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All our lives to find a better time
Aug. 5th, 2006 04:35 amRenault's magnificent season seems to have gone to hell in a hurry.
If I'm understanding correctly, all the mass dampers are is weights that can bounce up and down to help keep the tires pressed against the track. I'm unsure how the FIA interprets that as being moveable aerodynamics, since they're fully enclosed, and not acting on any aero surfaces.
The strange thing is that people have been doing that in slot car racing since at least the early 70s. Your car stays on the track a lot better with a sprung brass plate hinged to the chassis pan, to help absorb the shocks.
To be honest, on the whole I'd rather see all that sort of stuff done away with, and go back to rigid tube framed cars with no wings of any sort. It does seem rather arbitrary of the FIA to wait until Renault has designed an entire suspension around this concept to suddenly find fault with it, especially when they've been running some variant of it since last season.
Alonso seems to be pretty much toast this Sunday to start with, now that he's been penalized two seconds in qualifying. That's probably not recoverable on the Hungaroring. The penalty for his behaviour with Doornbos is pretty hard to fault, since that sort of thing just isn't acceptable. I do think they might have given him the benefit of the doubt for the passing under yellow, though. It's always disappointing to see the outcome of the race hinging on stewards' decisions.
*****
PETA have finally found something useful to do.
*****
It's refreshing to see the UN's utter fecklessness working to hurt rather than help the terrorists for once.
*****
Castro seems to be in poor shape. I've always felt a sort of grudging admiration for the fellow, communist or not. I do think he's an honest man who wanted what he thought was best for his country. I also think we treated Cuba rather unfairly in the wake of their revolution. A lot of their economic grief isn't so much due to Castro's policies as to the fact that we won't trade with them.
It will be strange when Castro's dead. He's been dictator of Cuba for literally my entire life. Fidel with his army hat, beard and cigar was one of the iconic villains of my childhood. He was always portrayed in our propaganda as a bit of a comic-opera scoundrel, wanting to be a mighty dictator, but really just Brezhnev's lackey.
Raul seems to be busy trying to whip up hysteria over the imaginary prospect of an American invasion. I wonder just how secure his position is? On the one hoof, perhaps he just wants an external enemy to promote national cohesion. On the other, maybe he feels a need to keep a very tight rein on the army and reserves so he can quash any incipient coup. Our government may find itself in the strange position of having to prop up Raul Castro for the sake of avoiding anarchy.
*****
And I just found out that Christiano daMatta hit a deer at full speed yesterday during practice at Elkhart Lake. They're saying he may or may not recover. I hit one at 60 once driving a van, and it was an impressive impact. I can well imagine 200 in a tiny little race car.
If I'm understanding correctly, all the mass dampers are is weights that can bounce up and down to help keep the tires pressed against the track. I'm unsure how the FIA interprets that as being moveable aerodynamics, since they're fully enclosed, and not acting on any aero surfaces.
The strange thing is that people have been doing that in slot car racing since at least the early 70s. Your car stays on the track a lot better with a sprung brass plate hinged to the chassis pan, to help absorb the shocks.
To be honest, on the whole I'd rather see all that sort of stuff done away with, and go back to rigid tube framed cars with no wings of any sort. It does seem rather arbitrary of the FIA to wait until Renault has designed an entire suspension around this concept to suddenly find fault with it, especially when they've been running some variant of it since last season.
Alonso seems to be pretty much toast this Sunday to start with, now that he's been penalized two seconds in qualifying. That's probably not recoverable on the Hungaroring. The penalty for his behaviour with Doornbos is pretty hard to fault, since that sort of thing just isn't acceptable. I do think they might have given him the benefit of the doubt for the passing under yellow, though. It's always disappointing to see the outcome of the race hinging on stewards' decisions.
*****
PETA have finally found something useful to do.
*****
It's refreshing to see the UN's utter fecklessness working to hurt rather than help the terrorists for once.
*****
Castro seems to be in poor shape. I've always felt a sort of grudging admiration for the fellow, communist or not. I do think he's an honest man who wanted what he thought was best for his country. I also think we treated Cuba rather unfairly in the wake of their revolution. A lot of their economic grief isn't so much due to Castro's policies as to the fact that we won't trade with them.
It will be strange when Castro's dead. He's been dictator of Cuba for literally my entire life. Fidel with his army hat, beard and cigar was one of the iconic villains of my childhood. He was always portrayed in our propaganda as a bit of a comic-opera scoundrel, wanting to be a mighty dictator, but really just Brezhnev's lackey.
Raul seems to be busy trying to whip up hysteria over the imaginary prospect of an American invasion. I wonder just how secure his position is? On the one hoof, perhaps he just wants an external enemy to promote national cohesion. On the other, maybe he feels a need to keep a very tight rein on the army and reserves so he can quash any incipient coup. Our government may find itself in the strange position of having to prop up Raul Castro for the sake of avoiding anarchy.
*****
And I just found out that Christiano daMatta hit a deer at full speed yesterday during practice at Elkhart Lake. They're saying he may or may not recover. I hit one at 60 once driving a van, and it was an impressive impact. I can well imagine 200 in a tiny little race car.
