Category: 2009

One Year On

Eighteen Months Ago I Was Just a Fan.
When the 2008 season started I was just discovering blogs after years residing in a newsgroup community, and reading the news and rumours on the popular racing news websites such as Autosport.com and GrandPrix.com.

This was the time of the death of Champ Car and the absorption into the IndyCar Series, I had been watching both in 2007 for the first time in about six years, and when they came together – while sad about CC going down – I was tremendously excited that they’d finally done it! The problem? I couldn’t find many other people who were excited with me within my existing racing circles – so I looked elsewhere for news and rumour and gossip about the merger. Who was moving over? Who wasn’t going to make it? I NEEDED to know.

The first places I found were MyNameIsIRL and Pressdog, very quickly followed by IsItMayYet? and Meesh’s blog which Pressdog has since dubbed “SHWIT!“.
If there were any F1 bloggers working as hard as this quartet I hadn’t discovered them by this stage, although in fairness my F1 needs were already catered for elsewhere.

In actual fact, some of the above began to start talking about F1 in the absence of Champ Car, because they wanted a second series to cover alongside IRL. It was interesting reading their experiences as they learned the ropes, coming from a completely different perspective to the one I’m so used to here in the UK. I found myself commenting on their posts with increasing regularity and length, usually about F1 or connecting an IRL thing to F1, because that’s what I knew. Sometimes I tried to explain something about F1 they didn’t know (and sometimes pretended not to know for comedic effect, which I’d missed!!) in return for their excellent posts educating me about the world and culture of IndyCar racing.

These bloggers also frequently post notes which they write during the races. I thought this was a fantastic idea but by mid-season I’d identified something – they were all commenting on the same feed! Not too much of a problem because they each have their own views… yet I couldn’t help but think the F1 coverage I was receiving was better than what was being described to me, and that I could offer a different take on IndyCar, perhaps describe a similar journey as above but with that series.

Over a period of a few weeks I gained the desire to write similar posts from the UK perspective and TV feed, because not only would it be different to the above but I also hadn’t seen anyone else approach the UK feed from that angle before. Not that I expected many readers, it was just a nice idea to have somewhere to keep a record of my thoughts.

I’m also interested in a broad range of motorsports and I’d hoped to be able to relate F1/IRL goings-on to what else was happening in racing. To be fair this only really came up trumps when Mike Conway moved to America and nobody there knew who he was, whereas I’d spent two years watching him in GP2.
That’s probably the highlight of the last year for me. In the preseason break I’d described him in more than one place as fast but erratic, looks odds-on for a really good finish before the magnets pull him into a wall, or a light knock just ends his race. I haven’t been able to pay as much attention as I would have liked, but I’m getting the impression this is how his 2009 has been so I’m pretty chuffed with the original assessment!

So by July ’08 all I needed was the guts to actually start it. In the first week of August I decided to bite the bullet, set up a blog and write an introduction.

One Year On
It seems to have been reasonably popular. I mentioned the site around a few places and was amazed to find people not only visiting, but returning! I was getting 10-15 regular readers every week after just a few months. It trailed off heavily over winter, I got the impression it was the same for everyone though, yet as soon as the F1 car launches started happening in early 2009 the number of readers actually rose above previous levels! I was stunned. This was helped in no small part by copious plugs from the bloggers I talked about above.

Then a friend from the F1 community I was on at the time suggested I check out Sidepodcast. Not only a podcast about F1 – bear in mind I’d never listened to a podcast in my life before – but also an interactive community with daily discussion about racing and everything else in life. I said hi. Was asked to plug the blog. Not only did readership jump again (!!!) but I found a really great group of people to hang out with, many of whom now have their own blogs. SPC were even kind enough to plug the blog on the show, more than once!

By the time the F1 season started in March I’d joined Twitter, connected with lots of other bloggers in comments or on Twitter, appeared on various Sidepodcast and PlanetIRL podcasts and I even got a mention on Midweek Motorsport!

These days I’m getting roughly 40 regular readers and I’m truly amazed to have as many as that, especially since the blog has been pretty quiet since the season started because I have been working on accountancy studies (which are thankfully over for the time being). I honestly expected to stay at just a small handful of readers, if that, because I’d started this as somewhere to keep a note of my thoughts.

I hope to continue this for the forseeable future, and in fact I’ve got a lot planned as I begin what I call the Big Massive Catch-Up to watch a lot of the racing I missed while studying. I’m in two minds over whether I’ll post much about that, right now I’m leaning towards very short updates on all but F1 and IndyCar. I’ll probably skip most of the news because this has never been a news site. I do plan to write notes on the IndyCar races but they won’t be as long or verbose as last year or like the other bloggers’ notes. I hope you stick with me!

So, there’s only one thing left to do:

For their regular links, comments, tweets and general encouragement, my thanks goes to:
Bill / Pressdog
Jeff / MyNameIsIRL
Meesh / SHWIT!
Christine & Mr.C / Sidepodcast (and everyone there!)
Dex / MidweekMotorsport @RLM
Kohl / PlanetIRL
Allen / FuriousWedge
Andy / TheSpeedGeek
Gavin / F1Numbers
Duncan / vee8
Everyone else in the sidebar and anyone who has linked me (I can’t list you all!!), and last and not least to all the other readers and commenters who have dropped by over the last 12 months.

Here’s to another year!

Michael Schumacher Returns

It was too good to be true, wasn’t it?

He’s back. HE’S back. Him. That man. The one we thought we’d got rid of.

We’ve had a great year and a half without him and it has been brilliant to see new drivers come to the fore and make F1 their own, and also watching Ferrari evolve in the post-Schumacher, post-Todt era. I’d even begun to not dislike them.

I do wonder how MS will fit in as a race driver in that changed environment, rather than a ‘consultant’ on the pit wall. Let’s hope none of the old nonsense returns.

I must admit to being curious about how he’ll perform after so long away, in a new-style car with no testing whatsoever – and in Valencia on a circuit he hasn’t driven before vs most of the rest of the field who have.

As much as I dislike the guy and his tactics, you can’t deny that in terms of ability and application he is the best of his generation if not all of them. If he didn’t pull such ridiculous stunts I might even have become a fan of his, and yet… too many, too often, too deceitful. So it’ll be interesting to see it for a race or two, though I don’t think I want to see him for any more than that.

Realistically Massa won’t be in the car before winter testing resumes in January, but still… get well soon Felipe.

A Push To Pass

As reported in several places, the IndyCar Series will adopt a ‘Push to Pass’ system this weekend and for the remainder of the year. This system will provide a horsepower boost for a duration of 12 seconds per button-press. The amount of extra hp will depend on the fuel mixture setting selected (there are several preselected settings from full rich all the way to full lean, to save fuel, and a yellow flag setting). A fully rich setting will gain just 5hp while a leaner setting will benefit from up to 20hp.

These are not big gains. The Senior Technical Director of the IRL said the small amounts were due to the fact these are normally-aspirated engines which are already near their full potential, unlike Champ Car turbos which only needed a boost level change to get big hp gains. Perhaps he’s inferring that the A1GP engines are somewhat detuned under normal conditions, considering they get a rather larger bump from their normally-aspirated P2P…

What is very interesting about this development is that it is being introduced on an oval. No variant of P2P has ever been used on an oval, to the best of my knowledge, since Champ Car had stopped racing on them by the time their system was implemented. On an oval the horsepower and car setup are everything. Perhaps even just this small difference will be enough to create close racing? Maybe less so on the shorter tracks, but at those where their foot is on the bulkhead all the way round, definitely.

I am much more sceptical on the road and street courses where I really don’t think it’ll make an ounce of difference, the jump in power just isn’t enough for those tracks.

What is interesting is a tweet from Allen from The Furious Wedge. He mentioned another change that has been lost among the hoopla about P2P – the removal of the ‘wicker bill’ from the rear wing (as well as the general freeing-up of the aero regs). The wicker bill is a part on the trailing edge of the rear wing which creates drag. I’m not entirely sure why they are there, perhaps in a previous evolution of the aero package they helped the racing but it seems the reverse is true now, for whatever reason.

Let’s hope these changes improve the racing which has reportedly been dire this season. I’ve not really been able to see much of this year but I have recordings which I will watch over the coming weeks.

The Passing of Henry Surtees

I am sure readers of this blog will know by now that Henry Surtees died yesterday from injuries sustained during a Formula 2 race at Brands Hatch, he was 18.

Will Buxton reminds us of Mario Andretti’s words upon the death of his Lotus team-mate Ronnie Peterson in an accident at Monza.
“Unfortunately, motor racing is also this.”

Despite all of the great strides forward in motor racing safety over the last thirty or more years, it unfortunately remains the case.

These cars are compliant to 2005 F1 safety regulations, including wheel tethers. No doubt there will be an investigation, hopefully the cause of the apparent tether failure will be found and rectified. I have now seen footage of the incident. That wheel should not have come off.

As for the wheel assembly striking the car, this was nothing more than a freak accident and there is no way anybody can legislate for that, freak accidents will always happen.

The driver is as safely cocooned within the bodyshell as is possible without enclosing him – some are suggesting the latter should be the next move, but in my opinion this would bring about other problems, such as extrication from the car in an emergency. Given the very low number of times an accident such as this happens it would seem counterproductive to run closed-top formula cars.

Henry Surtees

Anybody who attended a BTCC meeting in recent times and stayed trackside for the support series will have seen Henry Surtees race, even if they didn’t realise it at the time. He competed in Formula BMW in 2007 and Formula Renault in 2008, both on the BTCC support package. (Ginetta Juniors was not yet on the package when he ran in it, and FBMW has since merged to become pan-European). His name was known to most who follow the junior ladder in this country and perhaps further afield.

On a personal level, I was at a wet and windy Silverstone last year when he took a podium finish in the afternoon race. I don’t recall much of the race apart from a few spinners and a driver who lost a wing and kept driving (not Surtees), and I didn’t watch him specifically though I was very much aware he was there and I remember being pleased that he scored a good result because it confirmed he was more than just a ‘name’ driver, more than just the son of someone famous.

**
It should be noted that Sunday also saw the death of co-driver Flavio Guglielmini on the Rally Bulgaria, while driver Brain Lavio is in a ‘stable’ condition. Rally Bulgaria has been on the FIA European Rally Championship schedule for 20 years and this year was a Candidate Rally for the 2010 WRC, for which a decision will be made in September.

Also on this dark weekend, Ricardo Londono was shot and killed in Colombia. Londono was entered for the Brazilian GP some 28 years ago but was not able to qualify despite reportedly setting some good times earlier that week.

My thoughts go to the families and friends of each of them.