One of the worst things about watching recorded Formula 1 race and qualifying session is spoilers. I would think this applies to everything meant to watch live.

Yesterday, around noon time, I was on the phone with my parents in Ukraine. I had had a chance to watch qualifying yet, but did have it recorded for later viewing. Somehow on the phone my sister started saying something about Felipe Massa. I immediately interrupted her saying that I don't want to hear it as I haven't watched the qualifying yet. But I already felt bumped since I assumed she tried telling me that Massa took the pole. That wasn't the case though, Massa had a huge accident and was airlifted to the hospital for an urgent operation.

Today, after I watched Hungaroring qualifying session, the actual race had already happened. But I planned to watch it later today. Later in the day, in a shopping center parking lot, I met a random person driving Subaru STi, who pulled over to talk about Subarus. Then, he asked me if I liked Formula 1 and told me that he was happy that Felipe Massa was fine. "Please please please don't tell me anything about the race", I pleaded with him, "I haven't watched it yet". So he said "Ok I will not".

This was a crazy weekend for potential spoilers, but I managed to not get it spoilt this time.

Normally, I really have to cease going to twitter, facebook, and other news websites that will potentially deliver spoilers. On average I am about 1 day late in watching F1 sessions, but I don't mind this since I can chose when to watch it.

<vlad 2:16> The Formula One Teams’ Association has thrown the sport into total chaos by announcing its eight members will set up their own breakaway series at the end of the season.
<vlad 2:16> a joint statement from Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Renault, Brawn, Toyota and both Red Bull teams issued on Thursday night said they had grown tired of the governing body’s demands and had been left with “no alternative” other than to initiate a split.

FOTA press-release indicates the seriousness and of the matter. "...teams therefore have no alternative other than to commence the preparation for a new Championship which reflects the values of its participants and partners. This series will have transparent governance, one set of regulations, encourage more entrants and listen to the wishes of the fans, including offering lower prices for spectators worldwide, partners and other important stakeholders...Note to Eds: Statement issued by FOTA on behalf of BMW-Sauber, BrawnGP, Scuderia Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Red Bull Racing, Renault, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Toyota."

I really hope this is not the end of Formula 1 and some compromise will be reached. I have been a huge fan since my early teenage years and love this sport so much!

If anyone cannot tell that I am f1 fanatic (by looking at the domain name of this site), I am going to submit this right now.

This weekend is a first F1 race in Melbourne, Australia. I cannot really watch the race without watching qualifying session first. In fact, for me qualifying session has become more exciting than race itself, ever since they've moved to knock-out style. Anyway, I am on the road and do not have a good access to internet. I have my mobile broadband card from Sprint and Android G1 data plan. Both are completely unlimited in traffic.

I spent entire morning nursing my laptop downloading qualifying session. First I tried to Sprint mobile broadband card. But it was too slow for too long. Then, I've enabled my tethering app on Android and speed went up. I think averaged 100kbs, with peak of about 145kbs. So I left my laptop in the car with download in progress. USB cable was powering Android from laptop battery. I went to grab a coffee in Miami Lakes and briefly spoke with real estate agent. Must have been no more than 30 min. I returned back to the car to find Android completely dead, despite it being fed power from laptop. I guess it must have gone to infinite loop of sorts or something that the drainage was so high that USB power from laptop wasn't enough :)

So I went back to Sprint mobile broadband card and finally finished my qualifying session download. Overall it must have taken about 6 hours between the time I started this endeavor.

Too bad there isn't an app for Android yet that will just download torrent. I may try to install command line shell package for that. Tomorrow, I may have to go through the same to download the actual race... I need to find a better _mobile_ process for doing this. Now off to somewhere in Miami Beach, grab food or drink and watch qualifying!

Hubcaps. At least to me these things meant either old cars, cheap cars or ricer cars (spinning caps). However, Formula 1 teams bring them back to the scene. First Ferrari. Then McLaren. And finally some other teams adopted this. Of course in Formula 1 things are done for some kind of purpose. In this case hubcaps help cooling brakes.