A Day of Great Finishes

I haven’t talked about racing in a long time, but today is worth it. First, the F1 race was decided by a controversial penalty after 3 laps of incredible racing. Kimi Raikkonen was leading (red Ferrari) and Lewis Hamilton was chasing (silver McLaren) when it started raining. Rather than pit for rain tires, they tried to stick it out and Hamilton quickly caught Raikkonen. He attempted a daring outside pass and ended up cutting a corner to save himself and Kimi (and it’s borderline, but I could argue that Kimi forced him off). He rejoined the track and gave back the spot, just to regain the lead with a ridiculous juke (don’t forget, track is wet). After Raikkonen went way wide, both cars caught a slow lapped car and Hamilton was forced to the grass and gave up the lead. However, Raikkonen spun exiting the corner and although he made a great save, he gave the lead back. As the track became soaked, he eventually crashed and Hamilton managed to barely keep the car on track to get the win… for the moment. The FIA later gave Hamilton a time penalty for cutting the course although it seems fairly clear to me that he gained no advantage by doing so. If this ends up costing Hamilton the championship (possible, because the winner Felipe Massa is now only 2 points behind him in the standings), this has to be one of the worst calls of all time.

"This is huge for points"

Also, the final race of the IndyCar season was decided in dramatic fashion with Helio Castroneves passing Scott Dixon at the line (with help from his teammate) to win by 0.0033 seconds. This is the 2nd closest finish in IndyCar history (the closest was awesome too). It would have been cool if Briscoe had tried to make a move 3-wide at the finish (SPLIT EM!!) kinda like this finish, but Dixon would probably have won in that case. Despite finishing 2nd, Dixon won the championship so he should be happy anyway.

Everyone watch the finish to the Chargers-Panthers game? When did Jake Delhomme become good (or the San Diego defense become bad??). I gotta give him props though, we all thought the game was over when the Chargers were up by 5. Too bad so many people were stuck watching the Cowboys. Seriously, you gotta show the Chargers to a bigger market than that – the tiny bit of blue in SoCal (not even LA??) is completely pathetic.

Finally, even though it’s a new season, it’s hard to forget last year when you see something like this. “What a lingering tragedy” is the right way to put it, and hopefully the auction/other donations have been enough to finance the future of his baby daughter Jackie.

The calls aren’t going your way…

…so just pitch the ball at the umpire! We’ll call them innocent until proven guilty, but how often does the catcher decide to duck out of the way of a ball? It sounds to me like the Stephens County team was getting waxed (they lost 13-1) and decided to take out their anger on the ump. I gotta hand it to them though – since it was the 3rd game in the championship series and they were going to lose anyway, why not do something stupid? They can’t really penalize you after the season. Anyway, you be the judge – intentional or not?