Ashes Fantasy Cricket League

With the Ashes series coming up, I've started a league in the official cricket Australia fantasy competition for this blog's readers. The address is http://fantasy.cricket.com.au/ and when you sign up, you will need to enter the league code 170599. It should be a lot of fun, Test cricket being one of the games most suited to Dream Team-like competitions (apart from Aussie Rules) and there is $20,000 in prizes to be won. My secret tip to winning is to not pick Nathan bloody Hauritz!

Split Averted... But Can Formula 1 Convert The Spare With The Tour Fast Approaching?

Almost as soon as any real consequences of the potential F1 series breakaway were considered, the split is now off. Max Mosley has agreed to resign from his presidency of the FIA and now the teams are placated. Read more here... if you think that this situation will hold together for any more than a few days before someone decides to play some more politics of doom. It is exactly this kind of politics which continues to dog Formula 1. Where there is money, prestige and power, some people will seek to control it for their own ends, regardless of the impact on other parties. Witness drug cheats like Alejandro Valverde as another example. Valverde has been banned from the Tour De France this year by Italian authorities (wait, France isnt part of Italy is it?) because of his involvement in infamous Operation Puerto. The Italian Olympic Committee banned Valverde from racing in Italy for 2 years and this year's Tour passes through Italy briefly (well that explains why Italian authorities are involved). Valverde reckons that the Italian Olympic Committee have no power over him because he is Spanish, but its only a matter of time until the UCI act on the same findings that the Italians have used. And anyway, the ASO which runs the Tour has a record of being probably the harshest sporting body in the world on drugs (and rightly so). Tom Boonen has been banned because he has twice tested positive for cocaine in the past year. And last year the whole Astana team was banned because of the team's history of doping in the 2007 Tour, robbing Alberto Contador of the right to defend his title (even though he was with Discovery Channel when the doping occurred at Astana). Cycling may have drug cheast, but atleast they are trying to fix the problem. No-one in F1 seems to want to throttle back the backroom scheming. Now, I'm not saying that this is anywhere near as bad as drug cheating, just that they are both similar types of problems.

FOTA vs F1

In recent weeks, the relationship between the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) and Formula 1 has grown increasingly fractured, until FOTA announced a week or so ago that they would form a breakaway championship next year. The big 3 reasons for this were money (budget caps), politics and freedom (technical). The only recognised teams left in the regular F1 championship for next year are now Williams and Force India. Presumably then, the FOTA championship will take over the niche that F1 has held within 2 years, and F1 will become a feeder category, because lets face it, nobody wants to see any competition that has a powerhouse like Force India a podium chance.

But more interestingly, what technical regulations will the FOTA championship have? Formula 1 has been vastly over regulated for a long time, curtailing engineering improvements to gradual aerodynamic improvements. There has been little innovation or real change since the pointy-up nose cone in the early 1990s. Soon after any team makes a real breakthrough, it is banned by the FIA who want a driver's series. If you want a driver's series, watch touring car racing. Formula 1 (or its FOTA replacement) should be about engineering the fastest possible car. Lets bring back some of the radical design ideas of the past...
The Tyrrell P34 for example, which raced in 1976-77.