Supercars Championship is something Yours Truly has been somewhat
following for a while. Off the top of his head, he can name several top drivers
like Craig Lowndes, Jamie Whincup, Cameron Waters, etc.
And of course, Shane van Gisbergen of New Zealand.
In fact, van Gisbergen has been dominating so much like Max Verstappen
in Formula 1 that he is probably the only Supercars driver that Yours Truly can
pick out from a Police lineup, if there is one.
(Speaking of Verstappen, he and van Gisbergen both drive a car with Red
Bull livery and, of course, they both have Dutch heritage.)
Then, Trackhouse Racing in the USA came calling as part of their effort
to put international drivers behind the wheel in selected NASCAR races, in particular street and road races. Van Gisbergen took up the offer, and entered
the race in Chicago.
The Grant Park 220 to be exact, held in the Chicago Street Course last weekend.
Van Gisbergen impressed right away in testing and qualifying, and started the
race third on the grid.
He ran in the top ten all day, and challenged leader Justin Haley for
the lead late in the race. Van Gisbergen was in such a good form that he
overtook Haley not once but twice for the lead, after his first overtaking maneuvre
was judged to have taken place just after a yellow flag was shown. He became
the first driver to win a NASCAR race on his debut in 60 years, since the legendary Johnny
Rutherford’s victory in the qualifying heat race for the Daytona 500 in 1963.
Meanwhile, the top three drivers in the standings before the race,
Martin Truex Jr., William Byron and Ross Chastain, finished 32nd, 13th and 22nd
respectively.
Now spare a thought for the regular NASCAR drivers, who risk their lives
every week trying to outrace and outscore each other in one of the tightest motor-racing
series in the world.
Imagine you are one of them, having spent your whole life honing your
skills, trying to move up the ladder and beat the other 30-plus drivers every
single week. Then someone from literally the other side of the world, whom you
will probably never see again for the rest of your life, comes and beats you up
the only time he races you.
Duh.
Joey Logano, himself a two-time NASCAR champion who finished 8th in the
race, said simply, “He made us look like a bunch of fools. A foreigner came in
and kicked our butt today”. (Courtesy of Brett Winningham @NASCAR_BRETT)
The end of the pay Cable TV service reminds me of the time when Yours Truly worked for them.
Yours Truly's first summer job was with Cable TV.
That was during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, where another college student and Yours Truly were hired to assist in the “live” broadcast of the Games on Channel 06 or 07 in those days. A red-eye shift for Yours Truly, starting from 12 midnight to 6 in the morning.
Due to contractual reasons, Cable TV was not allowed to broadcast the Games live in full. 30% of an event was the most we could broadcast live. Usually we didn’t care about that requirement as we didn’t plan to broadcast anything live, as our main goal was to provide regular verbal updates, without footage, on some of the more popular events every 30 minutes, hosted by an athlete-turned-commentator who used to play goalkeeper for the Hong Kong national soccer team.
But that requirement became a major issue when we decided to broadcast the men’s 100 metre race live.
Not every part of a race is created equal, and the most exciting part, of course, is the finale. That is why our plan was to broadcast the final 30 metres or so of the race. And what about the first 70 metres or so? Our plan was to pretend that we had overrun the commercials, but somehow managed to catch the last part of the race, just as we returned from the break.
We had the commercials lined up, and the host fully ready to start commentating at a certain time and hour. The schedule was announced months in advance and we could plan around it. Say, the race was scheduled to start at 4:00, and we were ready to end our commercials and start our “live” broadcast at about 4:02.
But we forgot about the jump starts, a pesky and annoying thing that had disrupted our plans. While the experienced Olympic runners were rarely unnerved by them, our host, this time a former track and field coach, was left completely stranded as he had to start rambling while staring at our cameras when we returned from the commercials, and we could not put the live broadcast on screen yet. Thankfully, he didn’t have to ramble for too long as the race finally started shortly afterwards, and Yours Truly remembers that our live broadcast began around midway through the race, despite the 30% requirement.
As for the most important question? Who won that damn race?
No one really knows. In fact, no one really cares, after all these years.
Yours truly feels obliged to write about Diego
Maradona, the fallen soccer hero who passed away two days ago due to a heart
attack.
Even though the Argentinian was never his cup of
tea.
Truth be told, Yours Truly grew up in a world
dominated by English soccer, which was heavily broadcasted in Hong Kong in the
early 80s. In fact, that was probably the only world-class soccer action
broadcasted in Hong Kong back in those days, as the coverage on Bundesliga and Serie
A came later. Not surprisingly, Yours Truly was really fond of English soccer,
and did not know that there were other national soccer teams that he could root
for.
So when England, his favourite of the time, was
beaten by that diminutive Argentinian single-handedly (figuratively and
as-a-matter-of-factly speaking) in THAT quarter final of the 1986 World Cup, there
could only be one public enemy for him.
To make matters worse, when Yours Truly started following
Serie A, he grew a liking to Milan, and to this day, he will maintain that his
all-time favourite is the great Dutch striker Marco Van Basten. But when the
minnows Napoli often got in the way of Milan's path to glory, he could always put
the blame on that Argentinian genius not much taller than him.
(Speaking of an Argentinian genius not much taller
than Yours Truly, there is another one playing for Barcelona right now. And you
may have heard of him.)
Anyway.
Yours Truly is impressed by what Maradona had done
in his professional life. From humble beginnings to being a global superstar,
for leading Napoli, which had achieved virtually nothing before his arrival, to
two excellent Serie A titles in four years and a UEFA Cup victory in 1989 (over
Stuttgart with Jurgen Klinsmann in the side), and for captaining and leading
Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title almost single-handedly, his impact to the
game could never be overstated.
While his private life and drug and alcohol problems
may have tarnished his image to some (Yours Truly included), perhaps he should
be regarded as a rock star, who rocked and shocked the world with his performance
on stage and his undoing off it.
Sevilla, a modestly successful Spanish soccer team
with ONE La Liga title under its belt, has won the UEFA Europa League (formerly
the UEFA Cup) SIX times (all in the last 15 years), which is one more than the La Liga's big three, namely Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have won COMBINED (FIVE).
Evidence #2:
Nick Heidfeld, the retired Formula One driver who is
known for having never won any Formula One races in a 12-year career, had
maintained his perfect winless record in his four-year Formula E career. In
fact, the closest he came to a victory in Formula E was in its and his first-ever race,
when he made a kamikaze late lunge in the final corner in Beijing in 2014, with
disastrous consequences.
...
Evidence #33:
On the very first day of the 33rd week this year (i.e., August 9), South African rookie Brad Binder shocked
the MotoGP world by winning the Czech MotoGP race on a KTM. Earlier, Italian
rider Enea Bastianini won the Moto2 race, his second in a row. Later that day,
Dutch driver Max Verstappen came home first in the 70th Anniversary Formula One Grand Prix in
Silverstone.
They all had race number 33.
...
Evidence #42:
Part 1:
Jackie Robinson Day is held on April 15 each year. To commemorate Hall of Famer Robinson who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, all MLB players don a nameless #42 jersey on that day in his honour, while his #42 jersey has also been retired by MLB.
This year, however, due to the coronavirus outbreak, the MLB season has been delayed, and the on-field celebrations have been postponed to August 28.
Part 2:
Chadwick Boseman, the Hollywood actor famous for his role as Black Panther in the Avengers series, as well as playing Robinson in the movie 42, died recently.
In its previous life, KTM must have done something
hideously wrong to Johann Zarco.
Otherwise, it would not be possible to explain how
Zarco, intentionally or not, has been spoiling KTM's party in the past couple of years.
Zarco became a red-hot property after his outstanding
first two seasons in MotoGP in 2017 and 2018 with the Tech 3 Yamaha team.
Looking to take the next step, he decided to sign a two-year contract with KTM before
the 2019 season, with the hope of becoming the number one rider in the up and
coming Austrian squad which, at that time, was still finding its footing in
MotoGP despite showing a lot of promise.
With Tech 3 switching to KTM in 2019, the newly-set up Petronas SRT Team became the official customer Yamaha team. Had Zarco stayed with Yamaha, he would have become the leader of the de facto second-best Yamaha team on the grid. His departure though, meant that the honour has now fallen onto the current MotoGP championship leader and fellow Frenchman Fabio Quartararo, who at the time was an unheralded 20-year-old and a surprise choice for SRT.
Unfortunately, Zarco's tenure with KTM ended in disaster.
Apart from starting on the front row in the wet Czech Grand Prix, his best
finish was tenth in the Catalunya Grand Prix. Growing so frustrated with his performance,
he asked for a release from his contract, and was dumped with six races left.
Having severed his ties with KTM, Zarco became a
free agent, and was called up later that season to replace LCR Honda rider
Takaaki Nakagami who opted for season-ending surgery. However, his performance
was not good enough to secure him a ride with one of the so-called big teams.
Let's go back to KTM for a moment. Zarco's replacement
for 2020 is South African Brad Binder, who went on to secure the Austrian
marquee's first-ever win in MotoGP class in the Czech Grand Prix last week.
Now back to Zarco. Thanks to the efforts of various
sides, he had landed a ride with Avintia, a team he initially didn't want to
join because he didn't believe that it is good enough. His concern, in fact, is not unfounded. Despite joining the MotoGP
class in 2012, Avintia has never finished on the podium.
Then it finally came right. In the third race of this truncated 2020 season in Czech Republic, a race that would eventually be won by
Binder, Zarco put in a herculean effort to put his Avintia Ducati on pole. And
he was running strongly in the race when more skirmishes with KTM took place.
Pol Espargaro, the incumbent number one rider in
KTM, ran wide in a corner. Seeing a gap, Zarco decided to go for it, only for
Espargaro to veer back onto Zarco's racing line and the two collided. While
Zarco managed to stay upright and go on to finish third despite being controversially
given a long lap penalty for the collision, Espargaro's race was over. Judging
by the pace of Binder and Espargaro at that time, it would be fair to say that Espargaro
would have finished ahead of the South African.
While KTM did get its first win, its plan to probably
give it to Espargaro, who has been with the team since it joined the MotoGP
class in 2017, was ruined by Zarco.
In the very next race in Austria, Espargaro showed great
pace again throughout the weekend. At one-third distance of the race, Espargaro
had a healthy lead over Andrea Dovizioso and Jack Miller. It looked as though
Espargaro would finally secure his first win in the premier class.
Then Zarco struck again. This time, he did it in an indirect but spectacular fashion, and it almost resulted in tragedy.
While swerving and dicing for positions in the top
ten, Zarco was hit from behind by Quartararo's team-mate Franco Morbidelli, and
their two bikes went out of control, skidded along and across the track at a high
speed, and then somehow somersaulted through the tiny gap between the Yamahas
of Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi, who were clearly unaware of what was
going on behind them.
It was such a miracle that the two flying bikes
somehow didn't hit the two Yamaha riders and strike a probably fatal blow on either
of them. It was also a miracle that no one was seriously injured in such a
frightening accident.
With carnage and pieces of bikes (fortunately not riders)
all over the track, the red flag was shown and Espargaro's advantage gone. Clearly
upset and unravelled by it, Espargaro rode with a vengeance but erratically in
the re-started race, and in a carbon copy of his accident with Zarco in the
previous race, he clattered into fellow KTM rider Miguel Oliveira after running
wide, thus ending their races and his hope of victory.
So, what's more to come between Zarco and KTM? So far, the 2020
season, like what is going on in the world right now, has been pretty crazy. Yours truly just hopes that they will bury the
hatchet and things will go back to normal soon.
Niki
Lauda, the three-time Formula One world champion known as "The Rat", passed
away last week.
Yours
Truly used to be a diehard Formula One fan as a kid, always fascinated by its cars, drivers, teams and history. Despite his love for Formula One, however, Yours
Truly always had to cover his eyes when he saw the still pictures (accompanied by creepy music) of drivers who had died racing, like Ronnie Peterson, Gilles
Villeneuve and Riccardo Paletti, fearing that somehow they would crawl out of his
shabby television set and take him to who knows where.
But what
haunted him the most was the sight of the then still active Lauda, who spotted horrific
facial scars courtesy of his fiery crash at Nurburgring in 1976.
Talk
about someone who gave it all to the sport and lived to tell us about it.
Your
Truly used to have a soft spot for the red and white McLarens sponsored by
Marlboro in those years, and can still remember how happy he was when John
Watson and Lauda won several races between them in 1982 and 1983. And when his
all-time favourite Alain Prost arrived in place of Watson beginning from the
1984 season, Yours Truly's dream had come true as McLaren had become the
dominating force he had wished for. While Prost would lose the title that year
by just half a point, Yours Truly was equally joyful as it was the other
McLaren driver Lauda who took the honour.
Even
though Lauda bought his way into Formula One at the very beginning, his speed
and results had earned him a seat at Ferrari with which he would win two world titles
in 1975 and 1977. Coming back just weeks after his Nurburgring crash in 1976
was brave and gutsy, but he did show his human side when he pulled into the
pits in that year's finale at Fuji during torrential rain, saying that it was
simply too dangerous to keep racing (ironically, Prost would do the same in
Adelaide in 1989, but that did not cost him his title). Without the injury
lay-off, Lauda would have won that year's title, which went to James Hunt by a
single point.
After his
retirement at the end of the 1985 season he focused on his aviation business, Lauda
Air, which Yours Truly's better half took during her first trip to Europe. In
later years he worked with Ferrari and Mercedes, and as the Non-Executive
Chairman of the latter he was instrumental in transforming Mercedes from
also-rans to the very best Formula One team at the moment.
For Yours
Truly, Lauda was someone he grew up with, and someone he always has high regard
for. When The Rat passed away after a short illness, Yours Truly felt that a
part of his memory had left him for good.
However,
Lauda's legacy lives on. When Yours Truly talked to his son about Lauda's
passing, he suddenly became smart and said that we cannot talk about Formula
One's history without mentioning Lauda. Indeed, his world championships, bravery, sacrifices, longevity,
out-spokenness and contribution are things that no one should ever forget.
No, it
was not because something was bothering him. Instead, Yours Truly was so
excited by the sporting scene around the world that he simply could not fall
asleep.
In English
Premiership, Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-0 to return to the top of the table. Being
a fan for the Reds since childhood, Yours Truly really hopes that Liverpool can
finally become the league champion for the first time since 1990. Five years
ago, his dream was shattered when the Reds lost to Chelsea 0-2 late in the
season, and the second goal by Demba Ba (Who?) was the result of a disastrous slip
by none other than their captain, Steven Gerrard. When Yours Truly saw Andy
Robertson had a similar slip last night when led to a break for the Blues,
there was definitely a sense of déjà vu. Fortunately, that break resulted in
nothing and Yours Truly really hopes that it has finally exorcised the demon
that has been plaguing the Reds for years.
In fact, demons
of various breeds have been exorcised here and there. In Moto2, Thomas Luthi, a
solid veteran rider Yours Truly has been rooting for, won comfortably on his
third race back from a disastrous year in MotoGP. In fact, Luthi's spell in
MotoGP was so bad that he was the only regular rider in the grid not to have
scored a point last year. Five 16th-place finishes were the best he could
muster and even Xavier Simeon managed to score ONE point more than he did.
Luckily for Luthi, he managed to latch onto a solid Dynavolt team in Moto2 this
year and is now second in the championship.
In
MotoGP, Alex Rins finally got his first win in his third year in the series.
With the ever-improving Suzuki team, he came on strong late last season and
finished second in the last two races of the season. With the dominant Marc
Marquez crashing out yesterday in Austin, Rins managed to out-fox Valentino
Rossi for a much-deserved first victory in the premier class, and also Suzuki's
first win in MotoGP since Maverick Vinales' win in Silverstone in 2016.
Finally, Tiger
Woods finally won his 15th majors in Augusta, a one-stroke victory over three
other players. Yours Truly seldom watches golf on TV, but the likelihood of
Tiger finally winning another was so appealing that Yours Truly decided to stay
in front of the TV, and was duly rewarded when El Tigre two-putted the 18th for
his first major win since the U.S. Open in 2008. When Woods finally let out a
huge roar after his title-clinching putt, everyone in the world, including Yours Truly, could
feel that the monkey is finally off his back.
And that
was just another sporting Sunday around the world.
