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TMR Gets Airtime on Sidepodcast

That’s right, I guested on my very first podcast!

I appeared alongside many others on Sidepodcast.com‘s recent Episode #97 with a modest little prediction for the upcoming Australian Grand Prix.

The podcast featured predictions from a whole host of regular commenters from Sidepodcast’s Live Comments, many of whom have their own blogs which I recommend you check out (I’ll be updating my links over the weekend).

If some of them seem at ease on the calls it’s because they regularly call in to the various podcasts produced by SPC. This was my first phone-in to any show anywhere!

You can listen via two methods:

– If you’ve got less than an hour I highly recommend you listen to the full Episode as it weighs in at a perfectly-formed 43 minutes, an ideal length in my opinion because you don’t have to set aside your evening to hear it! There are a variety of options for listening in, just go to the page to find out more. The predictions appear in the ‘Feedback’ section but don’t worry about that, you’ll come to it soon enough.

– If you’re more pushed for time please check out the 6 minute Predictions Montage.

While you are on the site take a listen to this week’s hilarious Panel featuring guest host Gavin Brown! The podcast edition should appear later this week so look out for it.

There are also a variety of F1 Season Previews to look out for as well as an hour-long fascinating chat with F1 scribe Joe Saward who is the man behind GrandPrix.com as well as being a published author of racing books. (Meesh, if you’re reading this, he talks about the trials of being a journalist in the F1 media centre – some things don’t change, even in F1!).
Even if you don’t listen to any of the other items above, at least make sure you listen to that discussion. It’s worth it.

SPC Crash Course
These guys ‘live comment’ everything. That is to say, a ‘live blog’ but with all the commenters joining in with conversation in real time. You can’t quite imagine it until you see it, so go there now!

To keep up with chat between events, go here: Doohickey
For commenting during events, go here: LCLT

Just keep it clean and keep an eye on what thread you’re posting in and you’ll be fine.

Warning: This will take over your life. It has mine – and I don’t see that as a bad thing. That’s when you know you’re hooked.

I will be in the comments for all F1 races and for as many qualifying sessions as I can make. During races I may be a little quiet as I’ll be taking notes for this blog, though I do hope to throw my oar in from time to time. These guys do the practice sessions as well, unfortunately I have to work. Grr, damned work, grr.

PS – I still hate my voice

F1 Week: WMSC decisions

Welcome to F1 Week on Too Much Racing! I’m planning to post daily in the run up to this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, the first F1 race of the year.

Last week the FIA World Motorsport Council (WMSC) announced some changes for 2009 and 2010, some of which were quickly rescinded after FOTA pointed out they were done without the consultation of the teams, which is necessary when we are so close to the start of a season. If they’d announced it earlier the teams wouldn’t have had a choice but to accept them – I may be wrong but I believe the cut off is 1st January.

The WMSC decisions were:

To award the World Drivers’ Championship (WDC) to the driver who wins the most races, irrespective of points standings.
Not Adopted
Thankfully FOTA got this one stopped because this is a stupid idea. It got a lot of press around the world in time for the new season, and I get the niggling feeling that maybe this was the intention all along? In any case, FOTA’s own proposal to increase the points awarded for podium finishes was in my opinion much more sensible.

Teams may conduct three 1-day test sessions for young drivers, between the end of the final GP of the year and 31st December. Drivers must not have either taken part in an F1 event or tested an F1 car for more than four days during the previous 24 months.
Adopted
This is an excellent move to ensure the traditional young driver evaluations of November/December are able to continue through the test ban. My main query is with the chosen 24 month restriction which means a certain M. Schumacher becomes eligible soon.

Teams may conduct eight 1-day straight line aero tests between 1 Jan and 31 Dec 2009
Adopted
This is interesting because it has been backdated to 1st January, and certain teams (including McLaren and Renault) are known to have conducted extensive straight line testing at Kemble airfield. It would be interesting to know how much of their allocation has been used already and if they already knew this rule was coming in.

The FIA will publish the weights of cars after qualifying.
Adopted
This is in response to comments that there is too much guesswork after Q3 (qualifying with race fuel) and the beginning of the race. Instead of waiting until cars make their stops, we ought now to be able to guess the strategies. But wait! We have KERS now, and some teams aren’t running it. KERS is worth 30kg so if two teams are running 615kg, which of them is running a medium load with KERS and which is running a heavy load and no KERS? We are none the wiser! Thanks FIA!

Tyres: ‘Wets’ are now ‘Intermediates’ and ‘Extreme Wets’ are now ‘Wets’.
Adopted
On the face of it this seems pointless, but it is an important change as it clears up some confusion. Bridgestone always referred to wets and extremes, yet the paddock, teams, drivers, fans and media all referred to inters and wets. The latter has been common terminology for over a decade and actually brings Bridgestone into line with everyone else.

Drivers must be available in their team space in pit lane for autographs on the first day of practice.
Adopted
This looks good but really, who has access to pit lane even on Friday? The fans? Not always! Many GPs have pit walkabouts, I don’t believe they all do. This seems mainly to benefit sponsors and Paddock Club members. Not good enough.

Drivers eliminated from Qualifying, drivers retiring from the race and drivers finishing outside the top three must all make themselves available to the media for interviews.
Adopted
Excellent move! This was called for by FOTA, and effectively prevents a driver from leaving the track when the race is in progress until he’s answered questions. Both Raikkonen and Hamilton have been guilty of disappearing without a word when their day hasn’t gone well. The top 3 are covered by the press conference which we should all see after the race, but can get skipped by broadcasters.

During the race every team must make a senior spokesman available to the media.
Adopted
Teams have usually been pretty good at this in recent years but this makes it official.

“A number of further amendments were made to the 2009 Technical Regulations. Full details on http://www.fia.com shortly.”
Curious… This was announced one week ago and there isn’t anything newer on the site to do with Tech Regs.

2010: In addition to existing rules which remain stable, all teams will have the option to compete with a budget cap.
There’s a lot of words to state the cap will be £30m but that technical development will be much less restrictive than the existing rules. It’s an interesting concept and I’m very curious, yet it’ll create a two-class F1 and that’s not right. Everyone should run to the same formula. Multi-class racing is for sportscars, which does it very well! This one still has a long way to run.

Side-note: interesting they use pounds instead of euros, the FIA’s normal currency after they switched from US dollars a few years ago.

There was also some housekeeping about changing HondaF1 to BrawnGP. This had the knock-on effect this week of the car numbers changing and potentially denying Brawn any monies owing to Honda. It’s interesting that the FIA treated Brawn as a completely new entrant, yet Force India was not a new entrant when it bought Midland. I can’t work that one out although GrandPrix.com suggests it may have something to do with Honda breaching their contract to race in F1 because they withdrew without a buyer already lined up.

During this week I’ll come back with a recap of all rules changes for 2009, i.e. wings, KERS, the new Safety Car rules; a track guide; my guess at a form guide for the weekend; anything else that takes my fancy!

* * * *
Also in the WSMC decisions were some matters for other FIA series:

The future World Rally Car will be based on S2000, with modified aerodynamics.
Present WR cars will not be eligible for the championship from 2011 (they will still be able to enter rallies, but not win the title).
Proposal to limit WR cars to 1.6 litres from 2013.

The FIA GT calendar was amended to change the date of the Bucharest street race and the Zolder finale, and to replace the Argentinian round with an event at Paul Ricard.
This looked bad until Stephane Ratel of series promoter SRO issued his own release clarifying that Argentina will be a feature event in the brand new FIA World GT Series calendar in 2010.

There were also several paragraphs stating the FIA’s intention to be more green, including potentially setting up a new ‘energy efficiency’ championship for manufacturers, laboratories, universities and individuals ‘without become a spending race’.

Okay, see ya tomorrow.

IndyCar TV: Versus & Sky Sports

While I’ve keeping up to date on the BBC’s F1 coverage here in the UK, I’ve been remiss in not talking about the new TV deal for the IRL IndyCar Series. Since it is effectively the series I cover most after F1, I need to put that right straight away.

US Coverage
(see below for UK coverage details)

New for this year is a switch to the Versus cable channel, which brings with it an increase in race day coverage and as well as more time for qualifying. What’s interesting is that all of their content will also be available on Versus HD – which is a result!

Five races are still with ABC, doing that curious American thing of splitting coverage between broadcasters. Obviously Indy isn’t moving any time soon but with the rest of them… guys just put them in one place and market the hell out of them, yeah? I’m guessing ABC insisted on this arrangement.

Versus is cleverly choosing to air IndyCar programs around the 500 so as to keep the content rolling and the awareness out there, which is good thinking. I think it includes something on qualifying but that’ll be announced properly later.

Previews
Prior to the season there are four hour-long previews every Saturday at 2.00pm ET.
– The first of those was aired last weekend and was about Danica P. Okay, not my choice but she is the marketing darling of the series so I can live with that, even if I’d prefer a similar show about the reigning champion – but I’m just a hardcore fan not a casual viewer… The remaining shows are:
– ‘Top Ten Closest Finishes in IRL History’ which should be very entertaining! (I’m fairly sure this is ‘IRL’ and not ‘Indycar’ history, so since 1996);
– Next is ‘Crashes and Conflicts’ which worries me slightly, we don’t want to be attracting the sort of “fans” who “only watch for the crashes” so I hope they treat it with a respect for the danger instead of ‘hey that’s cool’ – because it isn’t cool, what’s cool is the skill in avoiding the crashes;
– Finally we end with ‘IndyCar World Tour’ which is about the circuits visited during the season;

Qualifying
During the season there will be a post-qualifying wrap up show at 6pm ET on the Saturday. I don’t think ESPN covered qualifying did it? I’m not sure, someone let me know, but if so this marks a big improvement and dare I say a toe-in-the-water for potential live coverage next season, so make sure you watch it to convince them to do it!

If the IRL knock-out qualifying is as good as it is in F1 then it’ll be worth watching, and the oval system seems interesting in a completely different way.

Race
This is followed on Sunday by a live 3-hour race show featuring build-up and post-race. It sounds like you guys are finally getting for IndyCar what we’ve got here for F1! IndyCar finally gets the hours it deserves.

Race commentary will be provided by Bob Jenkins, Jon Beekhuis and Robbie Buhl. Jenkins is an experienced hand who’ll run a steady ship, Beekhuis is possibly the best IndyCar technical expert around, and Buhl is a team owner. That’s a good, solid line-up.

In the pits will be the inimitable Jack Arute, along with series newcomers Lindy Thackston and Robbie Floyd. I hope Thackton isn’t the token female that Brie was for so long last year (due respect though – she did get A LOT better). Apparently she’s been on ALMS pit reporter duty before so that’s promising. Floyd seems to be coming in as a total newbie to racing, so maybe he’s the one in the deep end this year? Good luck to them all, let’s keep an open mind and give them a few races to bed in.

Races will be re-aired in full the next day (Monday). There will also be further reruns on Sunday for races in odd timezones, like Motegi.

Lights
Alongside the Monday re-air, Versus will show Indy Lights in full – a great result for the Lights guys. Furthermore, two of the Lights races will be live – at Indy and Homestead. I’m sure this marks a major step up for this series.
(PS – if someone could see their way to sending MotorsTV in Europe the Lights tapes a little earlier than last year, that’d be cool too)

Overview
On the whole this looks to be a very good deal, and it’s long-term as well. Okay so the reach isn’t as big as ESPN’s but ever since the coverage announcement was made a couple of months back several US-based IRL bloggers have noted that Versus has appeared in their local area, or the area of people they know. So it is growing and will continue to do so – this a great chance for the IRL to put their series in a place where it can grow along with the network, a bit like NASCAR did many years ago. There’s a lot of potential here – this is a good deal.

The IndyCar Series begins on April 5th on the street/airport hybrid circuit in St Petersburg, Florida. This will be live on Versus at 2.00pm ET, and remember to check out the qualifying recap show the day before at 6.00pm – get eyeballs on to it to show them you want to see it live next year!

UK Coverage
IndyCar once again returns to Sky Sports with every round live or same-day delayed, primarily on Sky Sports 3 (St Pete will be on Sky Sports Xtra).

There are precious few details around at the moment and I’ve been unable to locate an announcement but I have found a short-term schedule of motor racing appearing on Sky over the next six weeks and IndyCar is on it, along with NASCAR and A1GP.
I assume there will be at least one replay of the IndyCar races if not more at various stages in the week, however there is no HD coverage as far as I am aware – this of course may still change. Last season there were only two HD races across their entire motorsport portfolio, yet this year I believe most if not all of the NASCAR events held so far have been in HD. We’ll know more nearer the time.

We also don’t yet know who will provide commentary. In previous years ESPN supplied a different commentary pairing, Garry Lee and Larry Rice, along with the same pit crew seen on American TV (albeit with fewer reports). We don’t yet know if we’ll have Jenkins/Beekhuis/Buhl or another team – frankly there are pros and cons to both options. It’s nice having the guys talking to us without endless promotion for other stuff on the network, and giving shouts to countries watching. On the other hand, it’d be fantastic to have everyone watch the same thing (a la A1GP) and maybe the US domestic guys could shout out the different places tuning in live.

Once again you can expect interjections from Sky’s London studio with Keith Heuwen and guests during any yellow flag periods.

The IndyCar Series begins on April 5th on the street/airport hybrid circuit in St Petersburg, Florida. This will be live on Sky Sports Xtra at 7.30pm and is directly followed on the same channel by live NASCAR Sprint Cup from Texas. That’s a good long day of racing, starting with the Malaysian GP – love it!

Weekend Preview: 14-15 March 2009

Welcome to what Blogger tells my is my 100th posting! I can’t believe I’m at that number already, I only started in August.

We have a quiet weekend this week with only one major series competing, as even NASCAR takes a break from time to time. Next week is very different with ALMS kicking off at Sebring and NASCAR paying a visit to Bristol, among many others.

As always this preview highlights events happening this weekend. Make sure to regularly check your listings for highlights and preview shows! I know that MotorsTV is airing an ALMS preview and ITV4 has WTCC highlights, and over in the US Versus has another of their four IndyCar pre-season specials – so there is content out there to be found if you can look for it.

* * * *

FIA World Rally Championship
– Cyprus Rally (3/12)
– Cyprus
– www.wrc.com

The WRC makes a return to the island after a couple of years away. This year the drivers will have to manage with using gravel tyres instead of asphalt ones, I don’t know why this is and it doesn’t make sense, to me it sounds like a cost-saving method. I have to admit to not following WRC this year so I don’t really know what’s going on or who’s fast – though I can guess!

The Production WRC boys will be joining in this weekend along with a small number of Junior WRC entries.

UK TV: Daily updates each evening on Eurosport, and a roundup on Sunday on Dave.
Elsewhere: Check www.wrc.com for details, video and live stage timing.

* * *

Other Events:

World Superbikes & Supersport, Losail, Qatar.
I don’t follow WSBK at all. I’m sure the racing is good but I just can’t bring myself to care. MotoGP has it for me. Now, fans of bikes will almost certainly tell me that I’ll like WSBK if I watch it and this may well be true! If I’m cruising the sports channels and stumble upon it I’ll watch, but since I don’t have any sports channels this may be a long time coming..

Note – Autosport magazine lists the Atlantics as starting this week in Savannah, Georgia, yet Open Wheel World noted yesterday that there are under 14 days until the start of the Atlantics season, as a support to the 12 Hours of Sebring. I’m calling this a cancellation which Autosport forgot to erase from their calendar.

Come back for another preview next week, which may be slightly earlier or slightly delayed depending on what college work I get done, and other reasons.