I’ve been reading a book this week for a review for VivaF1.com, as part of their week of book reviews.
You’ll find the review here: MotoGP: An Illustrated History
I hope you check it out because it is a really interesting book even if you are only casually interested in two-wheeled racing, and please do also look at the other reviews posted since Monday.
You may remember in August, VivaF1 organised the first ‘Blogger Swap Shop’ to tide F1 bloggers over through the summer break. I wrote a post for VivaF1 and Leigh from the F1 & Motorsport Archive wrote a post here, just two examples among many other great swaps.
If you enjoyed those, good news, now we’re in the off-season there is going to be a whole series of them! Viva are soliciting as many bloggers as possible in the hope of getting a wide selection, so that we can write for as many different people as possible.
Just as last time there are already a mix of sites signed up: commentary blogs, satire blogs, analysis blogs, community blogs and any other flavour you can think of. In August everyone really raised their game and it was quite tough to come up with something, it’ll be interesting to see what happens this time!
Want to join in? Sign up here!
The off-season is the ideal time for people to take a break from racing, but not me. This is when I catch up with all the things I haven’t had time for during the main season. I hope you’ll stick around because there is also plenty else happening around the racing blogosphere too.
For one thing I have been moving house over the last week, and preparing for it for a while beforehand, so my planned blog posts have been delayed – there’s a bit of a backlog now. Over the next fortnight I plan to write about:
– Saturday and Sunday at the Belgian Grand Prix;
– A few short paragraphs on all the F1 races since then;
– A few short paragraphs on the last two MotoGP races of the season;
– My day at Silverstone for the Le Mans Series;
– Some other seemingly-random stuff I’ve been watching;
After that I’ll be catchup on some racing from all over the place as I try to cut down my massive backlog of things marked ‘to be watched’. I insist upon watching it now I have it, no cheating by skipping ahead.
Then we’re into the depths of the off-season and there is the Thursday Thoughts series which will surely make a comeback in a couple of weeks, then perhaps Bloggers Swap Shop could make a return after its triumphant debut a few months ago. Be sure to check out all the various other blogs taking part in these initatives, not only when they are happening but in the meantime because there are some good posts out there.
I’m tempted to start a series of posts linking to good blog articles I find elsewhere. Jackie at VivaF1 does for F1 articles, Tony at PopOffValve does a great series on IndyCar, JOWT for junior series. I’m not aware of anyone doing it across multiple disciplines of racing. In any case, these sites and others need more links to them not just from them. The remit of this blog is to expose people to racing they might not otherwise follow, and act as a discussion place for those of us that already do. The game has done that a little, at the expense of the discussion. Time to redress the balance.
Then there are the F1 launches and tests, Dakar and soon Daytona again. It isn’t that long really.
Don’t disappear this winter – your humble bloggers aren’t.
As part of Sidepodcast’s ongoing On Track series in which members of the community describe their days exploring the race tracks of the world, I recently wrote of my experience at Thruxton circuit in 2001. I was fortunate enough to drive in road cars while sitting alongside race instructors and culminating in a run in a Formula Ford 1600 on Britain’s fastest road course circuit.
I’ve adapted my account from reports I’d written in the days following the run, which were originally posted to the F1NGers newsgroup. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it. Sadly this has been my only time driving on a real track, I hope to return some day.
I Watch Too Much Racing 