32 year old Mark Webber has claimed his first pole position in his seventh season in F1. What’s more impressive is that he qualified on pole despite being heavier on fuel than his immediate rivals. Webber sits alongside the Brawn of Rubens Barrichello who out-qualified Briton Jenson Button again; Button starts behind Webber on the second row along side German favourite Sebastian Vettel in fourth. But the fuel adjusted grid shows that Vettel is behind his team mate Webber so we could be looking at another Red Bull 1-2 after the first round of pit-stops. The McLaren’s seem like they are having a bit of a resurgence with Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen qualifying in fifth and sixth respectively with Hamilton qualifying third on the fuel adjusted grid! So we could well be in for a good race tomorrow; it’s just a shame that Speed TV aren’t showing the race live so I will have to wait until 2pm local time to watch the race on Fox.
While the action is hotting up on the track, things have gone a little quiet in the ongoing FOTA versus the FIA feud. The last thing I heard was on Wednesday when the 8 FOTA teams walked out of a meeting to decide technical rules for the 2010. FOTA were told that they hadn’t officially entered the 2010 World Championship so had no say in Wednesday’s meeting at the Nurburgring despite being included on the official 2010 entrants list! The FIA later released a statement saying that the FOTA teams knew that they only had observer status before the meeting, something that the 8 FOTA teams refute! Now a breakaway series is back on the table with FOTA talking directly with commercial rights holder CVC about signing a new Concorde agreement. But I am baffled by this action as CVC can not override the FIA as Formula 1 and the FIA are contractual bound to each other after the commercial rights were sold to Ecclestone. The moment that the money men get directly involved in the running of the sport; it will soon descend into complete anarchy! Meanwhile the continuing bickering is having a knock on effect as more circuits express their concerns and question their future on the F1 calendar with Victoria Premier John Brumby saying that Melbourne (Australia) “won’t host half a F1 race“.
Now for a sport I haven’t talked about for a while; cricket. The Ashes tournament kicked off a few days ago in Cardiff. And after day four of the first test Australia have taken charge after posting a first innings total of 674 – 6 declared in reply to England’s 435 all out. The Englishman finished day four 20 – 2 when rain brought an early end to the days play. Assuming that the final day is rain free; England will be relying on Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen to steady the ship after the wobble just before the rain came pouring down. I believe that England’s best hope for a draw is to do a rain dance with the Aussies current form. This performance has brought back the harsh reality of the 5 – 0 drubbing 2 1/2 years ago in the land down under.
Life in Kansas has been pretty relaxed, I have been feeling much more positive and calm after receiving my work permit. I have applied for a few jobs online as that seems to be the only way to apply for major companies here in the US. I spent three hours on Friday applying for two jobs online, the application is pretty lengthy and filling out non US addresses is a royal pain in the posterior. I’ll just have to wait now to see if they call me in for an interview but will keep on applying for other jobs in the meantime. On Saturday afternoon we took Conner to the pool in the apartment complex to give him his first taste of swimming. He loved every moment of it as our friend Travis went in the pool with Conner as neither Erin or I swim. We enrolled Conner in swimming lessons at the local Y(MCA) Monday through Thursday for the next two weeks which hopefully he will come out of being able to swim reasonably well. We bought him a floatation suit as well so when he does go in the pool in the apartment complex, he’ll be safe from drowning!