So there I am minding my own business, busily tweaking the cantankerous Eee PC only to discover there's discontent in the comments because madam's forgotten to write a post again. It just so happens there is a December the 3rd this year, and here's a post to prove it.
Topics for discussion, on the day that Sidepodcast forgot, include:
- The Relentless Sidepodcast Panda-Cosworth Racing F1 Project has been reignited, and to hell with the credit crunch.
- Although by all accounts Honda Racing look to be feeling the pinch of the downturn. Nick Fry appears to have lost his dinner money, and now a bunch of British hacks are going to go hungry. Mind you, if they'd spent all year slagging off my car, I wouldn't be buying them lunch any time soon either.
- Fernando's revealed the launch date of Renault's '09 challenger, yet claimed the car we'll see won't bear any resemblance the final design at all, which begs the predictable question - why not launch it later then?
That should keep things ticking over until the morning, anything I've missed?
Numero uno! :P Um, where's everyone? :)
Ooops, must be a leap year on the Sidepodcastland Calender.....
or second, either way :)
i'm here but i'm sorta distracted.
And people wonder why I installed the dual-Chain guns (Machine Guns) on the cars....
Nothing new there. The Renault that Alonso won his races with last year looked nothing like the Renault that came out at the launch. The Launch Renault looked like some Easter Egg Candy on wheels, the Renault at the ebn dof last year race looked like a double race winner....
thought that was for the photographers?
What about the Ispy and Number games?
still on 'h' i think, and i'm not sure where we got to with numbers.
lemmie check.
59, i think:
Number of years that F1 has existed
to which i'll add:
60 - years of ferrari... erm, last year
ER, was not Ferrari a part of the Alfa Romeo team in the first season of F1?
I spy is still on h. I have given out a few clues. Smaller than a toolbox, inside the ISS and you don't want to sleep on top of it because it is uncomfortable.
And since we are having a December 3rd I will add an extra clue. 'me' mentioned it/them in the past week but not in relation to I spy.
Who dropioed the morphing of EJ to Vijay? I like that.
i thought they made an expensive video last year to celebrate?
borrowed from the autosport forums.
There was an Alfa team then but Ferrari had separated from them a long time before that. Ferrari entered GPs in 1948 before there was a championship.
hats?
Happy Panda?
Well, form follows functions. The more it wins, the better it looks. :D
Wow, people are still up over there at this time? :O
yeah. but am having success with the eeepc so am happy. wifi is now semi-reliable and it understands the concept of energy saving too.
course if i could think of something beginning with 'h'...
'61- The year Phil Hill won his championship.
So... does anyone have any tips for remembering something you have to do every day?
yup. keep the doohickey open, eventually someone will remind ya.
how f1 minute got to 348 episodes i shall never know?
erm... set a reminder on your phone? there must be something on the G1 that will give you reminders every day :)
fyi: they went ahead and make a video of lewis' perfect lap:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vft1BRtfXFc
i love that even the sky in mclaren's virtual world is grey!
Ooh, good idea!
she needs a "jules" to remind her.
hehe i kinda like the look of that track... in other youtube related news, don't tell anyone but i just managed to find a way round the school's website blocking system thing so that i can get onto youtube :D
No and no. The panda has never looked happy
Windows has a really good calendar for that
Pantano's having a bit of a moan that no teams are interested in him for next year, even though he won GP2 this year.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72303
My favourite bit:
"That's what it's like now, if you don't get in touch with people, no one looks for you. I feel abandoned. The only person behaving fairly has been Ecclestone. I called him a few days ago and after ten minutes he called me back."
When was the last time Mr E was called fair!?
interesting insight from pantano though:
"The only real drives still available are at Honda and Toro Rosso. Bernie told me that if anything moves, I'll be the first to know."
my question... why does bernie give a damn? is he worried about the credibility of his gp2 championship in the face of max's new f2-what-do-ya-call-it?
It took him 3 seasons of F3000 and another 4 seasons of GP2 to win a championship. What is so outstanding about taking 7 seasons to win a champioship when Hamilton did it in one?
I remember reading about Pantano when he was karting and all the reports were that he was like the next Senna. His reputation was quite incredible but there were questions being asked then why he was taking so long to move into cars. There were suggestions by people who knew a lot more about karting than me that he may never move into cars. I am not sure how old he was when he switched but I know there were stories of guys he had comfortably beaten in karts winning major F3 titles befoe he did.
He may have an impressive list of titles behind him but any decent driver with 7 seasons in F3000/GP2 should be able to take the title when his rival was a driver who missed out on ten years experience and whose car racing career started after Pantano had already completed 3 seasons in F3000.
How ironic is it also that all 4 of Lewis' tyres on that lap look to have flatspots :D
ouch! :D
It even looks like he's done it to them BEFORE the hot lap. Look at the onboard at the start of the lap. Since when does an F1 car wobble like that! Worse than Kimi's at Nurburgring '05.
it's not quite in the same league as red bull's "lap of singapore" i guess :)
Put it this way - I ain't buying the new F1 game if its the same as Lewis' lap video. Red Bull's - definately. Mobil 1's - hell no. :P
Although it took Hamilton four years to win the British Formula Renault Championship and F3 Euroseries, when Pantano won the Formula Palmer Audi Winter Series and German F3 Championship (back when it was considered the world's premier F3 series) straight out of karting.
Also, your comments about Pantano switching from karting to single-seater racing seem to be wide of the mark. Are you sure you're not getting him mixed up with his compatriot, the five-time world champion Davide Fore?
Pantano moved to cars from karting at the age of 20, which is fairly standard. He was around the same age as Vitantonio Liuzzi and Jarno Trulli (also both extremely successful karters) when they made the switch.
It is much more normal to move out of karting at 17. In the UK now karters can switch to cars at 16. It was definitelyPantano I was thinking about. By the time he did the German F3 championship its best days were behind it as can be seen by the list of champions. Heidfeld in 1997 was the last decent driver to win it.
2007
Carlo van DAM (HOL)
F3
2006
Ho-Pin TUNG (CHI)
F3
2005
Peter ELKMANN (GER)
F3
2004
Bastian KOLMSEE (GER)
F3
2003
Joao Paulo De OLIVEIRA (BRA)
F3
2002
Garry PAFFETT (GBR)
F3
2001
Toshihiro KANEISHI (JAP)
F3
2000
Giorgio PANTANO (ITA)
F3
1999
Christijan ALBERS (HOL)
F3
1998
Bas LEINDERS (BEL)
F3
1997
Nick HEIDFELD (GER)
F3
1996
Jarno TRULLI (ITA)
F3
In my view Paffett was the last decent driver to win it (he did beat Timo Glock to the title). German F3 declined when the Euroseries was established, in 2003.
At the time F3 was still very much seen as an essential step for aspiring young drivers (championships such as the World Series - in its current form - and International Formula Master didn't exist). The British and German championships were the two best series, with the latter producing the better drivers. You'd have to go right back to when de Ferran won the title to find a British F3 champion potentially better than Pantano.
Was Heikki heavier than Lewis in qualifying all season? (apart from Silverstone)
http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/news/detail/081203093857.shtml
Evenin all, back from legging it. Started to snow.
Erm, how's everyone?
Makes sense doesn't it then?
But Albers made it into F1, as did Pantano. (Not going to lie to you, I have a soft spot for Albers, mainly cos he shares my birthday, but y;know.)
But since 03, no really impressive driver has won it have they.
???
What were McLaren playing at doing that?
two guesses.
For some reason I always quite liked Albers too. Don't know exactly why...
:D
Some dodgy angles there. Would have been nice to see some of the track. And why wasn't Christine narrating the lap?
Obviously they were giving Lewis an advantage, but surely they can do that without wrecking Heikki's weekend every time?
why not? he knows his place :D
Because we all know that in the future (when he becomes the most experienced driver in F1, and his chances of staying at Honda start to look bad), he'll be telling the media how badly he was treated by Lewis and McLaren.
Also someone should tell McLaren that they can achieve 1-2 finishes without asking the Williams in front to pull over on the last lap.
sounds like he's doing that already. looking forward to the "us" and "them" anecdotes next week ;)
So long as we have refueling one driver in each team has an afvantage at each race. Imagine you are running a team with one driver who in his rookie season blew the reigning double world champion out the door and came within a point of being champion and in the other car an unproven driver who doesn't know the team, the car and isn't as quick as your other driver. Are you going treat them equally and penalise your quicker driver?
I would argue the Mike Conway and Markko Asmer at least are as good as Pantano or Paffett. Sato is definitely better than them and for me johnny Kane was a great driver who never got a decent break.
Two things come to mind looking at recent F3 champions. Honda seem to have killed off a few careers and why is it Alvaro Parente had a bigger re[utation before he won than after?
but the same driver, at every single race? all season long?
according to ron, treat them equally. so say's he many, many, many times.
not in practice though.
http://www.f1break.com/2008/12/03/mclaren-equality-under-the-microscope
If you have one driver who is clearly better than the other it seems the natural thing to do. If both drivers are at a similar level then balance it out. At the end of 2007 McLaren got a whole load of grief for losing the driver's championship by not favouring one driver.
agreed. at the end, no problem. what about race 1, and race 2 and race 3?
doesn't sound like hk was given (or will be given) much of a chance.
Lewis won the title by one point. Had they not favoured him Massa would be champ and Ron would be getting more grief for not having a clear number one. The team would have had a clear view of the performance difference between the drivers from testing so if you know one has an advantage you favour him.
In which case, they surely need to communicate this better with Heikki, make sure he knows the score from the outset, so that he's not going to complain about it later on.
and maybe don't bleat on about driver equality at every opportunity. like you have some kind of guilty conscience ;)
It certainly seems excessive to me. If we were talking about the last couple of races, I could understand it. However, employing this type of strategy for the majority of the season is too much. It means that teams become about managing - or manipulating - performance, rather than racing.
The ironic thing is that it's this type of thing that Ron Dennis, along with others such as Patrick Head and Frank Williams, have always been against. All have been prepared to use team orders under specific circumstances, but were totally against the kind of season-long manipulation we've seen with the likes of Briatore, Brawn, Todt and Sauber (with Frentzen in the team).
You say apart from Silverstone. Then surely Britain is more insensive to get behind Hamilton? No. That makes no sense surely.
yeah, but the pressure of pole got to him the year before.
best to keep media hype at bay and it worked.
me:
hk was not given a chance. SO FRICKEN WHAT? What's HK gonna o about it? Join Force India? Oh, HK, clean Lewis' toliet like a good little lackey, Heikki.
Like Ron let his adopted son race against his two-time world championship teammate, which on paper was stupid. All well, equal equipment, equal effort, equal results behind Ferrari.
Now that Hamilton's proven himself to be a championship contender and HK proven himself to be rubblish at Renault the bigger question for Ron should have been, "Do I promote PDLR to the second seat?"....
haha. bless ya.
we know hk can do nothing about it - well except be a bit of a trouble maker and it's been a while since we've seen one of them at woking - that's why he's still there.
Hamilton losing a Driver's title because HK pulled/pulls a "Didfier Pironi" on him would have been cool.... Be funny if Hamilton totally loses it....
I think we need to confirm that the story is accurate. From memory I don't recall Hekki running noticeably longer first stints than Lewis on a regular basis - did he not stop first sometimes?
Does this mean that McLaren fuelled Hekki heaver, but then called him into the pits early? What would be the logic in that?
Why would Mclaren handicap a driver so that they cannot compete with Ferrari in the constructor’s championship? Even late in the season when Lewis could have done with a 'rear gunner' to take points off Massa.
Surely Pironi should be a swear word here?
erm?
ill-informed / misguided supposition is underrated in my book :)
ron didn't sound too bothered about that prior to the brazillian gp. maybe he figured if they won max would've found a way to hand it to ferrari anyhow?
Hi,
Sorry I've posted this question before, but by the time I came back to look at replies, I'd forgotten which post I'd attached it to. I've taken note this time...;-)
Is there anywhere I can register on the site so that I don't have to type my name against every comment I post?
I'm a couple of podcast episodes behind, coz my wee one's been keeping me busy, but I'm getting there!
Just a quick intro about me:
Real Name: Marty
Nickname: Big Mealy (because I'm a wide 6' 4" country dweller - and therefore only eat oatmeal straight out of the field next door)
F1 Fan since: DC started in F1 when I was at Uni, and my flatmate got me into supporting homegrown talent (I'm Scottish)
Drivers I'm supporting in 2009: Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil and Bob Kubica
Drivers I'm putting a voodoo curse on in 2009: Fernando, Webber (looks like it worked too soon!)
Hoping to contribute to this site more in the coming months, but life's just so damn hectic!
You don't need to register. Your name and e-mail should automatically appear after your first post. It even works on my old clockwork XP machine.
so am i :)
This information sounds like it belongs on the Wiki :)
http://sidepodcast.wetpaint.com
Last time I checked, you don't have a wee one. Or is panda getting a bit rowdy now?
Hey Mealy, caught me five minutes ago and I would have been in a bad mood. But now, hey!
More from that Pantano interview:
"I challenge anyone to have a CV as good as mine," Pantano told Autosprint. "I won two karting world titles, three European, three Italian, German F3, GP2 and was always at the front in F3000. But now I don't have a seat in F1, is this a joke?
Should you really be citing karting titles as one of the reasons why you should be getting an F1 drive? Showing skill in karts can be an indicator that you could be a brilliant driver but you still have to make good on that potential. Taking seven attempts to win F1's feeder series hardly marks you out as a great.
football?
Oh aye, we won 2-1
It's gone very, very quiet around here...
we is not being idle sir:
http://www.f1minute.com/
Well, while I'm still around, may as well write about something. RLB Update - In the middle of pre-season testing for the upcoming IndyCar season at Laguna Seca. I'm quite privileged to be driving for Andretti Green. But then again, I was team manager last season, kinda neglected it, but when I lost my SuperLicence I used m'genius, handed over the team to another person and made myself one of the drivers. ;)
No no, I meant here in the comments :)
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/manchester-city-in-pound129m-bid-for-casillas-1049961.html
If this does go through (although there's no way I can see it happening), then Fernando Alonso will be looking for a new manager, as Luis Garcia Abad will no doubt retire to palace in Abu Dhabi.
wow. one hundred and twenty nine million? pounds??
Then again, what's that worth these days? A couple of Euros?
You can imagine though that Garcia Abad will have been begging Casillas to let him pass the offer on to the club. Not to mention attempting to convince him that Manchester's a lovely place to live, and not really any different from Madrid. I think even I would say that with a straight face under such circumstances.
:D
There is a very simple reason why Giorgio Pantano isn't getting into F1 in 2009: he got into F1 in 2004. None of the team principals needs reminding that he scored two points less than his substitute (Timo Glock) and that at no point in any race was he in a position containing a single digit. If the F1 world struggled to find space for Timo after that performance, how much more trouble would it have had finding space for Giorgio?