Chandhok Speaks

I don't really know much about Karun Chandhok the racer, but I am pretty impressed by Karun Chandhok the commentator.

There are many talking points in the Australian Grand Prix, from Brawn GP being the first team since 1954 to achieve a one-two finish on its debut, to the double non-scoring finishes for Ferrari, which happened only once last season. Since everyone is talking about them, I am not going to get into details here.

While it was a fascinating race, there was nothing noteworthy in the commentary during the early part of the race. But it all changed when the safety car came out following Kazuki Nakajima's crash. Amidst the chaos, the safety car somehow picked up Sebastian Vettel as the leader, with the real leader Jenson Button having left the pits just seconds before the safety car did. When his over-anxious partner Steve Slater said that the safety car has just picked up "Vettel, the race leader", Chandhok's response was a swift "No", and immediately pointed out that the safety car had made a mistake by picking up the wrong leader. Spot on.

Later on, when Vettel and Robert Kubica collided with each other while fighting for second, he commented that there was nothing else Vettel could do as he had no way to go to avoid the collision, as proven by the helicopter footage. Ironically, Vettel would later be penalized by the FIA due to this incident, a decision which I totally disagree with.

I didn't stick to my TV for the entire race, but these two incidents have given me a lasting impression about Chandhok. In a world of "Political Correctness", people tend to distance themselves from their own thoughts by uttering phrases like "I think" and "it appears that". Chandhok was right to the point without using these semantically meaningless phrases while telling us clearly what has happened on the track and what he really believes.

I think I'd better go remove these phrases from my vocabulary, as it appears that I am using them a lot.

World Farcical One Championship

The FIA has made a huge mistake.

From the 2009 season on, the Formula One World Champion will be decided by the number of wins a driver has in a season, while the old point-scoring system will still be used to decide the rest of the standings.

In other words, Nick Heidfeld can forget his dream of becoming a World Champion.

It just doesn't make any sense.

When I learned of it this morning, I thought it was just another whimsical recommendation by the likes of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. But to my horror, I soon realised that it IS the final decision.

It's been commonly accepted for ages that the driver who has accumulated the most number of points will be crowned the World Champion. Yet under the new scoring system, some ridiculous scenarios might happen, including:

- Driver A has won the first 9 races of a 17-race reason. He can go home, grab some popcorn and watch the remaining 8 races on TV and still be crowned the World Champion.

- Driver B only enters the races he is confident of winning. Sure enough, he wins all four races he's entered, and then he can go home, grab some popcorn and watch the remaining 13 races on TV and still be crowned the World Champion.

In both scenarios, spectators and TV audience will definitely lose interest, as the suspense of "Who's going to be the World Champion" is long gone.

- A consistent Driver C (most likely Heidfeld) finishes all 17 races in second place, but never manages to win any of them. Still, Driver D, who has been erratic all seasons, somehow manages to win a couple of races with a stroke of luck, and be crowned the World Champion.

- Driver D, who has World Champion ambition, will choose to retire his perfectly-fine car when he knows he's not going to win the race, with the hope of getting a new and better engine, thereby exploiting a loophole under the current engine rule.

I know these are all extreme cases, but these are all possible.

My hope is that one or more of the above will happen this season, which will force the FIA to shelf this stupid decision.

Better Than Shaq

Yet another great article by Rick Reilly, one of my favourite sports writers of all time. Check out his story on a blind basketball player named Matt Steven by clicking here.