Friday, August 28, 2009

The Explorers Club
No. CXLII - The first Transpacific flight, by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (1897-1935), Charles Ulm (1898-1934), Harry Lyon (1885-1963), and James Warner (1891-1970) in the Fokker F.VII Southern Cross, 31 May-9 June 1928.








I prefer not to use the same images as appear on a given topic's Wikipedia page, if for no other reason than to give you, the reader, exposure to a wider variety of photographs and drawings. But in this instance I had little choice; the book cover above is quite simply the only graphic I could locate depicting the route of the Southern Cross's flight.

'Tis very curious to me that Transpacific is not as widely recognized a word as Transatlantic. "Trans-Pacific" abounds, but few have the gumption to adapt in into the Transpacific form. Now, I admit that Transatlantic and Transpacific are themselves unusual, as addition of a suffix is often insufficient to remove the capital letter from a proper noun, but there are only four oceans (there is no "Southern Ocean," it's the southernmost reaches of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans); so, I'm willing to grand them special dispensation (and await the opportunity to break out Transindian and Transarctic!). However, because Atlantic and Pacific are proper nouns deprived of their rightful capitalization, I dislike the terms transatlantic and transpacific. They should be capitalized as Transatlantic and Transpacific in deference to the proper noun status of Atlantic and Pacific.


This Last Week in Motorsport
I did it! I took me six races, but I finally did it! I didn't know the winner of the Grand Prix of Europe before I watched the race. Finally! Take that, time difference between Europe and North America and the instantaneous worldwide transmission of new that is, for the most part, a boon to our modern society and culture! Hooray, Rubens Barrichello's win was a surprise!

There were interesting developments in light of the previous "This Week in Motorsport" post. I wasn't disappointed to see McLaren's one-two start result in a two-four finish, because as much as I've come to love the process of qualifying, it's not the most exciting thing in the world for a driver to start from the pole, lead the entire race, and win the grand prix. However, I was disappointed in the way Lewis Hamilton's (McLaren) no. 1 start resulted in a no. 2 finish. The race really was only between Barrichello and Hamilton, once Barrichello passed Hamilton's McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen to assume second place in the running order.

Barrichello's Mercedes-powered Brawn was running on the "soft" tires, Hamilton's Mercedes-powered McLaren on the "super softs." Heat seems to be key factor of the performance of tires in F1 racing (heat equates to improved grip, apparently), and the thinking was that the heat in perfidious Spain under the Accursed Sun would favor the softest tires; however, this proved not to be the case throughout the first stretch of the race, as Barrichello kept pace with Hamilton, who was carrying less fuel and so had to pit sooner than the Brawn. With the super soft tires not providing a speed advantage and yet being more susceptible to tire degradation, I thought it obvious Hamilton's MP4-24 should be equipped with softs during his pit stop. To my dismay, another set of super softs were installed and off he went. Not very many laps later, Hamilton's tires began to degrade, forcing him to ease off his pace. All the while, Barrichello drew ever nearer on his harder tires. But there was yet hope for McLaren: F1 rules require each car to make use of both types of tire during each grand prix; so, at the end of the European Grand Prix Hamilton would have to be on the faster soft tires and Barrichello on the slower super softs.

And that's when disaster struck. Hamilton dove into pit lane for his second and final pit stop, but his pit crew wasn't ready for him. The team engineer has radioed Hamilton to drive for one more lap before entering the pits, but didn't transmit that message until Hamilton had already turned off the race track onto pit lane. The new tires had not been unwrapped from their warming blankets, adding devastating seconds. The times I'm about to mention are going to seem trivial, but having been raised in the world of swimming, where victory and defeat can be separated by tenths or only hundredths of seconds, I like this about racing. A typical pit stop, including fueling a a full set of four new tires, should take about eight seconds; Hamilton's stop took thirteen seconds, and when he "finally" emerged from the pits he was over six seconds behind Barrichello.

For the remaining laps of the European Grand Prix, Hamilton was faster on his soft tires than Barrichello was on his super softs, just as Barrichello had been faster when he'd been on the harder tires. Lap after lap, Hamilton was catching up to Barrichello, but there just weren't enough laps left in the race. Hamilton's Mercedes-powered McLaren crossed the finish line two-seconds-and-change after the checkered flag had dropped for Barrichello's Mercedes-powered Brawn.

After the race, to their credit, the McLaren team said that their slow pit stop hadn't cost them the race, that instead Rubens Barrichello had simply been too fast. (I'm a big fan of Joe Paterno's praise your opponents school of sportsmanship.) And perhaps the pit stop alone didn't lead to Hamilton's second-place finish.But, why oh why didn't the McLaren engineers recognize the superiority of the harder soft tires sooner? If Hamilton had switched from super softs to softs during his first pit stop, he would have had a much larger lead over Barrichello when the time came for the second pit stop and its retarded pace (note: I use retarded according to the definition of the word, not as a hateful slang term for diminished mental capacity). Given that Hamilton finished only two seconds behind Barrichello, a remarkably close pace given that they'd each done fifty-seven laps around an over three-mile long street circuit, an earlier switch to the faster type of tire would have been enough to surmount Barrichello's supposedly insurmountable speed.

I was sorry to see Hamilton lose this race, but for which reason? Was I sorry that Mclaren hadn't won? Was I sorry that Hamilton hadn't won? Was I sorry that Barrichello had won? On that score, I can speak definitively. Absolutely not, I hold no ill will toward Rubens Barrichello, usually the oldest man on the F1 grid, at age 37. Was I sorry simply because the path to victory had been easy enough for even a novice like myself to see, and it was a shame to see McLaren foul it up so badly? Even almost a week on, I'm not certain. I've got to give a lot more thought to the question of becoming a fan of any particular team or driver. And, of course, that's another question, Should I become a fan of a team or of a driver? As we near the end of the 2009 Formula One season, there is a great deal of speculation about driver changes, whom will be driving for whom next season?

This is the second of two consecutive weekends of F1 overload. There is ever so much more to come!

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
The Forces of Evil, "Vague Love Song" from Friend or Foe? (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The astonishing thing about The Forces of Evil, a side project of Reel Big Fish front man Aaron Barrett's, is that their lyrics are even more cheerfully cynical than R.B.F.'s. Not the right band for the earnest and forthright.

Donnerstag, 27 August
The Peacocks, "I'm Not Around" from It's Time for The Peacocks (T.L.A.M.)

Mittwoch, 26 August
Ingrid Michaelson, "The Way I Am" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

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