Category: F1

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.

FOTA’s Proposals

The Formula One Teams Association (www.teamsassociation.org), the independent body made up of the 10 teams of F1, conducted a survey in 17 countries of both F1 fans and non-fans as well as those who follow casually. From the results of this survey they have made the following proposals, known as the ‘roadmap’ and classified as ‘sporting’, ‘technical’ and ‘commercial’ to match the working groups established some months ago.

I’ll list these in the order of the press release and include my own comments in each section.

Technical
For 2009:
– An engine life increase of over 100%.
– A reduction in the usage of wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
– Engines to be supplied for €8 million per season per team.

These are expected to provide significant savings over 2008. In addition, these proposals were made for 2010:
– Engines to be supplied for €5 million per season per team.
– Gearboxes to be supplied for €1.5 million.
– Standard KERS system to be put to tender, target price €1 million to €2 million.
– 50% reduction on 2009 levels on the spend on aerodynamic development.
– Cap the number of chassis, bodywork and aero updates per season via homologation.
– Prohibit ‘exotic’ materials.
– Standard telemetry and radio systems.

My thoughts:
I agree with all of these moves, but one. They retain the uniqueness of F1 development, that the teams design their own cars, without needless aero updates for every race. The one I disagree with is standard KERS – the whole point of KERS being in F1 is that each team is developing their own systems, and some are radically different from others. Green tech should be the areas left open for development, not closed off!

Sporting
For 2009:
– A reduction in testing of 50%.
– Adjust the points system to 12 for a win, 9 for 2nd, 7 for 3rd. The remaining points to 8th remain as present. This is to further reward winners and podium finishers. (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 would become 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1)
– Starting fuel loads and tyre selections to be made available to the public before the race.

For 2010:
– Recommend a new qualifying format.
– Radical new points-scoring opportunities (e.g. fastest pit stop).
– Further testing restrictions, to 4 x 4 day single car sessions, plus one single car shakedown.
– Reduce Grand Prix race distances to 250km max, or 1hr 40 mins. (presently 300km or 2 hours)

My thoughts:
I agree completely with the 2009 proposals, of which testing has already been reduced significantly. The points need adjusting and the race data should be available, as it is in MotoGP.
I don’t think we need a new qualifying format, the present one works very well indeed! I also disagree with reducing the race distance and the ‘new points opportunities’. F1 should be about going flat out for a couple of hours, not racing for trick points or becoming a sprint race.

Commerical
For 2009:
– Increase data provision for the media.
– Explore means to more dynamically present F1, to improve engagement with the public.
– Nominated senior team spokesman available during GP.
– Commitment to enhance consumer experience via team and FOTA websites.

For 2010:
– Commitment to enhance viewer experience through TV coverage.

My thoughts:
You can’t disagree with any of this. I would prefer to bring the TV coverage forward to this year but I understand if it’s now too late, although I’m sure some improvements can be filtered in in the latter half of the year. I’d also prefer F1.com to be the focal point, unfortunately Bernie won’t let that happen. I like the opening up of personnel during race, like they do on American coverage of IRL/NASCAR. I also like telling the drivers to show up at an appointed time to meet the fans.

Other Points To Note
FOTA noted several other findings.

1. F1 isn’t broken. The survey results clearly were against the mooted suggestions of splitting GPs into ‘sprint’ and ‘feature’ races, or reverse grids.

2. F1 needs to be consumer-friendly. Only devotees watch a race live outside of their peak viewing times. No shit, Sherlock!

3. Qualifying changes are not urgent. Fans like the meritocracy and don’t want luck to play a part of it. Fans are actually quite smart.

4. Revise the points scoring system. Fans want the winner to be more rewarded than at present. Good idea.

5. Evolution of pitstops and refuelling. It seems fans very much like tyre changes, but don’t really care about refuelling and strategy. This isn’t a surprise as strategies haven’t been explained well in the past, despite the best efforts of James Allen and Ted Kravitz (here at least), and they are quite hard to follow sometimes even for us smart fans. Sometimes they are only hard to follow because they are boring. I like the sound of the 80s, when cars would go full distance but some drivers would choose to stop for tyres and try to catch up the time lost by making full use of their fresh rubber. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

There are further details on these points in the press release which I urge you to read. We’ll shortly hear of the FIA’s own proposals I believe as soon as this coming week. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any convergence.

BBC Promo vid

Check out the new BBC F1 promo!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7911126.stm

Theme: ‘The World’s Greatest Car Chase’

Two F1 cars in the BBC Sport colours of yellow and black race through city streets in the classic movie style, with a hint of that theme… I’m excited now. F1 is back on the Beeb. REALLY excited!

* okay, so they aren’t F1 cars, they’re mockups and they are in South Africa for no reason at all, but I don’t care.

This will air on all BBC channels in the few weeks before the season starts, and in cinemas nationwide. F1 is now arguably their biggest sports property and they are really going for it.