#and at least they were competent. unlike perez.

[themoonofblueside]

i know instagram comments are the mind killer but i genuinely can n o t tolerate people taking qualities in lewis' driving and personality and giving them to their drivers. Like no sweatheart the guy who equaled fuckass fernando alonso in his prime as a rookie and never backed down from a title fight is not going to lose the "psychological game". Unless you are someone incredibly close to him, you will not affect his driving skills, or even if you do it won't be enough.

let's examine who drives erratically, throws puclic tantrums when their rival is getting close to beating them and has never had a truly competitive teammate then make our comments.

[zeroducks-2]

Do you have an essential Dick Grayson comics reading list?? Especially sladick related 👉👈 I feel like I’m always hearing about fun interactions between them, but no one ever lists from what comics 😭🥺

Of course!

You can find lots of good stuff in Devin Grayson's Nightwing 1996. I suggest taking a look at #80 to #83, Dick and Slade have iconic interactions in those issues. Like this one!

(from #82 specifically)

There's also the whole "renegade arc" which spans from #110 to #115, and it has stuff like the Message Received in Dick's bathroom, and "Nightstroke". I feel we don't talk enough about Nightstroke lol.

I really recommend Nightwing 1996 in general anyway. Not all of it is good (we could really do without the racism), but it does have some of the most Iconic Dick Grayson Moments, and it's really fun and engaging. The whole Tarantula thing happens in that one btw.

For some of the more Old School flavor of both characters, I suggest reading some New Teen Titans issues from the 80s, especially The Judas Contract (yep the one with Tara), since it has Slade's first apparition and some really badass moments.

I personally am a big fan of that brief but memorable time where Dick was Batman and Damian Robin - I feel Dick's storyline really peaked with that arc and we never got even close to that ever again (it would be Batman & Robin by Grant Morrison, and I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND Black Mirror by Scott Snyder). Slade and Dick have a couple of memorable interactions during that run but nothing too significant.

For something with a more modern flavor, unfortunately there isn't much except Dark Crisis. You know, from where the whole "You were always the trophy, Grayson. Why would I waste my time with anyone else?" gayass speech comes from.

(this one, from Dark Crisis #2 specifically)

And then there's also that whole part with Dick and Slade fighting as their selves from pre-N52 and all that. I mean I'm not a fan of Dark Crisis, but at least Joshua made it gay and I love him for it.

I wouldn't be able to tell you with absolute certainty what are the "essential" Dick Grayson comics to read though, because unlike characters such as Barry or Clark, Dick has changed SO MUCH post reboot, especially when it comes to Tom Taylor's run. And as much as I tend to shit on Taylor's run and many more modern comics, I can't in good conscience call out of character the past 15 years of Nightwing/Dick Grayson. I recognize that Dick is sadly not the same character he used to be preboot, so most of what you read from before the N52 is essentially obsolete when it comes to Dick's personality (also his competence and the respect the superheroes community had for him tend to be spotty at best).

But yeah my point is that my "Dick Grayson essentials" are oldies, but they're still some of my favorite stories and I would highly recommend reading those over the modern slop that has been the Nightwing comics for a while now.

So to make a quick recap, for any Dick Grayson fan I would suggest reading Devin Grayson's 1996 run, The New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez, and Batman & Robin by Grant Morrison. Black Mirror by Scott Snyder is my all time favorite Dick Grayson comic.

[newstfionline]

Monday, February 8, 2021

America’s Mothers Are in Crisis (NYT) By now, you have read the headlines, repeating like a depressing drum beat: “Working moms are not OK.” “Pandemic Triples Anxiety And Depression Symptoms In New Mothers.” “Working Moms Are Reaching The Breaking Point.” You can also see the problem in numbers: Almost 1 million mothers have left the workforce—with Black mothers, Hispanic mothers and single mothers among the hardest hit. Almost 1 in 4 children experienced food insecurity in 2020, which is intimately related to the loss of maternal income. And more than three-quarters of parents with children ages 8 to 12 say the uncertainty around the current school year is causing them stress. The pandemic has touched every group of Americans, and millions are suffering, hungry and grieving. But many mothers in particular get no space or time to recover. Philip Fisher, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon who runs an ongoing nationally representative survey on the effect of the pandemic on families with young children, says, “People are having a hard time making ends meet, that’s making parents stressed out, and that’s causing kids to be stressed out.” This buildup can lead to toxic stress, “And we know from all the science, that level of stress has a lasting impact on brain development, learning and physical health.” Almost 70% of mothers say that worry and stress from the pandemic have damaged their health.

Pandemic’s Toll on Housing (NYT) As the pandemic enters its second year, millions of renters are struggling with a loss of income and with the insecurity of not knowing how long they will have a home. Their savings depleted, they are running up credit card debt to make the rent, or accruing months of overdue payments. Families are moving in together, offsetting the cost of housing by finding others to share it. Even before last year, about 11 million households—one in four U.S. renters—were spending more than half their pretax income on housing, and overcrowding was on the rise. By one estimate, for every 100 very low-income households, only 36 affordable rentals are available. Now the pandemic is adding to the pressure. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showed that tenants who lost jobs in the pandemic had amassed $11 billion in rental arrears, while a broader measure by Moody’s Analytics, which includes all delinquent renters, estimated that as of January they owed $53 billion in back rent, utilities and late fees. Other surveys show that families are increasingly pessimistic about making their next month’s rent, and are cutting back on food and other essentials to pay bills.

In pandemic, more people choose to die at home (AP) Mortuary owner Brian Simmons has been making more trips to homes to pick up bodies to be cremated and embalmed since the pandemic hit. With COVID-19 devastating communities in Missouri, his two-person crews regularly arrive at homes in the Springfield area and remove bodies of people who decided to die at home rather than spend their final days in a nursing home or hospital where family visitations were prohibited during the pandemic. He understands all too well why people are choosing to die at home: His own 49-year-old daughter succumbed to the coronavirus just before Christmas at a Springfield hospital, where the family only got phone updates as her condition deteriorated. “My daughter went to the hospital and we saw her once through the glass when they put her on the ventilator, and then we never saw her again until after she died.” Across the country, terminally ill patients—both with COVID-19 and other diseases—are making similar decisions and dying at home rather than face the terrifying scenario of saying farewell to loved ones behind glass or during video calls.

Trump’s Senate impeachment trial (AP) Arguments begin Tuesday in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump on allegations that he incited the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Will he be convicted? It’s unlikely. While many Republicans were harshly critical of Trump for telling supporters to “fight like hell” and go to the Capitol, their criticism has since softened. The shift was evident during a Jan. 26 test vote. Only five Republican senators voted against a motion that was aimed at dismissing the trial. It will take a two-thirds vote of the 100-member Senate to convict Trump of the impeachment charge, which is “incitement of insurrection.” If all 50 Democrats voted to convict him, 17 Republicans would have to join them to reach that threshold. Most Republicans have avoided defending Trump’s actions the day of the riot. Instead, lawmakers have argued that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office.

Ecuadoreans vote for president (Reuters) Ecuadoreans choose a new president on Sunday, with many voters weary of painful economic austerity measures and eager for a return to socialism, encouraging left-wing candidate Andres Arauz who hopes to win without needing a runoff vote. The 36-year-old economist, a protege of former president Rafael Correa, leads in polls on promises to make $1 billion in direct cash payments to families and to disavow the conditions of a $6.5 billion IMF financing package. His main rival, Guillermo Lasso, has been hurt by his image as a conservative banker, and pollsters say the possibility of low voter turnout due to the pandemic could dent his support. Lawyer and indigenous activist Yaku Perez is third in the polls. An Arauz victory would extend Latin America’s return to leftist policies, already evident in Argentina and Bolivia, a challenge for Washington as it duels with China for influence in the hemisphere.

With Carnival scrapped, Rio’s Sambadrome hosts vaccinations (AP) In a normal year, Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome would be preparing for its great moment of the year: the world’s most famous Carnival parade. But a week before what should be the start of Carnival, the pandemic has replaced pageantry, with the great celebration put on hold until next year as Rio struggles to quash a rise in COVID-19 cases. The Rio mayor’s office opened a drive-thru immunization station Saturday at the Sambadrome, where a line of cars queued up on a broad avenue built for floats. Rio’s city government officially suspended Carnival and warns it will have no tolerance for those who try to celebrate with open street parades or clandestine parties, saying it is monitoring social media to detect any.

Public Buildings Set Ablaze in Chile After Police Shoot Street Juggler (NYT) Demonstrators angered by the fatal police shooting of a popular street juggler set several public buildings ablaze in southern Chile Friday night, leaving a city of almost 34,000 people practically without public services. The shooting took place after the juggler, identified as Francisco Martínez, did not comply with a police officer’s request to provide identification as he performed at a busy intersection in the center of Panguipulli, a popular lakeside community, witnesses said. An argument followed, during which the officer pulled out his gun and fired at least two shots at Mr. Martínez’s feet, witnesses told reporters. Videos taken by witnesses, which spread widely on social media, show the juggler jumping to avoid the shots then running toward the officer with his props in the air. The officer then shot him in the chest, witnesses said, and he died at the scene. Police then barricaded themselves in their station. Since protesters were unable to attack the police station, they turned to other government symbols. Ten public offices in the city of Panguipulli burned to the ground, including the municipal government building, the post office, the civil registry, a local court and a water management company, the authorities said.

Himalayan glacier breaks in India, up to 150 feared dead in floods (Reuters) As many as 150 people were feared dead in northern India after a Himalayan glacier broke and swept away a hydroelectric dam on Sunday, with floods forcing the evacuation of villages downstream. “The actual number has not been confirmed yet,” but 100 to 150 people were feared dead, Om Prakash, chief secretary of Uttarakhand state where the incident occurred, told Reuters. A witness reported a wall of dust, rock and water as an avalanche roared down the Dhauli Ganga river valley located more than 500 km (310 miles) north of New Delhi.

Protests sweep Myanmar to oppose coup, support Suu Kyi (Reuters) Tens of thousands of people rallied across Myanmar on Sunday to denounce last week’s coup and demand the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in the biggest protests since the 2007 Saffron Revolution that helped lead to democratic reforms. In a second day of widespread protests, crowds in the biggest city, Yangon, sported red shirts, red flags and red balloons, the colour of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD). “We don’t want military dictatorship! We want democracy!” they chanted. On Sunday afternoon, the junta ended a day-long blockade of the internet that had further inflamed anger since the coup last Monday that has halted the Southeast Asian nation’s troubled transition to democracy and drawn international outrage. Massive crowds from all corners of Yangon gathered in townships and headed toward the Sule Pagoda at the heart of the city, also a rallying point during the Buddhist monk-led 2007 protests and others in 1988.

Palestinian leader’s path to elections is fraught with peril (AP) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ call for elections has thrown his political future into peril, forcing him to negotiate competing demands to engage with a friendlier U.S. administration, mend the rift with his militant Hamas rivals and keep his unruly Fatah movement from breaking apart. It’s far from clear the elections will actually be held. Doing so will require an agreement between Abbas’s secular Fatah movement and Hamas, which have been bitterly divided for more than a decade despite multiple attempts at reconciliation. The two sides plan to meet in Cairo this week. The outcome of the talks will largely depend on the 85-year-old Abbas. He has spent decades nonviolently seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Instead, he has come to rule an increasingly autocratic and unpopular Palestinian Authority confined to parts of the occupied West Bank. Reconciling with Hamas and holding elections could shore up his legitimacy and meet longstanding Western demands for accountability. But even a limited victory by Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel and Western countries, could result in international isolation and the loss of vital aid—as it did after Hamas won the last parliamentary elections in 2006.

[wokeinmemphis-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[redroses879-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[arcadeparade-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[asanusta-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[pooki-chu-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[sophistikatedblogger-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[quebrando-promesas-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[crashinthefastlane-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[theeblacksheep-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[ourclassycollectionpainter-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x22 watching notes

*loud Dean!girl tears*

Cup of Tea No. 1:

Expectations - Berens Buckleming Clean Up Operation, which tbh when you rank writers by skill at this job WAS the top of the game over Dabb but then Perez showed up. But I still expect a competent job.

This appears to be the BMoL and Mary wrap up episode, although on this show appearances can be deceiving.

As a fervent Mary stan this season, I'm hoping they don't kill her but if they do kill her she dies next episode for heroic reasons, not this episode for rubbish hubris reasons, although I am open to being won over to a tearful passing if they actually get to friggin communicate everything with her, and in that respect I feel we've been waiting since 12x03 for Berens to get back to the point he was making there...

I EXPECT Ketch to die bloody, but ever since last episode I've been pre-emptively disappointed that he's going to be mauled by his own hellhound. Slightly less disappointed if Dean opens the cage and says "Sic 'im, boy," to the dog, because this IS an episode by Bobo "Drowley" Berens.

Aside from that, I've pretty much got nothing because I haven't been speculating ahead on much or really daring to entertain any ideas, except for firmly staking my entire farm on the mystery dude from the 2 in 1 trailer being "Garth with padding" so I expect I will be handing over my farm soon. Although I assume that's in 12x23 and therefore not yet and maybe not for hours.

[note from past me ‘hours’ yeah okay this episode literally ended up making me bedridden and too weak to move by the halfway point so I took like 24 hours from start to finish :P]

-

Oh yeah, Dean's got a pending 7 years ago "welcome to next time" for Walt or Roy from Dark Side of the Moon. One or the other is supposed to be in this episode. The reminder of 5x16 nudges all its themes onto the table, and it's nice that it's a Dabb episode, the one that wrecked Dean n Cas's faith, ruined Heaven for Sam n Dean, and had Zach attempt to ruin Mary for Dean with that chilling speech that after 12x03 we were saying really cut too close to home on what Dean might have thought after Mary walked out.

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Quick Jody recap. Not entirely sure if the "Jody is good people" line comes from 10x20 about Claire, or 7x22 about not!Jenna, the Alpha's blood slave, but it certainly wasn't about Alex, although it's laid over a clip of them together, and the only reminder about Jody is that she adopts wayward daughters.

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Blah blah  murder!Mary, capturing Toni recap, Mary is brainwashed, bunker is gonna kill you... Noticing Ketch saying the air will "reverse" which means what, exactly, but anyway goes with the theme of reversing things. He also has an extremely punchable face, and since DHJ grew his beard back, all these con photos from the other day have been literally unrecognisable and I keep wondering who the normal looking bloke is hanging out on stage with them, because I'm so used to him looking like this:

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(brief break because Berens episodes always make me really sick for some reason)

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Anyway.

NOW.

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Dead guy (thing?) on a truck.

Dead guy. Mary used some reaaaally horrible cat claw looking knuckle dusters or something to kill him. BMoL including savergy as part of the deal; Mary is the hellhound who tears up these guys. Not just being effective at killing - it has to be horrible too. And Mary's been getting used to killing monsters horribly - why should it matter when it's people?

-

the obvious problem next season is the hunters have been decimated so monsters are going to be a much bigger problem and sam and dean can't rely on all these random nobody hunters to stop the next generation of tragic backstories.

This one was called Lester, and I watched 10x02 waaay to recently and that's the guy who got screwed over by Sam's demon deal shenanigans and Dean killed.

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Oh no I think he worked in Auto Repair - Bobby would have been a target if only they still had a Bobby

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Bobby would not have stood for this. Mary would have been in the panic room in a flash through some trickery and smart paranoia :P

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Aaaaah Jody's on the hit list. Who did Jody ever hurt???

I can tell you why that's stupid even for the BMoL: aside from killing law enforcement being a dumb idea in general to not draw attention to yourself, the local sheriff type hunters will literally always be the sort to get involved in cases on a local level and start hunting for themselves to protect a small town like Jody did... you're never going to stop them popping up and you're removing a valuable local level resource and I bet there are others like Jody who just didn't have the misfortune to know the Winchesters who literally never fight above their weight limit but are ready for vampires to come to town >.>

I know she's on the hitlist because she's an associate of the Winchesters but I mean... their overall plan is STUPID if they're going after hunter cops in general. Pfft

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*Sam, Dean and Toni bicker entertainingly*

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Toni argues that they NEED her so THEY don't kill her. It's like... on the endless infinite loops of Crypt Scene reversals, this one is Toni arguing for HER life to UNDO a brainwashing if they don't kill her, using the keyword "you need me", and... yeah. Same sort of deal - someone saying stuff to not get killed and there's brainwashing involved.

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Sam: "LORE"

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DAY ONE

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Remember how 11x14 is one of my favourite Sam episodes because Berens just sometimes writes the Perfect Sam, and he's all peppy and researchy? I've seen literally 2 seconds of this scene and I'm like, yeah, he's at it again.

Berens's take on Sam is probably the interpretation I've funnelled into Terrible Coffee AU, mostly because I laughed SO HARD at excessively caffienated Sam in 11x14 and what it did to his personality, I decided then and there I would never write a scene with him where he hadn't had at least 4 cups of coffee

-

Sam found a gremlin spell :D

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Pfft they need to purify some blood to make it work. While the Bunker is on lockdown and the lights are flashing red. Dean's even wearing a red shirt, though it's a plaid one, because he's in the family again unlike 10x03, and Toni's the ~invading element~ who last episode like demon!Dean spat a load of bitter truths at Sam, did the same to Mary.

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Aw they're all combining their blood. They're in like some sort of pact now, that they all at least want to live, at least long enough to try killing each other in free air. But yeah, no one of them is being relied on to be the purified one - symbolic that while they hate each other, when it comes to getting free none of them is being more self-righteous than the others, and also an admission that none of their bloods are pure enough that any of them could have lorded it over the others.

-

(Sam, of course, is working with Toni and compartmentalising everything about how she tortured and mind-raped him)

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Brains failed, now for brawn. (Sam and Dean still being aligned this way, and each having a day to try their thing)

I hate seeing a map of the Bunker as if it makes sense, but it reassuringly magically produces a brand new wall we've never seen before with a convenient exit right behind it - "let's Shawshank this bitch" - so I figure its magic is still at work. It's brainwashed too - it doesn't want to kill them, so it's doing its best to help :<

They need to manually override it.

-

Dean immediately gets repurcussions for his idea by getting a shard of concrete in his eye. Probably not symbolic

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Also they probably wasted a ton of air doing that

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"how did this happen?" "which part?" "all of it" - haven't hit play but cosmic consequeeeences

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"We had Cas back, we had Mom back"... I assume Dean's priorities have been pointed out by everyone but I'm doing it anyway. Even if you just say he's listing them and had to go one way or the other, and "Mom" is the more surprising one, but still... Cas being got by Lucifer was like, up there with things that getting him back was like getting Mary back, in how happy it made Dean. That is a Thing.

Also belatedly had some Thoughts and came back to this point, that Amara is really the big bad of this season too, but as an abstract concept of chaos, which she represents, where her 2 actions for Dean were to give him Cas and Mary back, but between throwing Lucifer wherever to let him carry on as he liked, and bringing Mary back to get tangled in this, she creates the two heads of the end of season chaos, and both arcs (and Mary and Cas have been mirrored all the way as the two sides of this sort of looping around each other)... I guess what I'm saying is I expect chaos and I'm blaming it on her, but it's belatedly given me a really interesting way to look at the randomness of the season.

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Sam's regretting things. Give him a dog. *ruffles his damp hair* He was just too optimistic for his own good. He wanted the world wide scale doing good thing, and wanted to follow along instead of leading.

Whenever I think of Sam and leading I think about boy!king Sam and the plans that were apparently there for him. He had the "I'm not a leader" arc like 6 years before Cas did, and it turned out it was all a con anyway, but the point is, Sam very very firmly does not like being put in a position of responsibility, probably has season 2-3 trauma related to it, since it was how he first died, and then how Ruby met him, swearing loyalty to him as if he would be that leader...

Ironically in 12x14 and Berens knows this full well as he writes Sam saying this, Sam took control and leadership of the situation and crisis-managed it all the way through to a dead Alpha vamp, getting the hero shot and everything, but he still blamed the BMoL over and over that they were the ones who did all the hard work, and turned to them for guidance, instead of seeing what he did there.

As Leviathan!Dean once said, but, uh, reapply this to being a GOOD leader, they're strong and smart and so on... He just went to the end that it was a perfectly good opportunity to subjugate the weak (which is what the BMoL want) and of course Sam would rather not do that :P

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Cup of Tea no. 2

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Oh crap, they're have a Moment about how they want to die, talking about how they didn't imagine it being this way because, well, who plans to be murdered by their own Bunker

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I don't think Dean plans to die this way any more

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Did Dean just....

he did

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Toni hates the Americans

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YEAH DEAN

He's gonna remember that forever.

If he's not dead and tbh if he is he just died happy

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Having an explosion in the Bunker was a terrible way to use up all the oxygen

YAY Dean did the thing and all the smoke is clearing

I suppose because this is on the CW Dean doesn't stumble in with a massive boner from finally getting to use it

This was already a symbolic victory for the crazy American way of hunting.

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Oh dear, it's Mary.

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She is covered in blood and just walks up to the door, and Jody's like... okay I guess this is what happens with the Winchesters.

I think 12x06 softened her up too much to the idea they just show up covered in the last hunt and want to watch TV

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Omg GARTH IS ALIVE. For now?

"You and Bess need to get someplace safe" :3 Thanks for looking after them for me

I mean now Eileen's dead and Garth is still alive I feel sort of bad for using his life to bargain with. Hence hoping he's mystery guy.

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Nyoooom

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oh that was a cruel fake trail of blood.

I mean real blood but fake anyone got killed because Jody is upright and Alex is next to her and Mary's just got a bleeding nose and a smirk while being wrapped in rope.

"Hello boys"

-

Heee Alex and Jody took down Mary and they're being proud of each other for doing it

I love them so much so I am in absolute terror that one or both of them dies

-

oh dear Dean's stuck in a room with Jody and Mary and she's taunting Jody for playing mom to Dean - 9x19 comes immediately to mind, and Momma taunting Jody for doing the same to Alex, which is how she got her in the first place. And Mary's tied to a chair and all she's got is the same demon!Dean thing from 10x03 to snark at Dean and tell Jody she can have him.

Honestly, Dean's adapted a lot very well to even survive watching Mary say she doesn't want him to his face.

He doesn't look HAPPY but he didn't like, burst into tears and/or storm out the room

"What's the matter, Dean? Am I too different from the Mary you know? Or too much the same?"

The whole messed up family thing in one go here >.> Mary mirroring Dean as demon!Dean having a dark side that renounced his family and claimed to have always been this thing, and Mary doing the same...

-

Lol Mary's hiding behind "inpenetrable psychic walls" - that's not the metaphor the Bunker was warning about us or anything, OR anything deeply symbolic about all the character stuff for Sam and Dean where they hide behind walls of "the story became the story" and all that. Looks like maybe this is how Dean is forced to tell Mary all the dark horrible truth about her deal and all that we saw in the script they teased? That he has to try and find a way to ease her out from behind it, maybe taking a few scratches and shrapnel in the eye to get there, but... Can he grenade launcher through it with his words??

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"They can't be torn down with grenades"

Dean is too sad to even do a "watch me try"

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Random hunters!

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And Walt and Roy!

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"No hard feelings" yeah it's much easier to understand when Sam's alive and that was 7 years ago and honestly so much character growth since then or something

Nice demonstration of putting aside bad feelings to work together

-

Dean leaves Sam to do the big presentation and Sam stumbles over introducing it as a personal problem he and Dean have ended up with, but then suddenly drops into inspirational speaking about "our people", taking on the burden as a leader :D

(I mean that's like the one thing they told us in PR but it was "sam n dean" and look I'm really proud of him okay? Berens writes a Sam I love)

Sam also admits, in front of Walt and Roy even, that he was one of the hunters who messed up and were suckered in by their flashy tech. Admitting that the current terrible scenario is his fault again, when that's what they originally killed him for - whatever was on the hunter grapevine about what Sam Winchester had done...

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blah blah America is great land of the free etc *Sam finishes the speech with an American flag flying behind him*

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But I mean good laying out of the philosophies of what they see hunting is really all about - the whole cops and robbers thing Sam talked about in 12x14 but thought the BMoL could help with that instead of seeing they weren't going to be anything like what he idealised about the job.

And he asks them to follow him :')

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I hope the near-death experience made Dean change his mind about dying bloody too

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Dean's so proud

Me too

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Oh no he's sitting it out. Literally because he blew his own fucking leg up.

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I'm sitting this out too... I'm in too much pain to continue doing anything useful right now

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Cup of coffee no. 1

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Morning! So Sam gets his big character growth moment to maybe not mess up leading a thing this time (people are going to die but they know that... more alarmingly, Jody's going with them >.>) and Dean's saying behind to fix Mary. He gives a speech to Sam about doing that which sounds almost exactly like the sort of thing Sam was saying about demon!Dean - if there's any of them still in there they're going to find it and bring them back.

The Mary stuff has always been emotionally more on Dean's side just because Sam would be perfectly content for her to exist and see what happens (which is probably an unspoken part of how the BMoL suckered him in that he didn't mention in the big speech to the other hunters) - he gets the external evil to fight, something which helps fix his and especially Mary's mistakes by taking down the operation, while Dean deal with Mary.

It only just occurred to me typing this, even though I've had like 14 hours since I found out what the plan was, that that puts Sam in a Ketch-ish direction if he's going to be anywhere predictable. I'm still torn about this because I want Sam to kill him for Eileen but Mary's got a personal beef too and I'd honestly be sort of confused if despite being the least-most-invested in killing Ketch, Dean doesn't get pitted against him, partially because this is The Raid pt.2 (this time the hunters doing exactly what the vampires did when they were all being killed off) and partly because stuff just kind of happens to Dean more. But it's entirely unfair of him to hog ALL the emotional catharsis if he's got Toni and Mary with him trying to fix Mary, and then ALSO has to deal with an unexpected Ketch

-

Oh dear, Alex just told Jody to kick it in the ass while heading off to a safe house with Donna. It's sort of the show generic rallying cry because Kim Manners, but it's also the Ellen and Jo bye bye phrase, and I don't like this. I have suddenly remembered I am very very worried about one or both of them, and Alex unfortunately still don't have much point to be in this episode except it's weird to pretend Jody doesn't have a family just because the actresses need herding, Claire's purposefully driven off into the sunset so doesn't seem to be a part of this, and that leaves Alex here to either kill or react to Jody being killed.

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Sam and Dean do the bitch/jerk thing which in a show where there was actual threat to either of them dying would make them having a "don't die pls" farewell unnerving for the exact above reasons, but just makes me feel like everyone's having tearful goodbyes to try and pretend the stakes are equally high - at least, the characters think so - to obscure killing off Jody.

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The BMoL have Sam and Dean on their board with "ELIMINATED" underneath them. Losers.

Aaaah I forgot Claire was a potential target though. The WORST thing they could do is kill her off-screen without ceremony and let Jody and Alex find out because Jody bursts into the control room and sees Claire's picture with "ELIMINATED" under it

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Oh nope Ketch is getting nervous about where his asset is so he gets the "keep it between us" info that Mary's in Lebanon, Kansas, aka time for Ketch to not be around to get killed in the base (making it infinitely easier to raid for everyone else) and for him to go exactly where I assumed he would.

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Sorry Sam, you get the second hand reassurance that Ketch paid for it >.>

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Nighty night, Dean and Mary :D I'm surprised they didn't just say African Dream Root but I suppose the BMoL have had time to develop these technologies and magical chemistry that makes the stuff work, and dream root does come with the problem that you can literally kill someone in one of the dreams, it's so real, and tidying up all the lore on how to do this sort of thing would make sense if they wanted to not have to deal with any odd plotholes from that. Using electrodes and stuff to link Dean and Mary connects them without the basic way dream root does it, polyjuice potion style, so theoretically neither of them should have control over the other, although Dean's entering Mary's head?

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WHERE'S THE SOCK MONKEY? INACURRATE. FAKE.

Oh well, I suppose there's some sort of weird symbolism sticking Dean in that chair to wake up but without Dean's sock monkey it just doesn't feel real to me.

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I suppose it could be any old day of the week not like dropping Dean directly into the scene in 1x01, since it's daylight beyond the windows, so perhaps Mary has been tidying and Dean's sock monkey is in his room where it belongs and it just happened to be on the floor in 1x01 because she hadn't tidied that day >.>

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Dean whatever you do do not pick up the tiny Sammy. He's very cute but I have a bad feeling about randomly appearing babies.

Oh it's so weird to regress Mary back to the Mary she was stuck at the whole time of the show for 11 seasons. I mean MARY said she was stuck there in 12x03 as well but her surface actions have all been really different, obviously. And at this point... Dean looks stunned to see her and I don't think it's just because it's the "wow Mom" shock he would get all the previous times, but now, FINALLY looking at her as someone who she USED to be...

Oh no he's so small.

This is what he looked like when he wore the "I wuv hugs" shirt. He's seeing it from the other side now.

Dean could pick HIMSELF up.

Oh noooo he's eating PB&J I didn't sign up for this.

I was expecting him to do this but I was not expecting it to be Dark Side of the Moon over again instead of 1x01. I thought he was going to go do something similar to Sam in the vision Azazel showed him in 2x21, but I suppose the point is that they return to the most important moment to them, and for Dean it was eating PB&J with his mom. It's utterly tragic that Dean and Mary have the same Heaven memory but from different sides, because one of the worst  things about Heaven is the isolation - if you don't know to start pressing on the walls looking for roads or loose threads, you can stay in a dream for eternity, and Mary and Dean might be living the exact same moment over and over again, but without each other... I'm not saying they should be soulmates, I'm saying Heaven should be more like what Ash made of it without the sneaking around and needing an advanced understanding of quantum physics or an angel to tell you what to do to start hopping between Heavens.

Of course put too many people together and they start talking and questioning and it's easier to keep them content if they don't have the ability to think about their situation deeply and philosophically, but are drugged up in their Heaven dream with happiness and mindless contentment living over their best times again.

And now Dean's stuck on the outside looking in of the same moment just as Sam was 7 years ago (you know maybe last night I was wondering if we'd come back here because I was thinking Roy and Walt were a very obvious clue... This is what happens when  you take 14 hours off)

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YEAH JODY. FUCK THE LAW. RUN A GUY OVER. SHOOT SOMEONE.

LOL Roy and Walt are driving Gadreel's car

-

Of course in the way the show endlessly loops around itself, what Dean is doing, especially the sitting opposite Mary while her brain is hacked thing, is 9x10 again. Toni is Crowley but this time Dean is going in himself.

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"You're choosing this" *Dean is horrified* *has only just gone through this with Cas last year* He hates that anyone would choose not free will because, well, contradiction. But Mary has regressed back to how she would have been in Heaven - living in the dream and not really able to think about what's outside herself, and so the choice to stay is very easy: abstract pain and harsh reality, or just not thinking about it. In a way it's almost like trying to right what she feels was done wrong to her - all those gifsets comparing it to Buffy talking about how she didn't ask to be brought back and how she had been happy in Heaven. To Mary, THAT was the violation of her free will...

"I hate you"

Aaand Dean reaches the most dramatic part of HIS character arc relating to Mary.

Ironically one of the B99 episodes I caught up while laying around like a dead fish yesterday included one where Holt got annoyed Amy wouldn't stand up to him even after he lost her favourite pen, and eventually wound her up enough to make her yell at him and dare to disrespect her superior officer (... to an Amy degree anyway :P) and, yeah. Same deal; Dean's been completely INCAPABLE of expressing anything negative to/about Mary, and even the argument in 12x14 was more a sort of downwards bump in this relationship, because within the episode he decided to reconcile with her *just* because she was Mary, and of course the argument was not as stark and final sounding as "I hate you" - reconciling with her after was just putting that aside in order to keep her around, not any sort of conclusion to this fight.

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lol getting some more use out of the sci fi corridors to randomly mimic the opening of A New Hope, though the BMoL are literally "the empire" and the American hunters are the "rebels"

-

oh I think Roy or Walt is already dead. Lol. Sucks to be them.

(they DID just think they were doing what was right in 5x16 but still. They've been a statisticaly anomoly to be someone who killed a Winchester and lived to tell the tale (I suppose the lady from Wishful Thinking as well but she was as much a victim of the spell as anything so it doesn't... count...?? I suppose the people from Mystery Spot who helped kill Dean all those 1000s of time as well :P))

Anyway being a redshirt on this mission gets them killed on the Winchesters' behalf so fair's fair

-

Oh boy here's the stuff from Dean's confrontation with Mary, and aside from squeezing her eyes not to listen it's completely one-sided as Jensen delivers the sort of Dean monologue which of all the monologues which should have got him an Emmy already, this is the best. This is terrible :D

He's using instead of "we love you" truths to get to her, the HoRRIBLE truth that she's been owed THIS ENTIRE TIME

Anyway he's blaming his whole tragic backstory on her instead of Azazel, because the story has become the story that even after 4x03 Dean's managed to keep Mary pretty much exactly on the pedestal he always kept her on rather than confront that she is the root cause of his angst, which involves her death... He's letting go of everything. Seeing her saying she wants the best for him and will keep him safe, but he knows she's saying this having ALREADY made the deal, and that her entire happy life with her kids was ALWAYS a sham because she ALWAYS knew something bad was coming, but while she was living like this she put herself entirely into that dream to ignore it.

"You left us, ALONE, because Dad was just a shell" holy crap the show is actually OVER, what's even left to SAY

I know when Mary came back, around this time last year we were screeching about the development he'd be offered by this, by finally getting to confront his family history again and get to be at peace with the way he was raised and all that... It's gutting to watch it in real time though

"I had to be a father, and I had to be a mother"

holy shit I wish I could send this scene back to season 10 me to see :D Like, right after 10x03. Because the character thread in Dean I've been following the entire time I've been in fandom has been waiting to see if this would ever get resolved well, after 10x03 where demon!Dean blurted out similar to Sam but from the worst possible place, at HIS lowest point. (This is not Dean's lowest point. Lowest point for his relationship with his mom, but higest peak he's ever stood on for his own personal strength. Holy crap I'm proud of my boy.)

(The phrasing here is all kind of reminiscent of 10x05's song about John and Mary and it's making me laugh inappropriately because the start of season 10 nailed all this so much)

And the thing is by setting this all here in the Dark Side of the Moon day it's a completely timeless moment - like sure there's some vague outside stuff going on like it's BECAUSE of the BMoL but Dean's ONLY talking about their history, their past, how his life was all the time since ever, and the historical facts of Mary's life. Any time since 5x16 they COULD have pulled the trigger on a scene like this, because all they needed was a run up to get Dean in the right mood to say it all. Of course this is the end result of a massive, at least 4 years project to tear Dean down and build him back up and have his character development go on an absolutely incredible journey... At this point I feel like the sports commentator yelling encouragement on the final lap before an absolutely record breaking victory.

"I couldn't do it - and you want to know what that was like?" YES PLEASE KEEP TALKING

Dean lists all the shit that's happened to Sam like the bitter Sam!girl he is and says "all because of you"

I think at this point I just want to look back at 1x09, where Mary as a ghost goes to Sam, before almost any of this happens except Jess dying and the horrible upbringing, and says "I'm sorry" because she KNEW what she'd done to him, and she died guilty about it. She said in 12x02,

MARY: And when we do find Sam... how am I gonna face him? DEAN: What do you mean? MARY: That yellow-eyed thing would never have come for him that night if I... I started all of this.

but with all the massive miscommunication themes she didn't go talk to Sam when she should have - when he came to her in the end of the episode and hugged her, she should have apologised there, and made a start on it. And if not then, then in 12x03, although I'm feeling like from the moment she cut her hair it was too late and she was already avoiding who she had once been, chopping off the style associated with herself as their mom and stepping into what would become this demon!Dean-like brainwashed Mary. I suppose it makes sense to say in 12x02 she raised the problem that she had to face sam somehow, and she DIDN'T and then we got 12x03, the mirror episode to this one on this side of the story (and it feels like Berens has made one of those clear lines through the season, with 12x14 being mirrored on the other side of this episode, in the way Robbie owned season 9 - so like I hand season 9 to Robbie, I'm giving Berens season 12 :P Good work on all this, sir.) In 12x03 Mary is faced with the haunted house full of mirrors to exactly what she's NOT seeing here - Sam as the burned, soulless doll in a crib, the object the demons passed around, and eventually was nothing but a hollow person, as Dean ends it on describing that Sam lost his soul. And for Dean, she sees the little boy, and she hasn't moved past that, but Dean had to tell her from the moment she died he wasn't that any more - he was the parent of the family. She's got her family regressed here again, because confronting it in 12x03 just made her run away. And this is as far as she's run, through the season, literally just running on the spot in this exact place.

Outside Mary is crying, but inside Mary is refusing to show anything. Maybe it's just because where her consciousness is - she won't cry on the face Dean can see. He's leaking tears in the dream but not on the outside. But yeah, she can pick one (1) set of tear ducts to angrily repress. Because at the end of the day, Mary has always been the one more like Dean.

Dean FINALLY gets through the "i hate yous" he's always needed to say to get back to "i love you"

*slowly sinks underneath the blankets* Yeah, saying "I love you" to Mary is the only way he's ever been able to get it out before - the speculation being that once he's worked through his COLLOSAL issues with his parents he might be able to say "I love you" more casually to others because he's at peace. I can SEE him settling into being at peace now, which I think is all that Amara INTENDED when bringing Mary back, but obviously the MASSIVE repercussions going on outside their little insular family bubble.

And Dean forgives her. And says on the other side of this, they can rebuild their family and make it work. AAAAAAH.

(AAAAAAAAH)

Finally he gets to the "but I need you to fight"

"Mom I need you to see me" Oh god this is so good and painful

Mary's crying on the inside too! But in this case it's good because that's the part of her that can see Dean

And we're back to mirroring the start of the season, the very opening scene, but this time Mary recognises Dean and gets to say his name first, instead of Dean crashing out of the trees at her, yelling "Mom", and getting his ass handed to him :P He had to tell her who she was, but this time he told her who HE was. And NOW she sees him, now he took down every single wall between them.

-

LOL Oops bye Toni nice knowin' ya except for all the times you were terrible.

If Dean had trusted her - and if they'd changed the freakin LOCKS again - she might not be dead.

Ketch does the thing again where instead of just killing his targets, he wants to talk to them, so he wakes Dean up instead of just slitting his and Mary's throats while they're unconscious.

-

I suppose now it's on Mary to wake up and save Dean

-

I was torn on who needed to kill the dark mirror of John more, but honestly, Dean's done, came out of the oven perfectly risen and smelling great, so he does not need to reject John. He sees John accurately and describes him in that speech in such a way... His memory doesn't have to haunt Dean, and he's forgiven Mary too.

(And we never mentioned the cupids. Pfft.)

-

christ, Dean's being given the Swan Song beatdown with his leg not working. For once he fights back because Ketch is absolutely not a loved one, but he's completely outmatched, and Ketch is enjoying punching him.

He says Mary said absolutely nothing about Dean - Dean knows from being in Mary's head how she DOES care about him, and that she was being brainwashed - he doesn't know for how long... Point is, these words can't hurt. He already made his peace with Mary too.

-

I think Dean just threw Ketch through the SW DW table, which is hilariously dark about their legacy >.> It's more about in the contacts they build outside themselves, and the WORK they do, than anything they write on a table - shots of Sam and Dean thinking about the world while sitting alone in the bunker or in/on the car are often very sad about how isolated and alone they are.

Thinking of which, we're rapidly running out of episode for me to be worried about Jody in.

-

Ahaha Ketch brought a gun to the fight. He says he's not stupid after Dean points out how stupid he was, but he's got his back turned to Mary, and Dean's now in exactly the same place SAM was in 10x03 after the demon!Dean chase, where Cas suddenly came out of nowhere and grabbed Dean.

Oh Dean flinched, he had been watching Ketch. Nice surprise. Mary's back :D

Dean hobbles over to stand at her side.

"I knew you were a killer. You both are." "you're right." Yeah, Dean n Mary are a pair aren't they :P Both been through this same arc now. Dean owns the description but I think he has a very different definition than Ketch, for all people tell him that he's a killer. He can kill things for his job and when it needs to be done, but that does NOT mean he's a psychopath like Ketch. And Mary has a heart too and chose the right side.

-

Jody pls don't stand with your back to the open door - this is literally how that random no name got killed in 12x14 and I really really don't like you not covering your back, especially when you're a cop, and even when you think you cleared this place.

-

Oh they all survived. Sam got the news about Lucifer, decided to pass on working with a maybe lesser evil to deal with a bigger one. Jody saves his bacon with the big kill shot.

-

Where does Dean even get prescription painkillers. I suppose he'd have got some when  he broke his leg but aside from that it's pretty much up to them to work out how much to medicate themselves by whatever illegal means off-the-grid people can fake prescriptions or health insurance. Also America's healthcare system is terrible because it seems like an entire adversity all by itself to their lives, while in a free healthcare country... yeah, not so much a big deal :P

-

Mary's got the season 7 Cas guilt now - everything that happened is her fault, she feels. I mean she certainly really helped the BMoL get a foothold and so on although they seemed pretty intent to come on over whether she had anything to do with it or not. But the broken family relationships, yeah, she ran away >.>

-

"What if he can't forgive me?" "Mom. You don't have to be scared of me" *Winchester family sandwich*

I think I'm starting to cry at this show way more often than I used to but oh my god I'm so happy for Sam right now. He misses the entiiiiiiiiire thing but the point he made back at the start of the season is he just wanted Mary THERE and her problem is she was TERRIFIED of him, and having the whole equivalent drama to what Dean just went through with her, but if she knew Sam, that's not him. He zenned out in season 5-7 and has already recovered from like, the whole thing, and piled on totally different trauma :P His arc was so important to resolve to the story they already completed the arc in Swan Song, and it wasn't about Mary but it WAS about peace with himself, and of course all done with external actions and plot drama while Dean had to deal with the internal stuff, literally going inside Mary's head to sort it. Anyway point is Mary doesn't need to be scared of him because there's nothing to be scared of. It's literally as simple as he wants his mom, should she happen to be here. Unlike Dean's entire character arc since season 1 still having been unresolved. And the heart of it was stuff that was obvious since season 1 or the first episode, but Sam got his resolution in season 5, while taking us back to that season 5 moment, showed how Dean did NOT get his resolution when he needed it, because it was never JUST about sam but his entire family.

I wonder how he'll be next season, no matter if Mary survives it or not.

-

Thinking of which, now Berens has finished writing season 12 for us, I suppose Dabb has a whole bucket of fuckery waiting to throw us into season 13.

[idontneedasymbol]

12x14 The Raid

Agh.  While there were some things to like about this ep (both the boys were looking more gorgeous than ever) there was a lot I didn’t care for. Under a cut for those who want to stay positive!

I don’t understand what the show is doing with the BMOL. Eps like this make me think we’re meant to think of them as potential allies, as maybe having some good ideas. But we’ve seen them do such evil things, it’s pretty much impossible to trust them. In particular, there’s no way to get over “First Blood.” Ketch slaughtered innocent humans, with Mick’s awareness/permission, for no reason except they could’ve been a hassle for Sam & Dean (and law enforcement was never more than a hassle.)

And no, neither Mary nor the boys know about that. But they do know about a lot of other things. The BMOL’s methods are sketchy as hell, but the show isn’t treating it that way at all. The vampires are being massacred, and we’ve met good vampires before -- Lenore, Benny, the poor sheriff in “Hibbing 911.” But the show doesn’t mention this, hasn’t raised it as a point. I wasn’t sure if the vampires were meant to be at all sympathetic -- the scene with the vamp woman who’d lost her nest, that was set up to be sympathetic in appearance, but then they were stressing she was being given a mug of human blood, so maybe it was meant to be ironic/black comedy with monsters aping humanity, but we’re supposed to want them dead. But not beaten, apparently?

But if the show isn’t intending the monsters to be sympathetic, and the audience is supposed to think that maybe Mary and now Sam are right to choose to work with the BMOL...why were we already given such strong evidence that they’re bad news? Is there actually conflict in the writers’ room of how to handle this? Or is it just clumsy storytelling?

More than the BMOL, though, I didn’t like either of the boys in this episode. Sam got to be badass, yeah. And his deciding to side with the BMOL at the end was not exactly unexpected -- they (unwittingly?) played to his weakness; he wants so badly to help, and that they needed him to survive here, were dependent on him, makes him want to save them. But his “Good” at that hunter being taken off and (implied) tortured -- wow WTF? If the BMOL just executed the guy, I could maybe see Sam approving. But to have Sam, with all his history of torture, be glad to see it happen to someone else...even someone who hurt his mom...seems really unpleasantly OOC. Mary saying “good” was disturbing, too, but Sam especially.

...Especially because the BMOL didn’t say, he betrayed us/got us killed -- Ketch says “We have ways of dealing with hunters who go rogue” -- like they’re policing hunters. Toni was torturing Sam because he’d ‘gone rogue’ -- and Sam is okay with this? Really?

(If Sam is trying to infiltrate the BMOL, if he’s suspicious of them but trying to get on their good side, then it works fine. But I really don’t think that’s where this season is going, as much as I want it to be.)

(OTOH “You’re changing the world, I want to be part of it,” is a really ambiguous line, so maybe...?)

Meanwhile Dean has been so freaking one-note this season. He gets angry with the people he loves, then he realizes he’s in the wrong and apologizes. In this case it was extra obnoxious, because they changed the course of the argument from one ep to the next. And I don’t believe I’m saying this, but it was better in BuckLemming’s ep. Sam and Dean at the end of last ep were both expressing anger, disappointment, betrayal with Mary. And then, as if the show realized that it was hard to dig Mary out of this one, they switched Dean to sulking about Mary not acting like a mother to them/him. Which is not what this fight should have been about. Mary’s not at fault here because she’s not tucking them in at night; she lied to them, put them in danger, nearly got Cas killed, got a hunter killed. These aren’t unforgivable actions; the boys have both done worse, in their day. But the show isn’t addressing what she’s actually doing wrong; instead it’s having Dean be childish and immature and then eventually get over it and acknowledge his mom as her own person.

Which is a theme I’m kind of getting tired with. There’s been emphasis placed on Dean specifically having to accept that the people he loves are still individuals who have the right and responsibility to make their own choices. And yes it’s a lesson he really needs to learn. But in doing this it’s severing any sense of relationship -- that the decisions you make do affect those close to you, and therefore you should take them into account. You shouldn’t let someone else dictate your decisions, obviously. But the lesson being played out here is that if your decisions hurt your family then that’s entirely their problem. Which is the opposite of a major theme of the show all before this.

The ep also did a thing it’s been doing all season, that Dean is just there at the end, and we don’t see him arrive, don’t see him finding out Sam was in trouble. It makes a specific point that he didn’t know Sam was there, to emphasize that he was entirely concerned about Mary, and that’s fine and all (though yeah, I’m annoyed that Dean is being written as so simplistic that it takes her being in danger for him to realize he’s being a dick; I thought he might’ve finally grown up a little but apparently not.) But it means that again, we don’t get any moment of caring between the brothers. Rather than supporting each other through this trial, they’re -- not even fighting, really, which would lead to the opportunity for cathartic reunion, a la Carver era; instead they’re just not working together as real partners. They argue a bit at the beginning, but then it’s put aside in favor of Dean with Mary and Sam with the BMOL.

And it’s frustrating, because I want to like Mary, and I don’t want to feel like she’s taking away the brother’s bond (or at least taking away the show’s focus on it)...but that’s what seems to be happening and it’s hard not to resent that, when it’s my favorite part of the show.

Annoyingly, they didn’t need to do this; Mary came across pretty good in this episode otherwise. It was confirmed she’s doing this because she’s trying to make the world safe for her boys, to get them out of this life. It might not be what they want, but wanting to do what you think is best for your loved ones even if they disagree is the Winchester way. And her not being as bothered by vampire genocide makes more sense in her case; she was raised as a hunter, and as far as we know has never met a ‘good monster’ (since she sees angels as something else -- she hasn’t met any bad angels?) Her reaction to Crowley is a case in point -- she sees monsters as monsters, to be killed, as Dean thought for a long time (and Sam never did, which is what’s making his being okay with the BMOL now so weird and OOC.)

And while it seemed like she was a disappointingly bad judge of character, to fall for the BMOL’s schtick, now that it’s looking like Sam (and probably Dean eventually?) is falling for it, too, that doesn’t reflect as badly on her.

It’s also unfair to Sam’s character -- he had a whole episode with Mary and he didn’t really advance his relationship with her much at all -- Mary got to mention that she knows he tried to leave hunting, but Sam as usual for s12 doesn’t really get to express much of his own feelings about that or anything else.

What I’m trying to figure out now is where this season is going. Right now they’ve set it up that while the BMOL have some disagreeable traits, they are effective -- they’re basically making the last eleven seasons of hunting look bad and incompetent. Since it seems unlike that the show is actually going to eliminate the supernatural and let the boys retire, the BMOL are going to have to be proved to be evil -- so evil that it taints their methods such that they can’t be applied in the future (at least not on this scale). And while that scale could be seen as evil in itself -- they’re going for genocide -- so far the show hasn’t been pointing that out. Maybe it will? But it would’ve been better to set it up sooner.

Finally, bringing the Alpha vamp back, just to kill him...boo. Abrupt end to an awesome villain. And yet another character of color biting the dust, oh SPN, why you gotta be so racist. Also partway through I had the thought that the BMOL had set up all of this to get the Alpha vamp out and kill him, but no, they weren’t that clever. I’d much prefer competent evil to incompetent...whatever the BMOL are meant to be.

(And what happened to the Colt anyway? Did Sam really leave it in the BMOL’s hands?)

Well, we’ll see where it’s going. I do hope Sam doesn’t lie to Dean about working for the BMOL. And I hope that eventually the show will acknowledge the BMOL’s sins and have the Winchesters (all three) react with the appropriate disapproval. Until then, just hope there’s something good between the boys in the next ep. Davy Perez’s last two eps were great; please don’t let us down!)

[torentialtribute]

Premier League Fans’ Verdicts: Bernardo Silva should win Player of the Year

The Premier League continued this weekend with Liverpool beating Cardiff to stay ahead of Manchester City, who were victorious about Tottenham.

Elsewhere Manchester United and Arsenal's hopes of finishing in the top four were hit by defeats.

Here, Sportsmail gets the fans' verdicts following the latest round of action …

Liverpool fans were informed as their team beat Cardiff to return to the top of the table

MANCHESTER CITY

Steven Allweis (View From A Blue)

All the talk has been around Sterling competing with Van Dijk to be named Player Of The Year.

In my eyes at least, Bernardo Silva should win the award. Against Spurs, he was as sensational as has been all season. He worked tirelessly, twisted Spurs' defense all over the place, ran with the ball as if it were attached to his foot and created the winning goal with a delightful jinx inside and cross in the box.

He is simply a joy to watch and has defined matches consistently for us this campaign. It's about time he receives the praise he so richly deserves.

Star man: Bernardo Silva

TOTTENHAM

Barnaby Slater (barnabyslater.com)

To be fair, Spurs put up a lot more or a fight than I fear we may be able to after our historic Champions League victory.

We could easily have had three in the first half, but equally it never felt like we deserved to get a result from the game.

Star man: Juan Foyth

[Idon'tcareforthatmuchthoughasamstillbasinginthefeelingfromWednesdayandecstaticaboutourupcomingsemi-final Bernardo Silva put in another fine display as Manchester City got the better of Tottenham

BOURNEMOUTH

Peter Bell (Cherry Chimes)

Bournemouth might have been confident. They expected the goal to come and found themselves in a real contest for possession. Chances went early on and Fulham took full advantage. Even with three strikers on the pitch, Bournemouth couldn't unlock the door.

Fulham fans were happy singing "1-0 to the Championship". Eddie Howe is still looking for consistency.

Star man: Jefferson Lerma

FULHAM

Russ Goldman (Cottage Talk)

Scott Parker wanted the team to play with pride and reconnect with supporters. Now hey is getting results, too. It is unfortunate that this has come too late to keep us in the Premier League but we are seeing building blocks for next season. The way Fulham played suggested a new beginning.

Star man: Sergio Rico

HUDDERSFIELD

Harry Greenwood (Better Than Klopp)

Another defeat along our embarrassing relegation road. Siewert switched things up yet again as he assesses the squad ahead of a huge summer. Although we had chances in this one we were toothless yet again.

Watford capitalized with a second before Karlan Grant – one of our very few shining lights – score a consolation. With Liverpool and Manchester United to come, things look bleak.

Star man: Juninho Bacuna

WATFORD

David Anderson (Golden Pages Fanzine)

What a season this is turning out to be! FA Cup dreams aside, it was nice to get back to winning ways in the league and take the lead in the race for seventh place and potentially Europe.

It was reassuring to see us manage without Troy Deeney and we did so capably thanks to the magic of Gerard Deulofeu. He was quick off the mark to give us an early lead and it meant the rest of the afternoon could be enjoyed rather than endured.

Star man: Gerard Deulofeu

Watford fans celebrate during their side's victory over Huddersfield on Saturday

WEST HAM

Graeme Howlett (KUMB.com)

For the second successive week, West Ham were denied a goal and two points by a mystifyingly bad call from the match officials. These things just yourself out over the course of a season, it has been said. Which may be true for some clubs, but certainly not West Ham United, for whom such things are becoming something of a regular occurrence.

Star man: Lucas Perez

LEICESTER

Phil Simms (LCFC World)

A lively end to a match, for long periods, bore all the hallmarks or an end-of-season run-out in the sunshine. The players were on the beach. Harvey Barnes' injury time goal at least sent the Foxes faithful home with a smile.

Star man: Jamie Vardy

WOLVES

Ben Husband (Wolves Fancast)

The sun was out and it felt very much like pre-season fare as a pedestrian Wolev's struggled to break down Brighton. The Seagulls came to the Black Country without any ambition but left with a point. Antoerh example of Wolves failing to get the job done against the lowly sides. Nuno's men now have four games to ensure the season doesn't fizzle out.

Star man: Ruben Vinagre

BRIGHTON

Simon Cox (Brighton Fans)

Not often does a 0-0 feel so satisfying! I wanted to be last on MOTD! After our recent farces this mundane, but disciplined, bore-draw was a breath of fresh air! Team selection was Chris showing fans the dressing-room divide, and that at least £ 50million has clearly been wasted.

We red our luck, but we certainly earned our point. Kayal was a patient, professional and should start at Spurs.

Star man: Beram Kayal

Brighton fans watch on their sides with Wolves at Molineux on Saturday

NEWCASTLE

Tom Bore (Read Newcastle)

What a day for Ayoze Perez. Silencing his critics in the most emphatic way – a hat trick at St James’s Park to all-but-confirm survival. His movement and build-up play has been superb in recent weeks and he was rewarded in full against Southampton.

It feels unlikely with three games to go that Newcastle will make the necessary steps required to equal last season's 10th place finish, but with 41 points already on the board, the feeling among the fans is positive nonetheless.

Star man: Ayoze Perez

SOUTHAMPTON

Jack West (Fresh Saints)

Newcastle capitalized on a dismal first half that proved pivotal in dictating the result. The second half was the complete opposite and we arguably deserved to take something from the game. Hassenhuttl's tactical changes were spot on.

Star man: Mario Lemina

EVERTON

Joel Parker (Toffee Analysis)

Everton absolutely dominated a dreadful Man United team, and for one of the first times this season were clinical. Silva's system is always better against teams that want to retain possession, but we struggle to create great chances.

Today was different, we started off quickly and had total control for long periods of the game. The goals were absolutely incredible and Everton thoroughly deserved the victory.

Star man: Gylfi Sigurdsson

MANCHESTER UNITED

Sam Peoples (The Peoples Person)

When will United rebuild the club properly? We're a shambles from top to bottom. So many of those players should be sold. There is no way this can all be done in one summer. Sir Alex retired.

Star man: The Away End

Manchester United's players look after a conceding fourth goal to Everton

ARSENAL

Peter Wood (Le Grove)

Unai Emery spluttered at a critical part of the season, arrogantly underestimating Palace. Mustafi in defense, Jenkinson anywhere near the team, Guendouzi and Elneny in midfield … it was always going to fail and it did.

Arsenal have blown a huge opportunity and it looks like the manager has it all on the Europa League. A very dangerous gamble.

Star man: The Final Whistle

CRYSTAL PALACE

Jay Crame (The Eagles Beak)

Roy got this one spot on and the players pulled off a big result against the Gunners, and fully deserved it with the hosts finding the pace and speed on the break hard to deal with.

Benteke has had his critics but we play so much better with him as the lone striker, he just hasn't been able to match that with goals. Today was a very good all round performance from the Belgian. Big call from Roy to drop by Aanholt but it worked.

Star man: Christian Benteke

CARDIFF

Callum Ellis (Inside Wales Sport)

Competed well in the first half but it was always going to be difficult once they took the lead. It looked like a penalty on Salah for me – and one of our fans would have been furious with that child or decision did not go our way. If we keep playing like this, we'll stay up.

Star man: Bruno Ecuele Manga

LIVERPOOL

Chances were wasted and Cardiff survived until half-time, but the Reds eventually become them down in the South Wales sunshine. Wijnaldum's strike was a thing of beauty and Milner has balls of steel.

No doubt the Salah diving agenda will rear it's head once again, but it's all nonsense that was a clear a foul as you'll ever see . Many Kopites are hoping for a favor from arch rivals United this week. Not me.

United don't even have a snowball chance in hell or stopping City. My fading hopes are with Sean Dyche and the Burnley bash brothers, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood. Or Brendan. Imagine that.

Star man: Georginio Wijnaldum

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