It’s a bit late, but only because I had to give myself some time to recover from the Brasilian Grand Priz! I have never watched such a close run race as the one at Interlagos. One minute, I thought that Lewis had lost the championship by the slimmest of margins yet again, but in the last 500 metres, he made it past Glock who was struggling in the wet with slick tires to claim the all important P5! Amazing stuff!

It was all the more special as it meant that I could wear my Rocket red shirt that was given to me as a birthday gift! Ahhh….the sweet “still smelling strongly of dye” smell of victory.

What an absolutely stunning race-result from Lewis Hamilton in China! The race was ansolutely boring, although I was just waiting for Lewis to over-cook his tires or mess up at the start, none of that thankfully happened. He even managed to tune down his engine in the final 15 or so laps to save it for the last race, in Brazil.

There was only really one special over-taking move of the race, and that was Felippe Massa on his team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen. He had an amazing race, lapping between three-tenths to a full half-a-second slower than his team mate and yet he still managed overtake him to limit the damage to his WDC hopes.

Ok, so it’s somtimes difficult to express sarcasm with the written word. While Ferrari’s strategy was debateably legal; t doesn’t cover up the fact that it wasn’t just that Ferrari had problems with the car this weekend, but that Massa was just so appalingly bad compared to Kimi and Lewis. The only driver who underperformed more than Massa, was Heikki who couldn’t even get in front of a Renault!

It was a great race in terms of Lewis’ chamiponship campaign though, so I was VERY happy yesterday.

Well, yesterday’s race was a complete and utter cluster-fuck, no doubt about it. Not just because of Lewis falling victim to the red mist in turn one, because that’s just the way it goes. I have no doubt that if Massa hadn’t purposfully punted him off the track, Lewis could have regained his position given some time.

Massa’s punt was the first major question mark for me. Why only a drive through penalty for purposfully causing an accident?

The next issue was; why was Lewis given a penalty at all? The massive bunch up and cars running wide into turn one is something we’ve seen time and time again in F1. Drivers locking up their brakes is a normal occurance in a mad rush to maintain or gain position with the drivers underestimating how their cold tires will behave in those kind of circumstances. Lewis didn’t cause any sort of accident. He didn’t make contact with a single driver. So why be given a penalty?

The final nail in the coffin of the FIA and they stewards it picks for the race was the descision to penalise Sebastian Bourdais, for car-crasher Massa’s mistake. Charlie Whiting has made it clear, time and time again that cars coming out of the pit-lane have the right of way. So why did Massa crowd Bourdais the way that he did, making contact and causing himself to spin out? There was no need for it. And how on earth did the stewards come to the moronic descision that it was the fault of Bourdais’ for the indcident?

It just makes no sense. I’m hoping that Lewis Hamilton manages to keep his cool this week in China, and takes the win or second place. Even a third place finish would secure the drivers championship for him, so let’s hope that Ron Dennis has a quiet word in his shell-like and makes sure that he does all that he can to make sure Lewis doesn’t loos his head again.

Those who know me, will tell you that I’m a pretty dedicated F1 fan. And I have been a fan, since I was a very young lad, cheering on Willams and McLaren. I was always more of a McLaren fan though, and so it also followed that Ferrari were enemy #1 as far as I was concerned.

So…it’s with some sense of optimism and a bit of aprehension that I’m looking forward to the Japanese Grand Prix tomorrow morning. Ferrari’s WDC contender, Massa, is stuck back in 5th place after a horrible Q3 session with Lewis Hamilton up in front in his shiny McLaren.

Hamilton is seven points infront of Massa in the WDC, and McLaren is a single point ahead of Ferrari on the constructors championship. Fuji is the race that is going to set the tone for the two remaining races of the season, and will decide if the WDC is decided in China or Brazil.

So will I be getting up at 6:30am on a Sunday to watch this race? Dammed straight I will.

After much delaying on my part, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WP. Yay! Errr…the upgrade instructions said I should do this. Write an entry about the upgrade. I mean….if I don’t do what the instructions say, it won’t work, right?

Well…that’s a bit of a blow.  A few weeks ago, I was asked if I wanted to think about applying for a job with a rather cool studio in the UK.  It all seemed to be going ok, apart from my one worry about the timing for the possible relocation….they sort of needed somebody sharpish but were willing to wait for the right person.

It seems they found the right person, and somebody who could relocate in a decent time frame for them.  So no job oppurtunity for me!  So that’s a bit of a bugger.   I won’t pretend that I’m not a little bit dissapointed because I am.  I guess there’s some small consolation in the fact that they asked me, rather than me having to ask them.

Another good thing is that I thought it would be a good idea after being told they wanted to see me face-to-face, to write a small physics demo.  Y’know…sort of to show that I do know what I’m going. 

I decided to use Ogre for rendering and Bullet for the physics and collision detection.  And with that, I wrote a sort of “glue” layer to hold everything together with my own vehicle physics sitting on top of that, which has a rather nifty Pacejka based tire-sim. 

So why is that a good thing?  Well…the framework I had written is almost a game engine in itself.  And the vehicle simulation isn’t to shoddy either.  It’s pretty modular, and there’s a lot more that I want to add  to it, like different suspension types, proper drive differentials and stuff.  Maybe even some tire deformation and 3d tire damage (flat-spots, tire wear…that sort of stuff).

Anyways….its something I can keep on working with, and who knows, might even be pretty neat by the time somebody does want to interview me face to face.

Nothing to see here! No, really.  There’s nothing to see.