Sites for Sore Eyes (Part 1)
During the Monaco weekend, discussion in the comments fell to drivers and their websites, specifically a comparison between Jenson B and Nico R and their relative dot coms. We decided it’d be an interesting idea to look at all the drivers websites and compare them, and now seems to be as good a time as any (because I am fighting having to talk about Max for as long as possible).
So, for clarification, I will be approaching the website as a fan, seeing what information is out there, and the geeky one will look at, well, the geeky stuff. So, let’s start.
Kimi Raikkonen
It’s always good to be confronted with a great picture to start with, and Kimi’s site opens with the Ferrari facing you head on. It’s clean and navigation is simple, there’s the usual biography and press releases, but it’s all very easy on the eye. There aren’t many wallpapers, which makes the multimedia page a bit over the top, but there’s a shop, a forum, and info on the official fan club, so plenty of places for fans to interact.
Something odd happens when I click on Kimi’s shop or forum links. A whole other website opens that seems entirely unrelated to the previous one and if I try to buy some merchandise I end up at a third one! On the plus side the forum appears to be pretty active, the general layout of the site is good, and blimey it loads fast.
Site: http://www.kimiraikkonen.com/
Fan rating: 7 out of 10
Geek rating: 5 out of 10
Felipe Massa
Argh, my eyes!! It’s garish and bright. Nagivation is simple enough but the sheer amount of flashy animation involved makes it hard work. Plus, the picture on the left keeps on smashing into pieces and falling off screen, to be replaced by another. It’s very distracting. There is a nice Ask Me feature, where you can submit a question and Felipe will answer the best ones, but I couldn’t bear to stay on the site long enough to read many of them.
Gah! The thing I dislike more than anything in the world, are websites that play music without my permission. The chances of me listening to some proper music while browsing the net are pretty high, so interruptions are always annoying.
The site itself is way too high maintenance, and feels like it’s aimed at the younger F1 fan. On the plus side it is translated into three languages, but since when have you had to pay to use a forum?
Site: http://www.felipemassa.com/
Fan rating: 3 out of 10
Geek rating: 3 out of 10
Nick Heidfeld
Nick’s website isn’t flashy or pretty but it’s very easy to use and stores a lot of information. As well as the usual news and biography, there’s some articles about Nick and his own GP Diary. There’s a lot of writing about the car and the team, which is good to see, but perhaps a bit too much. I didn’t take the time to read it all. In fact, once I’d read the “Quick Nick” stats and found out his favourite food was liver, I was too put off to go much further.
You would have thought with all their money, an F1 driver could afford a proper domain name. I had to check three times that I was in fact visiting the correct site.
In usability terms Nick’s place has a nice layout with a simple menu structure, although a couple of times I came across database error messages. It lacks the personal touch though, being piggybacked onto a corporate site in this way.
Site: http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/nickheidfeld/
Fan rating: 6 out of 10
Geek rating: 4 out of 10
Robert Kubica
Just like Raikkonen’s site, Kubica’s official site opens with a great close up of him in the car. It’s in Polish, and I couldn’t see any options to translate any of the articles, although there was the occasional piece in English. However, there wasn’t that much to translate anyway. Information about the season, news updates, a contact page and a countdown timer pretty much make the substance of the site. The images of the track are really good, mind you.
Pointless, is probably the best way to describe Robert’s site. It’s one and only saving grace is the 2008 season page which features some damn fine circuit graphics, in fact they’re some of the best I’ve ever seen. Aside from that there’s nothing to keep you around for more than 20 seconds or so.
I do love a short domain name though.
Site: http://www.kubica.pl/
Fan rating: 4 out of 10
Geek rating: 3 out of 10
Fernando Alonso
You’re presented with a lot of information on the homepage, most of it quite in your face and distracting. However, if you take some time to adjust, it’s then easy to find your way around. Whilst all the basics are there, news, biography, etc, the whole feel of the site is a bit impersonal. A lot of it is third person, and you kind of think maybe Alonso doesn’t have anything to do with it.
When I first visited the site it made a noise like a strangled animal, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why? Eventually I tracked the offending squawk to an advert at the base of the homepage… not the best welcome in the world.
I couldn’t get the shop to work, and the whole place screams “sell-out” with far too much marketing and not enough substance. Ferni’s history section is a superb way of looking back through his career, but has been implemented in what can politely be described as a ‘unique’ way.
Site: http://www.fernandoalonso.com
Fan rating: 5 out of 10
Geek rating: 3 out of 10
Sheesh, we’ve only done five? That seems like enough to be going on with. This may take longer than I initially thought. Never mind, though, check out part two for the second half of our driver site
...
May 30th, 2008 at 15:55 #1 - my FA fantasy said:
Kimi’s website used to be quite different not so long ago, it used to have tons of flashy animation and looked just like Led Zeppelin IV cover. It was a shock for me that he had changed his website design. He also added some grey colour to his helmet, probably Kova’s influence there.
May 30th, 2008 at 16:28 #2 - Ollie said:
I’ll be postponing my drivers/teams website review posts for a while then!
Good round up of the first five though. I’ve always been amazed at just how content-lacking some of the driver’s sites are. And when you look under the skin there are some even more bizarre happenings going on.
May 30th, 2008 at 16:31 #3 - me said:
shoot sorry, did you say you were going to do that? apologies, didn’t mean to tread on yer toes.
this probably something we should be doing during the close season, but somehow that was busier than the actual season.
May 30th, 2008 at 16:34 #4 - Kris said:
First of all: what a fantastic idea for an article!
Now, prepare for me to argue at all the geek scores
First of all, I run Firefox, and all my web traffic goes through a locally installed proxy server that filters out any javascript, flash or music that it doesn’t like the look of, with only trusted sites that Im confident aren’t going to do anything I don’t like (yes, you’re on it) getting on the VIP list, and being able to do fancy things. It also alters a few HTTP headers, which Im sure your, and everyone else’s stat trackers hate.
Out of the sites that you’ve discussed so far, only one loads properly when the drawbridge is up, and thats Heidfeld. I think you’ve underscored it for geekyness given how well coded everything is, and how theyve been able to design a perfectly usable, functional website without having to resort to screaming flash whizz-bangery.
Raikonnen’s site doesnt load even with my filter on bypass! He must have something against firefox users
Kubica’s won’t load at all without giving it access to the toybox, but works fine once allowed to use flash
The others work to at least some degree, and I’d normally ignore the minor glitches in favour of being able to avoid moving, flashing, beeping, noisy, non-resizable, non-right clickable nonsense.
May 30th, 2008 at 16:42 #5 - me said:
kris, i’m impressed that the internet is even usable with that many safeguards in place
the mysql errors dropped the value by one though, because decent error trapping / reporting is a must in my book. fair enough they may have been having issues, but splurging php code across the page isn’t nice.
will you come back for part 2 (once it’s done) and let us know how those drivers shape up pls?
May 30th, 2008 at 16:53 #6 - Z-Baumgartner said:
Brilliant post guys!!
My personal favourite is kimi’s but then i am a ferrari fan!
Anyway, did anyone else spot this website before?
http://www.f1grandprix.tv/
If you know what its all about please explain because i’m confused!!
May 30th, 2008 at 17:00 #7 - Ollie said:
No I didn’t say, so stop apologising. I was hinting at great minds…
@Z-Baumgartner: F1GP.tv has been like that for more than a year now. I think it was a project with a great idea, but never really seemed to get off the ground. Well, it hasn’t yet at any rate and ITV have snapped up the UK rights to show F1 online.
May 30th, 2008 at 17:01 #8 - me said:
i remember seeing it a while ago. the blurb mentions New Year, so it hasn’t been updated in ages, but it sounds like exactly the kind of thing bernie should be considering.
ahh, that’s a shame then
May 30th, 2008 at 17:06 #9 - me said:
ahh, phew. i think it was daniel who first mentioned it, when he noticed nico was the last driver to put up a site:
sidepodcast.com/2008/0…#comment-64760
a couple of other requests have come up asking us to do something similar.
…did i mention how both you and christine, have, umm, great minds, or something?
May 30th, 2008 at 18:33 #10 - links for 2008-05-30 » vee8 - a Formula 1 blog said:
[...] Sites for Sore Eyes (Part 1) – Sidepodcast Review of drivers’ websites (tags: internet technology websites drivers) [...]
May 30th, 2008 at 19:53 #11 - Steven Roy said:
You would think with all the managers, agents, publicists etc that accompany a GP driver putting a website together should be pretty easy.
For what it is worth I did a three minute look at each followed by a one line assessment.
Kimi- great pictures, nice layout, limited content
Massa- a bit like his steering, too much unnecessary action. Christine is right Gah!
Heidfeld- looks like a Formula Ford driver’s my first website
Kubica- nice pictures
Alonso- could have done with a few more adverts
May 30th, 2008 at 20:10 #12 - Alianora La Canta said:
Neither Robert’s nor Felipe’s site load on my computer (I’ve got Firefox, but none of the fancy stuff that Kris has), so I don’t even get to be assaulted by auto-playing music (which, like me, I hate). (http://www.f1grandprix.tv/ doesn’t load either, so I can’t answer Z-Baumgartner’s question…) Even Fernando’s loaded on the second attempt, and that seems to pump a huge amount of data down the line at first (though my pop-up blocker seems to block the good stuff).
It just annoys me that these well-paid F1 drivers and their management teams can’t even develop web sites that function…
Kimi’s loads, and I’ve noticed he’s using the same forum engine as the site I co-admin, which made me feel comfy straight away.
May 30th, 2008 at 21:07 #13 - lou said:
I’ve just ventured onto the internet/computer after having been asleep in a darkened room due to a rather awful headache and Felipe’s site has not helped at all! Seriously why all the bright colours?!
Great idea guys! Can’t wait to read your thoughts on the other sites. I love the scoring idea btw. Can i guess that a similiar idea may be in the pipe line for then team websites? Would be lovely to see which teams are more in touch with the internet world.
May 30th, 2008 at 21:34 #14 - me said:
haha, oh yes
i get the impression that some of the drivers merely have sites just so that their domain name points to something. i wasn’t expecting them to be internet geeks or anything, but seeing as these things sell their own personal brand you might think they’d give a damn.
certainly, as long as we’re not boring anyone in the process
May 30th, 2008 at 21:42 #15 - lou said:
your not boring me
May 30th, 2008 at 22:49 #16 - Alianora La Canta said:
I’m interested – especially when I discovered what a huge gulf there is between the sites I’ve (tried) to look at today!
May 31st, 2008 at 00:19 #17 - Sites for Sore Eyes (Part 2) | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] Turns out it was a mammoth task and this is only part two. If you haven’t already, visit Part 1 to read our thoughts on the first five driver sites and then prepare to be amazed by our next [...]
May 31st, 2008 at 18:44 #18 - Ollie said:
*blushes*
May 31st, 2008 at 23:36 #19 - Rich said:
Kimi- Quite classy, but somehow just did not do it for me. Nice photos, plenty of info etc, but sloooooooooooooooow! That’s what I do not like about flash it can be irritating slow, also had problems accessing the shop. The forum was the best bit and many people participate in it- but looks like a different site to the main one – so poor design consistency .
5.5/10 – too slow and a slightly broken site!
Massa- I did not find it half as bad as everyone else, it all worked rather well (tried all three languages), very clear navigation, don’t like the sound but it seemed only to be on the one page. Sure it has bright colours, so not the classiest design. I really liked the fact that he had attempted to answer some of the questions people asked. I found the site quite personal and reflects his country of origin – vibrant, carnival-loving Brazil. My most violent dislike was the image that shattered and fell to the bottom of the screen. Was someone having a joke at ickle Felipe’s expense? Is this really how he drives and smashes everything up. On my Mac it was way too fast like every second so got quite irritating. Lettering was too big, upper case and bold (like my first reader about Jack and Jill – we are not all visually impaired), but it is only a small gripe. Hooray it also has an RSS feed!
7.5/10 – (I think the site was designed on a high-resolution Mac – it did not look nearly so good on my Dell Windows laptop – so probably needs high resolution and good good graphics card to pull off)
Heidfeld- Neat layout, but too much information on the screen in places which only the most enthusiastic will read (I didn’t). Disliked the fact that it is a sub-website of another site and the top menu bar takes you too it! A cost-cutter website that does it job but somehow lacks any reason for you to want to come back.
4.5/10
Kubica- firstly there is no English therefore Robert I cannot be your fan, sorry mate. The site is very sensitive to platform and what fonts you have installed so text runs out of box space, loses alignment etc, etc – bad, bad, bad, bad flash programming. None of my computers provided consistent rendering of the fonts (just one reason to avoid using it). Also having small, white text (font arial size 4) on a semi-transparent red box on top of a photo – yikes even if you understood Polish you could not read this! Having said that, the artwork for each track is beautiful and very classy, but I still can only give it 2/10 since it is badly coded and also very impersonal, with no interaction and rather little content. By the way just http://kubica.pl works!
Alonso’s site, me thinks he is a direct descendent of practitioners in the Spanish Inquisition! There can be no worse form of torture than being tied to you chair and having to look at this site – the garish colours in perpetual forms of frenzied animation will subdue you to admit to anything to stop the agony (yes Fernando will all love uou, yes we really DO love you). Rather stay with the Spanish version to avoid this torture, somehow it seemed more calm in colour and pace of animations. This site even brutalises computers because they emit distressed sounds calling for help when you enter it (of course you cannot render help as you are tied up with your eyes forced open Clockwork Orange style – until you have joined Fernando’s fan club). My sense of self preservation prevented me from exploring any further.
June 1st, 2008 at 15:03 #20 - Sites for Sore Eyes (Part 3) | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] websites review, looking at the good, the bad and the pointless. Check out the first two parts here, and here, and then we can get started with the next five. As ever, I’m approaching it from the [...]
June 1st, 2008 at 18:40 #21 - F1bloggen » Lästips: F1-förare på internet said:
[...] sidepodcast har gjort en rejäl genomgång i tre delar. Nu är alla delarna ute, kika igenom del 1, del 2 och del 3. Riktigt intressant. Mitt intryck av att bra hemsidor av någon anledning inte [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 00:12 #22 - Sites for Sore Eyes (Part 4) | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] websites in our mammoth task of reviewing all the drivers and their web real estate. Check out the first three parts before enjoying this last set of [...]
June 13th, 2008 at 19:06 #23 - This is How the Teams Do It (Part 1) | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] week or so ago, we looked at how the driver’s websites stacked up against each other, in four very separate posts. Now we’re turning our attention on the teams, but the criteria is still [...]
November 7th, 2008 at 20:39 #24 - Rough Around the Edges | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] in the summer we ran a series of articles looking into the various sites owned by drivers and teams. We tore shreds off of all and sundry and managed to find flaws in the most unexpected of [...]