Bahrain Grand Prix – Race notes
It’s been a really busy couple of weeks for me so I haven’t had a chance to post some of the latest F1 news or even to watch Practice or Qualifying for this race, but I wasn’t going to miss the first race of the 2010 season!
As usual, my notes are after this cut… Read more
Bahrain Grand Prix – Qualifying
I didn’t see Qualifying before I saw the race, but I’ll back-date my notes so they appear in the right order.
Qualifying 1 (Q1)
Pit lane lights turn green and the first car on track is Di Grassi for Virgin
Di Grassi posts 2:02.131 for the first provisional pole of the 2010 season
Alonso (Ferrari) 1:55.972
(Button 1:56.130)
(Hamilton 1:5.976)
Rosberg goes P2 … not that it matters too much – everyone just wants to avoid the bottom 7 spots
(Schumacher P8)
5mins gone = 10mins left of Q1
Rosberg 1:55.463
Massa 1:55.313
(Vettel P2)
Halfway through Q1 – only Webber yet to set a time
(Webber goes P3 on his first flying lap)
5mins left; bottom 7 are Kobayashi, Trulli, Glock, Kovalainen, di Grassi, Senna & Chandhok
MW runs wide just as goes fastest in Sector 2 … but still takes P1 with a 1:55.298
SV 1:55.029
(New driver Petrov goes P9)
FA 1:54.612
(Sutil P3)
Chequered flag marks the end of Q1
Kobayashi jumps to P15
So the back of the grid will be: P18=Alguersuari; 19=Glock; 20=Trulli; 21=Kovalainen; 22=Di Grassi; 23=Senna; 24=Chandok.
Qualifying 2 (Q2)
Vettel & Buemi are first out of the pit lane
SV 1:54.035
4mins left of Q2; in the “knockout zone” (as the FIA call it) are Button, Liuzzi, Hulkenberg, de la Rosa, Kobayashi, Petrov & Buemi
3mins left – long queue of cars leaving the pit lane for 1 flying lap each
Chequered flag with almost everyone on a flier
JB scrapes P10, relegating former teammate RB
Mid-grid will be: P11=Barrichello; 12=Liuzzi; 13=Hulkenberg; 14=de la Rosa; 15=Buemi; 16=Kobayashi; 17= Petrov.
Qualifying 3 (Q3)
Battling for the front of the grid are: Alonso, Button, Hamilton, Kubica, Massa, Rosberg, Schumacher, Sutil, Vettel, Webber.
The top 10 cars will start on the same tyres (not just the same compound) as they use in Q3
FM 1:55.131
FA 1:55.072
(LH 1:56.828 for P3)
The pit lane is busy as everyone prepares for a final (or for 6 of them, only) flying lap
(AS P3)
Chequered flag ends the session
SV 1:54.101
(MW P4)
(FM P2)
(LH P4)
(FA P3)
(JB P7)
(MS P7)
So the front of the grid is: P1=Vettel; 2=Massa; 3=Alonso; 4=Hamilton; 5=Rosberg; 6=Webber; 7=Schumacher; 8=Button; 9=Kubica; 10=Sutil.
The provisional grid:
- Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull Racing)
- Felipa Massa (Ferrari)
- Fernando Alsonso (Ferrari)
- Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes)
- Nico Rosberg (Mercedes GP)
- Mark Webber (Red Bull Racing)
- Michael Schumacher (Mercedes GP)
- Jenson Button (McLaren-Mercedes)
- Robert Kubica (Renault)
- Adrian Sutil (Force India)
- Rubens Barrichello (Williams)
- Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India)
- Nico Hülkenberg (Williams)
- Pedro de la Rosa (BMW Sauber Ferrari)
- Sebastien Buemi (STR-Ferrari)
- Kamui Kobayashi (BMW Sauber Ferrari)
- Vitaly Petrov (Renault)
- Jaime Alguersuari (STR-Ferrari)
- Timo Glock (Virgin Cosworth)
- Jarno Trulli (Lotus)
- Heikki Kovalainen (Lotus)
- Lucas di Grassi (Virgin Cosworth)
- Bruno Senna (HRT Cosworth)
- Karun Chandhok (HRT Cosworth)
The artist project
I went to “the artist project” at the Queen Elizabeth Building yesterday – thanks to Sean Galbraith for the ticket!
Aside from my friends (Sean at DK Photo Group and Celine Cimon), the artists who caught my eye were:
- Mark Berens – Canadian landscape artist
- Joseph Sampson – landscape painter
- Julie Desmarais – oil paintings of trees and landscapes
- Marni Grossman – fine art photographer
- Sandy Middleton – fine art photographer
There were many other interesting sights but these artists inspired me and gave me more to think about – hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate some of those ideas into my shots at this weekend’s photo walk.
Mid-sprint review
The three teams I’m working with are on 2-week sprints; today and tomorrow marks halfway through their first sprints, so I did a brief mid-sprint review with two of the teams (the third team are doing theirs tomorrow). I introduced each team to the objective, which is for the team to look at the remaining work and any impediments then discuss any concerns they have about completing their committed stories in time for the Review, then opened it up for discussion.
Both teams (and I’m sure the third team) are concerned that the lack of a dedicated test environment is becoming critical. This impediment has been escalated and the teams have done what they can to work around it, but it’s fast approaching the point at which there won’t be time for the teams to complete all their testing. The IT department are working on rebuilding the server, and obviously they have other teams placing demands on them too, but it’s important that the people who set their priorities understand the implications – we don’t necessarily know the urgency of other work, so we can say we should be #1 but we can make sure we make our case as best we can.
Other concerns included getting clarification from experts outside the team (again, they have other demands of their time), the scope of testing for small, isolated code changes (can’t we limit the scope of testing more?), and a low priority support issue which they had committed to resolve in this sprint even though it’s not required until the end of the next sprint. Team members took responsibility to follow up on these items, and I suspect they’re already resolved.
One item which we’ll discuss in the teams’ Retrospectives, I’m sure, is the introduction of additional stories after the sprint started. It’s possible that both teams will struggle to complete all their stories, so the Product Owner (who was part of the mid-sprint review) is forewarned, and we took this opportunity to ensure the priorities are clear to everyone.
Even though they may not complete all the work on their task board, I still think the teams are doing really well – I was pleased to see people volunteer to get issues resolved, as well as the open discussion about the teams’ progress and performance. Obviously it’s important that the teams deliver completed stories but it’s also important that they grow as a team and improve the way they work, and I’m very optimistic in this regard.
Enthusiasm is key
I started a new (short-term) contract on Thursday and I’m very pleasantly surprised to see how keen people are! The company took the decision to “go Agile” only a couple of weeks ago and they’ve jumped in with both feet. They’re committing a lot of time and money to this transition, but even more important than that is the enthusiasm I’ve seen in the three teams I’m working with – people are eager to learn and experiment, which means the transition is a lot more likely to succeed.
I’m going to try to blog about how things go – the exercises and games we run, tools we use, etc. and how well they work. Obviously what works for one company (or even one team) may not work for another, but I think it’ll be interesting to see how things evolve with these three teams. (The company is forming more Scrum teams but I’m focused on the first three teams right now.)
When I joined, the teams were on day 4 of a 2 week sprint. They already had a (partial) product backlog, with the top priority stories estimated; the teams each had committed to some stories and broken them down in to tasks; they had started doing daily stand up meetings (a.k.a. scrums) with each team member addressing the three key questions. The teams also have support responsibilities, which they are managing using Kanban boards. Most surprisingly everyone seems to understand how this all works and (on the whole) are on top of updating both the support and story tasks.
As the new boy on the team(s), I spent some time sitting in each team room and just observing how the teams performed. I also ran an exercise loosely based on the Billboard Game – I say loosely because I’ve not run it before so I followed the spirit if not the letter of the game. It was a great way to get to know the team members, and even they knew each other fairly well before most people said they learned something new about their colleagues.
I’m really looking forward to next week – we’re going to do a mid-sprint review with each team to see if they feel they’re on track to complete all their committed stories by the end of this sprint. I’m also going to meet regularly with the Scrum Masters so we can share thoughts and learnings regarding Agile; as an example, the teams are approaching a particular problem (tracking the progress of dev tasks through code review, test, etc.) in different ways (separate tasks vs columns on the task board), so it’ll be interesting to see which works best for the teams – it may be they all chose to use the same method in the next sprint or maybe they’ll continue to test different approaches.
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