More Turkey

Funnily enough after spotting a flock of wild turkeys on my Saturday ride, I watched the Turkish Grand Prix on Sunday morning with my friend Brian. We've missed the last few races because of technical glitches with our PVRs and conflicting family schedules. The Istanbul track provided a great race to "restart" with. The course was build just last year and it's well designed for today's faster cars. Lots of great racing - and passing - all the way through the field.

It was a Ferrari front row at the start, with Felipe Massa managing to out-qualify his superstar teammate Michael Schumacher. Renault fill the second row, with point-leader Fernando Alonso ahead of his teammate Giancarlo Fisichella. Track temperature was an amazing 50C. The first corner was more eventful than usual as Fisichella spun out while running fourth so the 18 cars behind him needed to make a lot of quick decisions, not all of them good. My favourite driver, Kimi Raikkonen, started eighth and came out the worst when he was bumped from behind. After a pit stop to change a shredded rear tire he drove straight into a wall!

Another spin out on lap 14 at a dangerous point in the track brought the safety car onto the track briefly. All the front runners took advantage of the slowdown to dive in for fuel. Unfortunately Schumacher had to wait about fifteen seconds behind his teammate to be refueled. Alonso had no impediment and was able to jump ahead to claim second place and effectively stay there for the rest of the race. This enabled him to stretch his shrinking lead over Schumacher from ten points to twelve. Schumacher made a nail-biting attempt to get past though, as Alonso's tires were blistering badly in the heat. The last fifteen laps he was all over Alonso's rear wing in the slow stretches where tires were a bigger factor. Filipe Massa stayed comfortably in front the whole way and was a very emotional first-time winner.

Oh, I forgot to mention a few posts ago that I finally saw Transamerica. Felicity Huffman gave an absolutely amazing performance. Some great writing too. I guess you'd have to call it a road movie, but what a trip! Or should I say journey... Felicity's character is an unhappy man in the final stages of a gender change when he discovers, and has to come to terms with, the fact that he is the father of a troubled teenage boy.

Listening to: Say Hello by Deep Dish from George Is On.