Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again.
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused.
As I’ve alluded to in a few previous posts, albeit in passing, the F1 season so far has not been at all as one might have expected. It’s a been a mass of harmonious confusion to be honest from week to week so far. And that’s a good thing, btw. The usual and expected suspects, until the checkers dropped earlier today at the Bahrain Gran Prix, with the exception of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, have been conspicuously absent from the podium…buried somewhere down the finishing grid. Today, a bit of the old order rose from the chaos as Sebestian Vettel went wire to wire for the win. And today, at last Kimi Räikkönen stood on the podium for the first time since his return to F1….along with his Lotus Renault teammate Romain Grosjean. Seb’s teammate Mark Webber just missed the podium finishing in 4th. But disorder and a sort of chaos still remains as Hamilton, despite starting 2nd, came lumping home in 8th while his teammate Button crawled across the line 2 laps down in 18th. The perpetually sullen Fernando Alonso slogged home in 7th just ahead of his old pal Hamilton. And other than Schumacher, who doesn’t count anymore and picked of 1 stinking point for a 10th place finish, the rest of the cats, none of whom you could pick out of a lineup, finished just about where you’d have expected them to have finished.
In NASCAR Sprint Cup, which has teed off at the Kansas Speedway as I type these words, a similar confusion of expectations reigns…at least from the standpoint of Hendrick Motorsports ((a/k/a The Evil Empire)). Jeff Gordon is sucking wind in 17th going into Kansas. Jimmie Johnson is ONLY in 8th at the moment. Kasey Kahne is buried in 27th…and clawed his way out of David Gillillilllland Land only by virtue of a 7th place finish at Texas last week. None of these boys have a win this season. Now mind, Junior is in 3rd behind the Roushketeers Kenseth and Biffle, but….I’ve never REALLY considered Junior a Hendrick driver, even though technically he is. Junior is a Nation unto himself. The real take-way from this unexpected NASCAR season so far is the emergence of the Roushketeers….Biffle and Kenseth, and the surprising submergence of The Carl, who’s sailing in their wake in 11th.
Finally, what to make of today’s 4-4 ManU(re)/Everton tilt? Everton comes from behind and held the door wide open for City who gladly obliged with a 0-2 beatdown of the hapless, relegation-bound Wolves at Molineux. The championship will go down to the wire. Tottenham’s slide continued yesterday with a 1-0 loss to Queen Park Rangers. Liverpool was dropped today by West Brom 0-1 at Anfield and surely King Kenny’s days are numbered. My Blues drew 0-0 with Arse(nal) yesterday in a match that was much better to watch than the scoreline would indicate. Now if only they can get through Barcelona at Camp Nou on Tuesday…then the World, will truly be wonderfully, magically, and harmoniously confused. A condition that makes life and sport much more interesting.