Is Alonso’s success overnight?

In any competitive sport, luck can help you once but to perform consistently, one has to put hardwork and needs to be patient.

Formula 1’s rejuvenated hero, Fernando Alonso has just done that. With back to back wins in Singapore and Japanese Grand Prix, he has made a strong statement about his potential. Some Ferrari and McLaren fans might say that it was a fluke and with their share of bad luck, Alonso managed to win last two races. But winning back to back when your car is not as good as top 4, is something we should praise him for.

Ok, Alonso is doing well now, but how he is faring when compared to the top 5? Is he in the same league? Well, looking at last few races, we can say that ‘No, he is not in the same league, he is part of the higher league than top 5.’ This statement might look very aggressive considering the fact that Alonso was never in the title race for this season and his career was as good as putting a car on low gas. But there are stats to back it up that he is still the one. Have a look at the table below and you will understand, the consistent performances put up by Alonso as against bumpy ride the top 5 are going through. Alonso has amassed 35 points in last 6 races where maximum 60 points where available. In comparison, Hamilton (26), Massa (25), Kovalainen (25), Räikkönen (16), Kubica (16) are no where near to Alonso.



Figure 1 : Drivers statistics for last six races (click to enlarge)



Now you will argue that points in F1 are not true indicators as all positions from 9 onwards are just the same in terms of points (i.e. they all get 0 points). So, another statistic can be average ranking each player has achieved over last 6 races. For simplicity we will put a rank of 20 when the player did not finish the race and was not classified by FIA. In this perspective, we will see that Alonso with average rank of 5.7 is second only behind Hamilton (5.3) and is equaling Kovalainen (5.7). It is even more astonishing when you notice that he did not finish one race (results in ranking of 20) as against Hamilton or Kovalainen who finished all races. The other drivers are no where near to this consistent performance. Massa’s average rank is 7.5, Räikkönen is at 11, Kubica is 7.2.

What these statistics mean is that Alonso has performed better than others in last few races. Now, let’s go little deep to understand why it happened. There can be two ways. One, Alonso had a better car from Renault as against Ferrari, McLaren or BMW, or second, he is a better driver than all the others.

The first reasoning goes for a toss when we compare Alonso’s performance against that of his team mate over last few races. Nelson Piquet Jr is no mug in driving. He has won GP2 championship and is a very competitive racer. His car is by no means any different than that of Alonso’s. So why his average rank in last 6 races has been 11.9 and total points scored are mere 8? So, with same car setup, same engineers, same team one driver scores 35 points and other manages only 8. This only suggests that there is no doubt in slow and steady improvements in the team but Alonso is way beyond others when driving skills are considered which tilt the balance in favor of Renault.

By no means I am suggesting that other drivers are junk. Personally I am die hard fan of Kimi but in last few races Alonso has proved that he has in him what it takes to be a great driver and can be effective in car under him. After all, he managed to give a lot hard times to M Schumacher. Though for next seasons all major drivers seats are confirmed (all front running teams have extended their contracts with their current drivers), Alonso seems to be destined to stay in Renault. But just for sake of it, imagine Alonso in a scarlet Ferrari and I am sure your mind will go wrooooom !!! :)

Sony Ericsson P1i Review

To be honest, I was a genuine fan of Nokia phones all my life. Almost all the handsets I used till now were Nokia. I am not a person who will change handsets every 2-3 months. I like to really extract every drop of juice from the handset and then I move on. Till 2-3 months back, I was using Nokia CDMA 1110. A very basic model which was offered by my previous employer. Well, as long as I did not have to pay the usage bill, I was not complaining of using the lower handset and of the fact that I was not able to change the handset (CDMA, what else can I say!!)
Incidentally, I also bumped against Moto Razr V3i (this one I had presented my wife as her birthday gift). I went onsite for 3 months and as CDMA was useless out of the country, I carried the V3i. And Boy, it is a great handset !! I loved it. The style, the features, the camera, the expandable memory.. It was all very refreshing for me, especially after using Nokia basic models for years. :)
3 months back, I changed my company and that gave me an opportunity to look for new handsets. Suddenly, I found myself exploring all brands, all models. At one point of time, my family got bugged up, as much as I was into exploration, I was getting confused as well. Finally, I decided my criteria for new handset in terms of features and ceil value for the price.
Features:

1. Touch screen : Short listed : Moto Rokr, SE P1i, Moto Ming.


2. Any version of Office : Moto Q9, Nokia E series, Nokia communicator, SE P1i.


3. Wifi : SE P1i, Nokia Communicator


4. 3+ MP Camera with Flash : SE Cybershot series, Nokia N75, SE P1i.


5. Price : Within 20K : All the above except Nokia Communicator.

Being a software guy, I took logical decision to go for P1i. I read thousands of reviews and got to know about the good features it offers and also some of the drawbacks. This ensured that there are no surprises for me after I buy the handset.

Now, after using this handset for 2 months, following is my impression of it.
The things I liked:

1. Usability – the touch screen and the jog dial give a very convenient way to explore all menus, options.
   
2. Features – this handset is master of all. It has tons of features.
   Applications and utilities: Business card scanner is something I loved the most. Handwriting recognition is quite good. It also comes with office suite. A decent desktop tool for file transfer, sync, Blackberry email support, a couple of decent games. FM Radio is nice, although option to store only six stations is a drawback.
   
3. Communication - wireless lan, Bluetooth, USB interface, GPRS, Video conferencing (N/A for Indian networks).
   
4. Memory – it came with 128MB on board memory which outranks many other competitor models in the same range. It has a hot-swappable mini SD card slot. The handset package included 1 GB card which seems enough for me.
   
5. Camera – Camera for still shots as well as video. 3.2 MP still shot camera can work in many modes. The flash accompanies the camera. The image quality is nice but not something to die for.
   
6. Battery Life – Once fully charged, with moderate use (10-20 calls in the day and 1 hour of listening to music on speaker phone), the battery lasts for 3-3.5 days which I think is pretty good. Also the better thing is that it takes less than an hour to recharge a fully drained battery.

The things I did not like:

1. Keypad – Though it possesses a full QWERTY keypad, it is not the easiest to operate. To reduce the size of the handset and to reduce the number of keys, SE has introduced dual keys. i.e. if pressed on the left side of the key, a different character is printed and if pressed on the right side of the key, a different character is printed. So, for every letter user has to think where the character is located, and then he has to decide which side to press.
2. VGA camera – Apart from the 3.2 MP camera at the back of the handset, another VGA camera is fitted in front top-left corner. It can be used for video calls. But as in India, no operators support this, it is useless. I would have like to have an option to get rid of this camera and reduce the cost.
   
3. USB charging – Not sure what the root cause is, but I found USB charging works too slowly. It took almost 7-8 hours to get the battery to 80% charge level.
   

Also accompanying the handset is a desktop charger. Basically it’s a handset stand which can be connected to power plug for charging. As this is not very convenient to carry around, I seldom use it. SE also gives you 10 software choice points. These can be used to download some SE p1i related software. It is not very enticing as there are not many options available at 10 points. This is more of a advertising gimmick. :)

I do not want to stretch this article longer, so I will move to conclusion. I love this handset and I am waiting for lower GPRS charges by our telecom operators to make optimum use of this handset. I will recommend this handset to all those who want a stylish touch screen monster with tons of features, more importantly a 3.2 MP camera.

Adios,

Aamod Joshi