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The British Grand Prix

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Inspired by the signs that a store / company typically puts up when changing location, I think FIA's tagline should be "Don't look now, we're changing our mind".

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Pitpass says the weather's expected to be sunny tomorrow. Bummer.

I think there's still a chance of rain, at least that's what BBC weather are saying.

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According to Charlie Whiting they haven't changed the rules.

Charlie Whiting has defended the decision by saying “What we are doing is stopping people breaking the existing rules,” Charlie Whiting said.

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So, Steve, how's it going at sunny wet sunny drizzling wet snowy sunny rainy stormy cloudy moonsoony windy Silverstone?

No need for the strike through really, my friend. I think at some point, we have had pretty much all those weather systems!

Yesterday was mixed emothions for me. Spent FP3 down at Luffield, then bagged great seats at Becketts for qualifying. Could see all the cars coming into Maggots, Becketts then heading down Hanger Straight. Could then see them going through Village on the other side of the track.

Most impressive to me was Alonso. When he was on it, it was spectacular. The attitude of the car was far more agressive than anything else out there.

So, all good, until Michael came out too early in Q3. Rosberg did what Michael would have done ten years ago; had the confidence to wait. Oh well, never mind. It was very exciting.

Just having some breakfast then I'm back to the track. I promise I'll put more pics up. Don't expect all of them though...have taken 530 so far!!!

Purely on Alonso's handle of the track, I'm going to tip him for the win. Enjoy, everyone.

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According to Charlie Whiting they haven't changed the rules.

Charlie Whiting has defended the decision by saying “What we are doing is stopping people breaking the existing rules,” Charlie Whiting said.

Actually, Charlie is right. Ferrari are the only team who have stuck to the rules as written. Others have exploited them to the point where the FIA have decided they are taken the p**s! For me, the answer is simple. Half a dozen regulations are all that is needed. Car size, engine size, tyre size, fuel capacity, safety agenda, in-race rules, [pit stops, driver behaviour etc.]. The rest is bollocks and has nothing to do with racing. Sorted.

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Actually, Charlie is right. Ferrari are the only team who have stuck to the rules as written. Others have exploited them to the point where the FIA have decided they are taken the p**s! For me, the answer is simple. Half a dozen regulations are all that is needed. Car size, engine size, tyre size, fuel capacity, safety agenda, in-race rules, [pit stops, driver behaviour etc.]. The rest is bollocks and has nothing to do with racing. Sorted.

Exactly...

plus a Newey handicap of say 15pts per car per race.:D

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Vettel shouldn't be too disappointed with the outcome. His nearest competitors in the WDC finished behind him. As long as his rivals continue to play musical chairs when winning races, he's safe. I expect his cushion built up so far would serve him well even if Ferrari ups their game.

Didn't get to see much of the race, but from what I was able to see, plenty of overtaking. Steve, I guess you got your money's worth.

Alonso did pretty well.

Webber will be disappointed.

Seems Hamilton's rape of the tires cost him a podium.

Schumi could have finished 6th, but for the tangle with Koba. He did well to fight back to 9th, with a couple of nice overtaking moves.

Unhappy to see di Resta finish low down.

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Great race, old time Silverstone unpredictable all the way. The tifosis must be extactic as it is also the 60th annyversary since Ferrari's first win ever (by J.Froilán González, Argentinian :D)

My usual long boring post will come later as now I have fulfill my civil duties and vote in the local elections.

EDIT: Horner "I will never issue a team order even if allowed"?????? "Never" is too big of a word to be used in F1, Christian should have known better last year. It's clown time for you now :P

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Purely on Alonso's handle of the track, I'm going to tip him for the win. Enjoy, everyone.

FFS!!! You're the prophet of TF1, I switched off the TV when he was 4th or something and it must have been a crazy race. You b...

Actually, Charlie is right. Ferrari are the only team who have stuck to the rules as written. Others have exploited them to the point where the FIA have decided they are taken the p**s! For me, the answer is simple. Half a dozen regulations are all that is needed. Car size, engine size, tyre size, fuel capacity, safety agenda, in-race rules, [pit stops, driver behaviour etc.]. The rest is bollocks and has nothing to do with racing. Sorted.

I think we all agree on that. Too many rules.

My usual long boring post will come later as now I have fulfill my civil duties and vote in the local elections.

Your first civil duty is to thoroughly inform your comrades-in-arms. :angry:

I'll watch the whole race in the evening on Marca TV with Andy Souzek and not so many ad breaks. :blush:

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I like to point out that when I said Webber is the facto n2 of the team and he hadn´t/hasn´t the same equipment than Vettel everybody said I believe in goofy cons... (not everybody only Cav -nothing more to add) well it seems Webbo believe in the same conspirations!!!! Team order at RedBull? Hey Helmut what happened? What about free race?

I enjoyed Rosberg destroying Schumi another race and superb Nando race. By the way the man in the Macca n3 was Hami or Mansell? It seems Hami seems more like Nigel than Ayrton...

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I'm a grinning, knackered bloke with ringing ears and over 600 photos to go through. Money's worth? Wow, to be part of that today was one of the most incredible things I have ever experienced. The atmosphere was spine tingling. The roar down at Vale where Lewis held his nerve was shattering. I was on my feet, screaming, hugging random British motorsport fans. Never known anything like it. Lewis thanked us all for the support. Trust me, the support was unearthly.

And now, my favourite photo of the day. I'll show you more, but again, I need my bed.

LewisandMassa.jpg

Okay, I lied, you simply must have this one; end plate and bits of carbon flying and all that..!

Contact.jpg

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You didn't miss any bit of action, did you?

I can imagine what it felt being at the track right there.

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Weird, even Valenia inspired more posts than this race. Either Valencia is more exciting that we give it credit for, or McLaren didn't perform on British soil as expected... :whistling: (Yes, I'm going to deliver all the low blows I want to, cheap or not, as nobody cares anyway! :P)

Great pics from Steve, although I will leave that situation for last.

Alonso: Great job and DoD. Not "brilliant" DoD, mind you. Cynics will point to Vettel's botched pitstop as the only reason for his win or, even worse, to the whole throttle maping issue as some FIArrari conspiracy (yeah, right...). You will have to foget that a similar problem with his rear jack caused Nando's first stop to last almost 2 seconds longer than the average (5.8). Compare that with Vettel's 7 seconds lost in his infamous pitstop and all you get is a 5 second gap. Of course, had not been for Vettel's misfortune he would have probably (just probably) came out behind Seb and having to overtake him which would have been difficult. But it would have been a DoD to be there. He bid his time whne he had to attack Webber and Hamilton and had an intelligent race from start to finish. Nobody can take anything from his win this time. Kudos.

Vettel: It was great to see him fighting with Lewis.The boy certainly has the balls. So much of them that the team obviously called him in earlier to avoid him from throwing it all in a fruitless battle against Lewis (he could have finished behind Lewis, after all, without sacrificing anything). It is noticeable that fighting for position is something he had forgotten these past two years. This was a good wake up call. He didn't come out too bad, even if he didn't overtake Lewis. Overtaking is never easy when fighting for the top spots despite the time lap differences between cars. He tried. Nice fighting spirit. But he needs to improve his racecraft if he wants to be someone when the car is not under his a## anymore or risk becoming the new JV.

Webber: I can't help but like him. He is a fighter, he is clearly being mistreated by his team and all that. But he also is one of the worst starters currently at F1. He must acknowledge that and work on it pronto. He looks like Alonso at the beginning of the season. But Alonso quickly pointed out that he was lacking at the starts and vowed to work hard on it. And now he has improved. MW should do that too if he doesn't want to be in a position to be treated like a Number 2. Some things are not your fault (Marko and CH's love for Vettel, and all the benefits that derive from that) but some are. If you do not improve in what you can change then you are royally screwed in the things you cannot.

Massa: just like Mark, but his ups are not that high and his downs are even lower. An average race (again), despite having a car on saturday that looked very intimidating even compared against Nando's pace. More on him when I mention Lewis. He did provide what was for me the most enjoyable fight from a purely aesthetical point of view: the one he had with Jenson.

Button: Cookie awarded for his scrap with Massa. Loved the overtaking manoeuvre. He is certainly improving in the aggressiveness department but he needs to improve a lot more. If you have the car, and you are intelligent, you deliver. When you don't have the car you need the hunger, and that is where Button lacks. He seems pretty ordinary most of the time. He needs to couple his brains with Lewis balls or he would have always these bittersweet results of "what could have happened if..."

Others: Team Poochie :( I was absolutely gutted. Yeah, NH saved some face for the team but, well, he is just Heidfeld! Rosberg: unimpressive, yet efficient as usual. Schumi: this time he deserved a lot more (I'm starting to sound like a Schumi fanboi yuck!) the penalty was ridiculous, it was even more evident that it was a racing incident than the DiResta Buemi or the Massa Lewis incident. He was on a wet track ffs! He could have posed a real threat to the guys at the top of not for that. Then again, old-time Schumi would never have been caught like that...I don't know which one is the real Schum anymore. Di Resta: a shame about the pitstop. Perez: impressive that he can fight so much and preserve his tires so well (reminds me of Nando :whistling:). I hope he leeps maturing along that line more than along Kobayashi's path.

And now...what everybody expects! Ladies and gentlemen...I give you...Mr.Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE!!!!!!

AND I AM OUTRAGED! And if you are a Hamilton supporter you should be twice as outraged as I am (although I know that my post is counterproductive as I am putting all Lewis supporters in defensive mode with this). And no, it is not because he crashed (again) against Felipe. I guess it was a "race incident" as everybody seems to think that way (even SD). It is hard to judge from the limited footage provided (a single replay from an onboard camera, and a confuse frontal camera is all I saw). It is because the guy keeps thinking that arrogance is the solution. And a bunch of supporters will try to explain for the umpteenth time why is it that everybody else is wrong in a racing incident that he again has been involved with. You can only get so many incidents before they start looking like an M.O. :P He actually raced for Ferrari/Alonso almost all the way. He held up the RBRs and his team was the main responsible for the confuse situation with the mappings that ultimately benefited Ferrari. So why my continuous, obsessive hatred towards poor Lewis? Two reasons:

a) This one is totally subjective and unfair: I just can't stand the guy. He is arrogant. You can say the same about Alonso and Vettel (and at least half of the grid for that matter). But his kind of arrogance gets on my nerves. I give you that that is totally biased and unfair from my side. Well, certainly Ayton he is not :P Funnily, I always thought and still think that had he compared himself with Gilles then the question would have been more open to debate. I actually think he has more things in common with Gilles than with Ayrton, if we are talking about on track skils and styles. Other than that, Gilles was always a lot more likeable and popular than Lewis, and Gilles din't have to hang out with the Ronettes to achieve that :P

B) Here I beg to all the Lewis supporters to forget their desire to burn me at a stake and just bear with me for a moment: the thing that buggers me is the fact that he can be so much more if he wasn't so keen to compare himself with Senna just because he pushes cars out of the track. Is he fun to watch? Of course! I enjoyed immensely watching him at Silverstone overtaking cars as if there was no tomorrow. But that's exactly my point. Meanwhile his ego keeps growing and comparing himself with Senna, or God, or the Wizard of Oz, he keeps coming out as a mere comic relief. He actually races like there's no tomorrow. Moe precisely, as if there's no more laps besides the one he is in. One guy jokingly mocked Whitmarsh tweeting as a fake Martin saying "we didn't fuel his car enough because we never thought he would finish the race". And that is the situation he gets himself with his "People loves me because I am a brainless overtaking machine". It wouldn't be so bad if we haven't seen a better Lewis before this one. But we did. All he did this year was take a step BACKWARDS!

Last year we saw a more mature Lewis. A guy with the bals to overtake everybody, but also the brains to know when to attack, when to hold up, when to push and to show that he was one of he few drivers "on a league of his own". This year we see a guy crashing for stupid reasons, making bold statements on the radio when the team tells him that he should be smarter and preserve tires or fuel, and thinkig that people will always love him for that. Bollocks. They love him now, but soon they will feel the frustration. And I think (and stated it somewhere else) that deep inside him he knows that he is derailing from the maturing path and becoming the spoilt kid us anti hamilton fans always said he was.

He has nothing to envy from Nando. He is (in my blind pro Alonso eyes) still the only one who has shown that his roof is at least as high as that of Nando. He has proved so far more things that Vettel proved, despite both being equal in numbers. I KNOW he has the brains, he just need to use it. Last year's Hamilton was a racing legend. This year's Hamilton is just Danny The Menace, F1 version. Popularity does not equal quality. And that is a waste of talent.

Pheeewwww...ok, I am ready. Start the stoning :lol:

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BTW, I am becoming old and reluctant to change, but for my life I never could quite understand from the onboard cameras where the hell the cars were. I could not get used to the new layout. That was disorienting!

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Weird, even Valenia inspired more posts than this race. Either Valencia is more exciting that we give it credit for, or McLaren didn't perform on British soil as expected... :whistling: (Yes, I'm going to deliver all the low blows I want to, cheap or not, as nobody cares anyway! :P)

Great pics from Steve, although I will leave that situation for last.

Alonso: Great job and DoD. Not "brilliant" DoD, mind you. Cynics will point to Vettel's botched pitstop as the only reason for his win or, even worse, to the whole throttle maping issue as some FIArrari conspiracy (yeah, right...). You will have to foget that a similar problem with his rear jack caused Nando's first stop to last almost 2 seconds longer than the average (5.8). Compare that with Vettel's 7 seconds lost in his infamous pitstop and all you get is a 5 second gap. Of course, had not been for Vettel's misfortune he would have probably (just probably) came out behind Seb and having to overtake him which would have been difficult. But it would have been a DoD to be there. He bid his time whne he had to attack Webber and Hamilton and had an intelligent race from start to finish. Nobody can take anything from his win this time. Kudos.

Vettel: It was great to see him fighting with Lewis.The boy certainly has the balls. So much of them that the team obviously called him in earlier to avoid him from throwing it all in a fruitless battle against Lewis (he could have finished behind Lewis, after all, without sacrificing anything). It is noticeable that fighting for position is something he had forgotten these past two years. This was a good wake up call. He didn't come out too bad, even if he didn't overtake Lewis. Overtaking is never easy when fighting for the top spots despite the time lap differences between cars. He tried. Nice fighting spirit. But he needs to improve his racecraft if he wants to be someone when the car is not under his a## anymore or risk becoming the new JV.

Webber: I can't help but like him. He is a fighter, he is clearly being mistreated by his team and all that. But he also is one of the worst starters currently at F1. He must acknowledge that and work on it pronto. He looks like Alonso at the beginning of the season. But Alonso quickly pointed out that he was lacking at the starts and vowed to work hard on it. And now he has improved. MW should do that too if he doesn't want to be in a position to be treated like a Number 2. Some things are not your fault (Marko and CH's love for Vettel, and all the benefits that derive from that) but some are. If you do not improve in what you can change then you are royally screwed in the things you cannot.

Massa: just like Mark, but his ups are not that high and his downs are even lower. An average race (again), despite having a car on saturday that looked very intimidating even compared against Nando's pace. More on him when I mention Lewis. He did provide what was for me the most enjoyable fight from a purely aesthetical point of view: the one he had with Jenson.

Button: Cookie awarded for his scrap with Massa. Loved the overtaking manoeuvre. He is certainly improving in the aggressiveness department but he needs to improve a lot more. If you have the car, and you are intelligent, you deliver. When you don't have the car you need the hunger, and that is where Button lacks. He seems pretty ordinary most of the time. He needs to couple his brains with Lewis balls or he would have always these bittersweet results of "what could have happened if..."

Others: Team Poochie :( I was absolutely gutted. Yeah, NH saved some face for the team but, well, he is just Heidfeld! Rosberg: unimpressive, yet efficient as usual. Schumi: this time he deserved a lot more (I'm starting to sound like a Schumi fanboi yuck!) the penalty was ridiculous, it was even more evident that it was a racing incident than the DiResta Buemi or the Massa Lewis incident. He was on a wet track ffs! He could have posed a real threat to the guys at the top of not for that. Then again, old-time Schumi would never have been caught like that...I don't know which one is the real Schum anymore. Di Resta: a shame about the pitstop. Perez: impressive that he can fight so much and preserve his tires so well (reminds me of Nando :whistling:). I hope he leeps maturing along that line more than along Kobayashi's path.

And now...what everybody expects! Ladies and gentlemen...I give you...Mr.Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE!!!!!!

AND I AM OUTRAGED! And if you are a Hamilton supporter you should be twice as outraged as I am (although I know that my post is counterproductive as I am putting all Lewis supporters in defensive mode with this). And no, it is not because he crashed (again) against Felipe. I guess it was a "race incident" as everybody seems to think that way (even SD). It is hard to judge from the limited footage provided (a single replay from an onboard camera, and a confuse frontal camera is all I saw). It is because the guy keeps thinking that arrogance is the solution. And a bunch of supporters will try to explain for the umpteenth time why is it that everybody else is wrong in a racing incident that he again has been involved with. You can only get so many incidents before they start looking like an M.O. :P He actually raced for Ferrari/Alonso almost all the way. He held up the RBRs and his team was the main responsible for the confuse situation with the mappings that ultimately benefited Ferrari. So why my continuous, obsessive hatred towards poor Lewis? Two reasons:

a) This one is totally subjective and unfair: I just can't stand the guy. He is arrogant. You can say the same about Alonso and Vettel (and at least half of the grid for that matter). But his kind of arrogance gets on my nerves. I give you that that is totally biased and unfair from my side. Well, certainly Ayton he is not :P Funnily, I always thought and still think that had he compared himself with Gilles then the question would have been more open to debate. I actually think he has more things in common with Gilles than with Ayrton, if we are talking about on track skils and styles. Other than that, Gilles was always a lot more likeable and popular than Lewis, and Gilles din't have to hang out with the Ronettes to achieve that :P

B) Here I beg to all the Lewis supporters to forget their desire to burn me at a stake and just bear with me for a moment: the thing that buggers me is the fact that he can be so much more if he wasn't so keen to compare himself with Senna just because he pushes cars out of the track. Is he fun to watch? Of course! I enjoyed immensely watching him at Silverstone overtaking cars as if there was no tomorrow. But that's exactly my point. Meanwhile his ego keeps growing and comparing himself with Senna, or God, or the Wizard of Oz, he keeps coming out as a mere comic relief. He actually races like there's no tomorrow. Moe precisely, as if there's no more laps besides the one he is in. One guy jokingly mocked Whitmarsh tweeting as a fake Martin saying "we didn't fuel his car enough because we never thought he would finish the race". And that is the situation he gets himself with his "People loves me because I am a brainless overtaking machine". It wouldn't be so bad if we haven't seen a better Lewis before this one. But we did. All he did this year was take a step BACKWARDS!

Last year we saw a more mature Lewis. A guy with the bals to overtake everybody, but also the brains to know when to attack, when to hold up, when to push and to show that he was one of he few drivers "on a league of his own". This year we see a guy crashing for stupid reasons, making bold statements on the radio when the team tells him that he should be smarter and preserve tires or fuel, and thinkig that people will always love him for that. Bollocks. They love him now, but soon they will feel the frustration. And I think (and stated it somewhere else) that deep inside him he knows that he is derailing from the maturing path and becoming the spoilt kid us anti hamilton fans always said he was.

He has nothing to envy from Nando. He is (in my blind pro Alonso eyes) still the only one who has shown that his roof is at least as high as that of Nando. He has proved so far more things that Vettel proved, despite both being equal in numbers. I KNOW he has the brains, he just need to use it. Last year's Hamilton was a racing legend. This year's Hamilton is just Danny The Menace, F1 version. Popularity does not equal quality. And that is a waste of talent.

Pheeewwww...ok, I am ready. Start the stoning :lol:

come on! what balls?! he doesnt know how to overtake so team called him in. he almost hit hamilton, he chickened out and team chickened out when they saw his attempt on hamilton.there were five F1 champions in this race and every one showed much more than Vettel. why don't you say what you really think of driving skills of next youngest double F1 champion . they suck.

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Well done to Alonso, my DoD pick. You can sense how well he is driving lately and it paid off - even if he was helped a little by Red Bull's rare mistake in the pits - it was a deserved victory. It seems RBR lost some laptime from the engine regs change and that must have played a part, but Ferrari's updates for the race clearly worked too, and their progress shouldn't be overlooked. We'll see how much those updates worked when the engine regs go back to Valencia spec, as they will for the remainder of the season (my feeling is the win is more of a blip than a trend). The result is the same as last year, except this time Alonso is almost twice as many points off Vettel; it's hard to envisage a comeback from there.

As for the racing, it was a shame about Hamilton's fuel consumption problem - just how badly did Mclaren get that wrong? And does it have something to do with the engine change? It seems a bizarre miscalculation. My boy Perez was impressive in taking 7th, he's developing nicely :D Massa was dismal as usual, do we really have to put up with him for another year wasting a top car? Schumi shouldn't have got a penalty. JB's move on Massa was sweet.

Other points of interest:

On the Vettel/Webber case I hardly think it is the best example of "team orders" and favouritism. It's not the same as Alonso/Massa or Schumi/any team mate but Rosberg. Surely from a team perspective it makes sense not to allow cars to battle in the last laps from a constructors pov, and Webber said himself that had the positions been reversed, the same would have applied. Last lap battles are great but I don't see the alleged controversy when a team calls them off. Of course, I don't doubt that the senior members of the team prefer Vettel to finish ahead, but this incident is no proof that they actually physically try to ensure that happens (which is a completely different thing to a preference). As Andres pointed out: Webber needs to improve his own game before I am convinced he is a winner being held back, rather than just an almost-good-enough-to-win-guy not quite winning.

On Massa/Lewis incident, it's difficult to tell who is at fault there with Massa making such a late lunge on the outside, but I do think it was just good racing.

@Andres: You big flamer :lol: First of all I don't really see why your criticisms come after this race, where I thought Lewis drove very well from 10th on the grid, and was unlucky with the fuel problem. You seem to be picking an interesting time to be critical, with it being the British GP... almost as dangerous for an impartial image as the FIA choosing Mansell as a steward whistling.gif Anyway, back to Ham, yes he can be better, just like Alonso is better now than in 2007, (not just in driving but in his personality, I think...), and whether it happens for Lewis remains to be seen. Remember he's only in his 5th year of F1 and has much to learn, and hopefully he knows that. I think you touched upon my main issue with the guy, the fact that people always bring up Senna in interviews and the way Hamilton overtakes etc, and I think Lewis likes to please people and wants to live up to this reputation of daring overtakes and so on, and I think it sort of damages him somehow (although I am not sure whether this is simply something that I find annoying about the interviews, or whether this reputation/comparisons is something that actually effects his driving in any real way).

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come on! what balls?! he doesnt know how to overtake so team called him in. he almost hit hamilton, he chickened out and team chickened out when they saw his attempt on hamilton.there were five F1 champions in this race and every one showed much more than Vettel. why don't you say what you really think of driving skills of next youngest double F1 champion . they suck.

His driving skills suck? But he set the fastest lap on Top Gear!

Vettel's racecraft improved a lot from last year, he's not the best on the grid for that (Alonso, Button, and Lewis on a good day are strong contenders for that..) but he's as good as or better than most. There are a few examples this year showing that.

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