Cav's Place

There has been quite a lot of rain here lately, plus a fair amount of wind and even some hail, but I managed to squeeze two more runs on Saturday and Monday, despite the continued lack of a working stopwatch. Initially meant to run once more Wednesday or today at the latest, but that’d have meant doing it under pouring rain or even in a storm, so I’m still waiting for a decent moment and right now I’m thinking of having a look tomorrow morning, to see whether I may be able to use that free hour, between 7 AM and 8 AM, for another ten kilometers on the track on no or next to no sleep. Will need some sort of stopwatch for that though, even if not that one.

Back to those two runs, they were on a seven-kilometer route through the park, created by adding what Google Maps says are 650 meters after two laps around the lake, so 6.4 kilometers. That final portion also included a climb, on a quite steep path listed as being about 90 meters long instead of the stairs, which added a bit to the difficulty, and I also once again finished at the park exit and went first to one side of that wide path and then the other to add just a little more to the distance. Plus, with Orthodox Easter being last Sunday, there were plenty of people in the park on Saturday and even more on Monday, so I once again had to find my way around them and at times slow or even briefly stop.
I also tried to get some rough times by taking my phone with me, even if it doesn’t have an actual timer and only shows hours and minutes, plus that it definitely made me slower while I was looking at it. For that purpose, I started right after the minute changed to one divisible by 10, which actually in both cases was 40, and then looked again as I was finishing each lap and also at the end, trying to count the seconds from the last or to the next change of minutes, depending on whether that change was after I started looking but before crossing the line or after. This obviously means there’s quite an error margin and when I wrote down the times I approximated the seconds to the nearest number divisible by five.
Either way, the total time on Saturday, when I actually made a point of taking it slowly, was about 39 minutes, with a first lap covered in about 18:10 and a second one in about 17:25, making for about 35:35 for two laps and about 3:25 for that final section. As for Monday, the total time was about 37:15, with a first lap covered in about 17:15 and a second one in about 16:55, making for about 34:10 for two laps and about 3:05 for that final section. I obviously have no other sector times, as I didn’t even try to check at other points.

Otherwise, I actually advanced just a little more in Hordes of the Underdark, though I keep thinking I chose a less useful weapon upgrade as the last one now, plus that I keep wondering about buying some awesome items. Or one awesome item in particular, as I pretty much decided against the other remaining one and bought the rest, but that one costs over one million and would leave me without quite enough for all options somewhere else, according to what I gathered after carefully glancing at a guide, trying to just catch these things I should really know about while still avoiding most spoilers.
That’s the sort of thing that makes me stop playing games, though it’s usually a matter of character development or choices made in quests or dialogues with consequences that only become obvious much later. But this is also a choice with consequences that are only obvious much later and leave you with pretty much no way to change the outcome when that happens, so it’s the same idea and it really doesn’t play well with my perfectionism. But I really mean to actually finish this game, so I’ll try to push through one way or another and maybe this time it’ll actually work.

Around this time in 2007, I wrote a post to mention that Telford United, after being born from the ashes of the bankrupt old club in 2004 and placed initially in the eighth division, had promoted to the sixth, after having promoted to the seventh at the end of the 2004-2005 season.
This was somewhat significant to me at the time since, after picking it randomly out of those in the lowest available division, which at the time was the fifth one in England, Telford United was the club I had managed whenever I played Championship Manager games but was unable to continue doing so when I switched to Football Manager, since that was right after the old club went bankrupt and the new one was in too low a division to be an option, the game going all the way down to the sixth in England. As a result, I gave up on Football Manager 2005 quite quickly and said I’ll try one of those games again after I’ll be able to get back to the team I was used to managing, which should have meant the 2007-2008 season. However, I never tried any of those games again after that and at this point I’m starting to doubt I ever will again, but I nevertheless continued to at least occasionally check on what Telford United was doing all these years and this time they were in real danger of returning to the seventh division for the first time since the 2006-2007 season.
To quickly go through the club’s promotion and relegation history after 2007, in 2008 and 2009 they reached the promotion playoff but failed to actually promote back to the fifth division, where the old club was before going bankrupt, then finally made it in 2011. Once there they struggled but managed to finish the 2011-2012 season just above the relegation line, only to relegate back to the sixth division in 2013. However, they then promoted directly in 2014, this marking the first time when the club won the division it was in since it was founded in its current form in 2004, all other promotions having been after winning playoffs. Sadly, they then relegated right back in 2015.
This season they found themselves struggling to even remain in the sixth division, only managing to secure a spot above the line one round before the end, thanks to their win over Worcester City on April 23. Since I see they lost to Chorley yesterday and Brackley Town won while Lowestoft Town drew, this means they may have ended up in the last spot above the line but in the end were two spots, though still just a single point, above it, having 47 points while Brackley Town and Lowestoft Town finished with 46 each, the latter relegating.
As such, to get back to why I became interested in the club in the first place, I guess they’ll remain an option next season as well, just in case I’ll care to try one of those games again. The chances of that are pretty much zero not only for this year but for several more to come, but I guess it’s not entirely impossible that I eventually will, someday.

While I’m at it, looking at the top of the English football, Leicester sure is close to an amazing win. The draw with Manchester United wasn’t enough to make them clinch it today, but they may still do so in this round 36, two from the end of the season, if Tottenham won’t defeat Chelsea tomorrow. Not that Tottenham being second is something one’d normally expect either, and the same can be said for Chelsea being well outside the positions granting access to any European cup, or of Aston Villa being last, so many points below the next team above it and having been mathematically relegated many rounds before the end of the season.

And to finish with a glance at the far less interesting Romanian championship, Astra just managed to clinch the title about an hour ago after Steaua only managed a draw with Pandurii, leaving five points between the two with one match to go for Steaua. Astra still has two matches left, as they play Dinamo tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter anymore at this point and I wonder if they won’t even want to lose in order to give Dinamo a small chance to grab second spot from Steaua. That’d require Steaua losing to ASA Targu Mures in the last round, which seems pretty much impossible, and it won’t make any difference in terms of European cups, since Dinamo is in the same position as ASA and CFR Cluj, not being allowed to compete at the European level due to financial problems, but I’m sure they’d still want to finish above their traditional rivals regardless of anything else and any team that bitterly fought against Steaua may well be inclined to help them do so.

After wandering around the city for a while to compare some prices and get a few things last Tuesday, last week’s run was on Thursday and it was another ten kilometers, once again through the park, so three laps around the lake and then up the stairs and continuing to run all the way to the park exit. For once, I didn’t meet the target time, but that was a particularly ambitious 53 minutes instead of what can be said to be the usual 55, so 17-minute laps and then two more minutes for that final part. Either way, the 53:49 I did manage was closer to this new target than to the 54:43 managed when I first ran this route, which was also the better time of my until then two attempts at ten kilometers, the other being the 54:59 managed on the track.
Since I managed to keep the exact times in mind long enough to write them down then, I’ll list them here as well: Covered the first lap in 17:15, with sector times of 4:52 and then most probably 5:50 and 6:33, though these last two are the only ones I’m not sure I remembered that accurately, as I may have rounded that second sector to 5:50 in my mind when in fact it may have been a second faster or slower, which’d also make the third a second slower or faster, as the case may be, since the total lap time is certain. Then the second lap was covered in 17:23, with sector times of 4:58, 5:34 and 6:51, respectively, the third lap was covered in 17:18, with sector times of 5:07, 5:34 and 6:37, respectively, and then I managed a quite nice 1:53 on that final part, despite again moving to one side of that wide path before returning to the other before the park exit, to add a little to the distance.
Problem was that I didn’t feel well from the start, being somewhat nauseous and feeling other things not being quite right in my belly, including a fair amount of rather painful gas at one point. Pushed through that and also through the usual issues with my right leg, needing one and a half to two laps to get that knee and hip to stop moving in such wrong ways and work through the pain resulting from that, so it was actually getting better towards the end, as the time I managed on that final section proves, but it definitely wasn’t a comfortable run. Also, the way the lower part of that leg hurt later made it clearer that I may have the beginning of a fibular stress fracture there, but more on that later.

This week’s run was yesterday and the result was a great but uncertain time on what were probably 9.7 or 9.8 kilometers, but at the same time a complete failure that really messed up my plans at this point. And the reasons for it can quite clearly be described as technical, because the goal was to see how long I’ll manage to maintain a certain pace but my stopwatch stopped working at the end of the third lap. I’m not even sure whether it stopped when I pressed the button to temporarily freeze the display right when I finished that lap or slightly before that, which is why I said that total time of 51:24 is uncertain, as something around 51:30 seems more likely.
The idea was to try to cover five laps around the lake, so 16 kilometers, but I was ready to stop sooner if I’d fall behind the target times, even though there were a few different possible targets. The primary one was 1:27:00 for the five laps, so 17:24 per lap, with a secondary one of 1:27:30, for a more even 17:30 per lap, and one of 1:28:00 to fall back to if I was still fine after four laps but needed to slow down on the fifth. However, the ideal target was to gain a minute over the primary one over the five laps, making for an ideal target lap time of 17:12, which I rather doubted I’ll manage but meant to try if possible. And the fact that I did manage it for those first three laps even considering the other problem I’ll mention below makes it even more annoying that I couldn’t keep going.
The thing is that I first ran into trouble around a third of the way into the first lap, so after just over one kilometer, when I noticed that a part of the path around the lake was closed due to some work being done and somebody was instructing people to go around. That probably only added around 50 meters in terms of distance, but having to go over uneven ground and climb before getting back down once past that portion definitely had a greater impact on the effort required than the small additional distance in itself, so I was ready to consider a lap time goal met even if I’d have been several seconds short of it. In fact, with an ideal target lap time of 17:12 for the 3.2 kilometers, even simply an additional 50 meters would have meant about 16 seconds, but I definitely wasn’t trying to calculate that in my head at the time.
Either way, assuming my stopwatch wasn’t already malfunctioning by then, I completed the first lap in a quite surprising under the circumstances 16:59, with sector times of 4:48, 5:47 and 6:24, respectively. I was obviously overcompensating for that small detour, so I slowed down just a little in the second lap, managing a 17:11, with sector times of 4:50, 5:48 and 6:33, respectively. Then in the third lap I was tiring a little, even though at the same time I had again only managed to work through the pain and the odd movements of my right knee and hip over the course of the second lap, so the first two sector times were 4:55 and 5:55. Then, at the end, my stopwatch displayed 51:24, making for a third sector time of 6:24 and a third lap time of 17:14. However, it seems likely that it actually stopped shortly before I finished the lap, so that’s probably not accurate.
I did try to pick up the pace a little towards the end of that third sector and lap, but I did so because I saw a total time of 50:44 in a spot that should be just under a minute from the end of the lap and 51:11 in a spot that I think is usually about 25 seconds from the end at long distance pace, so it is perhaps likely that I covered that distance in 20 seconds since I pushed, but 13 definitely seems pretty much impossible. Plus that I think I glanced at the watch sort of by accident a few seconds before finishing the lap, as I was grabbing it with the other hand to be ready to push the button that temporarily freezes the display just as I’ll finish the lap, and I may have seen it display 51:24 at that point already, though I’m in no way sure of that.
So I took a few more steps, pressed the button again to unfreeze the display and saw that nothing happened. Pressed again, still nothing, so I stopped and wondered whether I had accidentally pressed the other button and stopped the timer, even though in that case it should have reset to zero when pressing the button that freezes the display while it’s running. However, pressing that again, thinking I’ll simply time the last two laps separately and then add the two times together, did nothing either, so I turned around, tried pressing the other two buttons a few times as well, but nothing did anything. The light didn’t come on, it didn’t switch between time, timer and alarm, and the timer neither kept going nor reset, so there was nothing to do but give up on that run, since the whole point was maintaining a certain pace and simply covering the distance otherwise would have only served to make my right leg worse.

Speaking of that leg, the knee doesn’t worry me too much, as I’ve had issues there for many years and it seems to act up after covering a certain distance, even while simply walking, but is usually fine again after a day or, at most, two. The hip I’m not so sure about, but that’s another thing I’ve been having small issues with for many years, in fact ever since I was little, probably even before the knee, and while something feels slightly different now, overall it’s probably along those same lines and gets better after some rest. So that leaves the potential stress fracture.
No, it’s quite clearly not an actual fracture yet, but it will probably get there if I keep pushing and it definitely felt bad last evening, and also after last week’s run and last Friday’s walk. Now I’m sure the problems started when I ran the distance of a half marathon and then walked a fair bit more only days later, but it didn’t feel this bad then, so I should be staying off my feet for a while instead of doing what I’m doing, but I can’t quite afford to do that just now, so have to control the effort somewhat and hope it’ll hold a while longer. I mean, it’s definitely not the tibia, which would be the more serious problem in that area, and some quick searches say that you can run with the beginnings of a fibular stress fracture for quite some time until it actually cracks. You shouldn’t, of course, as there’s no telling when it’ll give and you’ll need a couple of months to heal if it does, and I’m quite sure I’ll need to see a doctor and assess the damage in a few weeks, but hope I won’t need to do so sooner.

Since I mentioned last Friday’s walk, that was to a question and answer session with Nicusor Dan, who’s the candidate I support for the office of mayor of Bucharest. Voted for him in 2012 as well, when he ran as an independent, but now he has a party and they have people running for all available positions here, so also a list for the city council, lists for each of the six sector councils and people for each of the six positions of sector mayors. They also gained a decent amount of visibility and also attracted some funds, though they already spent most of them on gathering the required signatures, being the only new party who just barely managed to do so in Bucharest. What he said then, just a few days before the deadline, was that they were still a few hundred signatures short of the minimum and about one thousand short of their goal for two of the sectors, and they wanted a few hundred more for three of the other sectors as well, since some will likely be rejected for various reasons.
Still, the part I had the most trouble with that evening wasn’t walking there and back and then my right foot reminding me I shouldn’t have done that until the next day, and every so often during that next day as well. What messed me up the most was what happened before the session actually started, as the time was listed as 6 PM and I got there on time, he arrived minutes later, but there were barely a few others present. Counted over 50 after 8 PM, but people definitely took their time arriving, as only a handful were there even at 7 PM, when things did start, so at first he sat down at a table with a few that I guess were members of his staff and one other person who asked to join them to ask a few questions directly, but then I saw him get up and sit down at the table next to mine, to talk to the person who was sitting there, nodding towards me as well.
Of course, I tried to listen in, but after a while the discussion got to the mess the Liberals are in and I wasn’t that interested in that, so I stopped listening, looked away and sort of drifted off, waiting for something else to happen… Until I suddenly noticed somebody sitting down next to me, and then almost froze when I realized it was him. I mean, sure, I know him from protests as well, but I think the only time we talked, if it can be called as such, was when we exchanged probably a sentence each at a small one in Izvor Park and I’m scared enough of people and of interacting directly with those I’m not already close to even without also being surprised in such a manner… And without the person in question being someone who’s going places, if I may use the term, which only adds to the stress.
As such, I said something quite stupid at first and I’m sure I made things awkward past that point as well, in part by laughing at inappropriate times and appearing not to take things seriously. He actually seemed nervous as well, rocking the table, which I’m guessing had to do with the signatures they were struggling to gather, and he did get up and move to another table after a few minutes, staying there for much longer, but he was very open when it came to answering what I did manage to ask and even volunteered a couple of things. Sadly, I didn’t manage to say the one thing I meant to say to him directly, about his campaign slogan, as the one relevant thought I managed to cling on to had to do with what I had posted on his page earlier that day and I couldn’t remember anything else at that time, and later I obviously didn’t speak up during the actual question and answer session. Still, there were a few more interesting things I learned that evening.

I guess I could also mention that I got bitten by a cat while there. Not entirely sure it was male, but I’ll use “he” to refer to him anyway, and he was jumping on tables, begging for both attention and food. Didn’t seem to find me interesting enough to stick around even when I managed to pet him a bit, but after a while he definitely found a girl sitting at a table next to mine very interesting though, or more specifically he found her food very interesting, pretty much climbing on her when she tried to hold it away from him. And, of course, once she did give him a little bit, he came right back for more until someone working there picked him up and dropped him a short distance away. Wasn’t long at all until he was right back, however, and she was trying to keep him both away from her food and off the papers she had, so I picked him up and dropped him a couple of steps away as well. Didn’t help, of course, as he was right back there immediately, so I picked him up again, saying it’s not nice to bother people, and he sure didn’t like that, as he meowed angrily a couple of times and then bit my wrist when I walked a bit away with him and kept holding him.
I dropped him at that point, asking what that was about, and the cook came out to give him something to eat, which kept him busy for a while. Not for that long though, and when he was done, he jumped on the table I was sitting at, with two other people who had arrived later, and only paid attention to them for the fair amount of time he sat there, keeping his butt towards me, even though they were pretty much ignoring him. The guy even said as much when an employee came and warned them that if they’ll give him any attention they won’t get rid of him, and if they’ll give him food as well they’ll probably take him home, since that’s how he acts.

As for the part about Quest for Infamy, it doesn’t mean I started playing it, but I did install it last Monday… And then had it freeze my computer that night, requiring a hard reset, as I was trying to find ways to take screenshots and switching to DirectDraw in the settings caused that to happen when I started it in full screen, after seeming to work normally in a window. So I’m definitely waiting for version 2.0 of that, which I was told will be available for the GOG version as well, and will likely play it in a window even then, which also seems to be the way to grab screenshots. And I probably won’t be fooling around with settings that much either.

After the failure of the new Formula 1 qualifying format after only two races and the official announcement that the previous one will be used for the rest of the season, I started thinking of some other format that will add to the excitement while doing without the flaws of this failed new format. In a way, I guess I was trying to mix elements of the one-lap qualifying format from more than a decade ago with this previous and now once again current one, to come up with something fairer than the former and more exciting than the latter.
That said, splitting the cars into two or three groups, as described below, does leave some room for unfairness and abuse in case conditions worsen, which usually means rain starting or being heavy enough that more water accumulates on track than the running cars can clear away, during one part of qualifying, but there are ways to sort that issue out and I’ll mention them at the end. Along with that, I’ll also mention a number of other variations that may be considered, mainly because what I suggest would extend qualifying by up to ten minutes and some may be unhappy with that, and the way in which this model would apply to 18, 20, 24 or even 26 cars, as the numbers I’ll use below refer to the current 22-car grid.

To start with the definitions, my suggestion would split qualifying into four parts instead of the current three, so I’ll keep the same naming convention and refer to them as Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, respectively. However, since the cars taking part in Q1, Q2 and Q3 will be split into groups, you may also see Q1-1, Q1-2, Q1-3, Q2-1, Q2-2, Q2-3, Q3-1 and Q3-2 when I’ll be referring to a specific group. Since there will be no such split in Q4, there will be no Q4-1, as that’d be pointless.
Considering the current 22-car grid, Q1 will consist of two groups of seven cars and one group of eight, which I’d say should be Q1-3, to offer a bit more space on the track for those who’d normally be expected to need to fight for a Q2 spot. Then, after eliminating the slowest four in Q1, Q2 will be left with 18 cars, split into three groups of six. Another six will be eliminated after Q2, leaving the fastest 12 into Q3, split into two groups of six. And then, once the slowest six in Q3 will be eliminated as well, the remaining six will fight for the top spots in Q4.
The Q1 classification will be used to determine the Q2 groups and the Q2 classification will be used for the Q3 groups. For the purposes of splitting the cars into groups in Q1, the current drivers’ classification will be used starting from the second race of the season. In case of the first race of the season, the previous season’s constructors’ classification will be used, with the previous season’s drivers’ classification used to decide which driver will start in one group and which in another for the team that will be split in such a manner, even if one or both of the drivers in question changed teams since then. If neither of this team’s drivers raced the previous season, I’m in favor of handing over this decision to the team, as coming up with other fair methods to break the tie is likely too much trouble for something of too little relevance.
In Q1, Q2 and Q3, each group of cars will have five minutes of track time, while in Q4 that will be reduced to three minutes, but any car that crossed the line before the timer reached zero will be allowed to complete the lap. For Q4, that means drivers will have three minutes to find track position and complete an out lap, while those who have enough fuel to do so will get the chance to complete two flying laps, and perhaps even three on particularly short tracks, in Q1, Q2 and Q3.
If the conditions are poor on one of the longest tracks and race control determines that not all drivers will be able to find track position and complete an out lap before the end of the three minutes, Q4 should obviously be extended accordingly. While this may also happen for Q1, Q2 and Q3 if race control determines that many will be unable to do more than a single flying lap, I’d rather it didn’t, as I’d find it even more exciting to give drivers even less room for error just under the most difficult conditions. Plus that adding one or two minutes at the end won’t make much of a difference when it comes to the total time, but adding one or two minutes in up to nine different places will.
Within each part of qualifying, the timer for the next group will start as soon as the one for the previous group reaches zero, so, for example, if the last car crossing the line to start its last flying lap in Q1-2 does so just before the end of the five minutes, the first car starting its out lap as soon as the light turns green for Q1-3 will be right behind it on track. This means drivers from one group on out laps won’t get in the way of those from the previous group on flying laps, and it’ll be their job to find track position so as not to start their own first flying laps too close to those on in laps, at the end of their session.
The five-minute break between the parts of qualifying will be maintained, however, and it’ll still be counted from the moment the track is clear, the last car finishing its in lap and entering the pits. This means that, if there are no extensions or red flags, a qualifying session will last a total of 58 minutes plus the amount of time needed for the last car on track in Q1-3, Q2-3, Q3-2 and Q4 to complete its final flying lap and the subsequent in lap. Seeing as the current format makes qualifying last for 55 minutes plus the amount of time needed for the last car on track in Q1, Q2 and Q3 to complete its final flying lap and the subsequent in lap, I find the difference entirely acceptable.
Still, seeing as this format offers drivers only one chance, possibly allowing them to complete more than one flying lap in Q1, Q2 and Q3 but only if they stay on track, unable to return to the pits and try again, interruptions will obviously have more of an impact. In case of red flags, it’s clear to me that the part of the session they were brought out in will need to be restarted for the affected group unless this happens at the very end, when all drivers still on flying laps are past the troublesome part of the track by the time of the announcement and should therefore be allowed to complete their laps normally. Yellow flags, on the other hand, will need to be judged on a case by case basis and likely used far more sparingly, so not for every little issue but only for those that present a real threat yet not quite enough of one to justify a red flag. But that’s something I actually keep wishing to see in general…

Using this system with a different number of cars is quite simple, though it can probably be said that it’s actually best suited for a 24-car grid, as in that case Q1 will consist of three groups of eight cars and six will be eliminated before Q2, after which it’ll continue just as for the current 22-car grid. In the unlikely case of a 26-car grid, Q1 will get rather crowded, with one group of eight and two of nine, which seems to be a bit too much, especially on short tracks, but I guess it could be manageable, though I’d rather see eight eliminated before Q2 in order to continue the same way as for the current 22-car grid from that point forward. Another option would be to only eliminate the slowest six at the end of Q1 even in case of 26 cars, making for a Q2 with two groups of seven and one of six, and then for a Q3 with two groups of seven after six more will be knocked out. In such a scenario, it’ll also remain to be seen whether eight or six will be eliminated after Q3, making for either the usual six-car Q4 or a rather crowded eight-car one.
In case of 20 cars, Q1 will consist of two groups of seven and one of six, but I feel that only eliminating two at the end of it in order to stick to the system used for the current 22-car grid from Q2 onwards would be too little, so I’d rather stick to four being eliminated after Q1, making for a Q2 with either one group of six and two of five or, though it may not be the best idea on the shortest tracks, two groups of eight, before eliminating four more in order to get back to the system used for the current 22-car grid for Q3 and Q4. In case of 18 cars, on the other hand, it’d be easy to simply get rid of what’s described as Q1 above and start directly with what’d be Q2 for the current 22-car grid, but I’d personally rather keep the four-part system, with four knocked out at the end of Q1, Q2 and Q3, making for a Q2 with two groups of seven and a Q3 with two groups of five, before the usual six-car Q4.

As stated above, I see the slightly increased duration of the qualifying session as completely acceptable. However, though I definitely wouldn’t want to see this happening, I guess it could be possible to reduce the duration while mostly preserving this format by leaving only two groups in Q2, though this will likely require knocking out more cars in Q1 if there are more than 20 on the grid, or even if there are exactly 20, as I see groups of nine as a bit of a stretch on many tracks and even those of eight, especially past Q1, as on the limit for shorter ones.
Another method to reduce the total duration would be to remove the break between Q1 and Q2 or, in case the drivers taking part in Q2 will remain split in three groups, also by removing even the break between Q2 and Q3. Obviously, if any drivers who were in the last group in one part of qualifying ended up having poor enough results to need to compete in the first group of the next, they won’t be able to do so if there will be no break, so they’ll need to be moved to the second one while those who were just above the line will take their place, which won’t exactly be fair, but I guess it could be argued that their better previous results grant them this right.

With only five or ten minutes between the start times of the first and the last group in one part of qualifying, as opposed to about an hour between the first and the last driver in the old single-lap format, it should be quite rare that conditions will worsen enough to make starting early clearly be the preferred option. Temperature variations shouldn’t usually be significant enough even in case of qualifying sessions taking place in the evening, while in case of continued light rain the cars competing in one group are likely to leave a drier track for those in the next.
However, if significant rain will start between groups or if it’ll be heavy enough that water will keep accumulating on the racing line despite the running cars, the system will become unfair, as those with better results will be penalized by starting later, so under those circumstances race control should probably have the right to remove the groups and pretty much revert to the current format, allowing all cars on track for a ten-minute part of the session. And this may also be done if there have been multiple red flags that caused parts of the session to restart, though I’m not keen on the idea and think a better way would be to offer additional sets of tires to the drivers who needed to run more times as a result, to make up for those used under those circumstances.

As far as I can tell, this system should maintain a high level of excitement throughout the qualifying session, final times being set almost constantly and small mistakes potentially generating surprising results, while getting rid of the situation introduced by the system used for this season’s first two races, when most drivers were eliminated without even being on track and the end of each part of the session tended to be disappointingly quiet. Also, splitting the cars into groups should strike a decent balance between offering sufficient space on track and some incentive for drivers to strive for good times in each part of the session on the one hand and reducing the potential for abuse and unfair conditions brought by the old single-lap qualifying format on the other.

After a recent announcement that it was likely to happen, today it became official: The EBU has withdrawn the Romanian national public broadcaster, TVR, from all member services due to unpaid debt, the immediate obvious effect being that our entry, Ovidiu Anton’s “Moment of Silence“, can no longer take part in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, nor can TVR broadcast the competition. Of course, there are other effects as well, such as when it comes to the news TVR broadcasts, and if the situation won’t resolve itself by then they won’t be broadcasting our national team’s qualifying matches for the 2018 World Cup, nor the competition itself or a number of other competitions they had contracted through the EBU.
The situation from the EBU’s point of view is explained in the article I linked to above and TVR doesn’t make different claims, only pointing out that they did pay the participation fee for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, just because they had notified the EBU since the start of the year that they won’t be able to make any more payments otherwise and therefore expected such a decision but nevertheless hoped that by paying this fee on time the ESC participation won’t be affected. The Government, on the other hand, passed the responsibility to the Parliament and also stated that paying one of TVR’s debts would have discriminated against all others who are owed money, considering TVR’s desperate financial situation.

Now I understand that the EBU is doing this just to try to generate a wave a discontent, causing the public to pressure the Government and Parliament in the hope that this will finally make them pay TVR’s debt when all their other attempts quite obviously fell on deaf ears, but it’s definitely not fair to punish the artist for something that has absolutely nothing to do with him. I mean, he took part in the national selection five times before finally winning, now also took part in the promotional events organized before the competition, I imagine also invested a certain sum of money in this, and suddenly he finds himself kicked out through absolutely no fault of his own. If TVR no longer being able to broadcast the competition should still leave viewers the option of watching it on-line, what is he left with?
Some are suggesting to at least allow him to perform the song as part of the interval act, which I guess would be the very least they could do, but from where I’m standing that’d be too little and perhaps not worth the trouble and expenses for him and his team. This really shouldn’t affect the artist, who fairly won his right to be there and actually compete, so what I’m saying is that it’s fair that the EBU stops providing any services for TVR until the debt is paid or a new agreement is reached and as a result Romania probably shouldn’t get to vote in the competition, but Ovidiu should be allowed to compete as if nothing happened. And, looking into the future for a moment, not allowing TVR to broadcast other competitions that aren’t freely available on-line harms viewers more than TVR, so that hardly seems fair to me either, a more suitable penalty perhaps being to actually force TVR to broadcast them but without any sort of advertisements or sponsorship deals, so they won’t be able to earn money from things they didn’t pay for.

But this is longer than I meant it to be already, so allow me to also point you to a petition that was hastily created by somebody. If there will be others as well, I may edit this to add them, since that’s rather poorly written, but for now that’s the one I know of and linking to it is the least I can do. Not that the decision is likely to be reversed even in the extremely unlikely scenario that the debt will be paid, much less simply as a result of a petition, and the EBU made this clear, but it may still be worth something, at the very least to the artist, and perhaps when it comes to making other arrangements for those other competitions TVR contracted through the EBU as well.