Err, What?

BT Sport is a new venture from the telecoms company after it bought ESPN UK & Ireland, which itself grew out of the ashes of Setanta Sports. The line-up will be BT Sport 1 and BT Sport 2 – each with HD and SD simulcasts – and the existing ESPN channel will be retained, but it’ll be run by BT instead of ESPN. The existing ESPN Classic and ESPN America will be discontinued. MotorsTV has moved on the Sky EPG to make way.

Is this a good thing? The elephant in the room is Sky Sports, the dominant player in subscription-TV sports. If Setanta nor the mighty ESPN could make it work against Sky, could BT, despite little experience operating linear TV? BT already offer an on-demand service via IPTV (it beat Sky to that by a couple of years), could that make the difference?

Given Thursday’s announcements they are certainly giving it a damn good try!

No Free-To-Air MotoGP

Now for the bad news for many – no more BBC or Eurosport MotoGP coverage.

The free-to0-air* BBC2 airs all races live, and Moto2 and Moto3 races, and MotoGP qualifying, are live online and on the red button.

* excluding the Licence Fee but since everyone has to pay it anyway it is moot.

British Eurosport – but I believe not many other branches of Eurosport across the continent – air all sessions live for all 3 classes apart from the MotoGP race, which is delayed to give BBC2 the priority. Eurosport only requires a £5 extra fee on Sky (along with a whole host of other channels in the Entertainment Extra pack), and is on a fairly reasonable tier on Virgin Media cable TV, I think? It also has a very affordable web and app presence costing only £2.99/mth which is how I watch it.

The sharing agreement was set up in 2009 specifically to boost ratings by giving priority to the more widely available BBC2. It seems priorities have changed at Dorna!

As of now the only UK TV coverage is exclusive to BT. Sadly this means, unless a highlights deal is announced, MotoGP will no longer be available on free-to-air to the whole population.

This is a huge loss for MotoGP’s UK fans. I am sure Dorna took this option for their own reasons, possibly financial. The BT deal will inevitably result in far lower viewing figures. BBC2 gets about 1 million people per race, this is sometimes higher than F1 races on Sky! BT would be doing extremely well to reach 20% of that and it might be more like 10%.

There are some people who will get it free-to-air, effectively. More on that in a minute.

What MotoGP Will They Air?

Everything. All sessions and races will be covered live. Tthey’ll be covered live from site and from a London studio, perhaps they’ll send one or two pit reporters (and crew) and keep the presenting team at home? That’s a backwards step, the interaction you get from Matt Roberts, and previously Suzi Perry, is very much worth the investment. Talking heads sitting in a remote studio is not interesting to me.

What is interesting is the promise of extra programming between races, they’ve not given specifics but I imagine that might include profiles of legends of the sport, insights into GP history, a tour of a team HQ.

How.. And How Much?

First things first – the hook:  If you have BT Broadband you will be able to get BT Sport’s channels as a free extra. I’m a BT Broadband subscriber so this makes me quite happy! Effectively MotoGP remains ‘free-to-air’ if you are already with BT.

There are those who complain it isn’t “free” but that is only valid if you are now with a competitor at a lower rate – you’ll end up paying more by switching. That’s fair enough. For those of us already paying BT’s higher rates, this offer makes those prices better value. I’m paying them anyway so anything extra is a bonus. Ok it isn’t ‘free’, it is a new feature that makes my higher cost more bearable. Believe me I was seriously considering switching away at the end of my contract and this deal will heavily influence my decision.

Don’t have BT Broadband? A subscription costs £12 per month or £15 for HD but at the moment you can only get it on Sky.

Here are the four options. They say three but there are four, I consider the web player to be separate from the app. There’s a possible fifth.

Option 1)  Sky. If you have Sky you can ring up BT and give them your viewing card number. You DO NOT have to be an existing BT customer – the difference is only in cost. If you are with BTB you’ll get Sport free, if you’re not you’ll be charged £12 or £15. Seemingly you can only get it direct from BT (don’t call Sky), I bet this is to check you’re a broadband customer which Sky wouldn’t know.

Option 2) BT TV. BT have a couple of TV options of their own. You’ll need their broadband to get either.

They want you to get YouView but that requires some hoops to be jumped: You need to have BT Infinity (“superfast broadband” as they call it), their fibre-optic system which is slowly rolling out across the country.

If like many people you currently can’t get Infinity you can have BT Vision instead. For that you will need normal BT Broadband, or ADSL as most of us may know it. There appear to be no other restrictions on getting Vision. (Annoyingly there’s also a Vision-branded section on YouView – don’t confuse the two).

BT Sport will be delivered by encrypted Freeview channel needing a viewing card in exactly the same way ESPN is currently, but it’ll be the SD channels only and there’s a £10 fee for the card.

Update – more details here.

Both systems are focused on ‘On Demand’ services so I hope BT Sport content will appear there for free.

Option 3) Web Player. Seems to be BT subs only. Go to btsport.com and login with a MyBT username (the one you use to look bills). A big concern here is the use of unreliable Microsoft Silverlight which is my main bugbear with ITV Player.

Option 4) App for tablet or smartphone again needing a BT login.

I hope options 3 and 4 become available to non-subscribers. If BT are serious about bringing sport to the masses at lower rates than Sky, they would surely allow people to subscribe only to the web player and/or the app.

Potential Option 5) Virgin Media cable TV. No deal has been agreed right now but you can bet they are working on it.

Away from BT, another option for fans is the VideoPass on MotoGP.com – real diehards only though, a standard pass costs £85 per year or £21/month! A ‘MultiScreen’ pass is £30/mth.

Existing ESPN subscriber? I’m pretty sure I saw that your subscription will only run until ESPN changes hands at the end of July. If that means you have unused months I suggest you ask ESPN for a refund.

The Takeaway

Depends on what you have already.

++ for anybody with BT broadband and a Sky dish or YouView. Just ring BT and get all this stuff for free. If you currently pay for ESPN you’ll save £10-15 per month.

+ for anybody with BT broadband but no Sky dish. You (and I) will get the web player and the app for no extra fee. Most of us are perfectly used to watching BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD or Eurosport Player so this is a very good thing for us.

~ for people with Sky but not BT. £12-£15 isn’t going to break the bank if you only want BT Sport, but if you want Sky Sports too it’ll soon mount up. If you pay for Sky Sports and ESPN right now nothing will really change, a sport or two will have moved from one place to another as they do every year.

- for those who can and would pay for BT and/or Sky but are currently with other providers – switching is a hassle.

– if you can only afford one set of premium sports channels, do you choose Sky for F1, or BT for MotoGP & IndyCar? It’ll fall on your preference of racing and other sports.

— for anybody without BT or Sky and are unwilling or unable to switch for whatever reason. Cost is likely the main reason as both BT and Sky are expensive. There are a lot of people who just can’t afford it.

MotoGP’s ratings are going to drop substantially in 2014. ESPN’s ratings at the moment are dire and that will not change for a while. Even Sky Sports, the market leader in subscription sport, usually has poor ratings compared to Free-To-Air.

The increase in shoulder programming is a good thing – will anybody watch it?

I applaud BT for not only allowing their current customers access for no further fee – remember how often people complain the sweet deals are only for new customers – and also for keeping the monthly cost at a minimal level for non-broadband customers.

On a Personal Level

I have BT Broadband with BT Vision TV – unfortunately the Freeview part is broken so I can’t get ESPN, but even if the box worked I live in a transmission blackspot – if you pick up a main transmitter you see all Freeview channels but if you use a local repeater transmitter you only see half of them. Guess where I live! I must get an engineer to move the aerial.

I should be able to see a lot On Demand for free with Vision which is good. Anything I want live I can see on my PC or iPad for no extra charge, also brilliant.

Alternatives? I’m in a rented property so I can’t have a Sky dish – I might be allowed at this address but who’s to say how long I’ll be here and if my next landlord would let me? I also live well outside Virgin’s cabled area. These are the reasons I went for BTV in the first place.

Is this deal any good for you? Let me know! It certainly feels better than the Sky F1 deal but is that because I’m now used to that idea, is it because I know I’m getting availability for no extra cost?

Other Racing

IndyCar – BT seem to have taken over ESPN’s current IndyCar deal right off the bat, from channel launch this August. Good news. IndyCar fans were faced with having no coverage at all so it is a very different position to MotoGP which is reducing viewers. I’m *VERY* happy to finally be able to watch one of my favourite series completely legally for the first time since 2002!

NASCAR – There has been mention of NASCAR which I presume to be the 1-hour highlights show of the Sprint Cup. Time will tell. If so it might even mean I’ll stay with Cup for a season for the first time.

At the moment that seems it for motorsport but anything could change between now and the 2014 season.

Other Sport

Football, football, and more football: English Premier League, Scottish Premier League, FA Cup, UEFA Europa League, Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, MLS, English Women’s League.
English Premiership Rugby. WTA tennis. Red Bull ‘extreme sports’ (interestingly including Red Bull Crashed Ice!). UFC. And these from the head of digital production: “Our confirmed list of US sports: college basketball, Indy car, NASCAR, college football, MLB, Red Bull, MLS.”

It seems like a very decent line-up if you like those sorts of things. I’m not too into the different types of football so I wouldn’t pay for the channels, but since they are free-to-me I might dip into a few things to see if I like them!

It should be an interesting change in dynamic with the race having moved to April from a mid-season August, it has now become the opening round of the series. It’ll be our first chance to see the competitiveness of the teams and drivers particularly those that did not make the trip to Sebring in March. The weather and temperature will be other factors to consider, though in fairness they may not be too different to the years the race took place in September.

Racing This Weekend

FIA WEC, ELMS, and FIA European F3.

What Are They?

The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is a world series for the cars and stars of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and 2013 is the second year of the revived championship. Four classes of car compete on the track at the same time, two sets of ‘prototypes’ and two sets of GTs. This weekend features a six hour race on Sunday.

The European Le Mans Series is a regional series also linked to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It also has four classes, two of which are identical to those in the WEC and two are ’entry level’ in nature. This weekend they’ll race for three hours on Saturday afternoon.

FIA European Formula 3 is a single-seater category for aspiring drivers, if F1 is the top tier of single-seater racing then F3 is the 3rd-tier. In reality the talent from F3 graduates into all types of racing including WEC and the like. They will have two races on Saturday and another one first thing on Sunday.

What To Bring

Tickets! You could get a 3-day weekend ticket for £35 in advance and they should still only be £40 on the gate, obviously single-day tickets would be lower!

Appropriate clothing! It is April – expect a mixture of sun and showers. It also a cold Spring so bring a thick jumper and a coat. It’ll be hard to choose between a heavy coat for warmth or an anorak to stay dry so put both in the car and decide when you get there! Bear in mind Silverstone can feel cold on a warm day so if the day is cool already, be ready. Bring a hat too. And sun cream! Seriously!

Shoes that you don’t mind getting dirty. Although Silverstone spent a lot of money on path improvements around the start/finish straight, and that area really does look impressive now, they don’t extend around the whole track and in any case you might not want to go where the paths go. With all the rain we’ve had the ground will be muddy.

A radio! When the cars are running you will struggle to hear the PA system around much of the track so you will need a radio tuned to 87.7FM Radio Le Mans, and a supply of batteries.

You might also want a camera, with a supply of batteries.

Andy Blackmore’s Spotter Guides. You might want to print these:  FIA WEC – ELMS  Wait as late as you can as they’re being updated.

Bring food or plenty of money to buy some. I usually buy my lunch on site. Silverstone’s food sellers have markedly improved in quality over the years, unfortunately they can now make a hefty dent in your wallet. At least it isn’t as pricey as Goodwood! Don’t bank on getting anything on your way back to your car though, they’re all packing up by then.

On the plus side, parking is free and very simple. Go along Dadford Road all the way down, past the main entrance until you get to the 2nd roundabout and turn left there signposted Public Parking. You’ll discover you are near the end of the Wing, by Club corner. Follow the people wearing orange or yellow and they’ll have you at a nice spot barely five minutes walk from the gate, which is about a half minute’s walk from the track. Obviously if you have to queue to buy a ticket it’ll be longer, but if you’ve brought your ticket with you, you can be out of your car and trackside within 10 minutes if you want to be. I usually follow my ritual of getting a cup of tea first, maybe a bacon roll!

If you don’t feel like walking the track there are free buses circulating the perimeter road, also visiting the pitlane, so you can still make that journey to Becketts or the Hangar Straight if you want to.

A lot of the grandstands will be open for no extra fee. Not all of them are open all weekend, Sunday is the day with most availability.

WEC teams will be based at the Wing paddock. ELMS and F3 teams will be based at the National paddock (the old pits).

Want To Watch The F1 Race Too?

Greedy so and so, but, me too! And there’s good news – if you can get to Silverstone early enough, the Paddock Diner in the National paddock will be open from 7.30am Sunday and they will be showing the Chinese GP on their TV screens. That race starts at 8am and should run until about 9.30. Racing starts at Silverstone at 9.15am on Sunday with F3, by then you should have a sense of whether it is worth staying for the end of the F1.

Info from the most excellent FIA WEC Twitter feed which you should definitely follow.

Timetable

Friday

• 9.00am – 10.00am ELMS Practice
• 10.15am – 10.55am F3 Practice
• 11am – 11.40am F3 Practice
• 12.25pm – 1.55pm WEC Practice
• 2.10pm – 3.10pm ELMS Practice
• 3.25pm – 4.10pm F3 Qualifying
• 4.30pm – 6pm WEC Practice

Saturday

• 9.00am – 10.00am WEC Practice
• 10.20am – 10.55am F3 Race 1
• 11.10am – 11.30am – ELMS Qualifying – LMGTE & GTC classes
• 11.35am – 11.55am – ELMS Qualifying – LMP2 & LMPC classes
• 12.10pm – 12.30pm – WEC Qualifying – LMGTE Pro & LMGTE Am classes
• 12.40pm – 1.00pm – WEC Qualifying – LMP1 & LMP2 classes
• 1.20pm – 1.55pm – F3 Race 2
• 2.20pm – 2.40pm – ELMS Grid Walk
• 3.00pm – 6.00pm ELMS Race

Sunday

• 9.15am – 9.50am – F3 Race 3
• 10.00am – 10.45am – WEC Pit Walk & Autograph Session
• 11.10am – 11.40am – WEC Grid Walk
• 12.00pm – 6.00pm – WEC Race

When you leave I recommend allowing time to watch the podium ceremonies. Each of the four classes gets their own podium ceremony. Not only is it good to show your appreciation to the drivers it is a great way to let the car park empty before you hit the road. All traffic merges together into a single road and that means everything backs up, it takes a long time to get out, so instead of stressing in your car you might as well stick around for 20 minutes to congratulate all of the class winners.

Tweets

I’ll be tweeting from @toomuchracing throughout the weekend for as long as signal and battery allow, unless it is too cold to use it! And do remember to follow @FIAWEC as well.

See you there.

Silverstone is very open and windswept so it can be tricky to get good shots but I think I did a reasonable job. This year I should get some good ones as I’ll be bringing another lens.

Last year the race was held in late August, the best time it has ever been held. Previously it has been a chilly, windswept September. This year it has moved to a chilly, windswept April – just next weekend on April 14th. This was done to help the costs of the teams and to make the race more important in the run-up to the big one at Le Mans. Speaking purely as a trackside spectator it was far better in August.

I’ll be there next weekend to see the WEC on Sunday and the ELMS and F3 on Saturday - a weekend ticket booked in advance costs a mere £35 and that gives you access to multiple grandstands so it is an absolute bargain. That’s for a combined 9 hours of sportscar racing plus three F3 races! If you’re unsure whether to come, and you should come for the WEC at least, have a look at these photos to see if it appeals to you.

I may write a little something during the week, just some tips for those attending.

Click here to jump straight to the full Picasa album.

The grid:

Olympic Gold-winning canoeist green flaggers:

Side by side.. wait.. wait.. Go!

Audi vs Toyota:

Prototypes and GTs both racing at the same time:

Ferrari vs Porsche (vs Aston vs Corvette)

You can get a nice bit of exercise as you wander the track perimeter:

And back for the Chequered Flag;

And the podium!

All photos are clickable for a higher resolution. There are a lot more where that came from in the full album: 119 photos in all!

I hope you come along to this year’s race next weekend.

Anyway, nobody reads race reviews on blogs, they go to the news sites for that. The site stats prove it, and that’s fine because they can be a bind to write. I’m retiring from writing them. Fewer commitments and greater freedom, that’s what I say.

So yes, just a self-indulgent little note to say sorry for the lack of posts, and as of now the blog’s focus will change slightly. I liked it when I put up shorter posts interspersed with the odd longer feature piece so I’m going back to that format.

Never mind. I watched the extended highlights instead. The name ‘highlights’ does it a disservice, there wasn’t much cut out of the Sky show I watched and even less from the BBC show I watched just minutes ago before writing this post. I do think the BBC version was superior in every way, but Sky’s show only had half the time to prepare it as it went out at 11am rather than the BBC’s 2pm. We have an interesting choice between speed and quality, and I do like competitive choice.

Was the race any good?

It wasn’t a classic race but it wasn’t boring by any stretch. It was interesting, in the same way I said Sebring was interesting – for racing geeks like us there was enough to think about. For casual fans it might’ve been easy to think it was just cars going around, but for the rest of us, if you followed what was going on it was a very interesting race. Races can be very interesting without being nail-biting and this was one of them.

There was passing too, in the early phase of the race, through the midfield during the race, and not only on the victims of the current supplier’s tyre degradation.

When Vettel and the pair of Ferraris scampered away into the lead I thought the race was already over. Oh, ye of little faith. Within a few laps, the Lotus of Kimi Räikkönen closed in on them. It turns out at this track in these conditions the Red Bull wasn’t a match for the Ferrari on tyre degradation and both were outclassed by the Lotus, specifically that Lotus because the other one wasn’t anywhere to be found. I was so pleased Kimi started reeling them in because then I knew we’d have a decent race.

Felipe Massa had a great day. If he is able to carry this on in to the next races, suddenly we might have two Ferraris in contention for regular podium finishes if not wins and that’ll transform the Constructors’ battle too.

Adrian Sutil was the other man I was very impressed with, I’d never rated him highly and I’ve been proven wrong. To take a year out and then not only put in a solid drive but also race hard, fair and professionally with those around him – a good drive slightly ruined by the red supersofts suffering higher degradation than the team expected on a rubbered-in track at the end of the race.

Finally a word for Jules Bianchi, the man I thought should’ve been in that Force India seat was easily the class of the ‘young teams’.

Early Form

Sam Collins of Racecar Engineering mentioned in the RLM F1 preview that he was very impressed with the Lotus and they’d not only win races but the Championship, too. I scoffed at such ideas and I still think a title, either title, is a long shot. I’m not scoffing any more at the thought of multiple race wins – sure I thought one or two, but now.. unless RBR and Ferrari get a handle on tyres Lotus could bag a few more at the other street-based venues. We must wait to see the form on a permanent race track.

The McLaren seems to be a dog of a car, for a McLaren. I’m astonished they turned out a car this bad. Early indications are that the Mercedes is pretty good relative to last year and Hamilton seems very comfortable with his new team – I bet that’s aided by seeing his old one struggling so suddenly.
The Force India is looking promising as well, they just need to sort out the tyre strategy. Sauber seemed to be nowhere but we only have one car to guide us after Hülkenberg’s DNS, all we can say is Gutierrez received practically no TV attention at all. Toro Rosso seem to have a strange car, Ricciardo was dreadfully slow early on but then he and Vergne both set Fastest Lap later on, again we’ll have to see how it behaves on a more normal track. Williams really are in the deep doo-doo.

We have to be careful, though. This was only one race and Albert Park is a famously unreliable barometer of performance. This weekend is the vastly different challenge of the Sepang circuit, a very fast, wide, flowing circuit in the damp heat of Malaysia with the potential (certainty?) of wet weather in late afternoon, when the F1 sessions will be running.
Even at Sepang we may not get a true picture, it’ll be clearer than now but we’ll have to wait until China for a true picture, perhaps not until Bahrain, then when the teams get to Europe there are usually a host of upgrades in time for Spain and Monaco before the real order is established.

Next Up

The Malaysian GP at Sepang is this weekend. Don’t forget the opening round of IndyCar also this weekend.

Summary

The prototypes battle fell flat early on and in fairness that was expected before the race started. The focus fell on the two GT classes which did a good job of keeping things interesting, and there was a late battle in the PC class as well. With only an hour or two to go each of these three classes were led by something like 10 or 15 seconds! Tiny margins given the distances covered, a mistake on the track or by a pit crew would’ve turned it around.

I had other commitments in the afternoon and wasn’t able to join the coverage until 90 minutes into the race. I watched the rest, although I also dipped into the Red Bull Crashed Ice finale (I found myself unable to concentrate on that), and the delayed F1 qualifying.

I was watching the ALMS.com feed so their server problems were disappointing – I was happy they had the usual Hindhaugh & Shaw presentation and a solid pit crew. The ALMS Twitter feed claimed this race had 4x the viewers as last year, a statistic I find surprising considering last year’s race doubled as the inaugural WEC round, with a far deeper field. Compared to that race, with the ALMS struggling lately, this year’s race was always going to look a little weak in comparison to 2012′s so the increased viewership was interesting to see.

Through The Classes

P1

Audi dominated as everybody expected they would. There was a little fight amongst themselves but it was nothing compared to a battle with another manufacturer team, there was the definite sense they were tiptoeing around each other whenever they were racing – the right thing to do under the circumstances.

The real race in P1 was among the four-car ”petrol/independent class” but Dyson Racing encountered problems with their Lola-Mazda, and Muscle Milk Pickett’s HPD was penalised (stop and hold for 60 seconds) following “avoidable contact”, when Klaus Graf and a PC-car collided. This was a shame as they were fairly evenly matched with the two Rebellion Lola-Toyotas, perhaps the Pickett car had the edge (perhaps thanks to their drivers and their circuit knowledge).

So this race was spoiled by a couple of happenings but that doesn’t mean Rebellion didn’t earn it, they were fast and kept their nose clean. I’m glad they’re keeping a car in the ALMS in addition to their two in WEC this year.

The DeltaWing, run by a completely different team to last year and with completely different technical partners, failed to impress after running slower than the PC class pace before an engine failure ended their day early.

P2

Five entries in this class, all top-drawer quality but sadly the race was effectively over by halfway. Level 5′s pair of HPDs were in control, it was always going to be tough to beat their star driver line-up of Marino Franchitti, Simon Pagenaud, and Ryans Hunter-Reay and Briscoe.
Extreme Speed did a good job learning their own pair of HPDs after moving from Ferraris in the GT class, although Ed Brown in particular seemed to struggle with his car with multiple spins and the other, faster car was delayed with mechanical issues. ESM will work on it, they’ll get there.
After splitting the HPDs right down the middle in qualifying, the lone Greaves Motorsport Zytek-Nissan wasn’t able to keep up with Level 5 in the race – which surprised me I have to say. I’m not sure if they encountered any problems.

PC

It was a hard-fought battle in the single-make class, the lead changing handle multiple times throughout the race. Most of this 7-car field was competitive and there wasn’t any way of picking a winner, even when it eventually distilled down to two cars you couldn’t call it, it was still a race as Ostella hunted down Marcelli for the win which is the opposite of what I would’ve predicted! This class is going to be a lot of fun this year.

GT

As expected the GT class proved a dogfight, though I have to say it seemed much cleaner than the wheel-banging of past years, which is impressive given how hard they were all pushing.

The main race was between the Corvettes and the Risi Ferrari, that classic battle between marques. Interloping from time to time were the likes of the Viper, the new BMW Z4 and even the Falken Tire Porsche, which given the struggles of Porsche teams everywhere wasn’t supposed to be near the front. The variety bodes well for a very exciting season.

The Ferrari had better range, the ‘Vette perhaps the better speed over a stint. Despite electrical issues and a penalty for pitlane speeding (caused by temporarily having no limiter) the no.4 Corvette fought back to win by just 3 seconds from the Ferrari, however that was arguably only because Matteo Malucelli’s stellar drive faltered under intense pressure from the yellow ‘Vette.
The Vipers fell back after a while as did the promising new BMW Z4 which had an impressive debut – though as both are running with exemptions for engines that are way too big for the regs, I was quietly pleased they lost (even though they have very cool cars).
Feelgood result of the race was the Falken Porsche, I thought they were a way behind earlier on but they came back to finish 3rd.

Notable absentees were the Aston Martins which suffered car trouble fairly early on and were forced to treat the rest of the race as a test, a very rapid test in which they set the class fastest lap, hinting at what might’ve been.

GTC

It is a sign of these economic times that so many top quality drivers – and teams – are in the low-cost spec class supposedly for entry-level entrants. The benefit for the class is the ridiculously close race! When you have Jeroen Bleekemolen, Sean Edwards, Damian Faulkner, Sascha Maassen, and Spencer Pumpelly you can’t say the class is lacking in talent. The result then depends how good the amateur, ‘gentlemen’ drivers are, and if they’re as evenly matched as they are here you have a race on your hands! Even deep into the race the top half dozen were split by 20 seconds or less. It was only in the very late stages that it got a bit split up. An under-reported, much-knocked class (and I’m fully guilty of that) which should continue to see some great racing this year.

Stars of the Race

I’d never heard of David Ostella or Matteo Malucelli so I was tremendously impressed by their performances. Malucelli put in a near-flawless performance for Risi Ferrari, whenever I looked at T&S he was in the car, his only fault being a little kind to the Corvette as it attacked him in the late stages of the race and that’s just down to inexperience of Sebring. Ostella on the other hand seemed to warm to the race the more it went on, culminating in a fantastic PC-class race-winning pass against Kyle Marcelli, who is no pushover.

If you weren’t paying attention to the laptimes of AMR after their long, long delays, you might’ve missed Bruno Senna’s speed in the car. Some suggested he wouldn’t be suited to GT racing. Wrong!

Kuba Giermaziak seems to be the real deal, too.

Other Business

There were a few controversial stewarding decisions. Some of the faster guys were a little impatient when lapping slower cars. Some were racing incidents, others were the fault of the slower guy wandering all over the road, yet it was always the faster guy that would get the penalty. McNish was definitely unfairly penalised. Graf’s penalty was less clear cut and both opinions were flying around Twitter – I thought the PC car stayed wide and braked early to let Graf through, which Graf may have misread or not expected  - a racing incident but under ALMS rules Graf got the penalty for braking too late, ‘avoidable contact’.

Next Up

The ALMS moves on to the vastly different challenge of a 2-hour race on the short Long Beach street course, one month from now.

Next year’s 12 Hours of Sebring will be part of the brave new world of United SportsCar Racing.

As well as reading this, do listen to the Sidepodcast Season Preview Megamix. I joined several other listeners in submitting voicemails/recordings with predictions for the season ahead!

The new tech regs come in next season and that means 2013′s cars are much like 2012′s cars. Therefore I don’t see a big change in performance compared to last year. There might be a team that assigned more of a priority to this season than another team. Obviously there will be differences as there are from year to year anyway, it isn’t like they are carrying over the same car (in most cases) so there is scope for a bit of a shuffling.

Up Front

I think the Championship will ultimately settle down to another contest between Vettel and Alonso. The Ferrari seems better sorted so far this year than it was a year ago. Alonso is my tip for the Championship.

Among the teams, I am convinced Red Bull will again win the Constructor’s title, Seb will undoubtedly score bundles of points but the difference will come from the other seat. Webber vs Perez vs Massa should result in Webber winning that little battle but it obviously depends on what mood they are in (especially Massa) and the performance of the cars.

I thought Button should be up there but after his complaints from Friday practice that may not turn out to be the case. Perhaps they are just ‘managing expectations’. In any event, even if they are back a bit, McLaren are the best team at developing from a poor situation and by the midseason they should be scoring podium finishes and wins – unfortunately for them this seems to now be a recurring theme, certainly over the last few years.

Midfield

The burning questions are whether Mercedes, Lotus, Sauber or Force India will take a step forward or are they regrouping for 2014? From the early running in Melbourne it looks like Mercedes have made a nice step, at least in wet conditions! Will they still be there in the dry? Perhaps. Fast but maybe a bit fragile. I reckon Hamilton will get a win or two, Rosberg may also bag one too. It’ll be more competitive than last year.

Sam Collins of Racecar Engineering is adamant the Lotus is a car to watch. I am not so sure, I’ve not seen it tearing up the racetracks so far but I’d like them to do well. I do think they’ll score at least one win and it’ll be Kimi that does it. The Sauber is also a very tidy car and last year’s could’ve won a race or two with more experienced or faster drivers – if they’ve produced another fast car could Nico H. be the man to take a win? I think he can.

I’m not sure we’ll see a big change from Force India. The car looks no different and what’s going on with the money? Will it dry up? They could be looking at next year.

The other interesting thing about the midfield is their choices about when to ditch 2013 and look forward. With completely new rules there is a great chance to move forward, so if you are underperforming this year you will reach a point when you feel it is better to abandon it, do what you can with this car and throw the kitchen sink at the next one.

Lower Midfield

Williams should stay ahead of Toro Rosso, but they’ll be vying with each other to stay out of the Q1 drop zone alongside the two slow teams. I’d like to wish Williams would improve but I don’t think it’ll be this year.

At The Back

Marussia and Caterham will again be at the back and it seems by just as big a margin as before, which is a surprise. Perhaps they are just treading water with another bad car while they put a concerted effort into the 2014 cars. That’s potentially what I would do in their position, but they have to be careful to make a car good enough to beat the 107% qualifying rule.

I like the look of Bianchi. He got screwed out of the Force India seat when Mr Sutil turned up with bags of money, something Jules didn’t really deserve. These teams have four seats and three of them are filled with rookies, which is a terrible idea. You always want one experienced driver to work with. Pic should use his year of experience to beat them but he’ll be up against Bianchi. The other two will be nowhere.

Generally

Much like last year we’ll see some fantastic races, some mediocre races, and some absolutely terrible ‘races’ where we wonder what the point is (hello Korea). With any luck some of the good ones will be in surprising places – last year nobody expected Valencia or Abu Dhabi to be worth watching but they turned out to be among the best of the season!

Last year wasn’t a classic season (as some F1 media seem to claim) but neither was it a terrible season (as others seem to claim, particularly among sportscar media). I think we’ll see much the same this year. A mixed year of good races and bad, fortunes changing as the year goes on. That’s fine. That’s perfectly normal and I don’t think anyone can be unhappy with that. If it develops into a genuine classic then so much the better!

I’m really looking forward to it.

In summary – I approve!

The new name of the series is United SportsCar Racing.

Yes it is a little bit of a wishy-washy name, and it does seem to have ties to the name of the ALMS before it was the ALMS, which was Professional SportsCar Racing. Those are minor gripes. On the other hand, how many people actually know PSCR? The important thing is that it is a clean break from the current ALMS and Grand-Am names and doesn’t borrow anything from either of them. It allows them to move forward cleanly. It also reinforces the point they’ve been trying to get across since the Autumn – this is not a takeover, this is a true merger.

Okay so the actual helmet design I would say is a weak point but that’s not important, things like that can be tweaked over time.

You can watch the full half-hour reveal presentation with Q&A on the Grand-Am site.

Or you can see this short promo video:

In broader terms, the name of the sanctioning body is equally important and this was the first announcement. It pleases me, and just about everybody I think, to say the famous IMSA name is retained as the name of the sanctioning body. As they very clearly pointed out during the press conference, everybody told them this was the way to go! It makes so much sense with the old connections IMSA had with NASCAR, the renewed ties it has with that group, as well as the more modern association with the ALMS. Bringing it all together, it just makes so much sense to use that name now.

They have completely dropped the intermediary ‘ISCAR’ name as they always said they would, that’s good, that was a terrible name.

These are very positive developments.

Official Class Names

The 2014 class structure was loosely defined without names back in January. Now those plans have been firmed up and they are pretty much as-announced, now we have class names and confirmation of the fate of GX. There will be five classes.

P – Prototype – the ALMS P2 class joins the Grand-Am Daytona Prototype class, along with cars running to the DeltaWing concept. Technical information on how this tricky balance will be achieved should be revealed ‘within the next 90 days’, according to Scott Atherton. The P2 cars will be able to go to Le Mans.

PC – Prototype Challenge – the ALMS PC class as it is this year.

GTLM – GT Le Mans – the ALMS GT class as it presently is, unchanged and retaining the links to Le Mans including the ability to race there.

GTD – GT Daytona – the Grand-Am Rolex GT class plus the ALMS GTC class.

GX – the experimental GT class introduced to Grand-Am this season remains as a separate class.

P2 cars will be similar to ACO (WEC/ELMS) cars but tweaked to suit United SportsCar’s needs. It apparently will be possible to convert between specs to go to Le Mans, and similarly the European or Asian teams will be able to go to Daytona, Sebring and Petit. Unsaid, but much rumoured, is the possibility the rest of this class will also one day be able to go to Le Mans, including DPs or whatever they morph into. Will that happen in 2014? I doubt it. 2015? I think that’s a strong possibility. Let the merger bed-in then invite the merged class to play at La Sarthe.

They actually did the complete opposite with the GT classes that I had suggested! I said it would be best to avoid comparisons between Le Mans GTs and Daytona GTs, you’ll inevitably attract complaints from the small subset of fans who insist that America be faster (most American sportscar fans aren’t at all like that by the way, most would patriotically celebrate a home win whilst appreciating everyone else’s performance at the same time). But I can see their thinking: The cars with LM in their name go to Le Mans. The cars with D in their name came from Daytona. Nice and simple in a year in which it could be hard to explain the differences between two GT classes with potentially big grids.

Le Mans & ACO

Confirmation came today, Friday, that the ACO and IMSA have agreed to continue the relationship started by the ALMS, namely that IMSA teams and drivers remain eligible to enter the 24 Hours of Le Mans and that the Road Atlanta round shall continue to be called Petit Le Mans. Celebrate! I was genuinely worried that PLM was dead – worry no longer, the race is safe.
This line from the release was quite interesting:  “The second part is a Strategic Alliance agreement between the ACO and United SportsCar Racing to explore and develop new avenues and horizons for endurance racing together in North America“. What could this mean? Is this simply their way of saying that P2 and GTLM (or their future replacements) will remain valid in USCR competition?

Future

Looking forward I think 2014 will see growing pains but it’ll also be very exciting. Even more exciting than that though is the potential for what we might see in the future, let’s say 2015-2020. Those years could prove to be a new golden era of this style of racing in North America, and globally, too.

We’ve already seen several races this year, some of them were prestigious and some of them were very good, but really this weekend has to be considered the true start of the motorsport season, for two reasons:  Firstly, it is the first weekend of the year with two properly major events (the Australian F1 GP and the 12 Hours of Sebring), secondly, from this weekend there isn’t really an off week from major racing until the end of November! The season starts properly this very weekend.

I didn’t get anything like as much done this off-season as I’d planned. Partly I have been enjoying the freedom to do as I like after work, partly I haven’t had the energy because I find a cold winter to be mentally draining, and partly I’ve felt I had a lot of time so kept pushing things back. As a result there are fewer blog posts written, fewer DVR or backlog races watched, and a whole side-project was left alone. Admittedly an old and dying computer slowed me down, which finally died recently – now I have a new PC for a new season and I can get cracking!

What have I been watching this off-season?

Dakar Rally

I love watching the Dakar every January. I was sceptical of the move from Africa and I don’t like the retention of the name, yet nobody can argue the new adventures in South America are not a challenge. They could be the toughest “Dakars” ever staged and the landscapes of Peru, Chile and Argentina are jaw-dropping.

This year was particularly tough with the race having no warm-up before hitting the tough desert stages. Usually the entrants get a few days to acclimatise to the daily slog by running hundreds of kilometres through more temperate stages, before being flung into the navigational challenge of the dunes.
This year the route was reversed – the Peruvian dunes came first. That had a knock-on effect on the retirement rate and the competitiveness of the race with some fairly big time gaps opening up relatively early. It was always going to be so with the route running in this direction. In a year lacking major manufacturer entrants (particularly in the car category) it was always going to be more spread out than in the past. It probably didn’t mean anything, normally the time gaps are irrelevant for the first week, before they hit the sand dunes, all this year did was set the gaps a week earlier than usual! Unfortunately this meant it seemed the race was over much earlier.

Still, the Dakar remains the toughest motor race on earth, especially for the bikers.

Dubai 24

This is really an up-and-coming event now. More and more quality teams and drivers from over the world are gravitating to Dubai in January to get a race in during the otherwise dead off-season, and for some it acts as a nice breather from the cold winter! Perhaps for the Aussie entrants it is a nice breather from a hot summer.

The organisers (Creventic) are quite relaxed about the whole thing which is perfect, that’s exactly what you want from a non-championship race in January. If you have a GT or touring car call them up and they’ll tell you if it is eligible, and if it isn’t they might just create a class for it! This race has everything from GT3 cars all the way down to Renault Clio Cup cars modified for endurance racing, much like the German VLN series.

The GT3 class was much more interesting this year since the class was split in two – a Pro class and a Pro-Am class. In the past every car had to hit a ‘reference time’, go any faster and you’d be penalised. It spoiled the race last year. Thankfully for the Pro class those rules were dropped and it transformed the race – it was fast and frenetic from start to finish! It was also interesting to see how the identical Pro-Am cars matched up running with ‘amateur’ drivers and reference times – the fuel they saved meant more laps between pit stops, meaning some of these cars were in outright contention for many hours.

The winning Mercedes very much deserved it. I remember Sean Edwards and Jeroen Bleekemolen putting in brilliant drives, as did Claudia Hurtgen in the BMW who may have been the driver of the day with a brilliant fightback following a delay to that car, alas it wasn’t to be.

The entire race is available on YouTube (link to Part 1). If Sebring this weekend gets you motivated for sportscar racing or you’re at a loose end, you should watch some of it.

Dubai also runs the unique ‘Code 60′ system - instead of a Safety Car, purple flags are waved and the entire field slows to a speed limit of 60 km/h. It’s weird but it works! It potentially works because they’re so quick at towing cars back to the pits. That’s the other great thing – cars are allowed to be towed back, repaired and rejoined. None of this stupid ACO or FIA ‘outside assistance’ crap. Both concepts deserve serious further thought from the traditional grandees of racing.

Bathurst 12

GT and touring-style cars at Mount Panorama, you can’t ask for much better than that. I’ll argue with anyone – they look better than the V8 Supercars around there. Another Creventic-affiliated race and another which is growing very rapidly, more so than Dubai – this year’s race had twice as many entries as last year.

After a few hours it became a bit of a benefit for the leading Mercedes pair after everyone else had problems, though late-race rain storms suddenly threw everything into the air and made it unpredictable! The Mercs did hold on to win but the chasing Ferraris were faster for a while. Even with a big lead, you had to keep watching just to admire the talent to drive these cars at these speeds at such a track – vastly more entertaining than the featureless Dubai track. GT cars are slower in a straight line than the V8s but much faster through the twisty, narrow, concrete-walled sections along the top.

The entire race is available on Livestream where unfortunately the videos aren’t listed in the right order. Definitely, definitely watch for at least 5 or 10 minutes just to see GT cars on The Mountain, they look phenomenal.

Daytona 24

Daytona is a star-studded race these days with drivers from all sorts of sportscar series joining visitors from IndyCar and NASCAR. As a race though it still feels like it is missing something. I don’t know what the something is but I think it could be that I don’t care about the cars. I hope that changes next year with the merged US sportscar series and two additional classes to enjoy, certainly the ex-ALMS GT class will be something to behold on the banking.

In the top class it was clear the BMWs were the favoured engines this year, they were clearly superior to the rest and it wasn’t down to BMW’s development – they had rule breaks in the name of ‘equalisation’ which very much worked for them. They breezed by the other cars. Still, you’ve got to drive the distance, not crash or stress and break the car, and work through the traffic, and that’s not easy to do so well done to Ganassi for the win. The GT class seemed to go one way then suddenly in the last hour it all changed, the Pro drivers in the Audis and Ferraris suddenly jumped to the front, top driving and great strategy.

All eyes turn to 2014. Oddly while Sebring may take a knock with the loss of international P1s, Daytona ought to be much improved next year with the ALMS GTs aboard.

Racing Backlog

I’ve been watching the 2011 WRC season. Vastly underrated especially by myself, when I actually started watching it I realised how wrong I had been. The competition may only have been between a couple of guys – Loeb and Ogier – but the old cliché is true, it only takes two cars to have a race. The small supporting cast could’ve picked up a win at any point. Ok so there were only about 7 regular scorers in the main WRC class but they’re all top drawer, and the SWRC guys provided another class to watch. I have four rallies left of the 14-round series and I’m trying to get them done quickly. I hope to follow it up with 2012

Earlier this week I watched last year’s ALMS Lime Rock race on ALMS.com where many races are archived. I’m not convinced top level multi-class racing belongs at such a short, tight track. It would be like trying to run an ALMS races at Brands Hatch Indy circuit – elbows out, lots of contact. On the other hand it would be the perfect touring car venue!

Recommendations

These days I’m more active on Twitter, it is just easier to shoot the breeze on there. I’d like to get back into the swing of blogging but I say that a lot and it is quite hard to stick to regimented schedule, equally as hard to blog freely to no schedule (‘oh, I’ll write about it tomorrow’).

Thankfully, Steph (of More Front Wing fame) has entered the multi-series arena with a great new site, I recommend you visit Last Turn Pass for articles and opinion on all sorts of racing series. She’s posting race reactions a little bit like I used to do 3 years go - though hers are in the superior bullet-point format – and it’ll be interesting to see if she can keep it up for longer than I did once we’re into the weekly grind of a season!
Then of course you have Leigh at the Motorsport Archive which is also a great multi-series resource, indeed congratulations are due to him as he joins the GP Week e-magazine.

To get back into the swing of short-form posting I plan to have something up here tonight about the United Sportscar reveal, as well as a few words about the upcoming F1 season.

I’d like to get back into doing a weekly roundup of things I’ve been watching!

It seems ESPN were taken by surprise after the news was made public on the Sky Sports Facebook page! (The page also confirms there is currently no deal to air NASCAR Sprint Cup highlights, as they have before). After requests from Twitter users ESPN issued this confirmation:

Confirmed: We will have IndyCar action on @ESPNUK from the first race in
St. Petersburg on March 24th.—
ESPN UK (@ESPNUK) February 07, 2013

Understandably, details are thin at the moment so we don’t yet know which ESPN channel/s will show IndyCar – whether it’ll be the main ESPN station available across multiple platforms, or the niche ‘ESPN America’ station. Given IndyCar’s lowly status in the Sky Sports structure, languishing down on Sky Sports 4 I would have to guess it will appear on ESPN America, perhaps with the 500 on the main channel. Hopefully ESPN will instead choose to give it a push on their primary channel.

Right now we don’t even know if the coverage will be live or delayed, in full or highlights. ESPN UK covers the DTM but has a habit of airing it on a delayed basis – DTM races happen at 1pm UK time but sometimes aren’t aired until 11pm. Hopefully IndyCar’s schedule will help rather than hinder it.

Previously the UK’s coverage of ‘North American Open Wheel’ was served by Sky Sports (IRL, then post-merger IndyCar) and Eurosport (CART, Champ Car).

While it did have fans, I’ve been quite vocal at my dislike of the Sky Sports studio coverage, there was good discussion at times but I often felt it was very dry and stale compared to the American presentation and even compared to other studio-based analyst formats in this country. I fully realise this was due to the low budget limiting their options, and I very much appreciated the cut to the studio during the interminable US ad-breaks!

What Is ESPN UK?

I’m sure you’re all aware of the American sports giant ESPN, even if you don’t watch sport it features in enough films and TV shows that most should know it! The UK operation is relatively recent addition to the portfolio, only about 4 years old, when ESPN bought the remnants of the folded Setanta Sports operation.

Soon after entering the UK market they went aggressive on rights acquisitions and took some notable properties from the hugely dominant Sky Sports. The way to get attention in the UK market is to get the rights for football (soccer) and they went for a shared deal for top line (English) Premier League, and the FA Cup (split deal with ITV), but also games from the UEFA Europa League, Serie A (Italy), Bundesliga (Germany), Ligue 1 (France), SPL (Scotland), and MLS (United States). They also took Premiership Rugby Union, boxing and some golf.
In addition they also show a lot of North American sports across ESPN and a dedicated network for US & Canadian sports, called ESPN America. ESPNA shows things like NBA and NCAA basketball, MLB baseball, hockey, and since you can’t have a US-focussed network without American Football and Sky has most of the NFL sewn up, ESPN picked up college football (and I think the CFL, too).

This isn’t meant as an advert for ESPN, I’m lifting this stuff from their own website, but as you can see, IndyCar is actually a pretty good fit among all of this, if there aren’t too many clashing events.

The catch:  You have to pay extra. More details on that below.

What Does This Mean For British IndyCar Fans?

Details are thin so we don’t know yet but one thing is clear:

A change was necessary. The excellent F1 Broadcasting blog conducted a ratings analysis of IndyCar in the UK and the results were utterly dire – more people watch GP3. A series as good as IndyCar has no business having such diabolical ratings. There is no way it could stay on Sky Sports 4 for another year. Either Sky had to bump it up to SSF1 or IndyCar had to take it elsewhere. Even if figures stay the same they have to try something.

The difficulty here is not knowing whether IndyCar will appear on ESPN or ESPN America. The former has a wider reach: ESPN is available on Sky satellite, Virgin cable, and the digital terrestrial services BT Vision and Top Up TV. ESPN America is available on Sky and Virgin but not terrestrial – exactly the same as Sky Sports 4, the former home of IndyCar.

How Do You Get ESPN UK And What Does It Cost?

As with anything the cost you pay depends what package you currently have. There are usually discounts available for new customers. As a reference please see the ESPN UK website.

Sky

ESPN is an additonal £13 per month over your usual subscription. This isn’t a tier-system. For £13 you get ESPN + ESPN America in HD and SD, and the option of watching via the Sky Go web service.

If you subscribe to the Sky Sports Pack (Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 & 4) then ESPN drops from £13 to £10 per month.

The absolute minimum cost with Sky is £21.50/mth. Add the £13.00/mth for ESPN = £34.50 per month. This does not include the £10.25/mth  HD pack which you will need in order to see Sky Sports F1. It also doesn’t include the £5/mth Entertainment Plus pack including Eurosport 1 & 2 and ESPN Classic.

Again, if you are a new customer – or an existing customer in a renewal period – you might be able to get this cheaper.

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Frankly, if you are a dedicated petrolhead who had Sky Sports for IndyCar alone, it’ll be worth cancelling it. You’re probably paying £21/mth now so you’d save £8 each month! Remember you had to subscribe to both SS1 + SS2 just to get access to IndyCar on SS4. You only need the HD pack to get Sky F1, you don’t need another Sky Sports channel.

The winners here are those already with ESPN, and those who’ll cancel SS to switch to ESPN. Everyone else is going to have to find money. I don’t know if you can start it in March and stop it in October.. if not that’s £156 for a year.

Restrictions:  You need to be allowed to put a satellite dish on the wall! If you are renting a property, as I am, this might not be an option. If you’re allowed now you might not be in your next place, makes it tricky to sign up to their 18-month minimum. If you aren’t with Sky already £31.50 is a lot of money to find.

Virgin Media

Virgin also has ESPN in HD and a ‘go anywhere’ mobile option.

Unlike Sky, Virgin already includes the suite of 3 ESPN channels within their highest price tier, ‘XL’, so if you have that already you are in luck! If you can cancel Sky Sports on Virgin now IndyCar has moved away, you might even make a saving!

If you aren’t on XL already, an upgrade from the L tier to XL looks like it’ll cost you an extra £8/mth over what you pay now.

You don’t have to upgrade to XL, the ESPN website says you can pay £6/mth to get just the 3 ESPN channels. I struggle to find any mention of this on the Virgin site. Bear in mind XL includes MotorsTV which airs WEC, ALMS, V8 Supercar and all sorts. If ESPN is £6 of the £8 upgrade, if you get XL you basically get MotorsTV for £2 – bargain!

The absolute minimum to get the XL package on Virgin Media is £24.50/mth with a V HD box, but you’d need to switch your phone line to Virgin as well else it’ll jump to £32. There is the option to get a TiVo box instead for £29.50/mth. New subscribers get a discount for the first 6 months.
It might be possible to get the L pack with ESPN for £18.50/mth and the M for even less, but as I say, I can’t see that ESPN offer on the VM website.

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Trouble is, this is only available on cable.

Restrictions:  Virgin Media’s TV offering is for cabled-areas only, you can’t just hook up with your phone line. Cable is available in many large towns and cities but a lot of people don’t have the option.

BT Vision

BTV is a box combining Freeview (digital over-the-air), PVR, and on-demand streaming over ADSL.

This is a very attractive option because of the price:

ESPN is a £10 one-off fee. There are two tiers on BTV:  Essential and Unlimited. The Unlimited tier includes ESPN for no extra monthly fee, just like Virgin, you just need to pay a £10 fee to get a viewing card to slotinto the box.

There is only one option to get ESPN on BTV:  pay £12.50/mth for Unlimited and a one-off fee of £10 for the card.

But there are a few catches, and some hoops to jump:

- You need to be with BT Broadband.

- You need to be in a BT Infinity-enabled area, even if you choose not to take Infinity. This is a recent development.

- There may be a hefty activation fee (£49 on one page I looked at).

- ESPN is not in HD on Freeview, and you don’t get ESPN America, but you do get content in the On-Demand area (potentially in HD).

- For the IndyCar fan wanting to watch Fontana or Texas live, or Motegi if it comes back, on Freeview ESPN shuts down at 4am! Could miss the last few laps!

- If your Freeview has 30+ TV channels and a heap of radio stations you’re good. But if you’re stuck on a relay transmitter, like I am, and can only get 15 TV channels and just BBC radio only, you will NOT be able to get ESPN. Check yours here – if you get ITV3 you’re good for ESPN.

Read More – note BT are trying to push people on to YouView which is a new service. YouView does not include ESPN. Be careful to look for “BT Vision + Sport” which is getting quite hard to find.

That price though… if you can get it, get it!

Restrictions:  You need BT Broadband and you need to be an area enabled for BT Infinity, even if you don’t take Infinity. You also need to make sure you get the channel on your Freeview signal.

Top Up TV

This is a box you can buy for your Freeview, like BT Vision without the on-demand content.

ESPN here is £11.99 per month. That’s almost as much as Sky’s price and it isn’t in HD – but you won’t need to buy a whole Sky or Virgin or BT setup.

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As I said in the BTV section ESPN isn’t in HD here, it shuts down at 4am, and availability depends what signal you have. If your Freeview has 30+ TV channels and a heap of radio stations you’re good. But if you’re stuck on a relay transmitter, like I am, and can only get 15 TV channels and just BBC radio only, you will NOT be able to get ESPN. Check yours here – if you get ITV3 you’re good for ESPN.

Restrictions:  You need to make sure you get the channel on your Freeview signal.

Reaction

What do you think about these changes? Is this good for you, or are you no longer able to see IndyCar now?

This post is now available at IndyCar UK – click here and be sure to follow @IndyCarUK on Twitter.