Blog

Heading to the Autosport Show

Autosport International

Tomorrow, Saturday 15th January, I will be attending Autosport International, ‘The Racing Car Show’ for the 3rd time.

I attended previously in 2001 and 2004 and as you can see from the albums I’ve linked, the lighting at the NEC is diabolical. I shall try my best and I won’t be relying on a disposable camera this time.

The attractions such as they are, include the ‘live arena’, the interviews on the Autosport stage, the F1 Racing grid and a lot of trade stands featuring displays of racing cars. The live arena can be fun, it isn’t fantastic but it is an entertaining way to spend an hour. The F1 Racing grid is a collection of recent cars roped off, with the ropes getting in the way of good photos. Hopefully I’ll be able to time it right to hear someone interesting on the main stage, it can be a bit hit and miss.

You may wonder why I’m going if I know what to expect. Well, I want to see what’s changed in the six years since my last visit. My hunch is ‘not much’, though I’d like to see for myself. I’m also going with a group, as I’m meeting the guys and girls of VivaF1 (formerly Pitlane Fanatic), most of them for the first time. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes the experience, if at all.

To perfectly honest though, I had agreed to go to the Bloggers and Friends karting event before I decided whether or not to go to Autosport, because I wanted to support it. Eventually I decided why not, I’m in the area anyway. I’m looking forward to the karting as much as the Autosport show!

It is going to be a long day, I will do my best to take photos and if there is a mobile signal I’ll be tweeting too, and shall report back on Sunday..

EDIT – In the meantime you should check out the newly-relaunched The Feeder Series for Jon’s excellent recordings of discussions with various people at the show on the trade days. Part 1 and Part 2.

Welcome!

Welcome to the new home of Too Much Racing!

Thank you everybody who’s helped me over on the old site, whether by reading, commenting, plugging or whatever else you’ve done. The growth in readership over the 18 months since I started has been beyond anything I could have hoped for and it encourages me to continue, just as I hope you’ll continue reading.

Thanks especially to those who assisted with my minor crisis in choosing a future name for the blog. I’ve decided to make use of a function here on WordPress that is not offered by Blogger, and that’s having a different title to the URL. For the time being I’m going to call this blog ‘I Watch Too Much Racing‘. I’ll probably take a photo of my TV and have that as a logo or something.

So this is it, the new home. I think it looks a lot more slick and professional. I suppose I now have to make sure the writing matches up to it! I like the extra space it provides, I’m not restricted by the narrowness of the template I was using in Blogger and I didn’t like the alternatives there, plus I can add a whole lot more links and I’m all about sharing what other people are doing (particular between circles that don’t usually mix), as anyone following on Twitter will probably know.

WordPress does have limitations – I can’t embed the F1 Minute player or the Google Calendar, so I’ve had to improvise and provide links to each series’ calendar in the sidebar. Just click the link and that championship will appear, then down at the bottom right is an ‘add’ button, click that to add to your Google Calendar.
On the whole I think these shortcomings are a small price to pay for the many gains in other areas.

I think that’s it for this post, please bear with me while I learn the various admin features here, there are a lot more of them than on Blogger – and let’s not knock Blogger. It is a great place to get started in blogging without getting surrounded by confusing options and if you are thinking about starting a blog but aren’t sure if you’d like it, I recommend using it to find your feet or if you just want a space to write in.

Thursday Thoughts: Young Drivers

This week’s Thursday Thoughts question comes from RG of The Northern Waffler, who asks:

Which young driver, who is currently not in Formula 1, would you like to see in the series in the next few seasons?

This is a great question. When I’m asked about drivers who should be in F1, the default position is to look straight at GP2 – and if this had been asked three months ago it would have been a case of “well, pick one of these” from Lucas di Grassi, Nico Hülkenberg and Kamui Kobayashi (and he only on the strength of those stand-in drives at Toyota, his GP2 career was not great). Now each of those has been signed, to Virgin, Williams and Sauber respectively! So who’s left?

Frankly the remainder of the GP2 pack hasn’t yet impressed me enough, though I grant you I hadn’t kept up with GP2 very well in 2009. Paster Maldonado is fast and furious yet has apparently calmed down a bit, could he now be ready? What of Jerome D’Ambrosio and Giedo Van Der Garde? I like both of them and I would really like to see them in F1. Romain Grosjean was fantastic in GP2 but hopeless at Renault, does he deserve another shot in a different environment?

This question can’t pass without a nod to the oft-discussed Anthony Davidson and Paul di Resta, the Brits seemingly having lost their deserved F1 opportunities to an era when test drivers were ample and race drives were few. With the situation reversed they seem to have been passed over for drivers behind them on the escalator. The same could be said of Adam Carroll. I’d love to see Adam in a Formula 1 car. I think these are probably too old to be considered ‘young’ drivers now, but they should be there.

I was going to go for Ryan Hunter-Reay. The man is fast on the IndyCar road courses and is the perfect fit for F1 in terms of speed and image, and he should be in a McLaren or a MercedesGP (but not a USF1.. yet). Unfortunately at age 29, for the purposes of this question he is too old (as are some of the other names above).

Then there are the Red Bull proteges Daniel Ricciardo and Jules Bianchi, both are hotly tipped and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t make it to F1 eventually, Brendon Hartley could be another. I think they are a while away yet though and to be fair I don’t know enough about them.

So who do I pick?

After a lot of deliberating I’m going to go for Vitaly Petrov. I’ve been watching him for a while and I think it would be very interesting to see him in a Formula 1 race. He finished 2nd in the GP2 points last year and has scored some wins over the last couple of years, and while he may not be the out-and-out fastest driver around he is a fighter, and I do like to see a fighting racing driver – that’s something that seems to have been missing lately in F1 aside from Hamilton (no I’m not saying he’s as good as Lewis), look at Vettel who is a great lap-time driver yet seems to have an aversion to overtaking anybody. I think Vitaly is your classic underdog and I always love to root for that kind of driver, even if it rarely pays off.

Of course I could be proven wrong when I eventually get around to watching last year’s GP2..

2010 Race Calendar

During the 2009 season I thought it would be a great idea to create a race schedule in Google Calendar featuring different racing series. I was busy with accounts studies at the time and I never got around to taking it further. Early last month I decided it was worth exploring so I set up a trial with F1 and IndyCar dates. I’d add more later if I decided it looked okay. Again I let it drop when other things got in the way.

Christine from Sidepodcast recently created a calendar highlighting F1 events and the SPC / F1 Minute podcast schedules and she did a great job, enough to inspire me to get on and finish my idea.

Here it is!

(note – WordPress doesn’t allow the iFrame code that makes the embed work so I have had to leave it out for now)

My schedule includes F1, F2, GP2, IndyCar, Le Mans 24hr, ALMS, LMS, MotoGP, WRC, IRC and WTCC. I’ve also put in Dakar, Goodwood and a couple of other things. I’ll add NASCAR Sprint Cup and DTM soon – there are categories already so if you add them the events will hopefully appear in your calendar automatically.

Christine’s calendar is F1-specific and it includes Free Practice, pre-season testing and car launches. My calendar includes none of these things, only qualifying and race. I highly recommend adding Christine’s F1 calendar if you would like this extra information.

Click the “+GoogleCalendar” button to add to your own Google Calendar account. I have split events by race series so you can just pick the ones you want. I think there is a way to get them into iCal and other systems, though I don’t know how.

The calendar is set to UK time because that’s where I am and that’s most useful to me. I’m not sure but I believe when you import it, it will adjust it to your own default timezone. Have a play with it and see.

Race start times are estimates apart from F1 and Le Mans. This information is surprisingly hard to find. E.g. IndyCar.com only lists TV start times, not race starts. Many sites only give the dates and I’ve had to improvise. Then there’s the issue of timezones which I may have got wrong. I plan to make each forthcoming weekend as accurate as I can, beyond that just use this as a guide.

I’ve included qualifying for F1, Le Mans 24Hrs and IndyCar (times estimated). I don’t intend to include any more qualifying.

I hope you find this useful and please let me know if there is anything you would like to add. If the demand is there and I think it warrants adding, I’ll do so. I’m already considering Indy Lights.

As you can see I’ve also added a list version to the sidebar. When I create the new site I will have a version similar to the one above on its own page.

EDIT – WordPress does not allow embeds so I have linked them on the sidebar. This means you can pick and choose the series you are interested in! I’ve also since created calendars for Indy Lights and GrandAm.