OCTOBER 2, 2006

Dramatic times at grandprix.com

Our loyal readers across the world will have noticed that for the last 18 hours we have been unable to bring you our usual service news and views. This was not due to sabotage from unhappy racing people who do not like to hear too much of the truth - although there are a few suspects who might have considered the idea - but rather because of a fire in the switching equipment in a data centre in New York City. This meant that our servers were isolated from the Internet and there was nothing we could do to maintain the service - a problem exacerbated by the fact that it happened late on Sunday evening when Internet engineers are generally at home drinking beer and watching football games.

This is only the second time in six years that the service has been down for more than an hour - the previous time being when a large bulldozer went through the main Internet line around the corner from our offices.