Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Who Beats Kubica?

Even if you are not a Formula One fan, you have got to fall in love with Robert Kubica.

Why? Because he single-handedly made the largely processional Singapore Grand Prix interesting.

After the collision between Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber, the race had been rendered a boring affair until Kubica, running sixth, suffered a puncture late in the race, which dropped all the way down to 13th and out of the points.

But in the closing laps, he managed to catch those in front of him and in just a handful of laps, he nailed Jaime Alguersuari, Sebastien Buemi, team-mate Vitaly Petrov, Felipe Massa, Nico Hulkenberg and Adrian Sutil one by one, thus salvaging six points for coming home seventh.

All was done in a street circuit, no less.

It didn't matter at all if you didn't watch the earlier part of the race. Just start following Kubica after his late pitstop and it's worth watching again and again.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Bye Bye Barber

Yours Truly is really fed up with the ineptness of Alex Barron, who was solely responsible for Dallas Cowboys' loss against the Washington Redskins on Sunday.

Not one, not two, but THREE holding penalties. One killed a good-looking drive late in the game. The third one cost them the game-winning TD on the very last play.

Okay, Barron is definitely not good enough to start, and everyone knew he could be a liability. But did the Cowboys have his back?

In an interview, Michael Strahan raised a very interesting point, basically saying that if you know that Barron is not good enough, then why don't you give him some help, like by sending a RB or TE to help him block?

The more Yours Truly watched the replay of that very last play, the angrier Yours Truly got.

Not with Barron, but with Marion Barber, their starting RB.

On the very last play from the Redskins' 13-yard line and down by six, everyone knew that the ball would be thrown into the endzone. So what the heck was Barber doing when he chose not to chip block Brian Orakpo, Barron's holding victim on the play, and then lazily wondered a couple of yards beyond the line of scrimmage?

Yours Truly means, if you don't want to help, at least get into a good position.

But there was Barber, in the middle of the field, with a defender zeroed on him, not helping anyone anyhow at all.

Everyone knew that Barron would be gone sooner or later. Hey, even the woeful St. Louis Rams gave up on him. But on that play, Yours Truly also found out that Barber's days as a Cowboy would really be numbered, now that the Cowboys will definitely listen to the trade proposals for him, which were rumoured to be aplenty even before that game.

Being a Cowboys fan, Yours Truly just wishes him good luck, and that the team would receive some good draft picks in return for him.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

RIP Shoya

Yours Truly cannot say for everyone, but Yours Truly believe that somewhere deep inside most of the motor-racing fans is a morbid desire to see spectacular accidents live in action or on TV.

Last Sunday, that secret desire was satisfied by a three-bike pile-up on lap 12 of the Moto2 race at Misano.

Yet no matter how morbid one really is, the joy of witnessing a huge accident was quickly snuffed out by the serious injuries of the three riders involved.

When TV showed that the two riders on the left hand side of the screen, Alex de Angelis and Scott Redding, were getting back on their feet gingerly, we all could somewhat breathe a sigh of relief.

But when it showed the third rider lying motionlessly on the track just next to the racing line, you just knew that the worst might have happened.

Indeed it DID happen.

Shoya Tomizawa would have turned 20 in December. When he came out of nowhere to win the season-opening race at Qatar, he put his name in the record books as the first ever winner of a Moto2 race, a new category replacing the old 250cc race this year.

Ironically, he would turn out to be the first rider to lose his life in a Moto2 race.

For a young rider who had led the Championship earlier in the year, with one win and two poles under his credit, his passing was awfully early.

Sadly, looking at the replay again, on could quickly realise that when Tomizawa fell off his bike, there was no way the close-following de Angelis and Redding could have avoided him.

It was just a cruel twist of fate. "It's a freak accident", said Valentino Rossi, who added that no changes to regulations or the track could have prevented the crash.

Before the race, Tomizawa was seen waving at the TV camera joyously, oblivious to the cruel fate that lay ahead of him.

But like what people said, at least he died while doing something he loved dearly.