Let’s do a little speculating; how good a chance did Lewis Hamilton really have of winning in Korea?

While the drivers were circulating behind the pace car (lap 4-17) we got to listen to the radio conversation between Hamilton and his race engineer Andy Lathum on the broadcast. Of the drivers at the front Hamilton seemed to be the one most keen to get the racing going.

Unfortunately, when the safety car did pull off on lap-17 he was slow to react and got overtaken by Niko Rosberg at the restart.

As it happens, that may have been a little luck. Rosberg got taken out on the next lap by the spinning Webber, it would have been Hamilton that had been collected by the out of control Red Bull driver.

During the race Alonso lost second place to Hamilton because of a slow Ferrari pit stop. The team had problems when he changed from wet to intermediate tyres. This meant that he came out in third behind leader Vettel and Hamilton (who had pitted the previous lap).

The following lap Hamilton braked way too late into turn-1 and ran wide into the corner. This opened the door wide open and Alonso comfortably took second place back. It was a mistake by Hamilton rather than a daring, brilliantly executed pass.

This meant the Ferrari driver, not Hamilton, took the lead when the Renault engine in Sebastian Vettels Red Bull comprehensively let go on lap 44.

A quick summary of this years engine rules (as I understand them), a driver is allowed eight engines, no rebuilds. It’s up to the teams and engine builders as to how they swap the eight engines in and out of the cars to manage all qualifying, practice and racing. Renault said the engine in Vettels car was about 1600KM into its 2000KM design life when it let go.

Back to the question I asked. If he had not made the error into turn-1 could Hamilton have kept the lead, or was Alonso that much faster?

So it’s speculation time… Alonso was clearly faster than Hamilton at the end of the race. McLaren’s tyres were heavily worn, which caused the car to understeer (contributed to the mistake? Maybe), but Hamilton had pretty much matched Vettel and Alonso for time. The gaps had stayed fairly consistent between the cars before and after the round of tire changes.

I think he could have held Alonso off for the win, stay on line and it’s very, very difficult to get past.

If Hamilton had hung on and won, that would have given the McLaren driver a 14-point turnaround against Alonso and put him right into the center of the drivers’ championship battle. Today he is 21 points behind Alonso, had he kept his lead he’d be only 7 points behind.

Lets be clear Vettel looked very, very fast, but Alonso seems to be capable of a very similar pace and was probably the best driver on the day. Alonso stayed out of trouble, looked comfortable and never let a botched pit-stop get to him. He was given a couple of opportunities on the track and took then decisively.

Three wins in four races, and his sixth podium in the last seven races. He is clearly the on form driver, Ferrari has given him a competitive and reliable car and it’s up to him and the team to make it happen.

Clearly Hamilton’s mistake made life more difficult for himself, but there are lots of points left and after Vettels DNF a lot of teams will be even more worried about engines over the next couple of races. This is fun.

Out of all the things I did wrong, as a stepparent the most significant was not setting and ensuring my personal boundaries were respected, and this was my fault to a large extent. There were a lot of he said/she said incidents with the kids between the bio-mum and myself, they became very good at playing both their parents and the new family off each other, and it added enormous stress to our relationship.

Early on there was a significant amount of stress over court cases, the alcoholic father was taken to court twice for adjustment of the parenting plan. First was when he relapsed, he lost all visitation for 6 or 8 weeks and only supervised visitation for a number of months after that. It was more than 18 months before he was allowed overnights.

He turned up one morning and blew a 0.18 and a 0.16 on a brethalizer at 7:45 in the morning. At this point something had to give. We went to court and I clearly asked if the cutting of visitation was being done for the right reason.

I believe I was totally supportive through this time, it was tough as the stepparent my role is to hold hands, turn up to court and be quiet. It’s easy to feel useless, and I rather did.

Through out all of this I did not understand the power the other parent hed in the relationship. In all the reading I’ve done only one or two books (the excellent Stepfamiles by Bray and Kerry is one) touched upon the impact they will have on your life. It was not so much about the disagreements that two people, especially relatively recently divorced people will inevitably have, but the promises the bio-father would make and often not carry through with.

The father was treated with little respect inside the household and for the kids this took away any chance of a strong male role model. They needed to have, if not repect, certainly not hearing him reprimanded by the mother for his actions.

In a blended family we were already dealing with separate homes, animosity, my introduction and the schedule of shuttling between parents.

The kids were, as are most kids I understand, very good at playing one parent against the other. The want to be the popular parent was played by both bio-parents and gave the kids a significant amount of power.

The therapist stated it best, all authority derives from the bio-parent in the relationship, like it or not. Any authority the stepparent has over the kids comes from the agreement of the bio-parent and no one else. The kids know how the bio-parent treats the newcomer and their respect mirrors that of the parent.

This is one of the places where boundaries become important in making a blended family work. The boundaries and rules of responsibility and decision making need to be keep no matter what happens. No matter what the children do or say in an attempt to convince you otherwise.

I get now their job is to test limits and test the strength of the new relationship, I did not understand that at the time. One was clear, she was vocal about preferring it when it was just her an mum, before I came along. That was tough, but understandable, very understandable.

One seminar I sat through at BWE was playing with Google analytics. I spent a couple of hours looking at my numbers and putting together some custom scripts and charts. The results were fascinating.

I have a steady couple of thousand regular readers and a few over 200 subscribers to my RSS feed. These are actually pretty good numbers. When I go through my stats it’s always interesting to see what articles generate the biggest response in both in my stats and in feedback.

Formula-1 is a consistent winner with the people who read what I have to say. Football, a little less popular. Unless it’s a post about England underperforming, when I get comments galore. Politics, especially British politics has some interesting numbers, if I mention David Cameron then it tanks, which is annoying because I find him personally very interesting (if a little slimy). If on the other hand I talk about the Lib-dems, the numbers of casual readers (less than once every 2 weeks) makes a small, but noticeable spike.

The professional posts (Toyota Production System, PM thoughts) generate a more correspondence than any other subject, but overall there are fewer page views.

But the biggest, and I mean far and away biggest, posts are personal ones. This surprised me initially, but upon reflection the bloggers I read at least occasionally post something personal. It’s not necessary to share everything, lets face it a lot of our lives really are that mundane. It’s a cliché, but no one really does care what you had for breakfast, however everyone has something interesting happen to him or her today that is worth sharing.

It’s all rather fascinating and the data needs a lot more mining to make any reasonable decisions on directions and content, if I do decide to make any decisions on them. But it seems I’m doing something right, the growth in page views and readers is steady and I find that a rather nice reward in itself. So for those of you who post, e-mail and read, thank you.

I’m really starting to believe that future of Web 2.0 may belong to Google, they are not seen as the evil empire yet by most but are doing so much to shape the future of the web. It’s difficult to bet against Microsoft, I feel the same way about Google. I think that’s a good thing.

LA Galaxy, with Beckham, Donovan, Buddle, Gomes and so on at Quest next Sunday. This is why we watch the game, going to be a huge night and after traveling to LA to watch Seattle get hammered 3-1 in July, I think it’s time for revenge.

At first glance I’m an unlikely stepparent, my father mentioned this, my friends mentioned this, but I believed we would work it out together and working towards the same goal. I was warned how hard it was, and I said at the time that with her support I could do this.

I was clear that I was not a replacement for their father, I was a stepparent and that meant something totally different. I was promised we would work towards the same goal and I’d be supported in defining my role.

I read the books, looked at the websites and joined in a couple of the forums. In short I did the research, did the homework and was ridiculed for it (and I don’t use that word lightly).  Reality is that so many people now – even Prince William and Harry – are part of a stepfamily. You’d have to be a fool to think you’re going to walk into a family and it’s all going to work. Life isn’t like that and I may be many things to many people, but I’m not a fool.

My parents were married for 43 years, I never knew anything else and I never had to face the tough realities of separation and blended families (the current PC term). Growing up I had close friends who went through it; they were commuting between parents like most kids in this situation.

And what issues they are. The most pressing one was the difference between the role I saw myself in, had researched, shared my expectations and the role my other half wanted me to fulfill, more importantly this expectation had not been shared with me.

She hated (and I mean hated) her former husband (the girls bio-dad), the split had been messy and the wounds very close to the surface. She said later “I love you, I love the girls and so I believed everything would be wonderful and [their dad] would be replaced.” Along with the relationship with the father was the desire to be the “popular” parent, to be seen in a better light than their father. After all he let them down, she must be better than he is.

This brings up the first of the big lessons learned, despite doing he reading and research I did not understand I was not just getting into a relationship with her and the girls, there was all the baggage and the ex involved.

The ex was a dysfunctional alcoholic. I had no idea the role he would play in my life over the last couple of  years. Just as we brought the house he lied and threatened me, a path that became all too familiar. At first he denied ever having done so, then I took it out of context and then it was back to never having happened.

The respect the bio-parent shows to the stepparent is clearly modeled by the kids; they take their cues and model behaviors from both parents. One parent was dysfunctional and the other could not contain her hatred for him. I was in the middle expected to step into the shoes, only I was clear that was not my role. She forgot to mention her expectations to the kids, their father and me.

The biggest shock was that after we’d be sharing a house for 5 weeks I was left alone with the kids for 5 nights. I had huge problems with that, but what I wanted did not seem to matter too much. The grandparents were there for the first couple of days, but I was there with them every other moment from Sunday evening untill Friday night.

The kids hated her traveling, really hated and once they knew it was happening would act up for days before hand, make life difficult, argue and yell. It was an ugly situation. During the first 12 months we were together I was alone at night with her kids for 23 nights while she traveled with work.

I tried, I worked hard and put everything into it for years. Yet never seemed to be enough.

Almost every morning for almost two years I would take them to day care and pick them up. In between I’d work a full day, get them home, fix dinner and try to get homework at least started. Something like 80% of blended families don’t’ last, it’s a frightening stat and one I was aware of when we started this.

But one thing I do know is that everyone has to have his or her role defined, shared and understood by everyone. Authority comes through the bio-parent, not the stepparent, even though she wanted me to take that role, just never let me know that expectation. Let us just say I’ve a lot of thoughts on this and what I could have done differently.

The drivers championship was once more turned upside down, yet another fascinating race, this time in Korea. The big race day story was the rain; the conditions at the start were atrocious. Lots of standing water and almost zero visibility for everyone except the leader.

The race was held up for more than an hour for the torrential rain to dissipate and actually give the drivers a chance to see what was going on.

Ferrari and Ferdinand Alonso are clearly the on form team and won for the third time in four races. The Spaniard now leads the championship by 11-points.

Once again Red Bull were dominant in qualifying and had troubles during the race, if the team could translate qualifying position to race results the championship would have been all over weeks ago. Webber made a mistake and crashed out while Vettels engine let go in a fairly comprehensive way towards the end of the race.

McLaren had what we could call a rather mixed weekend. Lewis Hamilton kept alive his somewhat slim hopes of the title by finishing second. He looks to be back after his luck left him struggling over the last few races. He lies in third-placed and 21 points behind Alonso with two races (and 50 points) available.

Button on the other hand is all but eliminated from the championship. He’s 42 points out of first place and now needs way too much to go his way over the next two races to have a shot at retaining his title.

The first three laps of the GP were led by the safety car, the conditions were that bad. Then the race was suspended for over an hour while the worst of the weather cleared.

After the restart the safety car led the cars around again for another 14 laps. The worst of the water was cleared off the track by the circulating cars and on lap-17 racing got underway.

Webber crashed out on the 19^th lap, he was running second and spun out, damaged the car on the wall, and was then collected by Niko Rosbergs Merc. Both cars were out on the spot with lots of damage.

Vettel did well to open up a decent lead over Alonso, with Hamilton behind him. Hamilton did pass the Ferrari, but braked too late into turn-1 and gave the place back to Alonso.

Vettel looked like he was in cruse and collect mode, and did not appear to be troubled by either driver behind him. When they pushed a little, Vettel would respond and keep the gap comfortable. On the 46^th (out of 55) laps Vettels engine let go in a rather spectacular way. Renault was very apologetic this morning, and the Red Bull garage looked shocked when it happened.

Drivers are only allowed 8 engines over the course of the year. The teams are struggling to keep the running time on each of them down as the swap them in and out over the course of the year. Vettels blow up is maybe a sign that all eight of the engines for some drivers have a lot of miles on them and reliability may be an issue in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.

This was Alonso’s fourth win in the last seven races. Ferrari are coming good at the right time, the championship is so close, even with the all-but mathematical elimination of Button there are still four drivers in this thing. Red Bull may be the quickest, but points are awarded for finishes, and Ferrari look awfully good.

They are, quite simply, the two greatest footballers of all time. Today the most famous footballer the game has ever produced, Pele turns 70th. Next Saturday Diego Maradona, who may be the best individual player, celebrates his 50th birthday

To show the influence of these players, they have taken part in eight World Cups and won four of them, Both came from rural families in South America, and both went on to captain their countries to wins (one each) in the biggest tournament on the planet. Together they have showed what’s possible, and while their legacies are very different, there is no arguing that they showed what can be done with a ball at your feet.

First Pele, incredible pace and while not many would describe him as an imposing player he played at the top level for over 20 years, scored over a thousand goals. Included in that total is 77 in 92 appearances for Brazil, an impressive strike rate.

His legend and influence in the game even to day is huge. If Pele speaks, the football world listens.

His only real rival for the title of “the greatest” is Maradona.

In 1986 he captained the Argentina side that knocked England out of the world cup. That one game showed both sides of him as a player and person. There was the infamous “hand of god” goal, followed by maybe the greatest individual goal ever scored where he took the ball through England and calmly slotted it away.

In the aftermath of his second goal British commentator Brian Moore said that was the goal of the tournament. At 17 and watching it with dad at home it was difficult for me to appreciate at the time, dad (a Scotsman) was in a better place than I was to appreciate the brilliance in the moment.

Controversy and genius followed Maradona around, he almost single handedly won the ’86 World cup for Argentina and a couple of Serie A championships for Napoli. His ball control, determination and balance have never been questioned

However some of the decisions have made have been. Failed drugs tests and controversy of all sorts followed him.

A late night discussion over some happy hour sushi after the Saprissa game on Tuesday night (why do so many great discussion happen late at night?) shows an interesting split. The black marks only make Maradona more mortal than Pele.

I met Pele at a Grand Prix in ’91 or 92. The only person I’ve ever met that had the same sort of presence that Pele has was Muhammad Ali. I briefly shook hands with Ali at a book signing in London in the late 80’s. It’s interesting to meet legends (a word that’s over used, but very fitting here) and find they are everything you expected.

So who do I think was the best. I never saw Pele play, but saw Maradona plenty. Pele changed the game 20 years before Maradona emerged, he showed what’s possible in a way no one else has. For me it’s Pele, but for more than what he did on the field.

At one time Maradona hosted a chat show on Argentinean TV and Pele was his first guest. When he was asked who the best is, he said “My mother says it was me and Pele’s mother says it was him.”

An interesting qualifying in Korea last night. Interesting but not hugely surprising with RedBull once again a couple of tenths of a second ahead of everyone else. Vettel was 0.07 seconds quicker than Webber around the three and a bit mile circuit.

The circuit only finished laying the track surface a couple of weeks ago and no team’s even seen the place, let alone turned a wheel here before. The simulators suggested pole would be taken in a time of around 1:44. Vettel set a time of 1.35.585 (a little over 2 seconds faster than practice), with restrictions on gear ratios and final drive changes there was a lot of guesses based on inaccurate simulation data.

Alonso was third, Hamilton fourth. The third row was made up of the surprising Niko Rosberg (once again significantly ahead of team mate Schumacher) and the second Ferrari with Massa. The other McLaren was in seventh, unquestionably disappointing for Button, who claimed to unable to get his tires up to temperature.

This was Vettels 9^th pole in what’s been a remarkable season for the RedBull team.

A quick drivers championship recap, Webber leads Vettel and Alonso by 14 points in the drivers championship. The McLaren drivers are a little further back and realistically need the three drivers in front of them to have a did-not-finish (DNF) or two to really get back into the sharp end of this fight.

Points are scored 25-18-15-12 and so on. With three races to go and 14 points between the top three drivers all three of them need to go for wins. It’s not time for tactical driving yet.

In the earlier qualifying sessions Hamilton was quickest, but when it came to the final session where pole is determined he did not quite have it and ended up fourth.

On a slight side note, I got an email from a friend who’s out there for the GP. They have been put up in what’s usually a “love hotel” where theme rooms are rented by the hour. He is sharing the “celestial room” with moons and astronomical symbols on the wall that glow brightly when the black lights in the room are turned on. A little different to the accommodation at the other races.

Race is tonight at 10:30 PST on Speed TV in the US, should be a good one with so much left to play for.

I think my biggest takeaway from BWE was that social media is not about monetization.

When we go to a party, see a comedian (Jim Gaffigan a couple of weeks ago and Steven Wright tonight at the Moore), meet for lunch or go to a lecture we don’t ask about how we are going to make a return on that investment of time and effort. We enjoy the moment and the interaction.

Just occasionally we need to remember it’s about the conversation, and BWE10 reinforced that.

Not a pretty game at times, Seattle was already eliminated from advancing any further in the CONCACAF Champions League. Saprissa still controlled their destiny and would advance to the last 8 with a win tonight.

Sounders largely played their reserves tonight. Terry Boss apparently picked up an injury shortly before the game and Keller started in goal. Keller was among those who did not have a good night.

First the positives, Seattle look solid down the middle; they have depth in both defence and midfield. Tyrone Marshal, Alvaro Fernandez and Taylor Graham all looked good today.

Nate Jaqua had a decent game; he had little support, but did well playing as a classic, physical centre forward and was a clear presence in the box. Created a couple of good chances and his positioning on the Seattle goal was excellent.

There has to be some not so good. Miguel Montano is a long way from the finished article and clearly not ready to start. He played 30 minutes tonight and while fast need to be more disciplined with the ball. Also took a dumb yellow card for diving.

For all the depth in defence and the middle of the field, they looked awfully short of creative options up front. Levesque and Estrada did not have good games. Neither player seemed to have a first touch worth the name and when it got really chippy with lots of pushing in the Saprissa box neither could do anything when they got the ball. Very disappointing.

Lastly was the execution on set pieces, free kicks especially were particularly bad this evening. Nothing more to say, other then Nyassi and Montero were missed.

Seattle had the best of the play in the first half and deserved their goal. A well-taken chance by Fernandez just inside the box that was stopped, the rebound fell to Jaqua who finished well.

The goal came a few minutes after a huge scramble in front of the Saprissa goal. The ball ended up in the back of the net, but somewhere in the scramble the referee saw an infringement and did not give the goal.

Saprissa looked dangerous on the break and  equalized a few minutes after Seattle went ahead, an awful goal to concede too. The ball was behind the defence and there seemed to be a miscommunication between Keller and Scott, neither went for the loose ball and it needed up as an easy tap in for the impressive looking Jairo Arrieta.

After the break the game degenerated with some rather physical play from both sides. Seattle seemed to be on the receiving end of the more blatant stuff and the card kept on coming out. Inevitable someone was going to get booked a second time and it was a Saprissa player sent off for a second yellow.

The sending off was just after the second Saprissa goal. The score came with only a couple of minutes left in regulation and it was totally on Keller, the ball just slipped through his hands. I’m sure he’d like to have another chance at that.

It was a beautiful October night in Seattle and the game attracted a decent crowd of over 11.000. The game was entertaining at times, very frustrating at others. Saprissa needed a win and had a little luck tonight in getting it.

Overall results in this competition have been disappointing. Seattle have played six, won one, lost five. It looked like a tough group when it was drawn with both Monterry and Saprissa. Two clubs with lots of success in this tournament. It turned out to be a very tough group, but Seattle will be back next year, a little more experienced and hopefully a little more successful.