There is not much better than a quiet Sunday morning and a freshly made cup of coffee. Today I used my Fellow Stagg XF pour over. Unlike a more traditional Vario this is a straight sided pour over cup. I don't have a palette than can pick up huge differences between the two, but there some slight nuances. There isn't a preference, but I'll go back and forth. Today's beans come from a local roaster, Pearland Coffee Roasters. Just down the road from where I live, I love the fact that there is a top notch coffee roasting company down in the suburbs of Houston. It makes a bright cup, honeysuckle, pears, cinnamon. Lovely cup. It's a good cup to sit down with while I think about a few things that have occurred this week.
First up comes a recommendation, but not a TV show this week, instead a book. The Formula written by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg documents the rise of Formula 1. They do this not by going year by year, but highlighting the big changes that have occurred throughout F1's history, what or who drove those technological leaps to make F1 the powerhouse sports institution that it is today. It's a fantastic book, an incredibly quick read. I favorably compare it to the authors other book The Club which took a similar look at the Premiere League, documenting how the league came to be in the 90's and then its rise to be what we know as the EPL today. Both are oustanding books if you enjoy F1 and English Football like I do.
Watches
Earlier this week, one of my favorite watch companies, kind of out of nowhere released an eagerly anticipated watch that has sent watch geeks into a ferver with anyone that owns a watch centric YouTube channel breathlessly posting their reactions. It's the new Omega White dial speedmaster.
It's a stunning watch, the white has a depth to it that I didn't expect and you don't get from the traditional black dial. The indices are raised which helps create that multi-dimensional feel and the splash of red text adds just a bit of color. While I will always favor the historical moon watch, Omega did a great job with this new dial. I spoke to an AD on Friday and they already had 25 people on the waitlist, so Omega has a winner on its hands for sure.
Liverpool
While I am enjoying my coffee this morning, I am eagerly anticipating one of the most important matches that Liverpool plays. In just a couple of hours they host Manchester City for what could be THE match that decides who wins the Premiere League (sorry Arsenal fans). Liverpool sits on top of the table, but if they lose this match to City, City goes on top and it will be very hard to catch them over the last couple of months of the season. On a positive note, Liverpool has a fantastic record against City at home, so I have high hopes that they will win and continue to collect trophies during the final season of Klopp's leadership.
Formula One Thoughts
Race number 2 of the young Formula One season is in the books. This week the teams visited Jeddah for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. This second race was full of seasonal firsts:
First substitute driver, as Carlos Sainz was hospitalized for appendicitis so Ferrari called on its reserve driver, British teenager Oliver Bearman to drive the spaniards car. The youngster did an outstanding job in his first F1 weekend. He almost qualified in the top 10 narrowly being beaten out by the legend himself Lewis Hamilton. Oliver had a tremendous race, finishing P7 ahead of McLarens Lando Norris. The youngster did an absolutely tremendous job in his first F1 race. Will this lead to him getting picked up somewhere later this season or next?
We had the first car retired during a race this season when Gasley who was hardly getting started before the Alpine car had to retire due to a faulty gear box. This continues early season woes for the French race care team.
First yellow flag and safety car of the season when Lance Stroll ended up in the wall becoming the second car to retire this season.
First lead of the season for Team Papaya when Lando Norris lead the race for a few laps when he didn’t pit during the yellow flag.
First time penalty when Perez had an unsafe release during a pit stop and was penalized 5 seconds by the stewards. However in a rare case of a Haas driver trying to do better than other drivers Kevin Magnusson won a larger penalty by receiving a 10s one for running Williams driver Alex Alton into the wall, and then receiving a second 10S penalty for gaining a spot by going off track. Way to be an overachiever Kevin!
On the McLaren side off things their strategy for Norris seemed questionable. They kept him out during the safety car which as mentioned above allowed the British driver to lead a few laps. But it meant that he spent a long time on old tires that had to be managed. Norris dutifully did an outstanding job of getting his tires far beyond their predicted life. This allowed McLaren to put him soft tires when he pitted at last 38. He came out in place 8 ahead of fellow British driver Hamilton. Even though the McLaren car continues to struggle with straight line speed, Lando did an outstanding job of staying ahead of the Mercedes legend, and tried to race down the young rookie Ferrari driver Bearman, but he just didn’t have enough time to make an attempt to pass him. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I feel if McLaren had pitted Lando just a lap or two earlier Norris would have had enough time to track down Bearman and finish at least one place higher.
Lando’s teammate Piastri had an outstanding weekend. He qualified ahead of his teammate and ended up in P4 which along with Lando finishing in P8 kept McLaren in the top 3 for the constructors cup through the first 2 races of the season. The team continues to show they are starting off much better than last season, and I maintain hope that they will finish better than they did last season.
Red Bull continues to show they are far ahead of the pack in every aspect of Formula 1, from drivers to strategy, to racing technology the other teams are tragically lagging behind the racing bulls.
No comments:
Post a Comment