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On The Limit: Porsche World Cup Nordschleife Onboard

You are going to want to watch this. This takes serious skill, or balls, or maybe it is just plain stupidity I don’t know! I have no idea how these drivers do it. He can’t even see at times!

Event: Porsche World Cup
Venue: Nürburgring Nordschleife
Driver: Sean Edwards
Team: Team Abu Dhabi by tolimit
Car: Porsche 997 GT3 Cup (no ABS)
Conditions: Very very wet!

As a prelude to last week’s Nürburgring 24 Hours held on the daunting Nordschleife, Porsche brought together several of its one-make series into one six-lap World Cup event. This included the Porsche Supercup (which normally supports F1 in Europe) and national Carrera Cup championships from Germany, Britain, France, Italy and maybe more.

Supercup and Carrera Cup Germany driver Sean Edwards entered the race and his Team Abu Dhabi by tolimit team fitted an onboard camera. Here are some highlights including the start and opening lap on the GP loop and a part of the long track, before a full lap on the Nordschleife itself.

This is why I am not a racing driver, or if I was I could never race something as powerful as a GT car, I would’ve been killed several times over! The reactions and car control are just astonishing.

Thanks to @habibif1 for the tip via Twitter and to Sean Edwards for uploading the video to YouTube. I’ve not arranged this with Edwards or tolimit, but it is available under a standard YouTube Licence which allows sharing.

Goodwood This Weekend

This weekend is the Goodwood Festival of Speed and I’ll be attending on Friday and Saturday and I’m sure I’ll bump in to a few people from the online community.

Perhaps I’ll even bump into a famous name or two, not that I’ll have any idea what to say as my mind always, always goes blank in that situation. I do plan to get plenty of photos and videos especially because this year there is a big IndyCar presence, including current drivers and cars which never usually happens because until last year they raced at Watkins Glen on this date. This marks a rare UK appearance for many of them, even including the UK drivers who are usually too busy with racing and public appearances in North America (or Brazil) to please the sponsors.

There is also the biggest contemporary F1 presence for some time, possibly ever, and the usual array of classics from across the racing spectrum. Sadly there will be a lack of current sportscar drivers and cars since both the ILMC/LMS and the FIA GT1 series are racing in Italy and Spain respectively. There might also be a smaller motorbike crowd since MotoGP and British Superbikes are also racing. With the huge reputation the FoS enjoys these days I find it amazing racing series deliberately schedule events against it.

This is the first time I’ve attended two days of the Festival so I hope to take it a little easier than usual – they say it is a garden party but I’m always rushing from place to place to see everything in a single day (the site is huge). I hope I can take it easier this time. I’ve also never been on the quieter Friday, usually Saturday and Sunday are my preferred days but both are choc full of fans a few rows deep, you only get really close to the cars late in the day as people thin out but then time becomes limited.

So I hope to report back on Sunday, and who knows I might find time on Friday night for a quick update too. I’ll be commuting the 2 hours each way from home on both days because amazingly the cost of fuel is still lower than the cost of a hotel room on FoS weekend in the Chichester area… ought to have checked earlier I suppose.

I haven’t forgotten about posts for Belgian GP Sunday, LMS Silverstone or the Donington Historic.. will get there eventually!

Start Times: 1-3 July 2011

A guide to this week’s racing.

All start times are UK (GMT+1 / British Summer Time) and are taken from official series websites or those of the circuits. Live TV or web coverage is not guaranteed. I do not include practice sessions or warm-ups or rally stage times.

In square brackets I have included some UK broadcast partners, many of which also apply across Europe. Note that not all of these races are live on TV, many may be tape delayed, but you might be able to watch live or follow timing via the series website.

All weekend: Goodwood Festival of Speed

Friday

12.30am (Sat) – NASCAR Nationwide – Daytona Race

Saturday

Midday – WSbR FR3.5 – Hungaroring Race 1

12.40pm – F2 – Nurburgring Race 1

12.45pm – GT3 – Navarra Race 1 [MotorsTV]

12.45pm – British Superbike – Snetterton Race 1 [ITV4 / Eurosport]

3.45pm – GT1 – Navarra Qualifying Race [ESPN UK]

4.30pm – British Superbike – Snetterton Race 2 [ITV4 / Eurosport]

12.30am (Sun) – NASCAR Sprint Cup – Daytona Race [Premier Sports]

Sunday

9.15pm – GT3 – Navarra Race 2 [MotorsTV]

11.00am – ILMC & LMS – Imola Race [Eurosport (intermittently) / Radio Le Mans]

11.55pm – F2 – Nurburgring Race 2

Midday – DTM – Norisring Race [ESPN UK]

Midday – WSbR FR3.5 – Hungaroring Race 2

12.20pm – WTCC – Porto Race 1 [Eurosport]

12.45pm – GT1 – Navarra Championship Race [ESPN UK]

1.00pm – MotoGP – Mugello Race [BBC2]

3.00pm – Goodwood Festival of Speed [Sky Sports 3]

4.50pm – WTCC – Porto Race 2 [Eurosport]

For more events see the sidebar.

Was the 2011 European GP boring?

I’ve seen all manner of opinion across a variety of internet feeds, be it Twitter, Sidepodcast’s comments, and more, that the 2011 European Grand Prix was the most boring motor race of all time. But was it?

No.

Don’t be silly.

This kind of reaction seems to have become a hallmark of internet discussion and especially in ‘real time’ fora such as Twitter or Facebook. Knee-jerk overreactions just because someone is bored with a race and there is a keyboard in front of them.

Was the race boring? Well, half of it was. The first half actually really interesting, but the second half was awful. It seems people with a keyboard in front of them lose all sense of time and perspective after 25 boring laps, and by the chequered flag they had forgotten the first part of the race wasn’t actually that bad. They seem to have applied 3 previous years of boredom to this year’s event. I’m sorry, you just can’t do that.

The only person I saw with a different opinion was Lukeh in this excellent post, a beacon of common sense. It was not a great race. It might not even have been a good one, but I tell you something, it wasn’t a bad one either.

Afterwards I posted the following comment to Sidepodcast’s ‘Rate the Race’ thread:

I give this a 5 out of 10 simply on the basis that I really enjoyed the first half of the race and it was only from halfway onwards that it got boring (really boring).

People must have such incredibly short attention spans to level the vitriol I’ve seen about this race. There is nothing wrong with having a 5/10 race once in a while.

I’ll admit I didn’t watch live and because I had it fullscreen and was too lazy to boot up a separate device, I wasn’t following internet reaction as it happened (i.e the live thread), so I was just left with my own thoughts. I found the first 40% of this race to be just as interesting as any other. There was racing. There was passing. There was a 3-way fight for the lead which could have resulted in a pass at any time. That it didn’t was neither here nor there, at no stage in the first half of the race did I think it was a foregone result (apart from actually already knowing the result.. but you know what I mean).

There was a battle for 4th. Racing between McLaren, Mercedes, etc. There was a colossal battle for 7th-14th which I loved, Force India, Toro Rosso, Williams. There was split strategy among midfielders, with Jaime in particular proving a lot of people wrong, he shouldn’t be written off. Sutil had a good run as well, no crashes, top ten result.

There was genuine passing as well as DRS-assisted passing. Just because the DRS was useless among the top 5 – and we have to say the FIA got this one wrong with the distance between detection and activation – it doesn’t mean it was useless for everyone.

We also can’t expect the FIA to get the zones right first time at each venue.. they are going to get some wrong in the first year, they got it wrong here. But on the few occasions a car was close enough in the zone, there was a pass.

So it fell flat in the second half. That’s not an excuse to write off the entire thing. It was by far the best F1 race at this track I have ever seen. That’s not saying much but it is positive progress. We had half an interesting race here, that’s half more than we had before. Change the DRS zone next year. Problem solved.

In the second half of this race we’ve proven conclusively – without the effect of rain as per Canada – that the old aero problems still exist and cars can’t pass without DRS (even with KERS and Pirellis). That’s a problem.

By 2009 standards this would’ve been a good race. Leaders sailing off into the distance, bit of battling in the midfield as a sideshow, just like 2009 with different players. We’ve been spoiled this year. Frankly if this was the worst race of the year, we’re very lucky. People are acting like this was Bahrain 2010 and it was nothing of the sort.

And I’m not saying the latter half of the race wasn’t boring, far from it, it was terrible..

I should also add… it probably says something about how low my expectations were, that I was watching on delay in the first place, having prioritised a golf game with my Dad over it. And I always prioritise F1 first.

Let’s just have a sense of perspective, shall we? Two years ago we’d have loved this race and here we are with people saying it is dull. I think that shows just how far we’ve come in such a short time. What a great result that really is for the sport of Formula 1 and motor racing in general.