It's been a relatively quiet day both on the blog and for Formula 1. I think we're all recovering from the shock of last weekend, me included. I stepped out of my front door again, big mistake, and have picked up yet more germs. Can't even blame Silverstone or Cardboard tents this time. Oh well. Here's some of the things we have been discussing:
- Day 1 of the Jerez test - Toro Rosso lead the way, Buemi better than Bourdais again? Raikkonen was back in action, whilst McLaren had test drivers aplenty. No Red Bull or Toyota, though.
- Autosport is reporting that the standard engine will be going ahead as no less than five teams have registered their interest. That's half of the current grid, or more than half if you discount Honda. Interestingly, the article says Renault are amongst those signing up for the deal. No more Renault engines?
- We're also trying to decide which iPod Scott should buy. I'm personally a big fan of the Nano, although I sometimes run out of space, especially if I'm behind on my podcasts.
- Don't forget we're on C in the I Spy game, and I think 73 is the next to be completed on the Numbers game. If we could get to 100, that would be cool.
I'm hoping the second day of testing might be more interesting than the first, as it was hampered by bad weather conditions, and no surprise cars looking awful. Either way, feel free to add your thoughts on the above, or any other things that come to mind. I'll see you in the comments.
1973 - First official F1 race at Interlagos.
Which iPod are you?
http://www.apple.com/uk/ipod/whichipod/
Remember that the iPod Touch is the Funnest iPod ever and not as I read it every time the Funniest iPod...
Oh and it's iPod Touch, not iTouch.
do i have to choose one?
'74 = McLaren wins their 1st Constructor's Cup. (Boo!)
I've asked mum to get me an iPod touch for Christmas so i can make use of some of the apps available on iTunes. Plus it's cool :P
I read that as Funniest. Surely. Two grown men can't be wrong?
Get a Zune. End of discussion. ;)
75 - the total points of Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica this season, giving them 3rd and 4th in the championship, respectively.
Honda making cut backs in MotoGP as well?
Better still, get an iPod (doesn't matter which one) then one of these cases to make it look like a Zune: http://hideapod.com/
Just cancelled my subscriptions to both Autosport and F1-Racing magazine today. Worked out the combined total for both over the course of the year was in the region of £160, which I couldn't justify for what are essentially out-of-date magazines as soon as they hit my doorstep.
I think I was only purchasing them out of habit to be honest. Will I miss them? Time will tell!
they're not for sale in the uk?
we stopped buying autosport back in the summer. it looks and feels cheap, you almost want throw it away the minute you open it and if you're only interested in f1, there's about two paragraphs of interesting content... plus a cartoon.
if f1r are ditching sc and others, we'll have to see how it affects the quality of the composition. i love what they did after matt thingy left, but it must be an impossible ask to retain that standard in the face of cutbacks?
our subscription isn't up for renewal for ages, but i'm sure we'll let everyone know if things go downhill.
i'm guessing no. print is dead.
it's inefficient, expensive and requires exorbitant amounts of paper which we then are supposed to ensure gets recycled.
renault have reacted to yesterday's engine speculation:
"We would like to point out that neither Mr. Briatore nor Renault have spoken to the press regarding this matter before this official press release."
http://www.f1minute.com/2008/12/10/renault-press-statement/
that's not a denial either, though is it?
Cancelled my F1Racing subscription a while ago, but I still have the autosport online journal subscription. Don't miss F1Racing. (sorry Stuart)
breaking news... mclaren next to go "ugly":
makes a heck of a difference retaining the old rear wing, doesn't it?
Actually you know what? I don't mind that McLaren front end. In fact their car has a nose similar to Williams' and the front wing planes look nice curving down into the middle. I also like the fact that at least the nose has a nice curvature to it on the top and also lengthways.
and to think, I thought you had taste... :(
iPod's are the devils tool. They don't sound great and they are locked tight. I avoid Zune's as well as you need to sync them rather than just drag and drop.
Go with something from Cowon. The D2 is fantastic *my current player of choice*, as was the old M3 and X5. The current Q5 is seriously expensive but so worth it. The O2 is debatable at the moment - needs some firmware changes.
Oh, and Scott, which of the spikey haired miscreants was you in Game over the weekend? ;)
LOL, I was in on Saturday. I was the one with the kind of mohawk and glasses on :P
and a LittleBigPlanet t-shirt on. ;)
see, none of the above mentioned hardware plays enhanced podcasts. so you're disrespecting christine's hard work by ignoring her efforts :)
also, looking at the pics of said device. it's not even widescreen! how very 1980's.
:D
And besides I've wanted an iPod for a long time, so now I have the chance to get one for Christmas. :D
Might send a text to mum later reminding her it's the iPod TOUCH and not any of the others ;)
aside from the shuffle (which i found unusable due to lack of screen), they're all great devices. you know you can get them custom engraved online right?
Was thinking of keeping that part of my Autosport subscription going. The online journal, race reviews are quite handy and are more-or-less just replicated in the magazine anyway.
I just find F1 Racing isn't that essential any more. I used to genuinely look forward to it coming through my letterbox, but now I just find myself flicking through it trying to find something original and informative.
And Motorsport Magazine has never really appealed to me either. News is typically 4-6 weeks out of date, the only saving grace is Nigel Roebuck, but that alone doesn't warrant five of my English pounds. Plus they also mucked up my tickets for the Wales Rally GB by giving them to someone else, so they're not getting my money ever again! (bitter, me?)
and justifiably so, i'd say.
Yeah I did see that actually. You can't get Currys to do that though, I don't think :P But yes I agree, the iPod is a brilliant device, I just found the Touch the most appealing :)
Who needs widescreen on a device less than 3" across? You're not going to actually spend time struggling to watch video on it are you? Thats why I got the Q5.
48gb in something the size of a box of kitchen matches with the best sound quality available.
The enhanced podcasts only work on apple devices or Itunes anyway. So thats 99% of the sensible world excluded. ;)
And the shuffle is indeed useless - got given one for my birthday and I gave to someone else a few days later.
As for magazines - I have a standing subscription to Motorsport, purely for the historical side of it. I have the dvd archives too. I pickup the odd issue of Autosport form time to time, not often though. Never really got into F1Racing.
Oh, I subscribe to the RSS feed on Autosport and this just arrived:
Renault downplay standard engine link
The Renault F1 team have played down suggestions that they are interested in using the standard Formula One engine.
Which links to: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72417
Except that doesn't exist? Some pulled the plug on it?
it's just a press release. same info here:
http://www.f1minute.com/2008/12/10/renault-press-statement/
no idea where the autosport page went mind you?
what is odd. is the story was the lead story on their site about 10mins ago, with an image and everything.
maybe someone rolled back the homepage, or it's cached or something?
so you carry two devices? in this day and age??
No. 99% of the time I just have the D2 as I'll be either working and as such looking at a monitor or walking or driving somewhere so I can't watch video. If I'm at the gym it depends on what routine I'm doing on which device I have with me. Due to my knee recently it's been purely weights so the Q5 has had little use. Add to that my phone has a 3.5" vga screen in it anyway and can play video very well too. Currently have Wall-e, Hellboy and Patriot Games on it. :D
Although more often than not I have my 17" laptop with me anyway so an extra 300g wouldn't make any difference at all.
It's a conspiracy I tells ya!
downloaded illegally?
Encoded from the DVDs or bluray to xvid.
And when you have too much time on your hands you can browse through the archive. I like 'the F1 insider' columns. Shame they don't have anything like that anymore. Also I want season strokes back: HMPF!
seems like a lot of effort ;)
i think we'll probably keep ours going too. presumably it would make sense for haymarket to beef up their online "paid for" presence if they're cutting back on the paper version?
Also, having Autosport or F1Racing send here makes it almost twice as expensive and a week late (it's more for that growing Asian market), so it would be great for us internationals.
No more than it took to get them onto my media servers in the first place. Having around 800dvd's and in excess of 2000cd's is nice, but it takes a lot of effort to find anything. ;)
Around 75% of it is now on my server in movie only iso images and flac disk images. Bluray are proving more troublesome as they are enormous - so they are being missed at the moment. Also means I can play anay of my music or films wherever in the world I am as long as there is a decent internet connection. Encoding to xvid can be done at around 4 times realtime with a one click app, so it's not that time consuming. Especially as once I encode, I leave the resultant file on the server so I don't need to recode again.
i probably know the answer to this already, but i'll ask regardless...
wouldn't it just be easier to rent a movie from itunes when you felt like watching it?
they do high def, they let you search for stuff and it means you don't have to spend the rest of your life archiving and storing more content than you could ever possibly watch anyways :)
So if you're without an internet connection what can you watch?
Plus I like watching the extras and listening to commentaries... Don't get them with downloads. Also I don't drink or smoke or go out, so I need something to keep me occupied. ;)
true enough.
we do buy tv programs from itunes, so i guess they would be available. but if we could rent them, i'm sure we would too.
Christine would be quite happy to hear that she is not the only one who manages to injure themselves in bed....
http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/8919824?MSNHPHCP/?gt1=39002
Apparently Fox Sports is reporting that Derrick Rose, a guard for the Chicago Bulls NBA basketball team managed to cut himself on a misplaced knife in his bed while eating an apple and getting into that same bed.
My only comment is, why could not the bed a waterbed just to add that additional layer of insult....
I like that the headline says he hurt himself eating an apple. That's almost as bad as sneezing in a lift :)
Still not quite as good as pulling your back while swatting flies. The Biggest debate that got was whether or not the fly should get a medal.... :D
Montoya's Tennis injury is now quite respectable...... I take back what I said about it when it was current news....
View from the top doesn't really make things any better, does it?
The opposite i feel...
The problem with F1 right now is that we are racing what appears to be snowplows as opposed to racing cars.... :D
Well, at least they look like they can clear the roads of snow really quickly....
That looks hot
Oooh, hel,lo
Yep, I'd have to agree with that statement...
In Watergate terms it's a non-denial denial
"FIA president Max Mosley has indicated he may be willing to drop his plans for a standard engine formula, so long as F1’s manufacturers propose an “interesting” alternative" from SPEED TV.
Not sure what 'interesting alternatives' there are...?
Is it bad that i read "drop his plans" for "drop his pants"
:S
Doesn't this sound like the kind of talk a confirmed driver would make?
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72426
"They have been consistently moving up in Formula One, which is a very difficult thing to do," Sato told autosport.com. "They never go down - every single time they go forward and I strongly believe that they can do that as well in 2009.
"The absolute numbers depend on how what the other teams do, but I strongly believe Toro Rosso will do the best job possible."
Yup, but its also the type of thing someone looking for a job and wanting to get on the right side of the owners would say...
Also true.
((Trying to hold back a terrible joke about a Max's home movies.))
This what gets me about Max and FIA; they discuss at length about how they want to cut costs and make the sport simplier for new teams to come in. Yet, with every techniccal change (like KERS, changing the engine formula, new areo packages) they increase the cost by forcing teams to develop different and more complex components every year. Want to cut costs, pick a simple formula for the sport and stick with it for at least three years.
How does it help cut costs when the FIA constantly moves the goalposts for the teams?
sidepodspace update
After landing in California due to bad weather in Florida the space shuttle Endeavour is now on the back of the modified 747 on its way back to Florida to be prepared for its next mission.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/
I think the follow up is what other business imposes ludicrously tight deadlines on important long term strategical decisions?
When's the next mission?
http://www.rallybuzz.com/loeb-f1-2010/
Perhaps he'll swap drives with Fernando? Although if Sebastien is looking to get away from a championship moving towards standardised equipment, then F1's probably the wrong place. :lol:
Looks like Max & Co. had a fun day out in Monaco:
The next two scheduled missions are using different shuttles so I don't know when Endeavour flies again. Probably August/September ish.
The last mission was STS126 which was out of sync because of the repairs that had to be done during the spacewalks. The next scheduled mission is STS119 which is due to lift off on February 12th. It is taking up the final set of large solar panels which could not be installed until the repair to the rotary joints were made. The fault was found a few missions ago so this has been on hold for a while.
Also scheduled for some time early next year is STS125 which should have gone a month before the last mission. This is the final servicing mission for the Hubble space telescope. By pure luck Hubbel developed a fault a week before take off so the mission was put on hold so that the fault could be assessed and a repair worked out. So in addition to its scheduled work STS125 will take up the parts to repair that fault. Imagine if the fault had occurred a week after the mission. That would be an expensive call out charge to sort a simple problem.
ohhh-kay. all sweetness and light. what did they decide then?
I wonder if Loeb is playing politics. The WRC can't afford to lose their biggest star and I wonder if he is trying make sure he gets the kind of car he likes.
It shows how far ahead of the game Colin McRae was. He saw the problem with the expense of the WRC cars and just before he died he had designed and built his version of an affordable rally car.
you know what, this hadn't occured to me:
"Former world champion Fernando Alonso, who was considering joining Honda for the 2009 season before committing to remain with Renault, has admitted that he was taken by surprise by the Japanese manufacturer's decision to quit Formula One."
just imagine if he had been swayed by fry and brawn. presumably even he wouldn't have made enough difference to keep the team afloat?
more: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72425
How could they have afforded him?
Almost worse than BT!
max on next season:
"We’ve finally found a serious engineering challenge for the teams in KERS."
"Some manufacturers have risen to this challenge, one manufacturer has produced electric systems which will astonish people when they appear, another team is working on a completely new technology which will also astonish people. But some leading teams, such as Ferrari, have said that they don’t like KERS because it is ‘too complicated’."
"Could you imagine the great F1 engineers like Chapman or Duckworth saying ‘I can’t do that because it is too complicated’? It is a symptom of a disease in F1 where incremental change becomes the whole object of the exercise and real serious innovation plays no part."
love it!
who's going to spring the surprise then? and how come they've told max? also, how come he's not best friends with ferrari any more?
more: http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns21037.html
They probably asked Charlie Whiting for clarification as to whether something was in the rules or not. Although why anyne would ask Charlie's opinion after melbourne 2007 or Spa last year is beyond me.
"an English team, directed by the English, of which we are nothing but the bankers and the engine makers."
More on Honda F1 departure
After reading the newsletter, I am wondering if all the cars are going to use Minadri DNA?
So it is Nick Fry's fault then?
i heard it helped toro rosso no end.
true. maybe ferrari have a really cool system, but they're smart enough not to mention it?
Ah, yes, Max, and remind me, who makes the rules?
The big problem in F1 is that Bugatti can enter F1 with a couple of Veyrons and "Captain Slow" James May behind the wheel and lap the entire field....
And Hamilton twice....
It just does not make sence that Christine can reduce these people into babies with just an off the shelf street car, a decidely expensive street car, but still a street car.
A few more facts for the numbers game.
76 - number of fastest laps Michael Schumacher clocked up during his F1 career
77 - number of drivers who competed in 1957 season
78 - number of points Ayrton Senna scored to secure the WDC in 1990
78 - number of race wins by drivers from France
'79 ==> First ever Canadian Grand prix to be held at the "Circuit Gilles Villeneuve." (1978 race was held at the "Circuit de Notre Dame" which was renamed in the off-season)
79 - The year of the best race ever. Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux at Dijon. Oh for another one of those.
Any you-tube clips of that one Steven?
There are hundreds of clips. Just type Dijon 79 into the search box. There is one with Jeremy Clarkson's comments and some with Murray Walker. The one I have found quickly gives you the essentials. This was th day that Renault won the first race for a turbo and no-one cared. All anyone remembers is the last couple of laps of the battle for second.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LzCqY8Wg5So
I just found the Clarkson clip.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6sDtn8QnpFg
Try this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl2tIFxSEGA&feature=related
"Motormouth comments.
Thanks guys :)
The 2008 Google Zeitgeist has been released today. It would appear as if Sidepodcast has been responsible for a culinary revolution. :o
This is data from the UK:
http://drop.io/sidepodcast/asset/zeitgeist-2008
When the two of them got out of their cars they just stood and hugged each other. No animosity or acrimony. A lot of the older drivers wanted them banned but Mario Andretti said 'Just a couple of young lions scrapping. No-one got hurt so there is nothing to get het up about.'
this probably amuses me more than anyone else, but:
http://www.f1minute.com/2008/12/10/10-dec-08-buemi-leads-day-two-at-jerez/
an audio podcast, minus the audio :)
the girl is very unwell today, awwww.
Here's a better (longer) version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3tXJm9tYGM&feature=related
hehe. i blame steven roy.
I reckon that might end up being our new tagline.
Sidepodcast: I blame Steven Roy.
I like the sound of that,
"The duel with Gilles is something I'll never forget. You can only race like that, you know, with someone you trust completely, and you don't meet many like him. He beat me, yes and in France, but it didn't worry me. I knew I'd been beaten by the best driver in the world."
—René Arnoux after 1979 French GP
Nowadays it would have been protests and lawyer's letters.
Morning all,
I'm back from my weekend in Taupo and I am just spending my last couple of days in NZ chilling out with my family and stuff...
Scott, get the iPod touch - it's mega for videos and games as well as the cool apps - I play football and puzzle games on the train home all the time. Plus you get photos in your podcasts which look really awesome.
I love the WiFi, Google Earth and the fact it has an accelerometer in it too - quite frankly it's one of the best devices you can buy :-)
it's over already? but it's gone so quickly?
;)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=91bfGCxXI84&feature=related
Now you sound like my Mum :-)