It was about time the results and answers were released, seeing as it was supposed to end after a fortnight, meaning it’s either a fortnight late, or the guys had quite a few submissions to grade. And all I can say is that my knowledge of this season was… impressive for my standards, but not nearly impressive enough for the world’s standards…

*proceeds off to nearest wall and begins to repeatedly bash head against it*

Well played, Filip. Well played. The only two I got wrong were questions 20 and 21: Who was the driver blurred out in the picture (I guessed Bleekemolen, since I reckoned those were his hands); and Who said “blah blah” about Felipe Massa, which I thought was Piccione (he’s a tall’un, so I thought it was him saying it as a joke!)

Ah well, there’s always next year.

A1 Team Ireland are the A1 Grand Prix champions for 2008-09.

G’wan the Carroll! ’nuff said.

The Links

So, apparently last night I missed a load of action regarding Alan’s hair…
And when I say a load, I mean a load!

No offense, but yay. Finally the media will eventually will shut up about her…
PS. To quote Is Jade Goody Dead Yet?:

YES! (Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!)

Oooh, inciteful article about A1 from the man in the know, Mark Gallagher. Also known as the head honcho for A1 Team Ireland. I also loves how he has the same view on the Malaysia incident as I do!

The Pics

There’s only one picture that needs to be posted today.

Woo

The Vids

The Links

Sinéad wants some non-bloggers that read blogs to fill out her survey! Help her out!

The Blog Pound is taking Oscar predictions!

Seriously, if you are on Twitter, click this, and update! Do I have to start putting it in 600% font size?

And don’t forget the A1 this weekend! Support Team Ireland and Adam Carroll and hopefully we can keep the championship lead!

The Pics

There haven’t been many pics lately… so here’s today’s xkcd.

The Vids

Ever tried microwaving an African-American light?

So stuff to expect me ranting on at some point soon. Maybe all at once, maybe spread out, who knows. Although I could break the record for most posts in one day (currently at 2)…

• Toys 4 Big Boys trip with some of the Redbrick gang. The show fails. Seriously.
• Platinum Playthrough – Part 9. It’s not all that big, but at least I’ll have caught up with where I currently am in game.
• The A1 races in China. Adam kicked ass, expecially as it wasn’t wet!
• Looks and stuff, with me brought in somehow/somewhere.
• Maxi vs. K8
• Spambots and how they seem to work. Since I added the “guestbook” page, spambot activity has shot up exponentially…

And possibly other crap. But don’t expect much to pop up until I clear my feed backlog. Or maybe the other way around. Which reminds me, don’t be alarmed if I’m not reading your latest stuff yet. My backlog is at 341 items and counting (that is before I mark all the BBC and RTE news items read)…

It started out as another annoying shopping trip to fetch more stuff that we didn’t really need, only Elaine wanted. While Aoife and I were about to start heading back, I noticed that there was a lot of commotion going on in the field across the road from the shop. I noticed that there was another display from Dunboyne Motor Club, of different forms of racing cars either from Ireland, or driven by Irish drivers. I persuaded Aoife to come with and have a little look from afar, when I noticed that at the very end of the little park area… was the A1 Team Ireland car

After dumping the little one and the shopping back at home, and picking up my camera, I headed back down to the centre of the village, mainly to get a better look at the car and to get some good pics! Niall Quinn, A1 Team Ireland’s rookie/test/reserve driver was there, along with his family, as part of the event. The A1 car certainly seemed to be very popular – a good portion of the adult male population of Dunboyne were out in force to show their support. It turned out that it was actually a season two car rebuilt into a show car, which Michael Devaney had driven for real. It’s probably why it was missing the Celtic Tiger logo from the nose

A1 Team Ireland wasn’t the only attraction, there were plenty of rally cars, classic cars, and even a car from Formula Libre at the event. Not to mention all the buses that were at the terminus right behind the green space
Sadly, the A1 car didn’t hang around for all that long after I came back – it was being packed up quite early, perhaps around half seven or so (I really wasn’t sure of the time, I was too busy paying attention to cooler things ). Packing it up, however, was another sport in itself. Although it wasn’t a whole team of mechanics and race engineers putting it away, it was quite exciting to see them getting the car up on the jacks, onto the trolleys and then packing it away in the trailer

I managed to get a little chat with Niall near the end. It was fun talking to him, especially as he is sort-of an expert in the subject of A1 – he mentioned that the new A1 car looked a lot nicer than the current iteration, and is probably going to be around 8 seconds a lap quicker! Faster-paced racing is always a good thing! One more thing that he did mention to me, and this is a bit of exclusive insider info (or at least until Monday morning) – is that next season, 2008/9, there won’t be another trip back to Durban in South Africa. Instead, there will be a return to Beijing in China. When I heard that, I was very astounded especially after the disaster that was the previous race in Beijing in Season Two. However, he assured me that it would be taking place in a different part of the city, so with any luck this time there won’t be a very tight 180° corner that even when made wider, still can’t be traversed by a car even on full opposite lock!

All in all, it was very enjoyable hour (yes, it was only an hour from the time I arrived with my camera to the time I got back home) and I got plenty of pictures and videos, which I’ve uploaded as well into my Gallery. Hope you enjoy them!

First off, the A1GP ended last weekend with the thriller at Brands Hatch. Well, it would have been MORE thrilling had we (as in A1 Team Ireland) not lost our front wing early on in the Feature all because Narain "lost it" in the corner. At least Adam did a stellar job getting the car back to 13th, and scoring fastest lap after having to run half a lap with no front wing and a front-left puncture. At least we managed to take 6th place in the overall standings, but it could have very easily been 5th were it not for that incident, since South Africa finished 11th(?) and only ended up 2 points in front of us at the end…

Plus, next weekend is the end of the Premiership. Although it’s going to be a huge weekend with Man U and Chelsea tied at the top, it’s still going to be disappointing being the last of the football for three months. And don’t say that Euro 2008 counts as football. With Ireland not taking part in it, I don’t plan on watching any of it, even if it is taking place at a GMT friendly time!

IndyCars are on a bit of break "in preparation" for the Indy 500. Alright, I acknowledge it’s a very important race, but do you really need to take a month to prepare for it? I really would prefer to see at least one road course race taking part on an old Champ Car track during this month off. It’s not like Indianapolis is THAT hard to drive. If it was, I wouldn’t have been able to win at it in NASCAR 08…

And speaking of NASCAR, there really hasn’t been much of that recently either what with the All-Star race in a couple of weeks and next week’s Darlington race being a Saturday night race. Night races are not fun when it means I’d need to be up until around 4am just to watch them live (and that’s also dependant on if there was a stream available to watch it on!) At least the coverage won’t be on FOX anymore in June, and I think that’s what is stopping Setanta Sports from showing the races live over here.

Not being able to see stuff like this live on TV is not fun:

It’s not going to be a nice couple of weeks sport-wise. It’s one of those things that gaming cannot replace.

PS: Watching Sky Sports News over and over also doesn’t really help. It just makes me hate the presenters!