Tag: F1

2010 Belgian GP – Saturday Pt.2

If you missed Part 1 from Saturday at Spa, do check it out here!

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With the racing done for the day we returned to the cabins for a rest, a shower and a drink. We couldn’t really agree what to do with ourselves and we were all absolutely shattered from two days of walking the hills of the racetrack, braced against the rain.

At first we elected to be boring and stay to enjoy the hospitality of the site, nothing wrong with that as they were all very friendly and welcoming. They’d laid on food and drink although it wasn’t quite what we’d had in mind, lots of big meatballs and frites were involved and the local generic lager. Rude not to enjoy some of both. Not the high cuisine of Europe some of our group may have expected.

The food filled a hole. The beer was a bit underwhelming though as it tasted like Carling or Fosters (boring, can get that at home) yet we were in this place of beer experimentation. A few of us were getting itchy feet, particularly Bassano, Gavin and myself. We hadn’t properly explored the town of Spa itself yet, and we wanted a drinking session. Two of us would be driving Monday so Sunday night couldn’t be heavy on drink, that meant it had to be this night. Sadly some of the others didn’t want to go anywhere.

The fact I struggle to remember details suggests we were successful.

Continue reading “2010 Belgian GP – Saturday Pt.2”

2010 Belgian GP – Saturday Pt.1

You might remember I went to the Belgian Grand Prix last year with a group of people and I’d been writing a little diary of our adventures. Those updates had slowed to a halt… but it is time to finish off, here is the next instalment!
If you haven’t yet read the previous instalments you can start here, and there will be a summary post with links to both my write-ups and those of others.. eventually.

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Saturday dawned much brighter and drier than the wet, grey days leading up to the weekend. After the very heavy rain of Friday it was a welcome relief. We had another lift in from ‘Bueb’ and had a bit of a longer walk today as he wasn’t willing to chance his luck with the police cordons.

FP3

For the first F1 session of the day – Free Practice 3 – we decided to climb the hill at Eau Rouge and find a place on Kemmel, the long straight, as most of the group hadn’t seen it yet and those of us who had were keen to see some F1 cars in the dry there. Whilst it was dry and partly sunny there were also dark clouds hanging around giving the place an ‘impending doom’ atmosphere. Literally the calm before the storm. The view looked even more amazing in these conditions.

Continue reading “2010 Belgian GP – Saturday Pt.1”

Friday Favourites: 15 April 2011

A series highlighting the best around the motorsport web.

After a trial run in January (wow, that long ago?) I’ve decided to make a links post a weekly feature, and it has a new name purely to make sure I do it regularly. I’ve found if I leave things free-form they never happen again so I need to create a weekly schedule. I started posting TMR Game results exclusively on a Tuesday evening, and the new Start Times series will be posted on a Thursday night.

Items I list here aren’t necessarily up to date but they are always, in my opinion, worth a read or a listen. Whilst I have over 1000 items in my Google Reader, many of them are news articles so in terms of true blog posts and podcasts it is probably nearer 200. That’s still a hefty backlog so if your thing appears here a couple of weeks late, please don’t take it personally. I will take suggestions whilst retaining the right not to include things, I want these to be concise updates!

On to this week’s links.

  • More Front Wing: MFW Podcast Episode 36– I’m going to be honest, I struggle to stay up to date with podcasts, people release far more than I ever have time to listen to and I always feel bad for not keeping up. This is one such show, and one that had dropped – not purposely –  from my rotation in 2010 when I got snowed under with content. I won’t be making that mistake in 2011.The episode I highlight here is the show after the St Pete IndyCar race, with special guest Shane Rogers who is ridiculously knowledgeable about IndyCar and F1 (and who knows what else)!
    His input is fantastic, particularly since he’d attended the Australian Grand Prix that weekend and was able to offer a direct comparison of F1 cars and IndyCars – and events – from the perspective of the stands at the track. Steph and Paul put together a great show and subsequent shows feature Ed Carpenter and James Hinchcliffe, I’m listening to Ed’s show as I write and I can’t wait to hear the show with Hinch!
  • Oilpressure: Randy Bernard Interview Part 1 and Part 2 – Even if you are not a fan of IndyCar racing you should still read this interview. Randy Bernard, CEO of INDYCAR, has been a real breath of fresh air in his just-over-a-year in charge of the series. Such a huge change from the fighting, dictating attitudes of the 90s to early 00s and the introspection and cluelessness of the mid-00s – and I count all flavours of Indy racing in that: CART, Champ Car, IRL.  The unified IndyCar Series is now led by a man who is not just open to listening to teams and drivers, but also to fans and bloggers. This is just one of many Q&As he’s granted to bloggers, but what’s good about this one, is that it was Randy’s idea! He saw George at Oilpressure ask his readers for questions ‘should I bump into Randy’ at the Barber round, and Randy came back and made it a meet-up in person for a real Q&A. And it is a top notch Q&A as well, good questions (as you would expect from the learned readers of Oilpressure), great answers – not banal PR fluff.
    Do also take a look around the rest of the site to see more photos and words from George’s weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.
  • Sidepodcast: F1 in China – Christine has questioned why F1 still races in China when it seems there isn’t a single person in the world who wants it to happen. The personnel don’t like it, there are no fans in the place.. why bother?
  • VivaF1: The Prince of Motorsport (Part 1) – A great guest post at VivaF1 from The F1 & Motorsport Archive’s Leigh all about the life and times of the man recorded in the F1 history books as Prince Bira, or ‘B Bira’. Check out Part 2 later this weekend and do have a look at the other articles at both VivaF1 (some really great F1 articles in the past few days) and F1&MA (coming live from Monza for British F3).
  • Neil Hudson: New BTCC Regulations: Who is the fastest? – This season the BTCC has added new technical regulations alongside the existing S2000 and BTC cars. NGTC is a new spec for both chassis and engine, but there’s also the option to fit NGTC engines to existing S2000 cars. But which is faster? Neil checks the lap times from the opening round at the 1.2 mile Brands Hatch ‘Indy’ short circuit and graphs the results. I hope he does the same later in the year so we can see how the cars develop. (Sadly my comment appears to have been moderated).
    Note – This article appears on Neil’s own blog, he also writes for Touring Car Times which I urge you to add to your RSS rotation immediately for superb coverage of WTCC, BTCC, STCC, CCTCC, DTM, V8SC and more.

Do let me know of any interesting articles and podcasts you find around the web, and I’ll have more here next Friday.

World of Racing: 16 Jan 2011

Links posts. Often useful, these can sometimes be seen an easy route to blogging, simply sharing what’s around as a way to have something on your own blog. Never one to shy away from stealing a good idea which lazily gives me content, I present ‘World of Racing’, my interpretation of the ubiquitous links post!

I’ve noticed many posts in this style focus on one championship, so you’ve got F1 sites sharing F1 links and IndyCar sites sharing IndyCar links, which great and these blogs do it very well indeed, but I don’t see many cross-motorsport blogs doing the same which I think is odd. Whilst it is true many fans focus on one series as their preferred championship and they might not watch all the races of other series or read the dedicated blogs/news sites, perhaps they are interested enough in other championships to watch the occasional race, catch up with a bit of gossip or read an interesting post on the topic. That’s where I hope to come in.

Let’s get started with the first set of links!

Continue reading “World of Racing: 16 Jan 2011”