Schu-mucker
Watched the F1 qualifying at Monaco, and boy, was there a huge controversy. The 3rd and final round of qualifying this year has the last ten drivers start with the actual fuel they intend to start the race with. The less fuel you have, the lighter the car is, resulting in faster times (lower mass takes less time to brake and accelerate). So the fastest laps tend to be at the end of the session.
Well, near the end of the session, 7 time champion Michael Schumacher had the fastest time so far, and then ends up stopping his car on the last turn of the course, slowing down several cars behind him, including one -- defending champion Fernando Alonso -- who was at the time on a faster lap than Schumacher's top time.
I'm by no means an experienced racer. I've done a little bit of indoor karting, plus some computer games and simulations. But I thought it was pretty clear this was intentional. He does lock up the brakes entering the turn, causing some understeer (losing grip on the front tires, causing you to turn less sharply than you plan), and you can see him correct by straightening the wheel and continuing to brake. With the understeer corrected (no more skidding), he turns the wheel back in the direction of the turn.
But at this point, he turns the wheel back straight again so that he heads for the wall and ends up stopping the car just short of the wall. This was supposedly to correct more understeer, but you can clearly see from the video replays that the car wasn't experiencing any understeer anymore (which is not surprising, since it was moving much more slowly by this time) -- and note that his 2nd "correction" was a lot longer than the first one.
It just makes no sense -- until you consider his history. In 1994, with Schumacher narrowly leading the championship race over Damon Hill, Schumacher crashed into Hill, taking them both out of the race and eliminating Hill's chance to overtake him in the championship. In 1997, Schumacher tried the same stunt on Jacques Villeneuve but failed, with Villeneuve going on to win the championship (Schumacher was penalized after the race). Clearly a guy who wants to win even at the cost of sportsmanship. And he looked awfully squirrelly in the interviews afterwards.
I really hate people like that. It's like people who play pickup basketball and trash-talk instead of just letting their game do all the talking. Sheesh, does winning really matter more than your self-respect? At least some of the steroid-taking baseball players can argue that they needed to take steroids in order to compete with the other people taking steroids. But this? No excuse. Thankfully, The FIA penalized him for this latest stunt, and he was stripped of his Pole Position and will start from the very back of the grid.
Yeah, it will make for a boring race (and we'll probably wait to watch the SpeedTV coverage instead of the awful CBS coverage). But Monaco isn't really known for being exciting anyway.
Well, near the end of the session, 7 time champion Michael Schumacher had the fastest time so far, and then ends up stopping his car on the last turn of the course, slowing down several cars behind him, including one -- defending champion Fernando Alonso -- who was at the time on a faster lap than Schumacher's top time.
I'm by no means an experienced racer. I've done a little bit of indoor karting, plus some computer games and simulations. But I thought it was pretty clear this was intentional. He does lock up the brakes entering the turn, causing some understeer (losing grip on the front tires, causing you to turn less sharply than you plan), and you can see him correct by straightening the wheel and continuing to brake. With the understeer corrected (no more skidding), he turns the wheel back in the direction of the turn.
But at this point, he turns the wheel back straight again so that he heads for the wall and ends up stopping the car just short of the wall. This was supposedly to correct more understeer, but you can clearly see from the video replays that the car wasn't experiencing any understeer anymore (which is not surprising, since it was moving much more slowly by this time) -- and note that his 2nd "correction" was a lot longer than the first one.
It just makes no sense -- until you consider his history. In 1994, with Schumacher narrowly leading the championship race over Damon Hill, Schumacher crashed into Hill, taking them both out of the race and eliminating Hill's chance to overtake him in the championship. In 1997, Schumacher tried the same stunt on Jacques Villeneuve but failed, with Villeneuve going on to win the championship (Schumacher was penalized after the race). Clearly a guy who wants to win even at the cost of sportsmanship. And he looked awfully squirrelly in the interviews afterwards.
I really hate people like that. It's like people who play pickup basketball and trash-talk instead of just letting their game do all the talking. Sheesh, does winning really matter more than your self-respect? At least some of the steroid-taking baseball players can argue that they needed to take steroids in order to compete with the other people taking steroids. But this? No excuse. Thankfully, The FIA penalized him for this latest stunt, and he was stripped of his Pole Position and will start from the very back of the grid.
Yeah, it will make for a boring race (and we'll probably wait to watch the SpeedTV coverage instead of the awful CBS coverage). But Monaco isn't really known for being exciting anyway.