UFO Info Week-End

It was too long and all it did was highlight the stupidity

“It was too long and all it did was highlight the stupidity of not knowing what fuel load each car is carrying.”However, the new rule that obliges each driver to make do with one engine for a grand prix weekend would militate against a return to the Senna days, when drivers had 12 laps of qualifying and generally split them into four three-lap runs.There were suggestions here that Formula One might revert to the 2003 format, where the second session on Friday afternoon determined the running order for a single hour of qualifying on Saturday afternoon. Those with memories long enough to recall the visceral thrill of watching Ayrton Senna preparing for his final run in the free-for-all days, and executing it with chilling precision, cringed unhappily.”I was punch-drunk at the end of the first hour,” one eminent writer ventured. But the first impression of this new format is that must-see moments were few and far between.”The drama was largely confined to rookie Christian Klien going off-road when his Jaguar’s power-steering hydraulics played up, and David Coulthard very publicly getting the final corner wrong and banging his McLaren around on the grass. We have lost the last-minute sense of excitement of the old days, but even last year we had the uncertainty that a heavyweight might make a mistake and have to start at the back. “It’s not that interesting for us, either, to be honest.”The ITV presenter Jim Rosenthal was equally disenchanted “It lacked a genuine sense of drama,” he said “And if it’s going to last longer than the race, that’s bad.

Even Michael Schumacher, who snapped up yet another pole position in a new Ferrari that looks every bit as deadly as its five-in-a-row title- winning predecessors, didn’t like it “Maybe you should complain,” he suggested. The resultant list of lap times is then reversed, to provide the starting order for a second hour of running, which follows immediately and determines the starting grid.Besides giving tail-enders such as Minardi no time whatsoever to make any changes to their car set-up, this proved a dismal failure It was, most observers agreed, an hour too long. There is no truth in the rumour that Charlie Whiting of Fia, the sport’s governing body, has been consulted about the leading teams incorporating headlights into their front-wing endplates, but when qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix lasted 20 minutes longer than the previous year’s race you knew that Formula One was in trouble.
Under the new rules a one-hour qualifying session begins at two o’clock local time on Saturday and drivers do their usual out lap, qualifying lap and in lap, starting in the finishing order of the previous race. But if you can’t enjoy the atmosphere of a big tournament with lots of top players here then you are in the wrong profession.”O’Meara, who now putts with his own gripping style called “The Saw” – “It ran out of gas on that putt at the last” – simply could not remember when he was in a similar position “I’m just thankful to be here,” said the 47-year-old “It’s been a while.”. This meant several trips to Largs, which this winter he combined with watching Celtic’s home games.”It was nice to chip in to finish, but the golf course completely changed today,” McGinley said “It got faster and was playing like a major The door has not been closed on anyone Someone could come from six or seven back. However, around the same time he suffered the “worst six months of my career”, and 18 months ago went back to the coaching of Bob Torrance. Yesterday they both opened with six pars before both birdieing the seventh and eighth holes.McGinley has not won since 2001, the year he qualified for the Ryder Cup team before holing the winning putt at The Belfry when it was played a year later.

That year Tiger and Bjorn played together in all four rounds, and O’Meara and McGinley will do so again here.On Friday, while catching up after all the fog delays, they conjured 24 birdies between them in 24 holes. At eight under par he is six behind the leaders, who hold a three-stroke advantage over Brian Davis, who is a further two ahead of Paul Casey, Bradley Dredge and Simon Dyson.Ernie Els played like a man with jet lag despite the fact he did not go to La Costa and finished at six under, alongside Colin Montgomerie, who had a lacklustre day playing with Woods until the Scot eagled the last.Els, twice the champion here, lost to Robert-Jan Derksen last year, while in 2001 Woods found the water at the last to lose to Thomas Bjorn. He has been paid in the region of $2.5m (£1.4m) for his trouble, but yesterday he again looked like a green-fee payer in wanting to see as much of the course as possible.Woods maintains his driving is not a problem, and perhaps it is not when you can yank your tee-shot at the eighth into bushes on the left of the fairway and then magic a recovery on to the green and hole a 60-footer for birdie.Woods scored a 69, and somehow has had only one hole over par in each of the first three rounds. Woods journeyed direct from California after winning the Accenture World Matchplay last Sunday.For successive tournaments to be 12 time zones apart is not the best of scheduling, but Woods does not seem to suffer from jet lag, which Darren Clarke, after his third-place finish at La Costa, blamed for missing the cut here.Of course, Woods has been put up in the best suite in a luxury seven-star hotel, but he has been busy too, playing in an exhibition match, the pro-am, doing a junior clinic and visiting the USS George Washington with O’Meara. It was O’Meara who persuaded his friend Tiger Woods to play here in 2001, and O’Meara also showed up last year when the world No 1 was supposed to compete but withdrew due to the imminent war in Iraq.For once O’Meara was not travelling TWA – Tiger Woods Airways – as he had been in Florida nursing a back injury and the pain of a number of missed cuts.