in footballing terms, it’s not a fellow team, but is perceived by Scots to be the number one rival. If Celtic are playing against Barcelona in a European match, do Rangers fans cheer on their “fellow” Glaswegians? Aye, right! Were Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham fans in tears over Arsenal’s recent defeat in the Champions’ League final? I don’t think so.

…Scotland aren’t (sadly) a threat to England. It’s no big deal for English folk to support Scotland in those circumstances.

Who says Scotland aren’t being represented in the World Cup though? We all know that isn’t true!

It is perhaps true that Scotland’s rivalry with England is a little childish. But then again, England has its own childish rivalries with Germany, Argentina, France, Turkey……

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