Joe Saward – I Watch Too Much Racing

An Aside With Joe #16

Today the latest ‘An Aside With Joe’ podcast was released and amazingly they are up to no.16 already. It doesn’t seem long since the first one.

These chats with journalist and author Joe Saward are always very revealing and in this edition you can find out about:

making Grands Prix green;
a Grand Prix for electric cars;
Silverstone’s deal;
an update on the Motorsport Business Forum, not the Monaco one like much of the F1 media but the Orlando event (and the reasons why he went there);
hydroplanes – yes, really;

I’ve said it before and it is ever true – after listening to Joe speak for just under an hour you come away feeling a lot wiser about motorsport and you look at it through different eyes – plus you can impress your friends with the knowledge. Of course, your friends don’t care about motorsport and they still think Button is called Jason, hah, what do they know, nothing.

Thanks to Sidepodcast and especially to Joe for making the time to produce these, and particularly this episode which was an unexpected addition.

I know it is Christmas but you should make time for this one, LISTEN HERE.

Standards

There is a lot of rumour and speculation in the motorsport world. There isn’t anything wrong with a good bit of rumour on fan sites, blogs and discussion groups. It helps keep us all interested and we all like a good “what if” scenario over a pint.

Problems occur when these rumours are presented as hard news and people start believing them to be true. Us hardcore fans can often see through it but I’m sure we’ve all been in the situation where a casual fan, or just someone who knows we are fans, strikes up a conversation based on a falsehood and you have to patiently explain to them why they are wrong.

The respected F1 journalist Joe Saward has written on his blog about this problem and a fascinating discussion broke out in the comments. It is very long but it is worth reading every comment. This is about the future of web journalism.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/thieving-from-the-thieves/

For a while now a certain agency has presented rumour as news. I will never write an article based on the output of this agency. People like that give the web a bad name among traditional media and among the people being written about.

Why We Are Here

I’m a bit late catching up with my RSS reader, as I am with so many things. Nevertheless, I would like to associate myself with remarks made by Joe Saward recently. If you are disillusioned with the endless politicking in F1 and other motorsports be sure to give it a read – and also the comments, because the second comment is from motorsport historian Gerald Donaldson and there is also a comment from F1 PR man Nav Sidhu.
It is nice know that in a world where we can all write what we will, there is still a place for the professional writer to help us express ourselves more clearly.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/two-crashes/

Back in the world of the bloggers, I also echo Alia’s response to that post:

http://formula1home.com/forum/weblog_entry.php?e=844

I don’t wish to ride on their coat-tails, merely to pass on some good writing which deserves an audience. See you for Singapore.

The Customer Comes First

The esteemed Mr Pressdog has recently taken up the mantle of being the champion of the customer – the fan – who is losing out and needs to be listened to, needs to be taken seriously.

Formula 1 journalist Joe Saward agrees and he tells it straight both on www.grandprix.com and his blog, and he has been talking about how F1 should pay more attention to fans on several editions of podcasts from Sidepodcast.com.

Check out last week’s instalment “The Customer Always Comes First” on the link below (this quote is actually unrelated to fans and is about engines – but he is in the fans’ corner too), and be sure to check the site every race weekend for his latest musings as well as the regular Debriefs throughout the weekend from the SPC team.

http://www.sidepodcast.com/2009/05/27/an-aside-with-joe-the-customer-always-comes-first/