The Formula One world title will go down to the wire in Brazil in two weeks time after Lewis Hamilton crashed out of the Chinese grand prix yesterday. The Briton beached his car in the gravel trap on the way in for his second pit stop. McLaren took the blame for Hamilton’s first retirement of the season, although the Briton blamed himself for driving too hard for the conditions wearing his wet tyres out on a drying track. McLaren say they should have brought Hamilton in a lap earlier to prevent this happening, either way it means that team mate Fernando Alonso and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen are back in the hunt for the title after Raikkonen won and Alonso finished in second. Hamilton leads the championship by four points from Alonso and Raikkonen a further three points behind Alonso. Lewis is still favourite to take the title, he only needs to finish 5th to beat Raikkonen and needs to finish within three points of Alonso, so if Alonso wins and Hamilton finishes in second, Hamilton is champion. If Alonso wins and Hamilton finishes 3rd, then it comes down to how many race wins each driver has to decide the championship; and I am not sure who has won more races out of the McLaren duo. With the exception of Hamiltons misfortune, it was a good day for the Brits, Jenson Button finally managed to score some decent points finishing in 5th after a bad start slipping to 17th from his starting position of 10th. Jenson always seems to excel in rain hit races, Japan was the exception, rain is a great equaliser in Formula One, suddenly a good driver can make a bad car competitive. David Coulthard claimed another point for Red Bull but Red Bull Racing will be disappointed to be beaten comprehensively by their second team Toro Rosso with Sebastian Vettel and Antonio Liuzzi finishing in 4th and 6th respectively sandwiching Jenson Button’s Honda.
The English cricket team have taken a 2 – 1 lead in the ODI series against Sri Lanka in Dambulla. England bowled out Sri Lanka for 164 in just 41.1 overs. Tillakaratne Dilshan was the only man to put up any resistance hitting 70 from 84 balls. Then England came into bat and didn’t fair very well under the lights finding themselves 107 – 7 with five of the six top order batsmen falling for less than 20, only Paul Collingwood broke through the 20 runs barrier but could only manage 32 before being caught LBW. Graeme Swann added a useful 25 before being bowled by Fernando, Stuart Broad added 20 to the total and scored the winning runs in style, driving Malinga to the boundary. Let’s hope that England’s fortunes remain intact when the tour moves to Colombo for the remaining two ODI’s in the series.
England have done the unimaginable and beat Australia in the quarter finals of the rugby world cup and it was that man again, hero of the 2003 world cup Johnny Wilkinson that scored all of England’s points from penalty kicks. But England’s pack did most of the work pushing Australia back into their own 22 for much of the match, and Wilkinson took the opportunities that came his way and luckily for England his opposite number Stirling Mortlock didn’t take his chances. At half time Australia had a 10 – 6 lead despite England being the more dominant team in the first half. The second half wasn’t exactly flowing and neither team had much of chance to score tries leaving Wilkinson and Mortlock to exchange penalty kicks with both missing late kicks. Favourites Australia are out, as are New Zealand; England make it through to the semi finals to play hosts France next Saturday and maybe set up a possible final clash between England and South Africa who pulverised England in the group stages, but England are strengthened by players coming back from injury.
Plymouth Argyle could only manage a disappointing scoreless draw with Blackpool away at Bloomfield Road. Argyle never really looked like scoring, Blackpool had the better of the game even with new loan signing Lee Martin coming on 15 minutes after the half time interval, he made little difference to Argyle’s potency. Blackpool went close, but given that he only arrived in Plymouth on Friday and never trained with the Argyle squad. A point is better than nothing from away games, so that keeps Argyle in 9th in the league, a single win could potentially put Plymouth upto 3rd in the league and a loss could drop Argyle as low as 18th, the championship is so incredibly tight right now with 10 games played, but there is still 36 league games remaining, so anything could happen come the end of the season!
Liverpool also dropped points at Anfield in a 2 – 2 draw with Spurs. Paul Robinson spilled Steven Gerrard’s stinging effort and Andriy Voronin was alert to the chance beating Robinson to the ball to open the scoring in the 12th minute. Liverpool could have been 3 – 0 up by half time but Gerrard was denied by the woodwork and Voronin missed an easy chance. Liverpool found themselve behind with Robbie Keane scoring either side of the half time break, both times latching onto a loose ball after Dimitar Berbatov headed the ball into the penalty area. Liverpool had to fight for the point and they had to wait until the 90th minute before levelling things when Fernando Torres towered above the Spurs defence to head home from six yards out. Liverpool have lost more ground on Manchester City, United and Arsenal; but it seems that Eriksson has turned around Manchester City only dropping 8 points from a possible 27. Liverpool do have a game in hand over United and City though, so hopefully the Reds can make that game in hand count to overhaul City.
In non sports related stuff, work was good over the weekend, although I felt a little deaf and tired after Friday night’s 8 1/2 hour marathon charity session, engineering seven acts in one night, that takes on a toll on the mind, body and ears. But Saturday was great, it actually didn’t feel like work as there was one band, Backbeat (Beatles) and one acoustic act, Adam AKA Building Estoban. So I had an hour to sound check the band, so it sounded great from the moment they started to play, which makes a nice change from usual where the soundcheck is the first song of their set when there is four or more bands playing. I have to say they were rather good, I bet the Beatles didn’t sound that good live back in the 60s, just shows what good equipment, musicians and a good engineer can do. It was loud, but totally controlled as the whole sound was coming through the sound system, so it wasn’t harsh on the ears, I think that is possible the best sound I have ever engineered in Voodoo, although Cinders Fall came a close second, although they were a completely different style of music.
Things are going well with Erin, there has been some ups and downs, but that’s because we have both been shit on in the past and are a little cautious about getting too involved at this stage, but in reality it’s way too late for that. I have been seeing and talking to Erin’s little boy Conner pretty much every day on the webcam to get him used to seeing me, so it won’t be such a shock when I make my move to the US. Something that made me feel really good about Erin, Conner and the future was when Conner asked Erin where I went when the call dropped because of the unpredictability of the Internet. I like that he notices that I’ve gone, it makes me feel better about him accepting me into the family, which was my main issue with this whole situation. It just feels like everything is falling into place now, it’s hard to imagine that we have known each other for only six weeks, it feels like we have known each other forever. I guess we have met at the right time in our lives as we’d both given up on finding that special person. Although I desperately want to be with her right now, in a way, it’s better than we can’t meet for another five months, it gives us time to get to know each other even better given that there is a little boy to consider. It’s going to be difficult for us to not be together until then, but we have each other to draw strength from, spending a day without talking at least once pains us both as mad as it sounds having never met in person!
