Languid

I'm spending some quality time laying about this morning. Oh, I got up extra early to watch LIVE Formula One Qualifying from Barcelona.

Qualifying was very informative today. During Q2, clouds rolled in cooling the track surface. Suddenly times dropped like a rock! Many frontrunner teams were almost caught out.

Going into the fifth race weekend of the F1 season, the biggest story is the 2012 Pirelli tires. This weekend Pirelli has brought two compounds, Soft and Hard, the first time there's been a two step difference between the Prime and Option tires. There's about 1.5 seconds difference between the two.

The Soft tire is becoming infamous for it's performance "dropping off a cliff" in short order, and this weekend in Barcelona is no different. Typically, the Soft tire is best on it's first lap, as long as the driver gets the tire up to temperature quickly without torturing the tire. It's a tightrope walking task...it's easy to overcook the tire and fall off the cliff before an optimum lap time can be recorded.

All this tire  kerfuffle has added extra adrenaline to the pit lane, but it's just delicious for fans. Even more strategy to ponder for fans, even more engineers trying to collect data and quantify it for high quality decision making down on pit lane...in short, pure gearhead entertainment!

As I Columbus this post, I'm streaming LIVE video from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the Month of May began in earnest with Opening Day and the first day of practice for the Indy 500.

It's a nice day in Indy for running a racecar...overcast, 46% relative humidity, calm winds and temps in the mid-70s. It's all very stately by IndyCar standards, lurid almost...comfy from where I sit...

Day one of practice ends in 12 minutes. Then I've got to figure out my Fantasy picks for the AMGEN Tour of California