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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2008 Brazilian Grand Prix

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 04:21, 31 December 2008 [1].

2008 Brazilian Grand Prix edit

Nominator(s): Apterygial

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe it meets the criteria. It has undergone a PR here, where members of WP:F1 ensured that the article was comprehensive. It has been copyedited by about six editors, not including myself, and passed its GAN yesterday. So, I put this amazing Formula One race before FAC. I'm here to answer any questions or make any adjustments. Apterygial 03:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hell of a race, one for the ages. Question, though: In the final standings, Coulthard is listed as being out with a 'collision', but Piquet is listed as 'accident'? Were these the official designations, or did Coulthard collide with something other than a car? --Golbez (talk) 09:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The FIA (the link is in external links) doesn't provide official designations. The difference here is Piquet simply spun off (hence, accident), while Coulthard was shunted off by the Williams cars (hence, collision). Apterygial 09:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - One of the intriguing things about being an FAC reviewer is discovering the wide range of articles that come here, including many on topics that I've never heard of. Even more intriguing for me is finding a page on a sports event from my time, and this fits in that category. I watched most of the race live in the US, including the dramatic final laps (thank you, Speed channel). Keeping in mind that I'm familiar with the topic, and that I already have many active reviews (which limits the time I can spend with any one review), here are my opening thoughts:

  • Two Toyota links in the lead. The second can safely be removed.
  • "The Grand Prix was David Coulthard's final race, retiring after 246 race starts." This sentence needs re-working; if you read it out loud, the problem becomes clear.
  • Question: Lewis Hamilton certainly deserves praise for his season, but was there any thought in the racing world that he lucked out on this day? In the article, the post-race praise contrasts sharply with the section on the background, where the one quote shows there were concerns that he might blow it. I have a hard time believing that the media was completely silenced when Hamilton was one corner from failing to hold his lead.
  • Speaking of the ending, are there any interesting quotes from the media on how dramatic the ending was? I don't follow auto racing that closely, and I'm fairly young, but I can't remember a season title ever being decided on the last corner of the last race before this event. I know it's hard to express this in a neutral way, but a quote or two from racing people would serve to illustrate the rarity of what happened in this race, and I think that it would elevate the article.
  • Report: "and Massa's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen fourth on 69 points." Perhaps add "was" after Raikkonen?
  • Italics for The Times in the text.
  • "the rights now go to the BBC and La Sexta, respectively." Be careful with time-specific elements like "now". It would be better to state when the rights tranfer (2009).

I read partway through Practice and qualifying, and will return to review the rest at a later time. What I'm seeing so far looks good, and I'm impressed by the quality of the sources used; I don't see any questionable ones in there. Best of luck. Giants2008 (17-14) 02:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've made the minor adjustments, and I'll chase up the possible content additions. One of the great things about F1 being so popular now is that there is no lack of quality sources; the media love F1 and the amount written on it is beyond staggering. I vaguely remember Eddie Jordan saying Hamilton was "lucky", which could contrast well with his other quote. I'll chase some stuff up. Apterygial 03:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And added. Apterygial 04:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Took me a while, but I'm back to finish my review.
  • "Raikkonen qualified third, though was happy with beginning the race on the racing line behind his team-mate." Try "though he was happy...".
  • Long, winding sentence here: "Hamilton finished the race in fifth position, enough to become Formula One's youngest Championship winner, clinching the Championship by a single point." Here's an example of a tighter version: "Hamilton finished the race in fifth position to clinch the Championship by a single point, making him Formula One's youngest Championship winner."
  • That makes it look like the fact he won by a single point makes him Formula One's youngest Championship winner. I'll see if I can think of better one. Apterygial 07:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to keep what we already have. It seems clearer that any alternatives I tossed and turned over all night (sort of). Apterygial 23:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fair enough. It won't impact my support, but here's another idea: "Hamliton finished the race in fifth position, clinching the Championship by a single point and becoming Formula One's youngest Championship winner." Still don't think the present structure works, but I won't force the issue. Giants2008 (17-14) 22:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like that, and added your suggestion (fixing the typo). Apterygial 23:26, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Post-race: A common word like television doesn't need to be linked.
  • The Eddie Jordan quote uses a spaced hyphen, where we would normally use a spaced en dash or an unspaced em dash. However, I don't know if the same rules apply for quoted material. Might be a good idea to ask a Manual of Style expert about that.
  • WP:MOSQUOTE says: "Allowable changes: ... Styling of dashes (use the style chosen for the article: unspaced em dash or spaced en dash"). So I changed it. Apterygial 07:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • For reference 1 (Autocourse 2008–09), use en dashes in the title and page number.
That's all from me. It's really quite good and leaves me wanting to read more. The only other thing that bothers me is the part about Hamilton battling Vettel at the end. From my memories of watching the race, Vettel was pulling away from Hamilton toward the end because his car was cornering better. "Battling" sounds like they were wire-to-wire. Oh, and add periods at the end of the Massa and Hamilton photo captions. Giants2008 (17-14) 03:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I watched the final laps just then to see if it was as close as I remembered. It wasn't that close, in terms of distance, but I think in the conditions it was a mental battle, who was going to crack, to slide off the track. He wasn't really pulling away; there was very little in it. Anyway, apart from that, I fixed everything else, apart from that one sentence, which I'll keep thinking about. Thanks for taking the time to review the article, happy holidays! Apterygial 07:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent)I left one note above, but other than that I'm ready to support. Surprising that this reached such a high level of quality so soon after the event. Nice work. Giants2008 (17-14) 22:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Minor comment In the final para of the race section it says "Rain began to fall heavily on lap 69, as Hamilton ran wide, which allowed Vettel to take fifth position." I can't quite remember now, but you would expect that Hamilton ran wide after the rain intensified: can we nail down the relative timing? Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 07:50, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All the sources I have looked at suggest it happened about the same time. The track was already slippery because "Light rain began to fall on lap 63", and it is feasible that Hamilton may have made a mistake. The phrase "Rain began to fall heavily on lap 69" is really there to signal a gradually wetter rain (as it were), rather than any <SNAP!> and it's heavier. Sorry for shouting. Apterygial 08:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Note I did not evaluate the non-English sources. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:38, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I think the only non-English source is from El Mundo, which as our own entry says "is the second largest daily newspaper in Spain and one of the newspapers of record in this country, with a circulation topping 330,000." Apterygial 04:57, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I always point out that since I'm monolingual (well, I used to be able to read Latin, but it's been a while) that I can't evaluate the non-English sources, just for honesty's sake. I could see that the one non-English source was to a newspaper, but whether it was a tabloid scandal sheet or a serious one, I couldn't tell. Better to be safe than sorry! Ealdgyth - Talk 15:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And I wouldn't know unless I looked at the entry! ;) Apterygial 22:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Support - Looks good to me, though it gets a bit quote-heavy towards the ends, do we really need to know so obviously what every F1 website said or could it be put into prose and appropiatly cited (Though I accept there are peacock risks here). A few of the sentences can be a bit convoluted, for example 'Timo Glock remained certain the decision to stay on dry-weather tyres when other teams were pitting for wet-weather tyres was a correct one' could do with...something, commas or what have you, to make it more readable (Especially as it is just a tie in for a quote). All in all though, it is a solid article. There is the temptation to do too much of a bridge from this article to the 2009 season, and I think the article does well to avoid it. PS: Is 'Part 1, Part 2, Part 3' the standard in F1 articles these days for qualifying? Looks kind of hideous and clumsy. But if it is a standard keep it, very minor nitpick from me) --Narson ~ Talk • 12:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's useful to have those quotes there. The real intention is to display an accurate cross-section of what was said about the race from the huge volume of material that comes out about an F1 race. And yes, the risk of a peacock paragraph (as it were) would be hard to get around. I added commas to Glock's sentence, I think it really needed it! Finally, I'm assuming you're talking about the qualifying classification table. It doesn't look great, but I think the FIA wants points for the quickest in Q2 so in future race reports that could be useful (and yes, it is standard). Thanks, Apterygial 22:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was referring to qualifying. Was just making sure there was a reason we didn't use Q1, Q2 or Qualy 1 or something. If it is a standardisation issue, I can live with it. As I said, I had to nitpick to find the faults, it is a great article over all. Kudos. --Narson ~ Talk • 00:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The jargon issue prevents us from including in Formula One articles a lot of F1 terms (like Q1, P1 (for position), flying lap, etc.) Apterygial 01:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to support, obviously. --Narson ~ Talk • 17:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Apterygial 22:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Very minor thing that I just thought of, in the Background section it says "McLaren were second on 145 points". Technically, the entry competing for the WCC is "McLaren Mercedes". If McLaren had run a different make of engine in the car, it would be classed as a different constructor. AlexJ (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changed. Anyone supporting? Apterygial 23:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Informative and well written. It captures the background, the event itself and outcome of the race well. Works for me. Chasingsol (talk) 11:51, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - Well written, well sourced with reliable sources, a readthrough of the article doesn't give me any reason to believe that anything is wrong, and the layout is aesthetically pleasing and satisfies the MOS. — neuro(talk) 14:17, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - per the above. igordebraga ≠ 00:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. I think we are still looking for an image review. Apterygial 01:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Own work by the uploader released in public domain. The image is also in the desired SVG format. LeaveSleaves talk 02:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

  • I think that there should be a mention of the Ferrari team celebrating prematurely.
  • It already does: "However, premature joy in the Ferrari garage soon turned to disappointment as both Vettel and Hamilton passed Glock in the final corners..." Apterygial 23:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not really, they celebrated at the end of the race long after he passed Glock. BUC (talk) 07:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • First of all, I don't believe there is a discrepancy in that sentence which suggests that your interpretation was not the case. Secondly, a further expansion hardly strikes me as being notable. They celebrated, they were happy, and then they were crushed. Sad viewing, but certainly nothing that should be given undue weight in a Wikipedia article. Apterygial 11:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The rain began to fall heavily on lap 69, as Hamilton ran wide" Sound like the rain started just as Hamalton was being overtaken, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that was the case. BUC (talk) 17:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • See my response to 4u1e above. Apterygial 23:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image review All images have verifiable licenses and descriptions. I would ask the editors to add a source for File:Circuit Interlagos.svg. Since Wikipedia cannot rely on its editors' reliability for legitimacy, particularly in the area of self-made content, it is always best to include a source that users can check the diagram against. Awadewit (talk) 13:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for the review. Apterygial 23:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Image concerns addressed. Awadewit (talk) 11:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query, why are some of the entries in the "Race" table bolded? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:52, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pointscoring positions. Only the top 8 drivers get points, and that helps indicate those drivers (the points are given in the far right column). Apterygial 03:57, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is that stated somewhere that I may have missed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:00, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think so. It's the accepted manner to table F1 results on Wikipedia, and is shown in WP:F1's example race report. It's not hugely important, but does help if you want to know that. Apterygial 04:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unless you mean a mention of pointscoring positions, which is given in the piped link marked "points" in the lead and background. Apterygial 04:09, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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