Guess what? I’m playing RICKY POTTS IN ONE OF MY FAVORITE MUSICALS RIDE THE CYCLONE at the Chance Theatre in Anaheim! We are the California Premiere and you should totally come out and see it! Love youuu BUY YOUR TICKETS! We run until February 27th!!
Excerpts:
[First stints]
The opening stint saw graining and high degradation for all runners and lap times rose sharply from around Lap 10 onwards.
On Lap 14 [Norris] was called to box for new hard tyres. He then emerged behind Ocon – and Ferrari saw a small opportunity to cover him, and so boxed Leclerc the next lap. Unfortunately for Leclerc, it didn’t work out for him and he was undercut by Norris. Leclerc’s complaints on the radio at stopping to emerge behind the McLaren were met with reassurance that the race was most likely a two-stop, and it was the correct point to box. Piastri then covered both one lap later.
In [Sainz’s] opening stint, he was too far behind Norris to attempt an undercut and Ferrari were still considering the one-stop possibility. Therefore Sainz pushed to extend as he thought it was too early to stop. Later, he reported that the graining was improving and lap times may recover. This was important information for Ferrari. Sainz was then called to pit before being undercut by Hamilton so the lap time improvement was crucially not seen by the other teams.
[Second stints]
As graining emerged on the hard tyre for all three leaders, [they had to decide] when to stop for the final set of hards. Piastri was asked if he thought a one-stop might be possible, but said no.
[On Lap 32,] Leclerc is given the ‘box to overtake’ call on Norris as Ferrari looked to attempt an undercut. But Norris then pitted, prompting Leclerc to stay out. He was then told they will extend the stint to build a tyre delta.
In the second stint running in largely free air, Sainz pushed Ferrari discussion on the one-stop strategy possibility. The pit wall and Sainz discussed whether they should cover Hamilton’s second pit stop or remain on the one-stop option – with Sainz favouring the latter after reporting that his tyres were still good.
At this point the information is given to Leclerc that Sainz is targeting a one-stop strategy. Leclerc agrees that it is the best opportunity to win and immediately begins work on the tyre saving required to pull it off.
[McLaren third stints vs Ferrari staying out]
[Having boxed with 15 laps remaining,] Piastri needed to average 1.5 seconds per lap quicker [than his pre-stop pace] to make the pit stop beneficial. His first lap after the pit stop was indeed 1.5 seconds faster than before. However, he had five back-markers to overtake as well as Sainz. The back-markers cost variable amounts of lap time and Sainz then cost Piastri around two seconds of race time – which is crucial when considering Piastri only finished 2.6 seconds behind Leclerc at the flag.
So although Leclerc then took the plaudits and the glory on the Monza podium, he couldn’t have pulled off such a famous victory without the help of his Ferrari team mate.
We studied the radar on Friday and Saturday to understand the intensities of the rain and which tire you need to be on at each time, and this time it paid off.
Late to the game as I’ve kinda been kinda non-here for a minute but I scrolled through the Dot and Bubble tag, and thought I wanted to write this post into existence.
There's this part in Doctor Who Unleashed where RTD says this:
“What we can’t tell is how many people will have worked that out before the ending. Because they’ve seen white person after white person after white person, and television these days is very diverse. I wonder, will you be ten minutes into it, will you be fifteen, will you be twenty, before you start to think, everyone in this community is white. And if you don’t think that — why didn’t you? So, that’s gonna be interesting. I hope it’s one of those pieces of television you see, and always remember.”
And I'm like. Yeah. But the reason this works even as well as it does is largely thanks to the work of the previous showrunner with the previous creative team, which was notably the first era to have any writers of color (amongst other firsts in terms of inclusivity in directors, composer, actors). While Chibnall fumbled whenever he tried to write about race himself, he did have the self-awareness to have Black and South Asian writers writing the episodes where race is the focus (and a female writer for the episode where sexism is a focus; my point is, he seemed to know his shortcomings).
I wonder what the current creative team looks like? (not really, but I wasn't 100% sure for all of them)
To quote RTD:
“...before you start to think, everyone in this community is white.”
This is pretty non-self-aware, right? It's pretty “It is said, and I understand this, there was a history of racism with the original Toymaker, the Celestial Toymaker, who had ‘celestial,’ and I did not know this, but ‘celestial’ can mean of Chinese origin, but in a derogatory way,” right? (from The Giggle Unleashed) It's pretty “and I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that: associating disability with evil,” right? (from Destination Skaro Unleashed)
—none of which are issues that should be overlooked, but think how much exponentially better they might’ve been addressed if he’d consulted with Chinese writers and wheelchair-using writers before going straight to giving the Toymaker weird fake accents and making Davros walk?
How many Black or non-white people do we think saw the Dot and Bubble script before it landed in Ncuti’s hands?
And this just keeps happening.
And like, from some of the shocked responses I've seen from white viewers to the ending of Dot and Bubble, maybe the episode's unsubtlety was needed? From the way RTD talks about it in Unleashed, the episode was written with a white audience in mind, Baby's First Microaggressions (where of course the microaggressions come from people who are pretty self-admittedly white supremacists). Ricky September, a more seemingly normal depiction of someone in the racist bubble of Finetime, seemed like an interesting element, up until the way he died.
The ending worked for me, because I do think the Doctor's reaction is true to how the Doctor would react. I just keep thinking of how much better the core themes could've been handled by someone with actual lived experience on the subject matter.