final grand prix

This weekend sees the final race of 2011 at Interlagos in Brazil.

The championship was decided a while ago of course and it's actually fairly rare that it comes down to the wire, so since Brazil is normally towards the end, usually it's been decided before then.

The place where the race is in Brazil is not a particularly nice area, as I understand it.  Brazil has a lot of poor people and big slum areas, and I believe the track is close to one of those.

This usually leads to someone getting robbed or mugged or something similar.  This usually makes the headlines, but the media generally reports it as crime, rather than focusing a spotlight on the poverty.  I mention this specifically because in India that was clearly the angle they'd gone for - F1 is profligate and rich but India's poor, so do the Indians really want it?

It's a ludicrous argument of course.

Football is wasteful and rich, with big British team players being paid ludicrous salaries and tickets costing a small fortune, but I don't hear anyone saying there shouldn't be football allowed in India.

And any sort of argument that anyone can play football is only on slightly firmer ground.  Okay, very few people ever become F1 drivers, but then few ever become premier league players of football.  And there's lots of motor racing people can have a go at, from rallying to carting.

Anyway, got sidetracked a bit there.

Brazil is usually a really good race.   The circuit has always had lots of opportunities to pass and it's not uncommon for it to rain and make things a bit complex for the teams.  I'll be interested to see what happens with things like DRS and KERS - could this be a track where they're not really needed?  Could they make things silly in terms of passing and repassing, etc?

The race will be on fairly late in the evening as it's run on local time, which is always interesting.

I will hopefully also go and get a haircut at some point this weekend.  It's really becoming something of a mop head at the moment.

And I'll also hopefully be able to get some more stuff on e-bay.  I put a lot of the DVDs I ripped up there last weekend.  I thought about putting some up that I hadn't ripped, but it's always risky doing that.

I've done it before with things I hadn't quite finished, and if something happens it can be very tricky.  The obvious example this time is not finding the time, but I've also had problems ripping some of the DVDs and while I sorted them, that suggests there's a risk of delay or finding one that just won't rip at all.