Today’s Web Discovery : 16th November 2009

Starting a new series of blog posts – a set of links to sites I have discovered today. These include stuff shared by my friends on Google Reader, Twitter, e-mail forwards, etc. Let’s see if I can sustain this.

McLaren and Mercedes go their own way, from BBC Sport: The McLaren-Mercedes F1 team ceases to exist. Mercedes has sold its shares back to McLaren and instead bought a majority into Brawn. The Brawn team, 2009 F1 Champion both constructors and driver, will now be renamed Mercedes Grand Prix. McLaren will continue to use Mercedes engines as the contract is valid till 2015. But one feels that with Mercedes having its own team, their self-interest will motivate them to give more attention to their own engines than to McLaren. (Link shared by @anantha)

#1378656 (MyLifeIsAverage): This blog is hilarious. And thought provoking. Today’s story

Today, I was looking through the bumper stickers application on Facebook and I came across this sticker that said “if Pinocchio said his nose was about to grow, what would happen?” This was by far the most fascinating thing I’ve read all year. MLIA

Seriously, MLIA. (Shared on Google by kidakaka)

Marathi icons and the perils of taking them on (Vantage Point, Gaurav Sabnis): Gaurav Sabnis recalls Bal T’s petulant remarks against Pu La and the subsequent fall out – SS losing the elections. This time, Bal T repeats himself with his remarks on SRT, something that is making headline news everywhere.

Clearly, Bal Thackeray has forgotten the lessons learnt from PuLa-gate. Now he has decided to attack Sachin Tendulkar, for what are extremely benign comments, even if one was to look at them through the Sena’s prism. He has declared that Sachin has hurt the marathi manoos. Hah! Bal Thackeray, after losing 3 elections in a row, the most recent one so comprehensively, does not have even the hint of an authority to speak on the behalf of the marathi manoos.

While the nation and people outside the nation debate, twitter and blog about this, I wonder what SRT must be doing. While reading through all the newsprint that has been consumed over his 20-years of cricket celebration, there is one personality trait that most people from Hayden to Amitabh Bachchan observed – his relative composure and dignity on such issues. I reckon SRT is simply going to shrug and move on. It is too petty for him. Anyway, for him immediately, there is a test match (where he was out 3rd ball) going on.

Federer and Nadal

The rivalry of Federer and Nadal, which will see another episode tomorrow at Centre Court, has unanimously been declared to be the greatest of our times. Jabberwock calls it the “Channel Slam” as the Federer v Nadal has now graced the French Open and the Wimbledon Open for three consecutive years.

I was going back in my memory bank to recall other such great rivalries between two individuals. In tennis itself there have been many, in recent times Sampras v Agassi, Becker v Edberg, Graf v Seles, Borg v McEnroe, McEnroe v Connors, etc.

In other sports, two that come to mind immediately (given that I am not a big sports junkie) – Kasparov v Karpov at the World Chess Championships in the eighties and Prost v Senna in Formula 1 again in the eighties onto the early nineties.

I went on the web to check for details.  From 1984 to 1990, Kasparov and Karpov played five Championship matches, a total of 144 games. The score: Kasparov 21; Karpov 19; Draws 104.

More importantly, Kasparov won four of them, with the first one in 1984 abandoned after 48 games with Karpov leading 5-3 (as per the rules, the first to win six games was the champion, draws do not count. These rules were later altered next match onwards). From chess point of view, these games have had immense interest. However, under the shadow of the old Soviet Union, there wasn’t too much media interest as we have seen in the tennis situation.

Kasparov today is a vocal opponent of Putin

Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna came together in 1988 when Senna joined the McLaren Honda team. That year proved to be a comple washout with McLaren winning 15 out of 16 races. Senna became world champion over Prost, the two-time reigning champion. The rivalry was on the race track. The 1988 Portuguese GP saw Senna blocking Prost and almost making him drive into the pitwall. Prost managed to pull out and pull away staying in the lead.

This was followed by the famous collision at Suzuka in 1989, the next year which led to Senna’s licence being suspended. Prost won the championship that year. 1990 Prost switched to Ferrari but the rivalry continued. At Suzuka, the collision was repeated, this time intentionally by Senna. Both were out of the race but Senna who was leading the championship became world champion. He said later

“Why did I cause it?” Senna responded. “If you get f***** every time you try to do your job cleanly, within the system, what do you do? Stand back, and say thank you? No way. You should fight for what you think is right.”

Prost joined Williams and put a clause in his contract that forbade Williams from signing Senna, even for free. The contract clause ended in 1994 and rather than race with Senna as his teammate, Prost preferred to retire.

It all ended in San Marino in 1994. Alain Prost was one of the pall bearers at Senna’s funeral.

So we come back to Federer v Nadal. There are people trying to figure what’s going to happen – who’s got the game, the form, the court, etc. I think it is irrevelant. At the level that they are playing, I don’t think anyone has the least comprehension of what it will take to win. The only people who know how the game is going to go are the two players and they will let us know only tomorrow. So till then, let’s just wait.

How the championship was won

After a boring 2004 season when MS seemed to be unbeatable, the 2005 season has been a much more exciting one with new race tracks, down to the wire title races (both drivers and teams), fascinating overtaking manouvers and more. The highlights of the year

1. A new World Champion, youngest at that
2. An Indian in F1, he even scored some points (with a little bit of luck, of course)
3. Kimi overtaking MS and Fisi to win Suzuka after starting at the bottom of the grid
4. Mclaren 1-2, finally!!! at Interlagos
5. The Turkish GP, brand new race circuit

The disappointments
1. BAR & especially, Jenson Button
2. Barichello (guess, the second half of the season he was probably saving himself for BAR next year, figuring now he could actually win some races)

Right, now to the main point of this post. Kimi or Alonso?

Let’s look at some stats

Front Row Starts:
Alonso: 8
Raikkonen: 8 (All fair so far)

Top 10 starts
Alonso: 16
Raikkonen: 14

Starts in the back 10:
Alonso: 2
Raikkonen: 4

On all four occasions, Raikkonen got a 10-place penalty for engine change

Race Wins:
Alonso: 6
Raikkonen: 7

Podiums:
Alonso: 14
Raikkonen: 11

All in all, Alonso who started off the season with a bang winning three races in a row maintained his form and performance till the very end ensuring 3rd place finishes right upto Suzuka. The lack of consistency is where Kimi lost it.

Finishes with points:
Alonso: 15
Raikkonen: 13

Alonso kept scoring points (14 times at least 6 points)

Retire/not in top 8:
Alonso: 3
Raikkonen: 5

Actually, you can remove 1 (Indianapolis) from either guy’s score. But Raikkonen was making it difficult for himself

Here’s what Ron Dennis of McLaren has to say

“Our view is that we were too cautious in the first four races. We didn’t get the best out of the car as a team and that includes the drivers.”
(Source: ITV)

And this is what Kimi had to say

“It wasn’t perfect for me or for the team but unfortunately those things happen in racing. We will try to minimise them for the future and now we try to win it next year. For him and for Renault it was a good year, he definitely deserves it. Whoever has the most points at the end of the season or before the end of the season deserves it and I don’t have anything bad about it.”
(Source: Times of India)

So did Alonso deserve to be world champion?

From a neutral perspective that I share, he did. Of course, Kimi fans would look at his misfortune (read engine failures) and say “but for that…” The point is, it is like football, to win you have to score goals, more than the other team. So excuses like “shoes failure’ doesn’t really gel, right?

So will Kimi be a world champion?

At the age of four, he told his mother “I will be world champion one day. I don’t know in which sport, but I will be.” If he says so, he will. Check out Kimi Raikkonen’s biography in Wikipedia. And for the contrast, here’s Fernando Alonso’s biography.