Blog

Launch: Force India VJM02

Force India Mercedes VJM02

The new Force India had a soft-launch over the weekend, with pictures first appearing a day ahead of Sunday’s official release. Today these studios shots were joined by a whole host of Q&As from the FIF1 press office which you can find on the usual news sites, as well as pics from Jerez.

The big news is the switch from a Ferrari customer deal to an agreement with McLaren-Mercedes for the full powertrain – that is the engine, gearbox and KERS systems, as well as technical co-operation in other areas. Simon Roberts of McLaren is now the Chief Operating Officer at Force India as part of a personnel shake-up. Mike Gascoyne and others have left the company.

The basic theme running through all of the Q&As is that the new McLaren/Mercedes deal frees up FIF1 engineers to work on other aspects of the car, such as aero and internal packaging. It means that as other teams cut back, Force India don’t need to worry about that and can concentrate on the task at hand: working their way from the back of the field to regular points-scoring positions.

The first chassis was shaken down at Silverstone last week and Fisichella took it for a test at Jerez today. Liuzzi will shake down the second car during this week before the final big pre-season group test in Barcelona.

It’s a good looking car, quite aggressive with another high nose. The late launch means the car has spent longer in CFD and in the wind tunnel than their competitors, many of whom will need to do an (expensive) upgrade for the first race of the season.

I hope they are able to close up the remainder of the gap to make the midfield a close fight. They made some big gains in lap time last year even if that wasn’t represented in positions, in qualifying they used to be 3sec off the back and last year they were about 1 – 1.5 sec back. A long time in F1!

The downside here could be the decision not to run KERS until very much later than everyone else. Some reports suggest they won’t run it until May – that could prove to be a mistake. Still, at least they’ll be ahead of whatever Honda becomes..

Photo credits: http://www.forceindiaf1.com/

* * * *

Tomorrow Williams will launch their Formula 2 car powered by Audi, I’m not sure if I’ll be around but I’ll put a short post up about that some time this week as well as something on the Le Mans entry list.

MotoGP back to Eurosport

Gotta love the about-face. First Dorna takes the rights from Eurosport to sell them to FTAs, then they do a deal with Eurosport France causing uproar among fans in the UK and beyond.

Autosport.com and others are reporting that Dorna have changed their minds due to pressure from fans (and Toby Moody) and will indeed once again show 125cc, 250cc and MotoGP races during 2009. The support events will be live and the main event will be delayed on British Eurosport. I don’t know the status of the other local Eurosport services so I’m afraid you’ll have to check that yourselves.

2009 MotoGP Coverage (UK)

BBC:
All MotoGP races are live on BBC2. These are followed on the Red Button by MotoGP Extra, an analysis programme. Also on the Red Button are the 125 and 250 races as well as qualifying for all classes. Commentary will be as before: Charlie Cox and Steve Parrish.

British Eurosport:
All MotoGP races are delayed on British Eurosport*. 125 and 250 will be live as will all Friday and Saturday practices. The big news: The Toby & Julian Show will return!

* I expect this to mean the main channel, not Eurosport 2.

Both broadcasters will make the races available online after the event, via BBC iPlayer and Eurosport Player respectively.

Weekend Preview: 28 Feb – 1 March

This week is a stock car week so if that’s not your thing you may as well move along. I’m not planning to stay long either, I’d rather talk about sportscars and the ACO’s entry list so I’m off to do that now!

* * * *

NASCAR Sprint Cup
– Shelby 427 (3/36)
– Las Vegas Motor Speedway
– Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
– www.nascar.com

427 laps or 427 miles? What sort of distance is that? They either picked it with a random number generator, or I smell a sponsorship tie-in of some kind.

British air time: 9.30pm GMT, Sky Sports 3
American air time: 3.30pm ET, FOX

Now we already know from two weeks ago that 3.30pm ET = 8.30pm GMT so we’re missing an hour. Sky have put it on a tape delay due to live rugby coverage. They’ve got live golf on SS1, live cricket on SS2 and live Spanish footie on Xtra, so they’ve run out of room – a busy Sunday night for Sky! The other thing I just thought of – maybe FOX has an hour of pre-race and Sky is jumping straight from rugby to the green flag.
By the way, The Sum of All Fears is on Film4 at the same time, you should watch that instead, that’s a great film.
It’s quite a friendly time so if I’m about I’ll see if I can jump in.

The Nationwide boys take to the track on Saturday. Americans can see it on ESPN2, I’m fairly sure there has been no late UK deal so no coverage for us for the first time in years.

Speedcar Series
– Dubai (2) (4/6)
– Dubai Autodrome
– Dubai, United Arab Emirates
– www.speedcarseries.com

Speedcar visits Dubai for a second time in their current season but this time it will head the bill, what with GP2 Asia taking a long break before Malaysia.

TV coverage: none but try the website

Other
I’ve decided to shunt smaller things to a little section at the end else things are going to get very crowded as we get to mid-March. Yes I know Speedcar ought to go here, it will next time!

New Zealand V8 Supercars
– Manfield (6/7)

And although I never usually do bikes unless it is MotoGP, the World Superbikes are starting their season this weekend at Philip Island in Australia. There’s live coverage on Eurosport at 4am with repeats at a more sensible time. I’m sure there’s US coverage on Speed or ESPN or some place.

BBC F1 coverage announced

The BBC officially revealed their plans for the 2009 Formula 1 season today, confirming much of what has been rumoured over the last few months (particularly on the F1 thread of the DigitalSpy forums). This is the most comprehensive coverage of Formula 1 ever seen on free-to-air TV in this country, and rivals the pay-monthly options in Germany and Italy.

Note: This is UK only. There will be no live coverage on BBC World or BBC America.

Sources:
Announcement here and press pack here (4 pages, remember to click through!).

First the broadcast team. This was announced in November and I posted short profiles in my post at the time (not to mention a video of The Chain). This is a recap of the line-up:

Television
Anchor: Jake Humphrey
Pre/Post-Race Analysts: David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan
Commentary: Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle
Pitlane: Ted Kravitz and Lee McKenzie

Coverage switches from ITV1 to BBC1. Humphrey brings a different style to the anchorman role, while Legard coming from radio is a much more laid back presence in the hot seat than his two predecessors. Brundle brings his lengthy F1, Sportscar, and now TV experience back to the commentary box. Kravitz also joins from ITV with McKenzie coming from coverage of A1GP and GP2. DC and EJ should be a hoot in the post-race analysis whenever anything controversial happens!

Radio
Commentary: David Croft and Anthony Davidson
Pitlane: Holly Samos

BBC Radio 5 Live continues on from last year. Croft and Samos continue as before while Maurice Hamilton (no relation to Lewis) is replaced by the excellent but out-of-work F1 driver Davidson, who lost his drive when Super Aguri went under and ended up guesting for BBC Radio coverage last season. To be honest I rarely listen to this coverage as I’m watching the TV.

Online
Blogs from the commentary legend that is Murray Walker, current driver Mark Webber, the current on-screen team and their producer(?) as part of an overall relaunch of the Motorsport section of the website, which has been pretty poor over the last couple of years.

Next… the details!

Sessions
(I’ll recap how you can receive these channels at the end of this post.)

– Every F1 race of 2009 will air live on BBC One and Radio 5 Live.

– Every qualifying session will air live on BBC One and 5 Live, except for Brazil which will be on BBC Two due to the time zones interfering with the beginning of primetime.

– Every race and qualifying session that happens before 10am UK will get a repeat showing that afternoon. ITV has done this for some time.

– There will be a highlights show on BBC Three every Sunday evening at 7pm (not Brazil). ITV last year showed highlights at midnight.

– Each race will be available on BBC iPlayer for up to 7 days after the event. Once downloaded you can keep it for up to 30 days. I think the BBC3 highlights package will also be available if you’re short on time.

– Every Friday and Saturday practice session will air live on the BBC Red Button and online, and 5 Live Sports Extra. No word on whether the TV will feature radio commentary, for the moment I am assuming it will. ITV last year did not have any commentary on their online feed.

Red Button
BBC Interactive’s Red Button service for Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin customers will feature some special delights:

– A choice of commentary: either the TV or Radio feed. Hell of choice between Brundle and Davidson, as well as being quick drivers they are both natural broadcasters.

– All practice sessions will be on the red button, not on BBC 1, 2, 3.

– After qualifying and race coverage has finished on BBC1 there will be an ‘Interactive Forum’ on the RB. This is a phone/text/email show with talk from DC and EJ.

– During the race there will be a choice of screens:
1) The main BBC One feed with choice of commentary;
2) Split screen featuring the main feed in one window, onboards in a second window, and a leaderboard;
3) Rolling highlights of the race so far;

Those on the DigitalSpy forum think #2 will be similar to Premiere in Germany, which looks like this:

(with thanks to whoever I stole that from)

Um. Can I just say? Ultra-cool!

No word yet on whether this will be extended for qualifying, or jut race-only, but it’s pretty cool either way.

I am seething a little here because I don’t get the interactive service until Digital Switchover occurs in my region in May. Luckily those streams are online! They’ll be geo-locked to UK-only but I’m sure the techies among you will figure out a way around that. And it means my first Red Button trials will occur during the Monaco Grand Prix – kick ass!

Other
There is a very high degree of likeliness that we will see a Top Gear F1 Special sooner rather than later. Lee McK has already done the lap! I’m having visions of the TG team wandering around the F1 paddock, not during race coverage but as a part of the next series.

5 Live will have a preview show on Friday nights of race weekends, as they have done for a while now. Also continuing is the post-race Chequered Flag podcast featuring driver interviews. I have to say I’ve completely missed the boat on both of those shows, I will try and catch up with them this year. All you international readers should be able to download the podcast freely.

NO COMMERICAL BREAKS DURING THE ACTION!

Okay I think that’s everything, but I’m sure to have missed something – please let me know in the comments!

How To Get These Channels

TV:
BBC1 and BBC2 are obviously available everywhere, if you don’t know how to get those you aren’t in the UK so none of this post applies to you…
BBC3 and Red Button are on digital TV only. You should be able to find BBC3 easily enough on Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media. To go Interactive just hit Red during any F1 broadcast.

Radio:
5 Live is on 909 and 693 Medium Wave, DAB and online.
5 Live Sports Extra is on DAB and online.

I’m not sure the online feed for radio will work , it’s historically been blacked out during F1, so use the TV feed.

I’m sure any American/Canadian/other readers will be turning to our mutual friend Justin for a little help if they don’t like their own domestic feed..

* * *
PS – Meesh sez the USF1 announcement was a washout so I’ll not recap that today, head over to her blog instead.
PPS – Got my tax exam result last week. Pass. *Yay*