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Atom I've had a bit of a creative dry spell recently. That changed this evening when I saw WTF1's entry about the Formula 1 Wikipedia game. This is a game where you have to try to get from a random Wikipedia page to the "Formula 1" page in 6 clicks or fewer using only links in the pages themselves. It's based upon the "six degrees of separation" concept and it helps if you can make broad associational links... ...while allowing for certain weaknesses in Wikipedia's articles.
Take my first successful attempt, for example. The "Random Article" button placed me at Omak Airport (an airport in Washington used in World War II). You might initially think such an article was about as helpful as Lake Tanganyika Stadium (where I started the previous - and first - time). However, the article mentions certain trivia about the airport, including the airstrip construction material... ...Asphalt.
Now asphalt is used in all sorts of roads. Sadly, there was no mention of motor racing of any kind in Wikipedia's asphalt article despite 85% of the USA's asphalt being used in road construction. That said, in 1835 - the early days of European asphalt usage - the largest project involving the new material had 24,000 square yards of ground was covered for easy access around the... ...Place de la Concorde.
When I saw that I thought, "Wow! This will be easy - the FIA lives at the Place de la Concorde and the FIA article surely mentions Formula 1 among its activities!" Not so fast! Pretty much every other significant feature of the Place de la Concorde is mentioned (it features, among other things, 8 statues representing major French cities, the French National Assembly and the American embassy), but no mention of the FIA offices that are also there. Oh well, at least France does have a long and storied history in Formula 1...
which isn't mentioned in the France article. There is a lengthy sports section which describes a great variety of sporting activities in France. There's even a motor racing bit. Which talks about the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The article on the 24 Hours of Le Mans is lengthy. It turns out that in that length, there's a part about Peugeot introducing KERS for the 2009 event which mentions its similarity to the Formula 1 version, but I missed it because I thought I'd seen the perfect link in the "Purpose" section. The first line read, "At a time when Grand Prix racing was the dominant form of motorsport throughout Europe"
I thought "2 clicks and home in the 6 required!" and for once I was right. Grands Prix were the original form of motor racing and many of the series that followed adopted the terminology for their individual events. Formula 1 is the most famous of these. In the article, it mentions that motor racing was started in France, but France's accomplishments with regards to sports are so extensive that this didn't even warrant a mention in the France entry.
Some of my Wikipedia wanderings were a bit shorter. One of them started me at Way Out West (jazz group), which includes West African drums, a dan tranh (a Vietnamese zither) and dan bau (a Vietnamese one-stringed sound box). It has performed in several notable Canadian festivals but is based in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne is the second-biggest city in Australia, originally founded by settlers from Van Diemen's Land. Whether this has any non-coincidental connection to the Van Diemen single-seater car manufacturer is unknown. What is known is that it hosts the Australian Grand Prix (Formula One). So that particular wiki walk was completed in a mere two clicks. Maybe Way Out West should be invited to the 2012 F1 Rocks, seeing as the next F1 Rocks concert has such noted non-rock musicians as David Guetta, Taio Cruz and the Sugababes...
Amusingly, the next and final F1 Wikipedia attempt I did started in a motor sport article: the 2009 Formula Lista Junior season. It is a Formula BMW series running from April to September that started in 2000 and is still happening. Most of the drivers and all but one of the teams are Swiss, but the law in Switzerland means they cannot race in their home country. Instead, they race in France (including two visits to Dijon), Germany and Italy, benefiting from a rule allowing national-level racers from anywhere in the EU or a limited number of other countries reciprocal access to appropriate series in any country involved in that agreement.
That said, the 2009 title was not won by a Swiss driver, but an Italian one - Kevin Giovesi. He won 5 races out of the 12 and scored nearly 50% more points than the second-placed Sven Ackermann (who was the first in a cluster of six Swiss drivers). Some progression is clearly possible because even fifth-placed Sandro Zeller competed in three different F3 championships during 2010. Kevin Giovesi went into Italian F3 but came only 15th while Sven appears to have fallen off the radar completely.
Returning to the wiki walk, the final round happened at Monza. Needless to say, the Monza article casually mentions the fact that it hosts Formula 1 once... ...or twice... ...or 27 times (admittedly including reference lists). So that wiki walk got me to the destination in 2 clicks, but in a very interesting way for a motor sports fan. It's always nice to discover a previously-unknown racing series :)
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