The Formula One season is upon us...

So, you like lawn bowls? 

A man who loves cars, his cat and single malt. 

Our fiesty sports writer David Cutting drives a mean arguement for why you should get into cars. 

Lawn Bowls is a silly sport.

Consider it objectively. To play one must roll a series of balls that aren’t round with the aim of achieving maximum proximity to another ball, which is round. This is done in lethargic sequence to a soundtrack of nil but the birds and the cracking of arthritic fingers. And then they want me to remove my R.M Williams just to walk on the grass. I believe it to be, unreservedly, silly. But, there are those who love it and while they’ll never make a convert of me, I must remind myself that are some people it’s a legitimate sport.

Sport for most people in this country include balls of some description, but for raw, visceral thrill, nothing trumps Formula One motor racing, and the 2014 season is about to start. Maybe I’m the strange one but I’m still meeting people who don’t love Formula One. “Its just cars going around in circles they say, it’s too noisy” they whine. I must remind myself about variety (for want of Moruga Scorpion pepper) being the spice of life and these well-meaning dullards leave tickets available for the rest of us.

It’s a lazy observation to just see a man in a car driving fast in circles, for that man within is an elite athlete at the peak of physical health and is car is the resolute application of nearly all known sciences in their purest form. A Formula One team is a polymath project; it’s about calculus as much as it’s about courage. These are drivers who spend hours a day in the gym working on such things strengthening the oft-neglected muscles of the neck just so their heads aren’t torn from their bodies by the lateral g-force that their cars can generate through corners.

G-force is representative of one atmosphere. Imagine the weight of the sky on your shoulders at all times. You don’t feel it, but imagine that times three or four, acting upon your neck, for hours at a time. Sure, David Coulthard was genetically predisposed for it, but it takes a lot of training for others. These drivers aren’t just errant thrill-seekers or revheads. They’re artists, perfectionists. They’re mortally committed to moving their vehicle from point a to point b as quickly as physically possible. It’s not a drag race floor-it-and-hold-on sort of operation. It’s about turn in accuracy, throttle position, entry speed, brakes, balance and balls. It takes Jedi reflexes and unremitting belief in the vehicle. 

These are after all, cars that become ‘safer’ the faster they go. Formula One cars are light. Their carbon fibre and witchcraft construction ensures this. Anyone who removes the golf clubs from the boot before the weekly commute knows that a lighter car is both faster and more fuel-efficient. But the inherent danger lightweight cars is their lack of purchase on the road but the lab coat geniuses in Formula One development teams thought of a way to combat lift-off years ago.

While the cars get lighter each year, they too get heavier. Okay ,bear with me… The body work of an F1 car isn’t just there to carry logos and look pretty. It’s wind tunnel designed, to be as sleek as possible and to run with as little as possible drag co-efficient. This is science talk for the ability of air to slow the car down, as it’s punching through it at 300km/h+. At high speeds, air actually becomes rather dense so the cars need to be able to penetrate though this invisible wall as best they can. But beyond that, the body is designed to channel the air through a series of ducts and venturis in the bodywork to provide down-force so the faster you go. The more the car weighs, giving vastly improved traction.

At high speed, this kind of trickery can produce up to three times the vehicles’ weight so if we’re talking about a 600-odd kilogram car, at speed that same car effectively weighs 1800kg! It’s actually been theorised that Formula One cars could drive upside down so long as there is a means of getting fuel and oil into the engine. You can’t play lawn bowls upside down.

“Sounds dangerous” moan the detractors. And sure it’s not what you might call safe. But the drivers understand this risk, so too the spectators, team bosses and pit-crews. The last driver to be killed racing F1 was the shockingly brilliant Ayton Senna. Killed only one day after Roland Ratzenberger on the same track in 1994. Since then, while cars have left the road and drivers have been stretchered from the circuit (notably Fellipe Massa in 2009, when he caught a loose spring with his head), many of the stories we hear of drivers coming to harm are from off the track.

Mark Webber broke his leg mountain biking in 2008, Kimi Raikonnen had a little too much champagne and bonked his head falling from his yacht in 2006, Lewis Hamilton was arrested for lighting up the rear tyres on his C63 in Mebourne in 2010 and while I shouldn’t make light of it here in this silly analogy, the recent tragically awful accident of Schmumacher’s in the French Alps is the worst the great man has suffered in a lifetime of racing.

F1 drivers are built for this sort of work; their bodies and brains are designed to work within the parameters of racing, within that elite zone where the room for error is zero to none. Just as well suited to the task the boffins and brainiacs behind the scenes who calculate all manner of hopelessly complicated formulae to extract every single ounce of performance from both their cars and drivers. It is an elite sport, its spectacular and its viscerally thrilling. It’s like horseracing without the cruelty and with nine hundred and twenty two times the horsepower. A damn side more exciting than rolling balls around the backyard of the RSL.  

http://www.formula1.com/

Bathurst Wrap Up 2013

Bathurst Review 2013

Technical Adviser and Sports Writer Dave Cutting

A man who loves his cat, cars and a single malt. 

David Cutting and his cat Percy

Waking up on top of Mount Panorama on the morning before the big race isn’t the most serene way to start the day. The sounds of trucks and cars going about the circuit start early. Earlier still start the legions of fans, who crawl and stumble bleary-eyed from their tents to make for the BBQ area via the Esky and the toilet block but not necessarily in that order.

In the centre of the camping area, a great pyramid of discarded beer cans risen up.

The collective boozy effort now casts quite a long shadow in the morning light and fans in both red and blue gaze upon it with a sort of reverent wonder as they pass by.
It’s not met with the same enthusiasm by the patrolling policemen some time later but they carry on without a fuss, all the while knowing it could take only forty-five minutes to rebuild if sabotaged.
There are rules enforced now as to how much alcohol one party can carry in on one day. One case per punter, per day. But it comes in hidden, it comes in via several trips and one enterprising race fan enlightened me to his last six weeks spent burying beer cases all over the mountain to be dug up on race day!

It’s ten to nine now, and there are regular passes by safety cars and tyre trucks along the stretch of racetrack known as ‘Skyline’. We are at the very top of the mountain, beside one of the fastest runs on the circuit. 

Most are awake now, the chatter is growing to a rumble and smell of steaks and sausages is thick in the air. The large LCD displays are on, in just over an hour the race will start. The Bathurst 1000 is a like a yearly pilgrimage for many of the fans around me. Bryan and Tori, a couple from Mittagong in their late forties have been coming since 1993. They don’t have children, but rather a superbly restored Monaro GTS350 in lime green with a black stripe. I chatted briefly to Tori as I lusted over her car.

“It’s just what we do. It’s an Australian thing, not just a Ford or Holden thing. These are the best people in the world. It’s almost like a big racing family.” 

Closer to ten now and the safety car is making a few final laps of the track before the supercars set out on the track. For the uninitiated, a V8 Supercar is a stripped out racing version of a road going car available to your or me. Namely the Commodore and the Falcon.

Craig Lowndes & Warren Luff Red Bull Racing 

Since 1995 the supercar series featured only two makes. Holden and Ford, both running five-litre naturally aspirated V8 engines (as per racing regulation) but this year we have seen the introduction of two new manufacturers, being Mercedes-Benz and Nissan racing the E63 AMG and Altima respectively. And next year, it appears Garry Roger’s Motorsport will be fielding Volvo S60’s. Originally, this kind of stock car racing was built on the condition that the cars in the race had to so similarly resemble road cars that the racers should be able to drive their cars to the track, but things (mostly safety regulations) have changed now and these modern racing leviathans are couriered to and from the track inside specially built trucks. In fact, from atop the mountain, the scores of trucks can be seen lined up behind the pits area like Tetris blocks. 

Suddenly the safety car appears on Skyline with some haste and followed by the racing pack out on a practice lap. The normally assertive Porsche Panamera now looks like a frightened rabbit running for dear life from the gnashing jaws of a pack of greyhounds. It’s not a race yet, but the sound of the cars coming over the mountain is a deafening roar of mechanical thunder. In an instant the glorious din billows through the camping area like the trade winds and carries away with it the last shreds of my lingering hangover, so I open another can of Victoria Bitter (tipple du jour on the mountain) and await the next passing of the cars. 

Skyline is a fast straightway with a small curve between a hill climb and descent so when the cars come back over that first crest under racing conditions, it’s a genuine spectacle.
 It’s full open throttle, turn-in, hang on, stand on the brakes again all in a flash of an eye and even from behind the several safety fences, it’s immediately apparent that the drivers are working incredibly hard to keep these fire-breathing beasts on the black stuff.

2013 Champions
Mark Winterbottom ('Frosty') & Steven Richards

But for all the raw excitement of seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting the V8’s up close, it’s a little bit difficult to understand the state of the race without continued reference to the huge LCD screen erected beside the campground. Still, no one is looking at it and I begin to understand exactly what it is that Tori was talking about by describing the fans as a family. The campground now is alive with celebration. The BBQ are full and roasting, the beers are flowing like mountain streams and the only breaks in conversation are to turn and raise a drink to the cars as they scream by.

To follow the race, this is an event best watched at home but to experience the true beating heart of motorsport culture in Australia, this is a total bucket list thing to do. 

http://www.v8supercars.com.au

Australian Open for all

There is nothing more exciting, as a journalist than sitting in the front row, of any major sporting event (for me there are three; The Australian Open, The Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Avalon Airshow). Of course, these events are strictly limited to Australia, because honestly, if I start to prattle on about international sporting events I could be here for a long time.

I’ll level with you, the AFL season is not of a particular interest of mine, however, I am exposed to it constantly as my Mother, a crazed Essendon ‘Bombers’ supporter seems to think that every new season, is a new season to try and convert me. So far she has not convinced me, nor has my sister in trying to bring my fandom to English Football (or soccer as we call it here in Australia). Rugby League, Golf, most Olympic sports, I’ll still stay honest; it just doesn’t sell me.

David Ferrer

So, as you can see, with only three events that enthuse so, my delight when ‘tennis time’ comes around is riotous and somewhat, uncontrollable.  By the time October prior to the event, flips the calendar, my tickets are bought (for January’s Australian Open) and the two weeks are planned out strategically.

This year did not disappoint, and with the semi finals seeing a battle between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, as a tennis fan, I couldn’t ask for more.  This year, Melbourne Park shone a little different. The gargantuan Heineken beer Garden seemed to trump years before, a smart and well thought out money-spinner. The grounds are being renovated, however they still managed to make the courts and the outside-seated areas, in front of large televisions, look good.

Na Li 

Here is where I will name my friend ‘The Serbian’. He won’t mind you see, especially so because Novak Djokovic, although losing the battle throughout the quarter final, still displayed a wonderful performance of passion, and that of a humble, and that of an understanding gentlemen; when he did not advance to the next round. I’m going to recount just one of my days at the tennis, because if I consider recounting more than one, we could be here until Wimbledon starts.

‘The Serbian’ and I arrived at the tennis around 12pm; it was a sweltering 44 degrees. We had good seats in Hisense Arena; the line up saw two separate matches, one including Tsonga, Rogowska, Monfils and the other Federer.

Walking through the grounds, we were greeted with the epitome of ‘tennis’ spirit. How the promoters could keep it together in this heat, I don’t know! ‘The Serbian’ and I had a bite to eat (I was pleasantly surprised when I found vegetarian rice paper roles to eat, and my friend opted for a healthy option also, usually sporting events see only food that puts your heart at risk of bypass).

Tennis Australia Spidercam 

We then, with a Powerade each in hand, made our way into the stadium. The women were playing, (Radwanska def. Govortsova) and although our seats were front row we opted for something higher up, something that would keep us in the shade. We found solace near a particular obese family, however trying to walk past them ‘The Serbian’ not having much room, was bumped into a concrete pole, leaving his knee rendered sore, painful and useless for the rest of the day.  All I can say about this is fat people in crowds, rolls eyes.

The more people that poured in, the hotter it got. We left the stadium, peeling away from the fat family and luckily we did. The heat had got to me. I awoke in the St Jones ambulance air-conditioned portable room, lying on a bed that resembled that of WW2. After an hour of monitoring, tennis Australia had decided to close the roof on both Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena; only after however 28 people had also passed out.

Novak Djokovic

The experience didn’t taint me, and thus my dear friend, ‘The Serbian’ looked after me with an abundance of the Jacob’s Creek Moscato rosé, which proved to be the perfect pick me up. We then sat, in comfort for the rest of the afternoon, particularly cooler, enjoying our countless wines and then finally, enjoying the finesse of Roger Federer. That man is like watching liquid gold, he is particularly limber, flexible like a ballerina and without awkwardness or robotic movement.

You see, Roger Federer is a marketers dream and it is evident why. The way he controls himself as a sportsman, his well-spoken, but slightly accented speech and finally, his all over class. ‘The Serbian’ and I were a little disappointed that their was only a fraction of player merchandise (only one Roger Federer cap and one Rafael Nadal cap) compared with ‘Aus Open’ merchandise, this for us was a little disappointing.

Evidently, I could continue, but it would only be to bore you. ‘The Australian Open’ is an event you must discover, even if you only buy a ground pass and sit with your friends on the lawn with a picnic, while watching the event on the big screens. It is safe to say that my dear ‘Serbian’ friend and I will be watching Friday Nights’ (January 24^th) match with bated breath (Nadal vs Federer). Can I choose between the two who I want to win? I simply can’t. It’s like asking the question “which of your children do you love the most”.

Roger Federer

If I have however, convinced you to join the tennis fanatics of Australia for the event, you should always, take your own personal ‘Serbian’. Why? They know a lot about tennis, their passion is unregistered and they always look after the ladies (never an empty wine glass and always an arm to help you down the stairs).

 It is also worth booking seats to Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena, as that is where most of the top players exhibit. Purchasing early in October means that you will get very good, possibly even front row seats. 

Above are a series of photographs, shot by Sunny Lim for © CLiQ photography at this years Australian Open. I’m sure his representation of this event is far more engaging than my own. 

https://www.facebook.com/CliQPhotography.com.au