Here I am again. I'm slightly worried about... several things. Although also proud. Not sure which attitude is the correct one.

First of all, James's Geek Test. I scored 54% on this, which means I'm a Free Range Geek. I like the fact that I'm officially a geek. It's something that I have suspected for some time. And I'm sure it's a lot higher than when I first did it, all those years ago. Clearly I am becoming more geeky...

Secondly, the people at the Revolution Forum are freaking me out slightly. For one thing they're all scoring much lower than me on the Geek Test. Also, we swapped MSN ID's, so I've talked to a few people (briefly) online. One said to me tonight, after doing the a/s/l thing (which I hate, incidentally), "Oldest female on the forums at least". This made me a bit scared, but I thought it for a while and I only know of one other female on that forum. So... yeah...

On the slightly less geeky side, I watched the Formula One qualifying repeat this afternoon. Didn't get up in the night for it, but I will for the race. Oh yes. :)

Although I'm not sure that F1 is totally ungeeky. I mean, if there was an ideal sport for geeks surely it would feature the following aspects:

a) comfortable clothing in the form of T-shirts
b) many pointless facts to learn
c) lots of statistics to analyse
d) no chance to actually take part in the sport - no exercise
e) lots of cool technology

There are probably more points. But I think I've proved something. Hmm.

Anyway, qualifying was very, very good. The new rules definitely livened it up. I could explain them, if you don't keep up with F1 you won't know about it.

Basically, the old rules meant that there was a one hour qualifying session on Saturdays. Each driver had 12 laps to drive around and get a fastest time, which determined how high up the grid he started the race. Since you had to do an "in" lap and an "out" lap in order to drive your one "hot" lap, you had three or four chances to get a fast time.

The new rules mean that there are two qualifying sessions. The first one, on Friday, gives each driver one lap to post a quick time. This time decides in what order they qualify on the Saturday. The fastest driver on Friday runs last on Saturday, when the track should be quickest and they can see how their opponents performed. The Saturday session sends each driver out once, one after the other (as on Friday) to post as fast a time as they can. And that decides their grid position.

Did that make any sense?!

So... the one lap each thing worked very well. There were no boring periods, as there so often used to be, with everyone piling out in the last ten minutes of the session. The bad thing is that if someone makes a mistake they've messed up their qualifying session. That could also be seen as a good thing, though, in that it'll throw up some surprises. And no-one can get stuck behind traffic on their fast lap. So thumbs up from me!

Weirder things are that the cars have to be fuelled for the race before qualifying. They can't be refuelled after qualifying, so they have to carry enough fuel to do at least part of the race. The cars are all different weights, so the qualifying times aren't really representative of how fast the cars are. Not like the old days. :)

And weirder than that is that cars can't be worked on between qualifying and the race. Minardi cleverly got around this rule by coming in before posting times and thus not having to go into the parc ferme with the other cars. They're free to work on their cars until the race, and put as much fuel in as they like. It's cheeky, and bending the rules, but I hope they get away with it!

That's about it, then.

Mmmm, F1, how I have missed you...

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:45 PM