The Explorers Club
№ CCXXXIV - Roland Ratzenberger (1960-1994), whose death on 30 April 1994 during qualifying for the Gran Premio di San Marino will forever be overshadowed by Ayrton Senna's death the following day during the grand prix itself. Requiescat in pace.







For both this week's & last week's episodes of "The Explorers Club" I faced a question of propriety. I decided not to include any photographs of Ratzenberger & Senna immediately after their awful shunts, lying dead or mortally wounded on the track. Such photographs exist, but I see no value in them, only a ghoulishness that I cannot countenance. Despite the—in my experience & judgment—unfair characterization of motorsport fans as bloodsport fans, I hate shunts. I hate crashes, collisions, & lucky escapes. I acknowledge the peril inherent in motorsport; I accept the inevitability of a mortal shunt happening before my horrified eyes, if I continue to watch motorsport long enough. This current series of "The Explorers Club" is a way of confronting that grim reality. Quoting John Hodgman's letter-cum-essay "Slingshot": "We want to be able to to say, 'We will not be cowed by death.'" I will not be cowed by death, but neither will I glory in the deaths of these men, I will not gawk & rubberneck at their demise. To do so would be a disservice to those men, to their grieving families, & to the better angels of mine own nature. I am many things, a great many of them ignoble, but I will not be a ghoul.

This Week in Motorsport
I did not see this morning's opening rounds of the GP2 season (GP2 being the official top-tier feeder series for Formula One) because of a foul-up with the V.C.R. This foul-up also meant that I had not recorded the live coverage of the F1 Turkish Grand Prix, but I was able to watch the afternoon rebroadcast. Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull (Renault) started from the pole, as he has in all four grands prix of the year, & finished first, as he has in three of the four grands prix. Vettel's Red Bull stablemate Mark Webber continued to climb the standings, starting from second—the first all-Red Bull front row of the year—& finishing the same after a spirited duel with Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, who finished third. Webber's improvement has been steady: he finished P5 in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, P4 in the Malaysian Grand Prix, P3 in the Chinese Grand Prix, & now P2 in the Turkish Grand Prix; if one is inclined to read something fateful into such a pattern, how might the grizzled Aussie be expected to fare in the next race, the Gran Premio de España? Wunderkind Vettel's worst result of 2011 has been his second-place finish at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai. Ominous for the rest of the field, no?

Both Ferrari & Mercedes improved their form, the Scuderia scoring it's first podium finish of the year with Alonso's P3, but McLaren (Mercedes) continued to be the second-best team, with Lewis Hamilton finishing fourth & Jenson Button sixth. Lotus Renault was the third team to finish with both drivers in the points (World Championship points being awarded to the top ten finishers), Nick Heidfeld's seventh & Vitaly Petrov's eighth. The drive of the day was put in by to Kamui Kobayashi of Sauber (Ferrari), who started twenty-third after a mechanical problem in qualifying & charged up the field to finish P10, the last points-paying position. Hamilton is widely adjudged to be the most skilled passer in F1, but Kobayashi is certainly the most fearless (or reckless, depending on whom you ask). In the memorable phrase of Speed color commentator David Hobbs, the lad has "very large attachments." No real progress for my favorite back markers, Team Lotus (Renault); Heikki Kovalainen nearly broke out of Q1 for the first time since the team returned the Lotus name to F1 last season, but "nearly broke" isn't the same as "broke."

Only three weeks until the most glamorous race in all the world, the Grand Prix de Monaco!

A rough sketch of the single-seater career ladder*
Formula One
GP2
GP3
Formula Two, Formula Renault 3.5
Formula Three
Formula B.M.W., Formula Ford, Formula Renault 2.0, et al.
(go-karts)

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Mu330, "San Francisco" from Mu330 (K. Steeze)

Commentary: "There's no greater feeling than listening to 'San Francisco' by Mu330 with the top down in my new convertible." After several more text messages we agreed that the term "drophead" is even better than "convertible."

Samstag, 7 Mai
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, "Ain't No Sunshine" from Take a Break (T.L.A.M.)

Freitag, 6 Mai
Rob Carriker, "Marching Through Georgia" from Over There!: Songs from America's War (T.L.A.M.)

Donnerstag, 5 Mai
The Dandy Warhols, "We Used to Be Friends" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

*My pro-European (F1)/anti-American (IndyCar) bias is showing.