Break Point!

13 de octubre hasta el 19 de octubre.

Order of Play (weekly) 

F1: United States GP. Circuits of the Americas (COTA), Austin, Texas.

Tennis: Six Kings Slams (QF, SF, F) (Sinner & Alcaraz)

Motogp: Australia GP. Circuito de Phillip Island

Football: Boca vs Belgrano. Tottenham vs Aston Villa. Mundial Sub-20 (SF, F)

Hihihi!! Luciel here. This is the first entry of my new journal!! Im going to try to write weekly. Each entry will be about all the things I found interesting during the week, focused especially on sports, and the sportspeople or teams I support. 

Let’s start with my main obsession of the past few months: F1.  

This week the travelling circus arrived at its American leg in COTA aka The circuit of the Americas. COTA, at least this year, is under this format called “Sprint”. In regards to my drivers, their performances went something like this: George (Russell) had a okay-ish and disappointing race, Alex (Albon) had a shitty weekend, and sweet sweet Franco (Colapinto) did everything he could with that tractor he’s driving and ended up delivering show and slight drama in the back of the track. 

So, George. He won beautifully in Singapore two weeks prior. I would love to talk about his perfect weekend but, unluckily,  i decided to start this journal *this* week. 

This was a “top 5 is a good result” kind of week. Sadly his race result was P6 after qualifying P5 on saturday. His Sprint performance was a little bit more cute. Qualified p5 and had a good start, avoiding the whole crash at turn 1 and ended up in the podium in the 2nd place with Carlos Sainz (3rd) and Max Verstappen (1st). 

Alex’s week was trashier. Qualified p9 for the sprint, just outside the points. He kept it clean and avoided that crazy turn 1 chaos and secured a p6 while his teammate got another trophy podium. Saturday qualy was shittier; had a lap that kept him in danger for a while and when he did another one his lap time was deleted for going out of track limits. He ended up starting at p19 and he could only finish p14. Only ahead of his teammate in the sense that Carlos couldn’t finish the race after a risky move with Antonelli left him out of the race, gained him 2 penalty points and a 5-grid place penalty for Mexico.  

Franco’s week was probably the most exciting out of the three drivers i rep. He benefitted from Albon’s mistake in q1 that saw him advance through q2. He had a good race and he managed his tires very well. He pitted later than his teammate and, 2 laps prior to the end, he ended up with better pace and fresher tires than Pierre. He got to be fed up with being kept behind a slower car but his team said that ‘both cars were managing’ and ‘to hold positions’ but since he was about to crash into Pierre’s rear and all of this didn’t sound like an order that made any sense, he took his chances at a turn and got past him. This was celebrated in the argentinian transmission. Also that overtake was sexy as hell.

 

Now, let’s see what Mexico brings us next week (this week).

Both Sinner and Alcaraz weren’t really playing for an ATP title this week. But we got a saudi Exhibition as a reward. 

Firstly, Carlos Alcaraz. Carlos actually injured himself in atp 500 at Tokyo, at one of the first rounds, and completed his participation in the tournament winning beautifully despite his ankle suffering somewhat. Still, after that win, he withdrew from ATP M1000 Shanghái to recover fully. As far as i know, he wasn’t defending many points from this tournament, and this meant it wasn’t detrimental to his #1 status. 

So this exhibition was the first time we would see him play since. 

Six Kings Slam is an exhibition tournament where they call the best players in the ATP. This year, the six men who accepted the challenge were: Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Taylor Fritz, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev. Alcaraz and Djokovic were given BYEs because they were the ones who had the most Grand Slams. Tsitsipas and Zverev lost at QF, Fritz and Djoko lost at SF So this meant Sinner and Alcaraz would face each other in another final, this time hardcourt indoors, this time the prize was 6M dollars.

Carlos Alcaraz matches were fine but I think I didn’t pay much attention to them. I was interested in what Sinner could bring… Jannik had been experimenting a lot both with his serve in USOPEN and with his variety of play after USO (esp. in Beijing)

So Sinner actually kind of got injured during Shanghai. After winning atp 500 in Beijing, he went to Shanghai where the high temperatures and humidity made it some sort of a survival tournament instead of a normal one. There he got horrible cramps during his match with Grieskpoor that made him bend and made it difficult for him to walk. There weren’t really many updates about his health when he got back to Monaco, but as we were afraid something might have happened, he appeared in excellent shape to play 6KS. 

October 15th is, actually, my birthday. So Jannik was playing QF against Tsitsipas on that day and I was expecting to watch it as a sort of birthday gift. He played excellent tennis against a player that, to be honest, had a rough year. But Sinner was a murderer nonetheless, having the commentators call this match “a crime scene”. He did some experimenting on court too. Tsitsipas managed to sneak away a break at some point. It still was obvious who the winner would be. 

He, then, played Djokovic the very next day. A completely excellent game from Jannik who didn’t really care about this being a exho at all. He had an otherworldly serve quality that neither Djoko nor Sinner could believe.  Advanced comfortably to the finals where Alcaraz, who beat Fritz, was awaiting for him. 

So at this point im like “give this man a sincaraz final im pretty sure he can win it” and it made me kinda afraid to be WRONG. I watched the Alcaraz v Fritz match and Carlos had it very much under control. So, really, it felt like anyone could win this. 

The match was that Saturday. They had a day in between the SF and the finals since the ATP doesn’t allow their players to play three days in a row in exhos. 

I’m pretty sure anyone would describe this match as a match Sinner wouldn’t let Alcaraz play. That high quality Alcaraz displays any time he plays any match could very rarely shine against Sinner. 

Honestly, having great matches like these is always delightful. Makes one excited to see what’s coming. 

Additionally, I watched Naomi Osaka’s matches in the wta 250 Tokyo. I really like seeing her play and I would watch her more often if I can remember her schedule. She played on Monday (13rd) and on Wednesday (15th) and won both matches but got injured in the last set of her latest match and had to walkover from her next.  Wishing her a speedy recovery and I’m sure she will come back stronger. 

First of all, I want to start by saying I got into motogp fairly recently. Drivers i rep: firstly, Marco Bezzecchi #72 (Aprilia), then, Marc Marquez #93 (Ducati). The last race two weeks prior in Mandalika made me extremely sad. I hope Marquez gets well soon and I miss him terribly on track :(. 

This week they raced in Australia. Aprilia looked awfully strong in this circuit. Marco managed to dominate the practices, but failed to secure Pole Position during Qualification.  Fabio Quartararo #20 (Yamaha) managed to snatch up Pole last minute. It’s a real shame that his Yamaha doesn’t seem to hold pace at all. One could only hope he puts his hands in a good bike in the near future.

So Bez weekend was okay-ish. It looked like he could take up Pole from his times in the fps. Anyways he won the Sprint but he had to serve two long laps during the GP after last week’s accident with Marc. The pundits that were narrating this week’s GP were hopeful he could win the race even after the penalty, which was actually a bit of overkill. Marco ended up in the podium in p3 after a fight from p6. He struggled quite a lot to make some overtakes. Apparently, he used up a lot of his tires during his long laps and couldn’t really perform well in dirty air. Anyways, p3 is even better than him and his team expected. Nothing to criticize, really. 

Also, this week Sava (Lorenzo Savadori #32) was back! It’s really nice to see Bez and Sava interact in Aprilia’s socmed. Bez always seems very happy to have him on the team so I, as a fan of his, I’m very happy to have him on the track too. 

Hope Bez has a good week this week in Sepang (Malasya). I’m not really sure if Sava is going to come this week too since motogp just announced he would race in the AUSgp. 

About Tottenham vs Aston villa: I woke up and, either they were already tied or they were losing so I didn’t bother to watch it. Also I think Cuti is out, injured. I hope he’s back soon because the team might be a bit lost without their captain. 

About Boca: I think that was a weird penalty. I think it’s a shame they lost themselves after that and they allowed another goal by Belgrano. Exequiel Zeballo’s goal was great. Hope he keeps scoring btw. 

Sorry, I didn’t pay much attention to football this week :(. I’m a little bit obsessed with tennis at the moment. Sorry.