This is How the Teams Do It (Part 1)
A 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 the same. I’ll be looking at it from a fan’s point of view, assessing the content and general usability. The geeky one takes a more, well, geeky look at the sites, and then we rate them. Here goes.
Ferrari
I tried to link to the actual Ferrari Racing bit of the site, but it’s so flash-based, there’s no unique ID for that page. You have to pick your language, navigate whether you want the site or the store, then click on racing. Too much effort! Once you get that far, there’s not that much information on there anyway, but I do like the timeline through the years. A unique way of doing a biography, that includes a fascinating look at the way the cars have changed. The one problem I found is, even though I picked English, there still seems to be the odd Italian word thrown in here and there, making navigation harder, but not impossible.
I do like a website that resizes and repositions my web browser, no really, nothing makes me happier. I mean why stop there, why not rearrange my desktop while you’re at it? I’m only the visitor, that’s all.
Regardless of the heavy handed welcome, you would have thought that F1 was important enough to Ferrari to warrant its own site, wouldn’t you? Instead you’ll find your racing information buried under a sea of tiny little text links, oh and good luck finding your way around, even the English language version with its 6pt sized links contained Italian phrasing I could only guess the meaning of.
Incidentally, Ferrari have some great video interviews on YouTube, and I rather expected to find something similar here (albeit better quality), but alas if they’re around anywhere I couldn’t find them.
Site: http://www.ferrariworld.com
Fan Rating: 6/10
Geek Rating: 4/10
BMW
Firstly, it was impossibly slow to load. There was a competition for a trip to Malaysia, but I couldn’t wait for the site to load, so I’ll never be able to participate, let alone win. There is information about the Pit Lane Park, which is useful, and some team news, but nothing out of the ordinary to make it stand out.
Okay, I’m going to come right out and say it, in contrast to Christine, I think this is the best website I’ve visited in a very long time. Yes, I know it’s built in Flash and I know there’s no HTML version, but when a team of people put in this much effort and attention to detail, I can only sit back in awe. Seriously a thing of beauty.
To best illustrate why I like this place so much, allow me to guide you through but one section of many. Selecting ‘Season 2008′ from the top menu, followed by ‘GP Canada’ will introduce a short video clip. Watch closely as for a few brief seconds a BMW screams past not only the Casino de Montréal but also The Olympic Stadium. Clearly an F1 challenger was never in the vicinity of those two landmarks, which means somebody had to put it there by hand. I can’t even speculate the amount of effort that went into creating those 3 seconds of film. Literally the car could’ve been anywhere on any track in the world and who would’ve noticed? That’s my kind of attention to detail.
I will concede that all is not perfect though, and the sudden bursts of noise did ruin a particular track I was listening to at the time, and yep the site’s slow, and sure the shop’s a touch weird, but I forgive all sins because BMW’s abode simply oozes character.
Site: http://www.bmw-sauber-f1.com/
Fan Rating: 4/10
Geek Rating: 9/10
Renault
We’ve covered the Renault site in great detail previously, how it went completely wrong once a certain someone left. However, I’ll look at it with fresh eyes. It’s split into two – fan and team, which already makes me feel alienated. The team site is your standard news, statistics and history. The fan site is slightly more interesting, with the blog and the member additions. They were almost up to 7,000 members when I looked, so they must be doing something right.
As Christine points out this is a site of two halves, but I’m going to ignore the “Fan” section due to the fact it didn’t load. In truth it very rarely does, the words “scalable” and “architecture” spring to mind here.
Five seconds… count ‘em. That’s the entire length of time I spend on the Renault site and that was enough to tell me nothing had changed. The offensive music startled me once again, while a huge window opened and automatically commandeered my screen – I think they call that the element of surprise. No doubt it looks great on a 40″ projector beamed on the wall of the teams HQ, however it simply mocks my inferior equipment.
Site: http://www.ing-renaultf1.com/en/
Fan Rating: 5/10
Geek Rating: 4/10
Williams
I really dislike the bubble thing, when I went to click on one of them, it disappeared. That’s not a great start in terms of usability. If you discount that, though, the navigation is easy with the menu along the top, and leads to some good stuff. There’s some really nice track guides, packed with information, and a fantastic animation of the 2006 car, where you can break it down to its very basic components. With detailed biographies on the key team members, including drivers, and a really good interactive tour of the factory, I could visit the Williams site over and over again. I just wish they’d get rid of the bubbles.
If Williams were as fast on track as they are on the web, we’d be crowning this year’s constructors champions already. It’s nice to wander around the site, the layout is uncluttered, the colour scheme is friendly and I felt drawn into digging deeper. So much information and I just wanted to read more.
No mention of the Williams site would be complete without a hat tip to the multimedia section. They’re one of, if not the best in this area. Although, I could’ve sworn the Earth was more spherical the last time I checked. Maybe Sir Frank knows something we don’t?
Site: http://www.williamsf1.com/
Fan Rating: 9/10
Geek Rating: 7/10
Red Bull
I don’t understand why, when I hover a link, the timer things go crazy. It doesn’t add anything or tell my anything, and simply makes me dizzy. There aren’t too many extras on the site, just the usual driver info, car statistics, and press releases. Red Bull have a style about them, though, that makes every piece of writing worth reading, in case it holds a hidden gem. They’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves, and everyone else, which keeps me on the site. I dislike having to click “Read More” on a news article, though, when there’s plenty of room on the page to fit it in.
At last a HTML site to rival the Flash incumbents. I actually prefer the basic version, best described as “how the web should be” given that it reinforces the team’s brand whilst remaining both useful and user friendly. The over the top alternate version sadly offers little or nothing extra, except I quite liked the motion-blur-rollover-effect. Flawed though it is, given that your attention automatically moves to the thing that’s supposed to be blending into the background. I saw some text to read but was far to busy fading the images in and out to pay any it attention.
One quick mention for the paddock fly-by at redbullf1.com, just because someone put a lot of work into it. It doesn’t add anything to Red Bull’s main site but kudos for the hours of work that went into an entirely pointless but frankly gorgeous animation. I stand up and applaud such a pretentious waste of bandwidth.
Site: http://www.redbullracing.com/
Fan Rating: 7/10
Geek Rating: 6/10
That’s all for Part 1 of our team website summaries, don’t forget to visit Part 2 where we look at the final five.
...
June 13th, 2008 at 19:35 #1 - lou said:
nice reviews guys
You seriously would have thought that a top team like Ferrari could have come up with something better than that! It held my attention for about 10 seconds. I am not very impressed. The others were nothing really very special in my eyes. I’m sure i have said before but the renault site drives me bananas! Something always goes wrong. And the music on the team site annoys me.
After you have reviewed the final 5 are you going to do a post with the top 3(or 5) drivers sites and team sites, based on your scores? It would be interesting to see which site is the best site the f1 teams/drivers have to offer.
June 13th, 2008 at 19:43 #2 - me said:
that we can do… with a graph, why not
June 13th, 2008 at 20:09 #3 - Rich said:
Me too, it seems as if my computer and their web site disagree – I then used work computers are they were equally grumpy rendering it. Finally the stupid F1 car that seems to annoy every time you want to do something. This site actually crashes one of my work (Windows) computers – I call it the Alonso effect!
June 13th, 2008 at 20:11 #4 - me said:
i just wish they went back to what the had last year, it was damned near perfect. 12 months ago that site would’ve been 10/10 no question.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:17 #5 - Steven Roy said:
Ferrari – A bit nouvelle cuisine – lots of style but I would rather have a pizza, I accidently clicked on the omnipresent watch advert and when I hit the back arrow I ended up right at the start again. Don’t care if I ever see this site again
BMW – slow, I found the section under interactive where you are supposed to be able to design a wing(aero) but I have no idea what to do with it. Love that they let you play with telemetry. I have seen their pit stop game before. Damn it is addictive and frustrating
Renault – horrible, horrible music, the top item dominating the first page of the fan site is about Red Bull? Clicked on Features and nothing happened. On the team site the interactive feature on their car is coming soon. It’s June already. Yet another site I will probably never visit again
Williams – This is one of very few team/driver sites I have spent time on before. The bubble idea is interesting. I think I like it. It is certainly better than yet another scrolling menu. Typical Williams thinking that when you click on the race tab it is already set for France. I love that they include the history, the factory and people beyond the drivers, team principal and tech director. 10/10 for Williams.
Red Bull – All the flashy jumping about that goes on when you click on something is annoying. The constant read more links remind me of Starship Troopers where at the end of every news item they had something similar. The timer is annoying. This site is rubbish. The flyby is fab.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:20 #6 - my FA fantasy said:
Yep, I have to confess I avoid visiting RF1 team website, very user-unfriendly, so to speak.
Blog members (there are 7010 at the moment) must be mostly French-speaking; Spanish FA fans can’t express themselves properly in English and so there’s constant verbal spanking, which is funny, allows me to misbehave and offend them (some are even trying to harass your humble servant but obviously it ends up in social drama for them). Other fans include mostly Eastern Europe, Turkey, China, Germany, occasional Northern American fans, South Africa and there are 91 (!) Australian fans who don’t dare commenting at all; British fans are many but also prefer to stay away from commenting. All in all, the quality of the comments is p*** poor. The new PR guy seems like a nice person but not very much into constant dialogue with the fans. I think my dog is the most prominent member of the community, her question was picked up for the chat this week.
If only they let me moderate the place – I’d beat the hell out of those kids and put the blog back on track. Alas, RF1 webmaster can’t make up his mind.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:25 #7 - me said:
i quite like that they do that. very unusual in f1 circles.
omg, that’s brilliant, well done her
damn, we were gonna mail fraggle. will christine on the case. probably won’t make much difference but we’ll give it a go.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:27 #8 - Rich said:
Steven How can you review so quickly?
I have been to the Williams and the Renault site previously (and Honda). Have given up with Renault, which is sad because I get this periodic nice email communication and what is happening so you want to visit and then you remember the last time so you ignore the email and the invitation to visit the site. Their podcasts are great but somehow you seem to have to look to find where they are from the website. I agree with ME last year it was a great site – very clean and effective – like the Williams site. Started looking at the BMW Sauber – its slow to load but has quite trick features like the way to explore the car in almost a 3-D way and being able to save various views as a desktop picture. Initial impressions are favourable.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:29 #9 - my FA fantasy said:
Yeah, you can do that, she’ll only be happy to hand over the moderation work to me.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:32 #10 - Steven Roy said:
I think I was so quick because three of the sites annoyed me to the point I wanted to leave them quickly and I had been through the Williams site recently. So the only I really spent any time on was BMW. I still want to find out how to get their wing design thing to work.
BTW and totally off topic according to Autosport Alonso is off to Honda next season.
June 13th, 2008 at 20:36 #11 - Alianora La Canta said:
I can’t get the Ferrari one to work – I click English and get nothing but an advert. BMW’s loads nothing but a frame.
Renault’s loads, but apart from the irritating music, I find it virtually unnavigable. Putting the cursor in one place seems to select two or three items at once, which confuses the system (maybe that’s why it’s so slow – because it’s trying to give people who are on the site one or two sections they don’t want all the time!) The “Coming Soon” stuff was also off-putting and the Multimedia section in the fan site didn’t load. Basically, it was almost as bad for me as the sites that didn’t load at all…
The Williams site loaded just fine and was very good. I may well visit it again.
Red Bull’s site appeared to load, but none of the links seemed to work, which was really strange.
The winner is clearly Williams, if only because they were the only team whose site worked properly. And I thought the drivers had problems in doing their sites (which reminds me to get round to looking at the last five – or should I say four, because one of them has been in my bookmark list for a good nine months…)
June 13th, 2008 at 20:39 #12 - lou said:
What? thats only a rumour right? There is nothing on the Honda site… What will happen to Rubens (i assume he would be replacing Rubens). That would be horrible for Jenson! I will not have him being the second driver
So…according to rumours, Alonso is off to Honda next year and then Ferrari the next?
June 13th, 2008 at 20:44 #13 - Rich said:
You also have a cyber-dog. We use blogs for course instruction, and being the administrator I obviously see different menus and have different user rights, so I have made a student account so as to check what students should see and is in the my Dogs name “Red Africa”. After testing I occasional forget to change my login details so students get a postings and email communications from my dog, fortunately everyone sees the funny side (she comes to work with me so the student know and love her). She watches also watches F1 videos and if I say Jenson she barks good heartedly and wags her tail, if I say that is Fernando or Alonso she growls/snarls and if I say Lewis or Hamilton she curls up into a ball and ignores the screen!
June 13th, 2008 at 20:48 #14 - Alianora La Canta said:
One of the forum admins I know also has a login credited to his dog (posts from the dog account generally involve biscuits and lots of woofing). You’re in good company, Rich and my FA Fantasy.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:01 #15 - LadySnowcat said:
I am actually surprised that one of the teams hasn’t picked up on how successful sites like this are….
Do they actually look to see what’s going on outside the paddock?…
June 13th, 2008 at 21:03 #16 - Alianora La Canta said:
Which team are you referring to, LadySnowcat?
June 13th, 2008 at 21:06 #17 - Rich said:
My students have just written their exams and on the front page where it says lectures she put Rich and Red (not sure what the external will think if they notice!)
@Alianora – I got the Ferrari web page to open – first I was accosted with a large and vulgar watch they were wanted to flog you and no menu but if you click on it goes to another page where they add Ferrari sunglasses to sell you with the B$%^&*$ watch again and about two further clicks you actually find the Formula One web site – it really is not worth going to and does not say much even if you can decipher their Italian menu. It is basically a minimum effort website. Renault put lots of investment in just very misguided.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:10 #18 - Steven Roy said:
Ali,
At the bottom right of the watch advert there is a link in microscopic writing for Ferrariworld.com that gets you into the site.
Lou,
The Alonso to Honda thing is just gossip. Last season on GPWizard I started a game called Alonso bingo to see who would be first to find a story on the net linking Alonso to every team. I seem to remember Ali came up with stories linking him to about 9 teams in 15 minutes. I suspect it would be easy to find stories linking him to 6 teams now.
Another thing I noticed in the mag is that Rubens has outqualified Jenson 4-3 so far this season. Given Jenson’s reputation this surprised me.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:13 #19 - LadySnowcat said:
Hi Alianora…
Any of the teams…
The sites are so Corporate and non interactive…
Just a low priority I guess….
June 13th, 2008 at 21:16 #20 - me said:
i would assume that every major manufacturer is already aggregating every blog post, comment and forum entry on web daily (if not hourly) and probably have been for years.
i doubt individual entries or thoughts get picked up, but keywords about themselves and their competitors must certainly be watched or they wouldn’t be doing their jobs properly. same goes for FOM and the FIA and almost anyone else with enough money to be part of the f1 circus.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:18 #21 - my FA fantasy said:
Cool. Maybe RF1 blog will be able to offload all his fans to Honda, I’ll be praying for that. This new guy Grosjean seems like he’s got impressive speed in him, he had some technical issues (which cut his running) but no off-track moments in his 1st major F1 test.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:21 #22 - Rich said:
If the BMW-Sauber sites works for you it is very interactive – gives some of the feeling of being in F1 – I tried doing a perfect pitstop and put my first results up in drop.io – lets say I suck and did the Massa trick at Ferrari where he pitted and got no fuel so had to re-pit on the next lap. I also got a speeding fine! I think they [Ferrari] had an excuse other than stupidity which is my only excuse.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:28 #23 - me said:
apparently, i failed to stop at the red light and rear-ended my nearest rival…
June 13th, 2008 at 21:34 #24 - me said:
added mine to drop.io too. christine’s struggling with the whole login process!
how in the world do you hit the brakes in time?
June 13th, 2008 at 21:40 #25 - Christine said:
Well, I got there in the end.
Had to have a couple of goes because there are no instructions and I kept missing the blue brake thingy.
I’ve uploaded my results to drop.io and as ever, I suck.
Love to see what everyone else can do.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:41 #26 - Rich said:
I have not worked out how to get the fuel nozzle on – on my fifth attempt I managed to get everything else right and do it in 19 secs!
Cannot get interactive wing design to work – there is no menu. At least the site conveys some enthusiasm for F1 – the Ferrari site might as well have been an on-line store for all the good it was.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:52 #27 - me said:
hit the flashing blue dots i think?
cannot find an interactive wing design!?
June 13th, 2008 at 21:55 #28 - Rich said:
Now you know what Nakajima feels like every time he makes a pit stop during a race weekend. For me it is quite a hit and miss affair, but I have not rear ended by rival – which I guess is the Ferrari pit crew. I have not logged in – just been doing the free practice. I think they should include knocking over some of your pit crew.
Still not got the nozzle properly on.
June 13th, 2008 at 21:57 #29 - Steven Roy said:
I just wiggle the fuel filler until it is sort of in the centre.
The wing thing is accessed from the interactive menu and clicking on wind tunnel /cfd thing. I get an option to download a real player video when I run my mouse over the car but there is no video
June 13th, 2008 at 22:01 #30 - me said:
i see the word “interactive” and a black car. nothing more?
could be a mac thing i guess?
June 13th, 2008 at 22:04 #31 - Rich said:
Sure that is what I did – but it always tells me that I failed to get fuel in – so next I tried to hit the blue buttons as they appear but I am not quick enough so still do not get fuel in. Christine had the same problem.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:06 #32 - Rich said:
That is all I see on my Mac – I will try on a Windows but refuse to use IE cos it suck as a browser.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:09 #33 - Christine said:
It doesn’t work on a Mac, on a PC, in Firefox, Safari or Windows.
Either we’re missing something or Steven Roy is special
June 13th, 2008 at 22:10 #34 - Alianora La Canta said:
At the bottom right of the watch advert there is a link in microscopic writing for Ferrariworld.com that gets you into the site. {Steven Roy – 7 comments ago}
It shows up fine on my computer (same size as the advert writing), but because it was the same colour as the advert text, I didn’t know it was a link. When I clicked on it just now, it sent me to the generic car site and I can’t find anything relating to racing on there (apart from a tiny bit about “Since 1950 Ferrari has been at the peak of F1″ when I click on “Racing”). I get the impression it’s not serving me the same site as it’s serving you
Last season on GPWizard I started a game called Alonso bingo to see who would be first to find a story on the net linking Alonso to every team. I seem to remember Ali came up with stories linking him to about 9 teams in 15 minutes. {Steven Roy – 7 comments ago}
I remember that – it was fun
The only ones I didn’t find were rumours connecting Alonso to Super Aguri and Toro Rosso. Still haven’t found one for Toro Rosso. Anyone coming up with a Alonso-to-Super Aguri-for-2009 rumour now would probably be laughed off the site…
i would assume that every major manufacturer is already aggregating every blog post, comment and forum entry on web daily (if not hourly) and probably have been for years. {me – 5 posts ago}
Given the general inability of the team sites to even put up a functional web site (something that is fairly straightforward in internet terms), I doubt most of the teams will be that far advanced. I know Force India pays attention to the part of the blogosphere they host because they made a news story out of one of the blog entries, but Williams and Renault are the only other teams I’ve seen so far that appear to know about Web 2.0, let alone do anything about it. Max Mosley apparently reads blogs, but his (spoken) comments don’t support that.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:12 #35 - Steven Roy said:
I have posted a screen shot of what I see on my PC (Vista) for the wing design thing.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:12 #36 - Alianora La Canta said:
It doesn’t work on a Mac, on a PC, in Firefox, Safari or Windows.
Either we’re missing something or Steven Roy is special {Christine – 2 posts ago}
I’d settle for being able to get the site to load something more than a white frame trimmed with grey lines…
June 13th, 2008 at 22:13 #37 - Alianora La Canta said:
I have posted a screen shot of what I see on my PC (Vista) for the wing design thing. {Steven Roy – 2 posts ago}
Do you mean to tell me you’ve found something Vista can do better than other operating systems? Microsoft need to employ you for their PR department…
June 13th, 2008 at 22:18 #38 - me said:
they used to link here and f1 minute too, but i think they’ve stopped that now. they appear more clued up about the community than most.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:20 #39 - me said:
i see pretty much the same thing, but how is it interactive?
June 13th, 2008 at 22:22 #40 - Steven Roy said:
Ali,
Once you get past the watch advert you have to click on the ‘Racing’ link under the horse near the top left corner of the screen. They use a tiny red square to symbolise racing in their menus. Then use the minly Italian menu that appears on the right hand side.
I actually hate this site more the longer I spend thinking about it.
Vista had to be good for something but giving me a slightly better view of something that still doesn’t work was not really what I was hoping for.
I am not sure I like being special.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:23 #41 - Steven Roy said:
‘me’ ,
I have no idea how it is interactive but the white text says it should be.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:24 #42 - Alianora La Canta said:
That’s strange. Usually link lists get retained as sites grow. Wonder why Force India dropped theirs?
June 13th, 2008 at 22:25 #43 - me said:
how can your browsing experience possibly be so bad?
on the plus side you are the perfect website tester
June 13th, 2008 at 22:25 #44 - Alianora La Canta said:
Once you get past the watch advert you have to click on the ‘Racing’ link under the horse near the top left corner of the screen. {Steven Roy – 3 comments ago}
That was what I clicked on to get the “Since 1950 Ferrari has been at the peak of F1? bit. No new menus appeared when I did that, nor did anything else of use.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:27 #45 - lou said:
ahaha that game is hilarious! i’m so bad! ok that was my first go. I wil try again, i didn’t really know what to do.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:28 #46 - me said:
ahh, okay. well at least it’s consistently broken. it doesn’t work in all browsers on all OS’s.
credit where credit’s due
June 13th, 2008 at 22:30 #47 - me said:
not sure. there was a cool little black box in the top right corner of the homepage aggregating lots of f1 content.
now it says “f1 news”, but about 3 months ago it said “f1 blogs”.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:37 #48 - Scott Woodwiss said:
just going off topic:
does anyone here have an xbox 360 by chance? if yes, i wouldn’t mind playing against some of you guys. if not, no worries. Just thought i’d ask
June 13th, 2008 at 22:38 #49 - Alianora La Canta said:
My browsing experience shouldn’t be that bad, and in fact it is usually pretty good – I have a pretty standard version of Firefox (version 2.0.0.14), running on XP Professional (albeit one that hasn’t been re-installed since the Great Overheating Incident of 2005) through a not-especially-picky ZoneAlarm firewall. The only complication is that it has to work through my home network if I want to access the internet for free. Before you showed me all these driver and team sites, I could count the number of sites that had given my set-up trouble on the fingers of two hands without the thumbs. Most of them had been fixed with Flash or an e-mail to the site admin, and the others were examples given by my Web Site Usability lecturer as examples of bad sites…
That said, I do have access to browsers other than Firefox. There’s an extremely temperamental copy of IE 6, which I use as little as possible because it often reboots my computer without asking (accessing my e-mail or anything using Flash is particularly prone to this). There’s a well-behaved copy of Opera 9.25. And my PDA has a well-functioning version of IE (the version that comes with Windows Mobile 5) on my PDA, which also negates the requirement for the home network (but charges on a per-minute basis). I am pleased to say my blog works on all four browser/system combinations, even when the PDA has the images setting turned off.
Perhaps I should try some of these with the sites in the list to see whether it’s a browser incompatibility problem or if, like the pitstop game, it’s consistently bad (at least for my computer).
June 13th, 2008 at 22:39 #50 - Alianora La Canta said:
Scott, I don’t have any consoles on principle.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:39 #51 - me said:
just a wii sir.
tried an xbox360 on our old tv and the resolution wasn’t good enough, and couldn’t afford to upgrade to a HDTV, but the wii was fine so that’s what we’ve got.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:40 #52 - Rich said:
I put my first go up – I missed doing just about everything. I now cannot get my braking and limiter on – anyone else struggling here? The fuel nozzle is about hitting the blue blobs quickly enough.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:44 #53 - me said:
it’s consistent on my mac across all browsers too.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:44 #54 - Steven Roy said:
I have tried all sorts of things to get the fuel hose on but I always get a red cross. At least the time is becoming respectable. I am sure when I saw this game before people were doing it in 12 or 13 seconds. I have no idea how
June 13th, 2008 at 22:49 #55 - lou said:
This will make you laugh….i have a playstation one! i would love a Wii though
My first attempt was 50 seconds
cause i didn’t have a clue. Have it down to about 18 now, but im having the same problem as you rich.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:49 #56 - Rich said:
Yes that is normal for IE – hence I say it sucks!
Um – Opera not so good on the Mac….
Thought about using Safari on your Windows box – I find it the best browser, Firefox is slightly inclined to eat your memory and not release it otherwise it is good (more problematic on Windows than Macs).
Other thoughts – you do have the latest JRE installed and the latest Adobe Flash Player installed for your browser?
June 13th, 2008 at 22:51 #57 - Rich said:
I managed to get it down to 16 secs with fuel but not got the speed limiter right.
June 13th, 2008 at 22:57 #58 - Scott Woodwiss said:
awesome. i’ve played on one of those a few times. Rather fun, aren’t they? If the new F1 game comes out on the Wii, will you and christine race each other with the Wii wheel pretending to be jenson and franck?
June 13th, 2008 at 22:57 #59 - lou said:
oh my goodness! wow well done!
June 13th, 2008 at 22:58 #60 - Steven Roy said:
If you click on the four blue dots that pop up you get a tick for fuel hose. The one time I managed it I screwed up something else so the time was rubbish
June 13th, 2008 at 23:00 #61 - me said:
sheesh, does the car move that fast?
so, beating me at fantasyracers not enough for you, eh?
June 13th, 2008 at 23:00 #62 - Christine said:
Competitive much??
June 13th, 2008 at 23:01 #63 - lou said:
i managed it twice, but i did not put the pit lane limiter on at the right time so :/
June 13th, 2008 at 23:04 #64 - me said:
nooooo, she walked all over me when we had some game or the other on the PSOne.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:05 #65 - lou said:
lol I had forgotten about that. Whats your fastest time then? ahah this could be interesting. I am pretty competative…
June 13th, 2008 at 23:05 #66 - Rich said:
I cannot get the break pit limiter right – when I was doing everything else wrong I got one or other right now I cannot get either right.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:08 #67 - Christine said:
Don’t lie. I am useless at driving games.
There’s this thing called the brake that I struggle with.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:10 #68 - me said:
14 seconds, and all but braking correct.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:15 #69 - lou said:
I have the same problem on pretty much every driving game i have ever played, except Mario Kart on my DS
right well i’m down to 15…. but i don’t have a mouse just mu laptop touch pad thing which is difficult.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:17 #70 - Rich said:
16.14 secs with fuel is my best
My problem too – I am not sure what I am supposed to do? I try to hit the blue and then the red box with letters on!
June 13th, 2008 at 23:18 #71 - Scott Woodwiss said:
well i am, as they say, hot s*** (excuse me for that) when it comes to racing games. I’ve played them since I first got a Playstation, and I’m entering a Race Driver GRID tournament on XLeague.tv. The first prize is £300, and if I do win, then I will be sure to give a small portion of that to you guys out of generosity
June 13th, 2008 at 23:20 #72 - me said:
pah, excuses
i got the red block by hitting it real quick.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:21 #73 - Scott Woodwiss said:
I just had a great battle with a German guy on GRID online at Istanbul in GT1 Le Mans cars. I was in a Saleen and he was in a Lambo we battled for about 3-4 laps before he sort of gave up. But he apologised for that, and I thanked him for the great race
Which I won, by the way…
June 13th, 2008 at 23:22 #74 - lou said:
haha lol racing drivers excusses i know.;) However i will master the breaking and i will beat you
June 13th, 2008 at 23:24 #75 - Christine said:
I hope you understand that any plans we had for this weekend will have gone out the window now.
If the show this weekend is late, it’s your own faults for getting him hooked on this BMW thing.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:25 #76 - me said:
actually it does say “correct braking point”, i wonder if that means as late as possible?
June 13th, 2008 at 23:27 #77 - lou said:
i would say mine too, but im seeing the renault car tomorrow. But when i get back, and once i have editted the photos then i will be back onto it
ahaha another game for you to mention on the podcast
June 13th, 2008 at 23:30 #78 - Scott Woodwiss said:
oh yeah, there’s a fun management-type f1 game on mousebreaker.com. i’ll go find it in a sec
June 13th, 2008 at 23:33 #79 - Alianora La Canta said:
Other thoughts – you do have the latest JRE installed and the latest Adobe Flash Player installed for your browser? {Rich – 19 comments ago}
I was on JRE Version 5 Update 7 (came with OpenOffice 2.4), which turns out to be one version and six updates out-of-synch with the latest edition. I have Flash 9, which according to Adobe is the latest version.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:34 #80 - Rich said:
Are you going to give it more than 4 then as a website Christine – or are you taking marks off?
June 13th, 2008 at 23:37 #81 - Steven Roy said:
It shouldn’t be a long show this weekend anyway. It looks like the only things you need to cover to keep us all happy is helmet designing, pit stop games and marmots. How long can that show last?
Oh and Franck actually racing.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:38 #82 - Alianora La Canta said:
That didn’t go as planned. Neither Safari nor JRE Version 6 Update 6 would install because they reckoned something is wrong with my Windows Installer. Typical.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:39 #83 - Scott Woodwiss said:
http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/grandprixtycoon/play.php
Oh yeah! Check it out!
June 13th, 2008 at 23:39 #84 - Christine said:
As opposed to what, young man? No Franck bashing here, please. Not yet anyway…
I still stand by my marks, cos it is ridiculously slow. However, you may find the man upping his score to 20/10 before the weekend is over.
Also… Part 2 is going to be seriously delayed because of this as well
June 13th, 2008 at 23:40 #85 - me said:
which version of windows installer do you have?
June 13th, 2008 at 23:40 #86 - lou said:
if you try it then do share your data
June 13th, 2008 at 23:41 #87 - me said:
scott, if you’re good at driving, how do you fair with this:
http://www.piquetsports.com.br…PageSvr.dll/Get?id_doc=360
June 13th, 2008 at 23:46 #88 - me said:
hmmm, no luck thus far.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:47 #89 - Rich said:
No it is NOT THAT SLOW! About 10 secs initially!
June 13th, 2008 at 23:49 #90 - lou said:
My braking its useless! Its costing me vital time!
June 13th, 2008 at 23:49 #91 - Christine said:
Sorry, I find in this day and age, if I have to watch a loading bar just to get on to a website, that’s too slow.
Fair enough if I’m asking it to do something, but just a homepage? No way.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:51 #92 - Alianora La Canta said:
which version of windows installer do you have? {me – 5 comments ago}
The version that comes with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (and I can’t find anything that tells me what number that is).
June 13th, 2008 at 23:51 #93 - Scott Woodwiss said:
….ok, you got me on that one. On those type of games, I literally do drive like Piquet – all over the place.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:52 #94 - lou said:
ergh i should use my wireless mouse. But I’m upstairs…. :/
June 13th, 2008 at 23:53 #95 - Alianora La Canta said:
Incidentally, my 2nd place in the Sidepodcast comments Grand Prix is coming under serious threat from Rich. I will need to do some skilful defensive work to avoid being overtaken…
June 13th, 2008 at 23:55 #96 - me said:
try this, i don’t think it’ll do you any harm if you already have it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai…playlang=en
mind you, if your machine goes belly up, you’ve never seen nor heard of me
June 13th, 2008 at 23:57 #97 - Steven Roy said:
I tried that Piquet game before. It is hopeless.
I wasn’t bashing Franck it just seems that since you started supporting him he hasn’t actually raced anything. Wonder how the car repairs are getting on.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:58 #98 - me said:
me too, was just curious if you managed better than i did.
June 13th, 2008 at 23:58 #99 - Christine said:
Yes, that’s very true. I have that effect on people.
All I meant was the bashing can began when he doesn’t win. Cos he won’t. Cos I support him.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:02 #100 - Steven Roy said:
He has a really good chance of winning if Zonta can break his attraction to bricks.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:03 #101 - lou said:
Would you mind not supporting Wurz then?
lol cause i would like him to do well. 
but i also want franck to do well too. Oo will the podcast include a ‘Franck news’ section with a little jingle this week?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:03 #102 - Rich said:
Here as some play rules to get ahead
1) Lou is one’s biggest ally – get her on your side. Bless her, she always seems to read everyone’s post and responds!
2) Just play the BMW game and keep saying how you suck and you will get ahead.
3) Search the Internet for stuff to put up.
4) Post the minimum postable unit saves your fingers too!
Your are welcome to stay ahead and I had actually not noticed that I was creeping up!
On your computer problems – I used to get the message that this is not the right JRE and all sorts of stuff at times, or worst still Windows keep asking for the original disk, which needless to say ended up being the wrong disk! I migrated to Mac and not had the same grief.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:05 #103 - Rich said:
Yes but the BMW Sauber is a full on F1 pit and racing experience – so you can expect to wait a bit longer.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:08 #104 - Rich said:
Is IT bad or are you are BAD at it – I am really the most un-co-ordinated person – which is why Lou and ME are so much faster in the BMW Sauber pitstop.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:08 #105 - Christine said:
Absolutely. My whole entire being is with Montagny this weekend. Wurz who?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:10 #106 - Christine said:
Yea, I’m bad at it too. Can’t tell left from right when the car’s upside down.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:10 #107 - lou said:
I’m on Alianora’s side
as a fellow female f1 lover we must stick together 
Not sure if what you said there Rich was good or not….;) am gonna take it as a compliment?
I hate to admit it but ‘me’ is much faster than i am. However i will continue and slowly improve….
June 14th, 2008 at 00:13 #108 - Rich said:
Lou, I am going to support Wurz then cos he always seems such a nice guy in the Williams Podcasts and because he defected to Honda – the sensible man.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:13 #109 - Alianora La Canta said:
I’ve put on the version of Windows Installer me advised and it hasn’t fixed the problem. It’s no worse and no better than before.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:14 #110 - me said:
mac is pretty bad for java development though. apple insist on going their own way. i can see why they aren’t fussed about encouraging the latest and greatest from sunMS, but man they are literally years behind the curve when it comes to the latest VM.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:14 #111 - Alianora La Canta said:
I think lou may well be everyone’s friend on Sidepodcast
June 14th, 2008 at 00:15 #112 - lou said:
lol. I’m surprised your not doing a Montagny Live commenting over at iheartfranck.com
Will Franck be at goodwood? hehe you should have a t-shirt 
June 14th, 2008 at 00:16 #113 - Alianora La Canta said:
I can’t play the BMW game because the only part of the BMW site that loads is a white frame with grey edges. No links or anything, which makes me think it may well be in the outdated “iframes” coding method. That in turn makes it totally unsuitable for screen-readers (luckily I do not require one; not that it seems to help).
June 14th, 2008 at 00:16 #114 - Rich said:
A glowing complement, seriously but I need to defend the male sex here cos we not really as good at the commenting, if exclude ME.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:17 #115 - Alianora La Canta said:
I’ve got my own blog if I’m really keen to put stuff up, but to be honest I’m more into the analysis and memory recall bit than the resource-finding bit.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:17 #116 - Steven Roy said:
Since everyone is addicted to the BMW pitstop game and those who plan more than a couple of weeks ahead are talking about getting together at Autosport International and someone there is always running a real pit stop competition…….
Do you think they would let us keep going for three hours until we were winning.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:18 #117 - Alianora La Canta said:
You may well have noticed that I’ve taken Rich’s point 4) to heart – maybe too much to heart…
June 14th, 2008 at 00:18 #118 - me said:
shucks, sorry about that. do you have an error code or message?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:19 #119 - Alianora La Canta said:
Macs don’t do quite a lot of the stuff I use my PC for (old games, Sims 2 with all the expansion packs), so it’s not really an option for me. Besides, I doubt the Mac would talk to the home network, so I wouldn’t be able to access the internet with it, thus defeating the point of the Mac for the purposes of this discussion.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:19 #120 - Christine said:
We’ll probably start a thread somewhere for Le Mans chatter, just so we’ve got somewhere to go to a) celebrate, or b) commiserate.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:20 #121 - lou said:
Klien is in that team too isen’t he? It’s like a Honda team
June 14th, 2008 at 00:20 #122 - Rich said:
Um … I have just worked out with the BMW Sauber game it is clicking the mouse as close to the line as you can possibly get with car but not crossing it! So I managed my breaking OK but missed the speed limiter got all the fuel in – but it was a slow pit stop 15.95!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:21 #123 - Steven Roy said:
Has anyone had a look at the following item on Keith’s site today. That is going to keep me busy for a very long time.
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/06/13/the-times%e2%80%99-free-digital-archive-captures-45-years-of-formula-1-history/#comment-171652
June 14th, 2008 at 00:22 #124 - lou said:
yay just got into the 13secs!!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:24 #125 - Alianora La Canta said:
Steven, if it’s anything like the year I went (2007 – the Toyota pit stop stand was there), then you can’t keep having 10 million goes, but you can have multiple well-spaced ones. So you could do one in the morning, go somewhere else to discuss strategy, and then get in the queue for another, better, go in the afternoon.
Oh, and try and get into groups of three. That way, it’s easier for you to have a team for doing wheels. Plus you can be a bit more careless with the wheels on the side facing away from the crowd than the ones facing the crowd – lobbing tyres F1-style is discouraged anyway, but there’s a distinct health and safety issue with large tyres being sent crowdward and it does make you more cautious (and therefore a little slower). You probably won’t get the choice of which wheel to do, though.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:24 #126 - me said:
flash is basically unsuitable for screen readers isn’t it? can you throw us a link for a flash site that works well for you and maybe we can look at the differences.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:28 #127 - Alianora La Canta said:
Wierd. I tried again to get the error message text and got through (but then put up an error because I deliberately closed the internet connection during installation – I don’t like installers using the connection unless there’s a good reason and nobody else is using it (and it’s currently in use by Dad as well as me).
Still, maybe I might be able to install these bits of software by the end of the weekend. And all to look at a few silly sites…
June 14th, 2008 at 00:28 #128 - me said:
that sounds like a plan!
3hrs might be pushing it, but we can’t sweet talk the toyota boys right?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:28 #129 - Rich said:
I am really sorry – I forgot that was so mean of me – honestly it WAS accidental.
I am going to re-look at the Ferrari World since there was links that I seem to have missed.
Is there anyone who likes the Ferrari Pit watch? Idle curiosity.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:29 #130 - Alianora La Canta said:
YouTube works really well for me and that uses lots of Flash for the videos. So does Piquet Jr’s site and Rosberg’s full site (I assume the latter uses Flash).
June 14th, 2008 at 00:31 #131 - Alianora La Canta said:
me, what I meant by the frames comment is that using frames in a web site makes it screen-reader inaccessible whether Flash is used or not. Are iframes only usable with Flash (I know they’re distinct from standard frames)?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:32 #132 - Alianora La Canta said:
Don’t worry Rich – I thought you were giving general hints out as well as answering my implied worry.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:32 #133 - lou said:
That would be so cool!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:33 #134 - Steven Roy said:
I had another go at the helmet design thing. Started off with a red, white and blue striped design then went all artistic.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:34 #135 - Rich said:
But have you got your breaking right and the pit limiter on. Otherwise its a stop and go penalty!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:35 #136 - Steven Roy said:
For Christine or anyone else who wishes to keep in touch with Le Mans the ultimate source is http://www.radiolemans.com/
There are also several video streams available.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:38 #137 - me said:
i’m putting my money on a javascript issue somewhere then, because piquet’s site uses straightforward embed’s.
presumably you can watch video and hear audio on this site?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:38 #138 - lou said:
I’m getting better
It just so happens that time was set where i got the speed limiter wrong and the fuel wrong too. however i think i may have got the fuel now.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:39 #139 - lou said:
Ok im soo close to 12 seconds now….its scary how addictive this is….
June 14th, 2008 at 00:40 #140 - me said:
iframes are just a different way of displaying content in a frame.
you can load any html into an iframe, i think amazon adverts are loaded that way, but flash can be loaded too. we used to use them here, back in the day, but soon dropped them after they proved troublesome.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:41 #141 - Rich said:
I thought it was over? My “Honda Green” design was supposed to be a golden sun at the top then some fluffy white clouds in a blue sky – the letters JB and a star that has landed – because he is such a down-to-earth star and green grass all along the bottom edge. Pity we could not put tripe in like that as our description to go with the helmet design.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:41 #142 - Alianora La Canta said:
Yes, me. It never occurred to me that that was where you employed the Flash…
June 14th, 2008 at 00:42 #143 - me said:
man, you deviated from lines. very nice, i thought competition was over though?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:43 #144 - Rich said:
That’s no good you will get both a stop-and-go penalty and have to re-pit for fuel a la Massa.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:43 #145 - lou said:
When i visit JB’s site it comes up with the comp is closed…
June 14th, 2008 at 00:44 #146 - me said:
i think i would pick on zonealarm as the culprit of overzealous javascript filtering, although your JS engine could also be a bit messed up. that would explain why embedded flash works (the force india countdown for example), but not the more complicated flash gubbins.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:44 #147 - lou said:
ah am in the 12 secs now
I wander how low i can get….I told everyone i was competative….
June 14th, 2008 at 00:45 #148 - Rich said:
iframes are often used when you want to embed one website into another parent website – but it is just HTML – should not give any problems.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:46 #149 - Steven Roy said:
Update on the Alonso to Honda rumour
He has had a seat fitting and Bernie instigated the deal
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/29112007/13/alonso-honda-seat-fitting.html
June 14th, 2008 at 00:46 #150 - Alianora La Canta said:
you can load any html into an iframe, i think amazon adverts are loaded that way, but flash can be loaded too. {me – 3 comments ago}
So that’s why I never get bothered by Amazon adverts!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:47 #151 - me said:
wow, that is impressive stuff.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:50 #152 - Rich said:
Lou, I take it you are the competitive type – breaking into 13 secs – I actually found my mouse pad quicker than the mouse! but am still in the 15 secs!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:51 #153 - Steven Roy said:
I actually did those helmets a couple of weeks ago but I had not posted them before
June 14th, 2008 at 00:52 #154 - Alianora La Canta said:
If I could get it to work on my PDA (which isunlikely, since it makes a bit of a meal of images), then its small-screened stylus-based system would probably be ideal for this job.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:53 #155 - me said:
i like em, sir and i notice lou’s posted a file in the twelves on drop.io too!
June 14th, 2008 at 00:54 #156 - Steven Roy said:
I have had a post disappear into moderation I assume.
Apparently Bernie instigated the deal between Honda and Alonso and Alonso has had a seat fitting.
June 14th, 2008 at 00:54 #157 - lou said:
yeah I’m super competitive….It’s never a good idea to play tennis with me….Don’t think I need to say anymore
June 14th, 2008 at 00:57 #158 - lou said:
:O where did he say this/ which site reported it?
June 14th, 2008 at 00:59 #159 - me said:
soz, it’s back now. that’s looking less like a rumour as each hour passes isn’t it?
brawn + jenson + alonso – that’ll be the lineup of ‘09 wouldn’t it?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:01 #160 - Steven Roy said:
Lou,
The post you are interested in was posted at 12:46 am and is now in place.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:03 #161 - lou said:
:O As a Honda fan i should be pleased…and I like Alonso too…two of my fav drivers in my fav team…But I’m not pleased. :/ I can’t see Alonso wanting to be Number 2 driver….and i can’t see Jenson putting up a massive fight…
this is not great news for Jenson. Besides…look at Rubens this year, he is doing much better, and he fits at Honda…..hmmmm not sure what to make of it….not sure if I’m really pleased or not….
June 14th, 2008 at 01:04 #162 - lou said:
Just seen, thanks Steven
June 14th, 2008 at 01:05 #163 - me said:
so that article’s dated november right, that’s a pretty early seat fitting, even by alonso’s standards isn’t it?
i could see ferni at honda working out okay. i suspect pat talks highly of brawn and you’re going to want someone with experience on your side next year.
domenicali may find himself struggling in ‘09. does he have any experience of slicks / minimal downforce racing?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:08 #164 - me said:
in a wet race those two would be awesome. i wonder if alonso hasn’t reconsidered his number #1 driver role after the first couple of months of this season.
how much fun can it be annihilating your teammate each week?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:08 #165 - Steven Roy said:
I have just re-read it and it is out of date. It was a rumour for him to move to Honda for 2008 so is not current.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:11 #166 - Steven Roy said:
I just realised that the start of Le Mans is on at the same time as the space shuttle landing. Why can’t these people get together and plan things better so that I don’t have these problems.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:12 #167 - lou said:
But Alonso belongs at Renault, and Jenson belongs at Honda….I would be devistated if Honda got themselves sorted and finally started winning races and Alonso took the first win….but it would be good for the team to have Alonso, even if its just for 2009…but I’m now worried for Rubens…:( where will he go?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:13 #168 - me said:
maybe, but actually the more i think about it the more it makes sense. you go to ferrari and you’re expected to win. if you don’t you suck, if you do you’re okay. who wants that hanging over their heads?
but, go to the man who made ferrari what they are, and maybe you’ll get some teambuilding kudos along the way. especially when the team only has a solitary win to their name. this year wasn’t the year to make the jump, even if the seat was a snug fit. what about next year?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:14 #169 - lou said:
ach don’t do that to me!
June 14th, 2008 at 01:17 #170 - lou said:
we shall have to wait and see…but why would Alonso move to Honda to help build up that team when he can do the same at Renault, and they have less work to do. He knows Renault can win, and he fits in that team….Where as all Honda have for him is alot of work and Ross….Ross is a big positivei suppose, but if the rumours about him to ferrari are true why would he want to move again…surely Honda would not agree to a 1 year deal…
June 14th, 2008 at 01:18 #171 - Steven Roy said:
The story of the move was in this week’s Autosport so their may be some basis to it.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:24 #172 - me said:
a good point. but they’re downsizing like crazy at the moment. renault’s future is as uncertain as when alonso made the jump to mclaren.
honda have motivation, they have much left to prove. their strategy is aggressive (aside from the green pants) and while the results are woeful, they’re one point behind renault in the constructors championship.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:31 #173 - lou said:
really? That i did not know. sorry for my lack of knowledge on this subject…i had to revise so it was only important headlines only.
Good piont. Thats one of the reasons I support Honda, they have the motivation even after last year. I smiled when i saw that.
They actually have improved from last year. Weren’t Honda’s first pionts last year scored in France?
June 14th, 2008 at 01:35 #174 - me said:
technically only the engine dept. so it’s difficult to figure how much difference that’ll have on things like future regulation changes:
http://www.eemsonline.co.uk/news/11-06-08_6
it could also simply be a reallocation of resources to the aero dept. for example.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:42 #175 - me said:
yes, except it was point rather than points
whilst i’m not a huge honda supporter, mostly because we toured their factory and it looked like every other factory in the UK – in fact they may as well have been building hatchbacks in there such was the underwhelming impression we left with – i would bet the farm on brawn coming good in the next couple of years.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:43 #176 - lou said:
Thanks for the link. It kinda makes sence they would not want such a large engine dept, but it does seem to through their future into the air abit.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:49 #177 - lou said:
ah ok then piont
The Williams factory (well the bits seen on the Factory)didn’t look like anything special either….although i didn’t go to the Honda’s so i can’t compare. I support Honda for afew reasons. 1. They seem to be a genuinly nice bunch of people who love racing, 2. My dad has strong connections with honda (he deals with lots of different car companies) and they are always so nice to me when I pick up the phone to them (ok not Honda f1 but still honda
) and of course Jensons there 
thats a big plus.
June 14th, 2008 at 01:54 #178 - me said:
that is true, and that was after the magic of television was applied.
i guess our expectations were higher going in there. mostly it came across like a village fete (which is nice n’all if that’s what you’re expecting, but not so much when you want to see f1 cars), staged in a factory car park.
that’s good, because with any luck that attitude will be prevalent throughout the company.
damn i wish they’d employ some decent graphic designers though. someone who’d say “no, you cannot map the earth on a f1 car. have you considered go-faster stripes?”
that sort of thing.
June 14th, 2008 at 02:00 #179 - lou said:
a village fete! lol I can imagine how that could be disapionting
wasn’t it their first time of doing it? perhaps if they are doing it again i will get some free tickets from my dad and go check it out…see if they have improved. I suppose after the glamour of the Mclaren Factory (what you get to see of it anyway) all the other f1 factorys are just…well….factorys.
wow its getting late…or is that early….anyway, I should go to bed, I have to get up reasonably early in the morning so I can make sure I can definatly get some nice pics of that renault!
speak to you all tomorrow…or is that today?…later?…
June 14th, 2008 at 02:04 #180 - lou said:
They are by far the nicest company dad deals with. Very very helpful
yeah a decent graphic designer would be good….or maybe one that could stand up to Nick Fry and Co’s ideas..
June 14th, 2008 at 02:05 #181 - me said:
sounds like a plan, go do that
and thanks to all who’ve been hanging around chatting this evening, it’s been a lot of fun. cheers.
June 14th, 2008 at 02:14 #182 - Steven Roy said:
I have enjoyed this evening too. Thanks everyone
June 14th, 2008 at 02:29 #183 - Rich said:
Cheers everyone!
June 14th, 2008 at 11:19 #184 - Alex Andronov said:
I’ve only just caught up this morning!
I really like that BMW game… I like Lou am down in the 12 seconds area! Great stuff. It is being a close as possible to the blue and red lines when you press the breaks and limiter that gets you the optimum speed!
June 14th, 2008 at 11:27 #185 - Alianora La Canta said:
I’ve just tried installing the JRE this morning and it put up the error message again:
“The installation package could not be opened. Verify that this package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package”.
Since I picked up the copy of Windows Installer from Microsoft’s own site last night, I doubt that is the problem…
June 14th, 2008 at 11:31 #186 - Alianora La Canta said:
It’s amazing how much fuss a re-heated rumour can create.
June 14th, 2008 at 11:50 #187 - Scott Woodwiss said:
Morning everyone
June 14th, 2008 at 12:31 #188 - me said:
ahh, you missed all the fun. i have hangover mind you.
you got a screenshot to prove that?
June 14th, 2008 at 12:33 #189 - me said:
are you running the JRE auto updater? does it help if you download the full package from Sun?
http://www.java.com/en/
June 14th, 2008 at 14:30 #190 - Alianora La Canta said:
That’s where I downloaded the JRE from (the Version 6 Update 6, that is).
June 14th, 2008 at 14:34 #191 - lou said:
I am gonna have to see a screenshot
I suppose i should try get into the 11 secs….i will have to try after i finish editting photos.
It was a lot of fun wasn’t it. You were drunk? lol
June 14th, 2008 at 17:00 #192 - Alex Andronov said:
I will have to give it another go, but I’ve been banished from that computer now… No mouse on this one… And without a mouse it just took 26 seconds!!! Whoops.
June 14th, 2008 at 17:36 #193 - me said:
i was drinking, but it adversely affected my response times. at the end evening i was hitting 22sec pitstop averages.
June 14th, 2008 at 18:22 #194 - me said:
hmm, that was me last idea
will have a think some more.
June 14th, 2008 at 18:33 #195 - lou said:
ahaha
that explains why you didn’t improve on ur 13 secs 
June 14th, 2008 at 21:37 #196 - lou said:
Just in case anyone wants to have a look, I have posted some of my photos of the renault I saw today on my flickr account.
June 14th, 2008 at 21:42 #197 - Christine said:
Oooh, did you have a good time?
June 14th, 2008 at 21:50 #198 - lou said:
Yeah I did.
I was so strange. It was just sitting there in the middle of the precinct, with a red little cord around it. However the man said I could go inside the cordon and get right up to it so I could get some nice shots 
I do hate that people assume i know very little about f1 because I’m only a teenager! He tried to tell me where the engine was etc. :/
It was only last year’s Renault though, but it was still very beautiful!I’m not sure many people in my town even like f1 as there was only a small crowd of very confused looking people.
Oh and apparently they are going to be at Goodwood….apparently
June 15th, 2008 at 11:13 #199 - Alianora La Canta said:
Glad you enjoyed yourself, lou – pity the man was so patronising…
June 15th, 2008 at 11:27 #200 - lou said:
Thanks Alianora
I don’t think he meant to be. I think he underestimated how much I may know. 
I actually found myself smiling at the surprised look on his face when he realised how much i did know. ahah 
June 15th, 2008 at 18:41 #201 - Joe said:
Alonso…….Honda……hhmm. Rubens is doing a solid job, nearly getting 4th in Canada is proof of that. It’s great when transfer rumours start, I remember one a few years ago about Schumi going to BMW in 2008. I don;t think Alonso would fit in with Honda anyway, Renault’s far better for him, they can cater for any kiddy tantrums he has.Hopefully they have strong doors on their motorhome, eh?
June 15th, 2008 at 18:48 #202 - Rich said:
There was one (Alonso’s championship car)on show, a couple of years back here in SA. Renault brought it over for a motoring show (Auto Africa) in Johannesburg and I was up on business so looked at it during the weekend – they were pretty cool about people touching it etc.
June 15th, 2008 at 18:51 #203 - Rich said:
True – going to BMW Sauber might be a bit of a problem too can’t see Mario being too pleased about bashed in doors of their smart Motorhome.
June 15th, 2008 at 21:28 #204 - z-baumgartner said:
Try this website from ferrari!
Much better, especially for geeks as there are plenty of technical drawings that are updated after every race!!
http://www.ferrari-f12008.com/fwe/events/GP2008/index.jsp
June 16th, 2008 at 00:19 #205 - This is How the Teams Do It (Part 2) | Sidepodcast : Your Weekly F1 Podcast said:
[...] websites, this time looking closely at the teams to see how they fare. The first five can be found here, in Part 1 of the series, and this is Part 2, looking at the final five. I’ll be checking out [...]
November 8th, 2008 at 12:32 #206 - 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 [...]