Episode 74 – You’re Not Supposed to be Here, I Haven’t Changed Alonso
- Length: 50:23
- Size: 44.9 MB
- File: episode74.mp3
- Enhanced: episode74.m4a
- Transcript: Coming soon
- Torrent: episode74.torrent
It’s no secret that Valencia wasn’t what we were hoping for, and yet it still seems to have created the talking point of the season.
Intro
I said it would never happen, but we go live once again.
Good Week / Bad Week
Good week for safety and for returning to the sporting action, but a bad week for thefts and for Force India’s morale.
Qualifying
Renault are still circling way too slowly for our liking, and it’s not as though they were taking in the scenery. Did Ferrari get to choose which end of the pitlane they were at? Also what is up with Valencian security, because there was litter and a man or two on the track. Oh, and Trulli was awesome.
The Race
It all comes down to Ferrari really, as they dominated for pit lane reasons. You can hear our thoughts on the subject, and then an interview with Alex Andronov where he shares his own ideas on the subject. We also do a quick Fantasy Racers update.
Feedback
What TV coverage is like in Australia, plus plenty of emails. Adam tells us to give Bruno Senna a chance, Piotr shares some pictures from his time at the Ferrari Gallery, Keith the Marshall lets us know his plans for the future, and Leah finds F1 fascinating for understandable reasons.
Housekeeping
Just a quick mention of the charts and graphs available on Google Docs.
Remind me to bring earplugs when I’m flying domestically next...
August 26th, 2008 at 02:55 #1 - me said:
a quick note to say we pulled the feature where we covered live commentators fantasy racers teams, as it didn’t work quite as well as we’d hoped.
with a bit more preparation i think could still work, but i’m not sure. does anyone think it’s a good idea, and should we pursue it in the future?
August 26th, 2008 at 08:29 #2 - Alex Andronov said:
Thanks for the great opportunity. I really enjoyed myself.
I have written a very brief post about it here.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:49 #3 - me said:
appreciated
also thanks again for jumping in the deep end with us. we’ve got to get you back on for a proper discussion soon, we might even prepare some actual questions too
August 26th, 2008 at 12:45 #4 - me said:
ferrari confirm suspicions about kimi’s engine, bitch about the sport in the process:
“Changing the engine on Kimi’s car would have seen the Finn start from far down the grid at a track where it appeared that overtaking was impossible, proving it’s not enough to bring Formula One to a street circuit in a fantastic location to produce spectacular racing.”
we suck, but the sport sucks more. nice.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:53 #5 - Steven Roy said:
I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other on this. It could be something that could be used as a hook to get more live commenters. If it was mentioned in one of the regular shows that live commenters could get their teams mentioned it may encourage a few to turn up but given the choice of the same live commenters getting mentioned all the time or you two picking random teams to mention I would rather have random teams and involve more people.
That was an unfeasibly long sentence to make a simple point. I hope it makes as much sense to anyone reading it as it made in my head when I wrote.
Most of the live commenters so far are people who are not exactly short of a mention on various shows and Scott and I have been hogging things a bit recently so not getting my team mentioned is not exactly a hardship. Maybe mystic Ollie could turn his powers to forecasting the scores for a couple of randomly selected teams. I can see a pre-season mystic Ollie show to let us know what is going to happen in the season ahead.
August 26th, 2008 at 13:00 #6 - me said:
hehe. i could do with a mystic ollie before each race weekend. couple him with alianora’s spreadsheet and we cannot fail.
August 26th, 2008 at 13:04 #7 - me said:
earlier this year rubens tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, by making up more gp starts than he actually took part in. apparently bridgestone were trying the opposite this weekend:
“Although Valencia marked their 202nd Formula One race (the 1976 and 1977 Japanese Grands Prix plus every race since Melbourne 1997), Bridgestone wanted to raise a glass of champagne for their 200th event since their full-time entry.”
or to put it another way:
“Hockenheim wasn’t glamourous enough for us.”
http://www.autosport.com/news/grapevine.php/id/70065
August 26th, 2008 at 14:13 #8 - Mystic Ollie said:
Look into my eyes. Not around my eyes, into my eyes…
August 26th, 2008 at 15:25 #9 - Steven Roy said:
I found this http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1M4899769b7bed3012.cde at GP Wizard. It is an online version of Haymarket’s IRL magazine. So if they can do that presumably they could do online F1 Racing.
August 26th, 2008 at 15:46 #10 - Alianora La Canta said:
Look into my eyes. Not around my eyes, into my eyes…
{Mystic Ollie – 2 comments ago}
You mean the two black pixels on the screen, or the eyes that are presumably at the other end of the internet connection?
August 26th, 2008 at 15:47 #11 - me said:
that is seriously impressive. it has several videos embedded within it.
the only problem i can see, is i’ve just read the whole magazine for free
August 26th, 2008 at 15:58 #12 - Steven Roy said:
Sounds like a good deal to me. Seriously though I am sure they could e-mail with some form of protection to prevent it being copied. They could send dongles out to subscribers along with whatever freebies are flavour of the month. How much can a USB dongle cost?
August 26th, 2008 at 16:33 #13 - Steven Roy said:
I guess the big problem with doing F1 Racing the same way is Ernie. He would want a forune for video clips. The man is a dinosaur and a greedy dinosaur at that.
August 26th, 2008 at 17:07 #14 - Le BOL said:
Hi there!
Terrible, terrible grand prix, a full-on siesta… And the cars all looked the same just like A1, the same tyres, drivers all have nearly the same level. I’m shocked. Bring back Michelin! I’d even accept Kumho or some lousy Korean tyre manufacturer…
Somehow Sidepodcast keeps finding its way into my dreams! You guys have psychic powers, I’m sure. This time I realised that Me was messing with my blog adding at least 5 new entries and then he sent me like 100 pages worth of notes and new material to use in the future, then I found myself on a plane with just one engine and eventually I think we were going to crash. I admit to comsuming a croissant with ham and cheese but for sure it doesn’t explain everything.
To quote the song: “how do you do what you do to me, I wish I knew; wish I knew how you do it to me I’d do it to you..”
cheers everyone, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, that is a new laptop…
August 26th, 2008 at 17:08 #15 - Le BOL said:
coNsuming
August 26th, 2008 at 17:12 #16 - me said:
he’s back
sorry about the notes, i’m not usually that verbose.
August 26th, 2008 at 17:21 #17 - Le BOL said:
Yeah, yeah, just wanted to add that Valencia is on my “top 3 list most boring GPs of the year”, it comes in 3rd place after Barcelona and Hungaroring…
August 26th, 2008 at 17:22 #18 - Jordan Allen said:
Why do people people think that airplane needs a engine to land? Gravity does all the work….Now if you really want to have fun, become a glider pilot and when you take your friends up in the wild blue yonder, “say we are out of fuel…”
August 26th, 2008 at 18:03 #19 - Alianora La Canta said:
How much can a USB dongle cost? {Steven Roy – 7 comments ago}
£7.99 from Argos (which gets you 1GB, which is loads to put one month of content on), though given how many F1 Racings end up in circulation, I suspect Haymarket might just be able to get some sort of bulk purchase deal from a manufacturer if it went down that route. However, there would also be encryption issues to worry about, otherwise the special content would go the way of the PDF.
Somehow Sidepodcast keeps finding its way into my dreams! {Le BOL – 5 comments ago}
I had a dream about teaching a class and discovering one of the students wasn’t paying attention because they were watching a Live Streaming video. What I was doing teaching in the first place remains a mystery, as was how I didn’t notice anything odd when the student in question was the only one in class with an open laptop… (In case you were wondering, I had nothing at all to eat for about three hours prior to going to bed, so I can’t blame the food).
August 26th, 2008 at 18:17 #20 - me said:
that’ll be all the subliminal messaging doing it’s job then
August 26th, 2008 at 18:20 #21 - Steven Roy said:
Alianora,
I wasn’t thinking of a memory stick but dongle in the traditional sense which is a plug-in device that has to be in place before you can use a piece of software. It is common in industry to use this type of device with things like CAD software which can cost upwards of £50k per user. In some cases quite a few times that price. So to avoid companies buying one copy and copying it they sell a dongle with each copy and the software won’t operate without the dongle in place.
August 26th, 2008 at 18:21 #22 - Steven Roy said:
I thought the only subliminal messages were Red Bull, Michelin and YSL in big letters.
August 26th, 2008 at 18:21 #23 - me said:
confusing headline of the day for you:
“renault unveils the new renault symbol”
i thought – my god they’re changing “le hex”. turns out they have a new car called a symbol. gah.
August 26th, 2008 at 18:22 #24 - me said:
she’s wearing branded t-shirts too now? that was subliminal, i never noticed.
August 26th, 2008 at 18:23 #25 - me said:
how much does f1 racing cost in the US?
August 26th, 2008 at 18:28 #26 - Steven Roy said:
I did comment on it on it at the time but the comments were coming thick and fast so it wasn’t picked up.
No idea but I would guess maybe 50% more than it does here so about £6
August 26th, 2008 at 18:34 #27 - me said:
ahh, okay. haven’t re-watched or re-read as yet. it’s on my list this evening.
not quite in the realms of catia yet then
August 26th, 2008 at 18:37 #28 - Steven Roy said:
I think they can ge taway with a slightly less sophisticated dongle
August 26th, 2008 at 18:42 #29 - Alianora La Canta said:
how much does f1 racing cost in the US? {me – 2 comments ago}
It costs $72 for 6 issues from Amazon.com at the moment (they’re doing a special offer at the moment), so US readers are paying $12 per issue – or £6.53 for British viewers of the site.
Dongles aren’t especially expensive, it’s just that they’ve never taken off for consumer software because users don’t like having to plug in extra gizmos just to get software to work.
August 26th, 2008 at 18:45 #30 - Alianora La Canta said:
That price tag made me wonder – at £6.53 per issue, US subscribers are paying £3.20 an issue more than their British counterparts (who can get 6 issues for £20, or £3.33 per issue). Evidently the logistical side is pretty expensive…
August 26th, 2008 at 19:03 #31 - Steven Roy said:
Many years ago Ispent a while in Paris and the only place I could get Autosport was WH Smith’s on Place de la Concorde which is closer to London than I am now but it cost me double the cover price and arrived several days late.
August 26th, 2008 at 22:03 #32 - Jordan Allen said:
Going over the Dewey decimal system at the school’s library would be my bet….
,em>
It was not a dream…. You were having a “past life” experience….
August 26th, 2008 at 22:44 #33 - Alex Andronov said:
The thick and fast comments are an interesting issue. Becuase it’s chat it almost feels like it would be a good idea to repost interesting ideas while it’s clear (from the video) that you are reading.
But I’ve refrained thus far. It seemed that you both didn’t really have time to go back. Which is also fair enough. You don’t want masses of dead airtime while you’re reading.
August 26th, 2008 at 22:46 #34 - Alex Andronov said:
I did have a thought about combining Christine’s fav. new thing of Google Docs and Me’s Saturday morning show.
Really what you need is people to be able to apply to be on the show and you can create a web form which fills in a google docs spreadsheet. Each new row is a new person giving an answer. So the order will help you.
That way you can queue people without having to refer back through all of the comments. That one minor hurdle will make things much easier I reckon.
August 26th, 2008 at 22:47 #35 - Alex Andronov said:
Sorry Sunday morning show.
August 26th, 2008 at 22:53 #36 - Christine said:
Cor, for a minute there I thought he’d come up with ANOTHER show!
August 26th, 2008 at 22:58 #37 - Steven Roy said:
Didn’t he mention the Saturday show. More opportunity for product placement
August 26th, 2008 at 23:34 #38 - me said:
i like that plan, good thinking.
there was a plan floating around, about doing a saturday evening show on non-race weekends, for people in alternate timezones, whilst allow uk residents to watch late and sleep in on sunday.
at the moment, i think that’s still marked “pending”.
also, the only other fan club i’ve ever belonged to is the renault fan club. so i might quickly run out of stuff to wave in front of the camera.
August 27th, 2008 at 00:47 #39 - Steven Roy said:
I have just listened to the live show and it is quite incredible how together it sounds when I know what it was like when it was recorded. The other point is that when you sit through it live you get the impression that about 10% of the time is spent recording the bits that will be used for the show and the rest is spent on failed takes or generally hilarity or owls. It is very odd that the reality is that 50% of the time is spent recording bits that make the show.
The mirror on the Ferrari lollipop was to allow the driver to see the refuelling hose being removed
Sometimes I worry about the way my brain works. Despite having watched three free practise sessions and the race and then the live show yesterday something finally hit me while listening to Alex’s interview on the edited show. I was thinking about the track’s appearance as he was discussing all the moveable scenery when it finally hit me why the track looked so bare. There was almost no trackside advertising. I went and found a clip of Nico Rosberg completing a lap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo0izrYmAxs and it confirmed my memories. Aside from bridges there is about 2% of the adverts you would normally expect to see.
I cannot figure out why this should be but as trackside ads are the province of Paddy McNally it is unlikely he decided not to cash in. The only thing I can think of and it is pure speculation is that the politicians from Valencia wanted the track to get all the publicity from its first race and bunged McNally a few quid to forego his rights. Given what it cost to build the track this cost would be minimal.
One thing I missed live was the request to name turn 8 at Turkey. The first thing that struck me was to revive a name from Zandvoort which used to hold the Dutch GP. There is still a shortened version of the track in use. Zandvoort had a long fast 180º corner which was famous for Gilles Villeneuve going round the outside of Alan Jones. Something not many people would have tried. The corner was called Tarzan which I always thought was a great name for a corner that reward bravery something that also applies to turn 8 at Turkey.
August 27th, 2008 at 01:06 #40 - me said:
when i listened to the show, i thought “my god that bloke sounds like he’s done half the recording on his knees”.
someone (can’t for the life of me remember who), mentioned the america’s cup teams were up for putting their boats out on display around the dock, but the idea was shelved because they wore to much advertising. something very odd was going on there.
August 27th, 2008 at 01:35 #41 - me said:
ah-ha, found it. t’was mr. gorman who said:
“According to a well-placed source close to the AC organisers, many of the sailing teams had wanted to open their bases for the Grand Prix weekend and get involved, but Formula One was not interested and was particularly keen that all sponsor logos were removed to prevent them competing for eye-space with Formula One’s own sponsors. Speaking as someone who has enjoyed both sports, it seems a great shame that such a short-sighted view has been taken of a unique chance to cross-fertilise and promote the two disciplines.”
http://timesonline.typepad.com/formula_one/2008/08/valencia-scrap.html
August 27th, 2008 at 02:00 #42 - Steven Roy said:
Short-sighted stupidity. You have the choice of backdrops. America’s Cup yachts or industrial estate and car ferries? Not a dificult choice. I wonder what Bernie could have done if the teams had decided to take their yachts out to work on them.
August 27th, 2008 at 02:11 #43 - Steven Roy said:
I posted a pic on drop.io of Christine’s subliminal YSL product placement. Very subtle
August 27th, 2008 at 03:31 #44 - Jordan Allen said:
There is something about Villeneuves and fast 180 degree corners isn’t there. I mean Schuie himself would not dsre pass the laughable Pedro Lamy in the soon to be lapped again Minardi at Turn 13 of Estoril, so Jacques passed them both on the outside in 1996!
If Suzuka could have 130R what is wrong with calling Turn 8 at Turkey 50L, beside one being the obtuse measurement and the other being the acute measurement of the same darned angle?
August 27th, 2008 at 09:07 #45 - Christine said:
Not.My.Fault.
I got changed, then five minutes later, I turn round and he’s putting the duvet up saying: “We’re going live again.”
I joked with Alex pre-live that people would be able to see my pyjamas. It could so easily have been true! I need to keep a stash of unbranded clothes under my desk, it seems.
August 27th, 2008 at 09:54 #46 - Alex Andronov said:
It really did make me realise how much Me had sprung it on you!
I’m really not sure that you guys have to worry about the advertising thing. Surely if they are products that you like then it’s okay to promote them?
The only reason they block them on commercial channels is because somebody might do or say something defamatory while wearing a branded product. The BBC didn’t block all those Nike and Puma logos from the Olympics!
August 27th, 2008 at 10:53 #47 - Flibster said:
Plus, you may get freebies if you mention them.
I love the new Lotus Evora.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:20 #48 - Christine said:
Valencia GP set for name change
“The rights to the Mediterranean Grand Prix title were owned by former F1 driver and current GP2 team owner Adrian Campos. But he confirmed to autosport.com that he gave the title, free of charge, to Bernie Ecclestone last week.”
Free of charge? That’s unheard of, isn’t it?
August 27th, 2008 at 11:32 #49 - me said:
in return for what?
August 27th, 2008 at 11:51 #50 - Steven Roy said:
130R is not the angle it is the radius of the curve. 130R is a left hander. Unless you are Allan McNish in which case it is pretty much straight with a spin.
Campos wanted the 12th F1 entry that went to Prodrive. Anyone considering betting on the next new team in F1 would be well advised to bet on Adrian Campos.
Christine,
I can’t see any problem with the brands being shown. I only picked up on it because you went to s much trouble not to show your Red Bull then two minutes later mentioned Michelin. Besides you have more chance of getting freebies if they think people are noticing the brands you show.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:54 #51 - Alex Andronov said:
Maybe we should be saying things like, “Having seen that Michelin man on your podcast I am about to put in an order of 100 Michelin tyres”.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:55 #52 - Alex Andronov said:
Ah. Right. That sounds pretty good.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:07 #53 - me said:
riiight.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:17 #54 - Jeremy said:
This one?
http://www.sniffpetrol.com/
August 27th, 2008 at 12:40 #55 - Steven Roy said:
I hope Lou doesn’t see what they said about Button.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:40 #56 - Flibster said:
Thats the one.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:48 #57 - Flibster said:
Has anyone else seen what the FIA have come up with since the Massa investigation?
Linky
I find the quote at the end very telling.
He wasn’t being investigated for any sporting advantage he received from that, he was being investigated for an unsafe release from the pit box.
So, being unsafe is fine now. As long as you don’t get a sporting advantage…
*sigh*
August 27th, 2008 at 12:55 #58 - me said:
do you think they’ve already engraved massa’s name on the wdc trophy?
August 27th, 2008 at 13:16 #59 - Flibster said:
In the ranks of unsafe drivers, Massa is certainly up there with de Crasharis and Sato and Ide.
Even my other haf *who doesn’t follow F1 other than what I put her through every couple of weeks* said that it looks like the FIA favour Ferrari and are trying to prevent McLaren from winning.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s the FIA who are trying to stop McLaren winning, but it’s at least someone with power inside the FIA. *no names mentioned to protect the guilty*
If Massa wins the drivers championship this year I will be slightly upset, he, doesn’t deserve it in my opinion. Raikkonen at least puts his hand up when he makes a mistake, same with Hamilton and many of the other drivers. It’s always someone elses fault for Massa.
Although, to be fair, there hasn’t been one driver in the top 4 this year who have stood out above the rest as the deserving champion. Hamilton and Raikkonen have both had brain farts during the year so far.
I’d love to see Massa prove me wrong, but I don’t think he will – it seems that when the car isn’t exactly how he likes, or more commonly he’s fighting from behind, he just seems to fall apart.
I do think they have already chosen what logo to put on the constructors trophy though.
August 27th, 2008 at 13:19 #60 - me said:
ahh, yes. that’s more likely.
August 27th, 2008 at 13:45 #61 - Alex Andronov said:
The anybody but McLaren Logo?
August 27th, 2008 at 14:03 #62 - me said:
or that, yes
August 27th, 2008 at 14:09 #63 - Flibster said:
Yup. The dancing donkey preferably.
August 27th, 2008 at 14:31 #64 - Steven Roy said:
& you are driving a Ferrari
August 27th, 2008 at 14:50 #65 - Alex Andronov said:
I’m pretty sure that the only people who would have been able to appeal this would have been Force India. But my guess is that they wouldn’t based on the engines in the back of the car.
Did they actually lodge a complaint against Ferrari when Kimi crashed into the back of Sutil?
August 27th, 2008 at 14:59 #66 - Steven Roy said:
No. Besides that was a simple racing incident and if you watch the video Kimi did a fabulous job to keep the car out of the wall after it snapped sideways. He did everything he could to avoid an accident but was very unlucky. Mike Gascoyne was interviewed shortly after the race and while he was decidedly displeased he didn’t apportion blame to Kimi.
August 27th, 2008 at 15:00 #67 - Flibster said:
Nope. I do hope they got a discount on the next batch of engines though.
August 27th, 2008 at 15:31 #68 - Alex Andronov said:
Stephen I agree that that was a pretty great piece of driving from Kimi to avoid the incident.
I was wondering because there is a clear conflict of interest in this case. It doesn’t seem that there is an independent body really judging these cases.
August 27th, 2008 at 15:37 #69 - Steven Roy said:
Alex,
The conflict of interest may be greater than you think. I wrote this http://www.f1-pitlane.com/content/ferrari-international-assistance in May in response to some comments I received on another site. It shows the level of Ferrari bias there is in the FIA. Now we have deMontezemolo in charge of FOTA and Donnelly pushing the stewards around it is way beyond a joke.
August 27th, 2008 at 15:58 #70 - Flibster said:
Didn’t Alan Donnelly have Ferrari as a client as well?
I know he still lists the FIA and FOM on his site.
Jean Toad is on the WMSC – he’s the CEO of Ferrari
Marco Piccinini is also on the WMSC and a board member at Ferrari
Thats all I can remember off the top of my head.
I do wonder what would have happened if Renault were found with McLaren documents that were about the Ferrari information, or even just Ferrari information directly.
Slap on the wrist and don’t do it again still?
But then you have to factor in that Flavio and Bernie are business partners….
Sorry…It appears that I’ve taken this waaaaaaaaaay off topic
August 27th, 2008 at 16:41 #71 - Jordan Allen said:
Here is the question I would love to have answered by non-Hamilton fans….
Is the Massa/Sutil pitlane incident “unsafe” enough to equate Hamilton crashing into Kimi (who is waiting for a red light to change) and therefore should suffer from a 10 place grid penality next race?
Or is the Mass/Sutil pitlane incident “unsafe” enough to give Massa a 15 second, 25 second or a drive-thru penity, in which case, the race becomes a processional James Allen/Lewis Hamilton lovefest about now Hamilton gets another “Senna-sque” win?
Or does common sence and a couple of expereinces of watching NASCAR or Champcar/IRL races where thye have 30 frecking cars in the pit lane at the same time and actually race for posiition even under full course yellows prevail and you realise what a non-incident this truly was, unless you are a Hamilton fan who does not care how he wins races….
August 27th, 2008 at 16:41 #72 - Steven Roy said:
‘me’ did a piece on the subject of Donnelly in Jaanuary which covers Ferrari disappearing off his companies client list in the weeks before his appointment. http://www.sidepodcast.com/2008/01/25/fia-revise-f1-stewards-process/
August 27th, 2008 at 16:46 #73 - Steven Roy said:
Jordan,
The reason the rule is in place is because cars have hit mechanics before. My only complaint is that the stewards decided that an offence had been committed and then invented a penalty which does not appear in the rules. The rules give four possible penalties but the stewards invented a fifth.
You can’t use NASCAR as an example because open wheel cars react totally differently in a collision and I am not prepared to accept any Indy car formula’s safety rules. Under F1 rules Gonzalo Rodriguez and Greg Moore would not be dead.
The Lewis/Kimi incident only occurred because Lewis didn’t see a red light and Ferrari released Kimi early to let him race Kubica in the pit lane. Had Ferrari held Kimi and Lewis done exactly the same thing Lewis should have been given a penalty for not stopping and Kimi would have picked up a good few points more than him.
August 27th, 2008 at 16:51 #74 - me said:
i agree. i don’t think alonso’s friday penalty was warranted unless some unseen-by-us rule change occurred during the three week break. same goes for the massa incident.
i’m all for making the pitlane safer. i don’t think it’s fair on teams or drivers to suddenly start cracking down on misdemeanors without prior warning. am wondering if this is in fact what JYS was alluding to earlier when he said:
“stewards are part-time amateurs who are not paid properly”
maybe they did screw up and maybe donnelly is trying his best to repair the damage?
August 27th, 2008 at 16:56 #75 - Steven Roy said:
I think this is a dig at Max for getting rid of Tony Scott-Andrews at the start of the season and coming up with the rule that no steward can be from the same country as any competing driver. Therefore the majority of stewards have to be from outside the major motor sport nations that can train their people properly and give them experience.
Conveniently it was people from these countries who voted for Max. Donnelly is that to ensure that Max’s will be done and is assisted by having inexperienced stewards he can push around. Exactly what most of expected in January.
August 27th, 2008 at 16:58 #76 - Jordan Allen said:
Steven:
Do not chicken out on me. Do you prefer a Hamilton win or you telling me that smashing into the back of someone deserves the same penality as whatever Massa is convicted of doing?
August 27th, 2008 at 17:05 #77 - me said:
no-ones chickening out. you asked a leading (and rather unfair) question.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:09 #78 - me said:
this isn’t quite true, because there would have been space to the left of kubica. which was exactly where lewis was aiming.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:12 #79 - me said:
could one of them have pushed the button against donnelly’s wishes then? knowing that once the investigation warning was out there was no clean way of going back?
damn i wish there was more transparency.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:13 #80 - Steven Roy said:
I think in some ways the incidents are similar. The only reason there was not a crash on Sunday was because Massa realised there was going to be an accident and avoided it. Given the head protectors on the car and how useless the mirrors are it was purely luck that he was in a position to see Sutil. Had he not seen him and been unable to correct Ferrari’s mistake there would have been an accident like Lewis had with Kimi except it would not have been at the end of the pitlane and Massa could easily have bounced off into the safety car or the cameraman who had been kneeling in front of his car.
Had Felipe not seen Sutil and crashed into him then bounced into and killed the cameraman would that have been worth a penalty? If so you are giving penalties based on dumb luck. Ferrari released their driver into the path of another. That is against the rules. It is correct that they were penalised for it albeit the penalty was wrong.
It is easy to underplay this incident because Ferrari were in the last pit whereas most of the time they are in the first pit. Imagine a pitlane full of mechanics and Ferrari doing exactly the same with a car coming into the pits especially if that was a driver who was trying for a podium place.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:18 #81 - Steven Roy said:
I have no idea how the procedure for announcing a stewards investigation works. I also have no idea where the stewards or Alan Donnelly are during the race. I assume that the stewards are in a room in the race control building and that Max has Donnelly standing over them. I guess the only person who would have any chance of knowing this procedure is Alianora but I would guess that it is not documented.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:31 #82 - Flibster said:
I apologise if this is a little scattered – I’ve kind of written it as it’s appeared in my brain.
First off, I am not a Hamilton fan. But unlike many, I have nothing against the guy. The drivers I am fans of have all retired or died. Hell, the team I devoutly supported no longer exists as an entity in current F1. Lotus BTW.
I’m just happy that a Brit is actually doing well in something.
Secondly, I have nothing against Ferrari either. I may have little things against some members – Toad for instance, but the team itself is fine. 21 years was a damn long time for them to wait for a title.
I do not believe that Ferrari deserve any special treatment over any other team. Ferrari is just as important in F1 as Force India. The difference is only history.
Why was Raikkonen alongside Kubica in the first place? Racing in the pitlane? I pointed that out on a forum as being against the rules and was rubbished out of the thread.
The rule is clearly laid out. Massa should have got a drive through, stop and go, a time penalty after the race or a position drop at the next. In this case, they had more than enough time for either of the first 2 penalties to be applied – but chickened out as it would have handed the race to Hamilton.
If Massa had finished say, 10.4 seconds ahead of Hamilton I suspect we would have seen a 10 second penalty applied after the race.
The pitlane at Valencia is ridiculously narrow and Massa was barely in the pit lane. Most of his car was in the pit box areas. If there was another team in front of them he would have stood a good chance of running over pit crew or equipment.
The whole pitlane in Canada is pretty wide so 2 cars side by side wasn’t too bad. However – there is still only a one car width section that is the pitlane road.
I would still prefer to see stricter regulations in this area though. Just like on a main road, the person already on it has right of way over the person coming onto it.
Massa was the innocent party in this to be fair, his team let him out of the pitbox at the wrong time. Or rather he was the innocent party until he started moving across and forcing Sutil towards the wall. If Sutil hadn’t have moved over and they had collided or had hit the wall, would that have still been acceptable for a €10k fine after the race?
All they have really done is endorsed playing chicken in the pitlane – with a €10k entry fee to the game.
Add to all that Massa’s “It was Sutil’s fault” garbage in the press conference and he just looks stupid.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:40 #83 - Alex Andronov said:
I think the problem here is that you can’t start deciding whether to punish somebody based on if it’s entertaining or not it leads into all sorts of trouble.
This actually might lead us back to the cold fuel issue. That was difficult because people can’t be allowed to simply get away with things because they managed to hide it until after the race.
But essentially we have three problems. The rules are:
1) Too complicated
2) Too opaque
and
3) Inconsistently enforced.
It looked unsafe to me but I’m not the expert on the scene. It sounds like there wasn’t really an expert on the scene. But never-the-less if it was unsafe they should have used one of the punishments available.
It would have, in my opinion, been unfair to have taken the win from Massa as it was the team’s fault. But that isn’t the marshals call on the day. They have to apply the rules and if the rules are stupid they need to be changed in time for next time.
I am strongly against the grid penalties for the next race. They should be given actual penalties (not fines) like Black flag, Drive throughs, stop and goes, driver points removed, team points removed, time added. If an incident happens at the end of the race then drivers point and/or team points should be removed. And it should be decided before the podium.
But if I was in charge on the day I would have rued that the rules weren’t clearer and given one of the available punishments. It would have been unfairly strong but then the rules would be changed for next time. That’s the only way this can work – in my opinion.
August 27th, 2008 at 17:42 #84 - Steven Roy said:
I have just noticed something as a result of a discussion at F1 Insight. ‘Incidents’ come under article 16 of the 2008 F1 Sporting Regulations and the penalties for such are specified in article 16.3. Ferrari were found guilty of an offence under article 23.1i of the 2008 F1 Sporting Regulations which rather conveniently does not specify penalties.
The judgement can be found here
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/eur_08_document_411.gif
The regulations can be found here
http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.nsf/475632E46002BEDAC125744F004312F4/$FILE/F1.SPORTING.REGULATIONS.19-05-2008.pdf
August 27th, 2008 at 17:55 #85 - Alex Andronov said:
23.1.i is “It is the responsibility of the competitor to release his car after a pit stop only when it is safe to do so.”
But, and this is clearly the get out they were using…
The explicit things that can cause them to get you are:
Now my guess is that the “illegitimately impeded” thing was raised first, which is why Ferrari was so keen to get that quashed. Because that was taken out it was allowed to be decided after the race.
August 27th, 2008 at 18:24 #86 - Jordan Allen said:
Me:
I do not know if I am saking a loaded question. in Steven’s Roy’s own words.
Okay. The four possible penalities are:
1) Drive thru penality: Takes about 20 someodd seconds, as hamilton was 5 seconds behind Massa at teh end out the race, we can assume that Hamilton would be the winner by some 15 seconds.
2) 15 second time penality. End resuklt. Hamilton wiiner by 10 seconds.
3) 25 second time penailty. End result. Hamilton winner by 20 seconds.
okay so all those penalities give Hamilton the win.
4) 10 Place Drop at Spa. Well, we must remember that Massa was racing Hamilton at this point and the track was green. My own thouight is that no incident was created by Massa. It was obvious that Massa was trying to pass Sutil to get both a good outlap and tp place a backmarker betwen himslef and Hamilton. That’s what racers are supposed to do. No Harm, No fowl.
So, which one does he prefer?
I can see why the stewards investigated. What the should have done was dropped once they realized that nothing happened, and everything could be explained that makes racing sence to the popel concerned. Iffy, yes, but Massa had to get ahead of Sutil. If they wanted to play as safe as suggested, Ferrari would have to have waited until Sutil cleared pit lane, which would have Hamilton far to close for comfort.
August 27th, 2008 at 18:26 #87 - me said:
changing the subject, but renault have a blog post today requesting suggestions on how they can improve their site for next year.
the story appeared in their rss feed, so i clicked on the link with the intention of giving them both barrels over the mess they’ve made this year, and guess what?
nothing happened. the web site didn’t load and no page appeared.
brilliant!
dear ing renault f1 team, i have but one suggestion for you web site next year… fix it!
August 27th, 2008 at 18:27 #88 - Alex Andronov said:
August 27th, 2008 at 18:31 #89 - Steven Roy said:
e-mail them the links to your team website reviews. That should give them a clue what people think and who to copy.
August 27th, 2008 at 18:42 #90 - me said:
i’ve managed to find the survey:
http://surveyor.caradisiac.com/index.php?sid=59
feel free to add your 2p worth.
August 27th, 2008 at 18:57 #91 - Stuart C said:
Evening all,
Greetings from delightful Berwick-Upon-Tweed, where my room has a view overlooking MacDonald’s car park (I got up from my chair just then to check where the apostrophe should go, but regrettably only the golden arches are visible from here).
Apropos your questions from yesterday (apropos? Sorry for coming over all Alan Partridge – I’ll dismantle the Corby Trouser Press in a minute) regarding the Indycar mag… Firstly, it’s a customer mag – paid for by the IRL and advertisers/partners – so it’s free to the customer. Hence no worries about sticking the whole caboodle up on the interweb.
One of the principal sticking points over putting content on the F1R site is the licencing deal: we can’t run ads.
In other news, an (unnamed) F1 team is conducting market research at the moment into how people get information from the internet. A chap is coming to interview me on Monday. So I can now say, “First, make sure your wretched web site works…”
August 27th, 2008 at 19:08 #92 - Alex Andronov said:
Personally I have a very narrow view
Sidepodcast
and
F1 Fanatic
And lots of great commentary from Clive too.
Sorry to everyone else on here, but I tend to wait for you to plug your articles and then go and read them.
August 27th, 2008 at 19:12 #93 - Alex Andronov said:
I hardly even bother with ITV or Autosport any more unless it’s tipped by one of the other posters.
August 27th, 2008 at 19:27 #94 - me said:
you wanna tell said (unnamed) f1 team, that in order to understand the internet they should try it out first. and then insist the conversation takes place via IM or Skype
out of interest, any idea what sort of things they’re looking for? i’m guessing that:
“traditionally people use an input device and screen”
or
“using a combination of words and pictures”
wouldn’t justify the journey?
August 27th, 2008 at 19:43 #95 - Stuart C said:
Indeed. Well, initially they want to speak to F1 journalists about where they source information from on the web. Yes, I found this a slightly bizarre request, too.
However, one F1 team is currently engaging in a charm offensive with what we might call the ’second string’ websites (ie news sites with no access, such as Planet F1, Buspass, etc). These lucky folk were even granted a factory visit recently. The purpose is to seed positive news stories virally, since these sites tend to follow up one another’s stories without questioning the sources or validity.
August 27th, 2008 at 19:47 #96 - Stuart C said:
Interesting thoughts, Alex. How have you arrived at your preferences? I’ve seen Clive’s site and it’s very interesting. T’other one you mention is a bit noisy.
August 27th, 2008 at 19:52 #97 - me said:
would that be the same team currently on a charm offensive with bloggers too?
(it’s not working on us btw)
August 27th, 2008 at 19:59 #98 - Steven Roy said:
Stuart,
If you haven’t seen the review (and comments) of team websites articles the first one is worth reading to give Renault information. It would be well worth sending them the link although by now they must know how bad it is.
http://www.sidepodcast.com/2008/06/13/this-is-how-the-teams-do-it-part-1/
In effect as a result of that article they got a whole load of people delivered to their site and the general opinion was the site was rubbish, it didn’t work and no-one is ever going back to it again.
The other 5 team site reviews are at http://www.sidepodcast.com/2008/06/16/this-is-how-the-teams-do-it-part-2/
I started off using ITV, Autosport, grandprix.com and crash.net etc but I have gradually found myself switching to forums, blogs and sidepodcast. I still use the other sites but there is only so much genuine news to go round and most items of F1 news are in three or four simple paragraphs. The only way to understand what is going on is to read other people’s thoughts on the matter and piece all the little bits together that they have found.
I rarely go near a team site unless someone points me to something on it. The only exception was for the above reviews which resulted in me deciding not to visit most of them again for a very long time.
August 27th, 2008 at 20:01 #99 - me said:
same here.
August 27th, 2008 at 20:38 #100 - Stuart C said:
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps!
Thanks, Steven, for all that. F1 fans seem to fall into two broad camps: those who make full and frequent use of the internet to get their F1 ‘fix’, and those who don’t. I hesitate to guess at the exact proportions but you would be amazed at how many people enjoy F1 but aren’t quite fanatical enough to spend a goodly proportion of their waking hours scouring the web for facts and opinions. Those who ‘do’ quickly find a peer group of like-minded people and some blogs flourish while others wither on the vine.
I have no idea of the traffic levels but a trawl of the comments on several of the independent blogs reveals that there’s a relatively small contingent who comment regularly (there could be hundreds or even thousands of lurkers, though, so this methodology is fundamentally inexact).
The teams are waking up to the web and some of them are issuing useful content. I know Bradley used to put a lot of effort into the Renault web presence and the post-race debriefs with the likes of Pat Symonds were excellent. Obviously it could be a bit annoying if you’d spent some time laying siege to Pat for an ‘exclusive’, only to find him repeating broadly similar material for all to hear long before your own material hit the streets (I’m reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the film director who complained that Hitchcock had his version of Rear Window in the cinemas “before mine came back from the chemist”) but such is life. Williams are trying to do the podcasting thing – how do you rate theirs?
But F1 bloggers – like the political bloggers – are getting noticed. Partly it’s down to Google. Thanks to the miracle of Google Alerts, The Powers That Be are able to keep an eye on what people think. This site and others have cropped up on my employers’ radar (which reminds me: I think I owe Doctor Vee a pint…).
August 27th, 2008 at 20:50 #101 - Alenyaa said:
Hey there Sidepodcast!
Thanks for another wonderful episode. Enjoyed listening to your views and scoops!
Just one remark i’d like to make though. The fine for the Massa/Sutil pit lane incident.
As you’ve said during the podcast, cars going side by side on their way towards the pit lane exit isn’t exactly unprecedented, and normally race control don’t even bother to fine or reprimand it, which is the right way to go if you ask me.
Now, seeing as the Valencia pit lane is narrower than average and therefor does make for potentially more dangerous, I think the fine and reprimand are a suiting penalty for this “first narrow pit lane offense”.
As Alex (I think it was him) suggested I do think heavier penalties for such incidents would be in place for incidents like these in the future.
Cheers!
August 27th, 2008 at 20:57 #102 - Steven Roy said:
I didn’t know Williams were podcasting. I will add that to my never ending list of things to check.
The thing I don’t get about Renault is that they put out a load of info three or four years ago about their web presence. They were setting up in second life and the like yet they can’t put up a simple website that doesn’t annoy people into leaving within a few minutes. Scanning some of the comments on the reviews the thing that struck me was that it wasn’t the content of their site that was the problem. It was unwanted loud music, pop ups and the fact that people struggled to get things to work. Add to that they decided for utterly unfathomable reasons to split it into two sites. The first rule of sales is not to make people like you it is to make them not dislike you. People take an instant dislike to that site so it doesn’t matter if they were giving away F1 cars no-one stayed around long enough to find out if there were any goodies to be had.
I spent some time working in Paris a lot of years ago and the French love a compromise. The site design has compromise written all over it. It lloks like different people wanted to do different things and instead of letting one person create his/her vision they took a little bit from everyone.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:08 #103 - Stuart C said:
I spent some time working for the Japanese, so I see where you’re coming from…
August 27th, 2008 at 21:09 #104 - Flibster said:
I tend to get a lot of my info from friends in the sport first and then from there to the net.
Autosport is good for an occasional peek.
I do use totalf1.com for a general roundup. Check the headlines – if anything interests me than I look further.
As most of what I’m into at the moment is historic then the forix.com site and the f1.com site are both pretty useful.
I also enjoy the Red Bulletin – it’s not strictly accurate or even true but it’s always good for a laugh when at work – especially as I don’t have to pay for the toner or paper.
Team and driver sites are pretty much all adverts for their shop and their sponsors. Although McLarens at launch was pretty good with the full size press shots available to all.
Podcast wise, other than sidepodcast, I habitually listen to F1 Rejects – just for the comedy Aussie take on it. The Williams F1 podcast isn’t bad. Bit too pressreleasey for me. The Renault F1 one was alright last year – haven’t listened to it this year.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:11 #105 - Scott Woodwiss said:
evening folks. just been reading on autosport about today’s monza testing. incredible that all 10 teams are seperated by just over a second. if that isn’t close, i don’t know what is. also, how close the fastest 3 were – less than half a hundredth seperating ferrari, mclaren and williams. pretty good.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:21 #106 - Stuart C said:
Hello Flibster. Many thanks – I’d never heard of totalf1.com before.
Quite so. It used to be that you could wander around the circuit during a practice session and very quickly arrive at an impression of which technical packages were working (and which weren’t) and which drivers were quick (and ditto). Now it’s enormously difficult because the differences are so minute. Even Nelsinho has upped his game since France!
August 27th, 2008 at 21:22 #107 - me said:
i couldn’t really tell you in terms of actual figures either. we did briefly run a piece of software a while back called woopra.
it does live web stats, and what that told us was there were maybe 8 or 9 times as many people following a live commenting session as there are contributing. i guess lots of people find something like that useful, but either don’t feel confident enough to join in or have nothing add.
sadly we stopped using the software because it was flaky and caused browsers to hang in the middle of page loading.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:24 #108 - Steven Roy said:
The one thing this conversation shows is that in the time an unknown team’s personnel is going to take visiting Stuart they could have sat in front of a PC like Stuart has and gooten all this info a dozen times over by visiting different sites.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:28 #109 - me said:
i’m not sure we’re this best people to be criticising other peoples podcasts to be honest. but i will say i listen to the renault one, but not the williams one.
and i like both teams
August 27th, 2008 at 21:32 #110 - me said:
agreed alenyaa. now we have to wait and see where the fia go next, and see if any precedents have been set, or if the whole weekend was a one off.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:43 #111 - Steven Roy said:
Williams need to sort out their publicity machine. You are not going to believe this but on their site they are running a competition the prize for which is to take last year’s FW29 round Silverstone. They are going to let the winner drive an F1 car and I hadn’t even heard of the competition. How is that possible? In the massively unlikely event that I win the thing I would like to say thanks to Stuart for mentioning their podcast without which I wouldn’t be on their site even if it is about the best of the team sites.
http://www.williamsf1.com/news/view/581
August 27th, 2008 at 21:45 #112 - Stuart C said:
Perhaps, but would this be a representative sample? I think it’s a bit dangerous to take the views of blog posters (by nature vociferous and opinionated) at face value without a counterbalancing look at the views of people who don’t post/comment (for whatever reason). Scientifically, I mean.
Well, at least we’ll get to see if the new concessionaires in our cafe can make coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s already been through the machine 20 times.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:49 #113 - me said:
more representative than asking one man over coffee? yes
or are you planning on running a magazine survey?
cannot argue with that
August 27th, 2008 at 21:50 #114 - me said:
if i hadn’t just clicked that link, you’re right i wouldn’t.
awesome, thank you.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:53 #115 - Steven Roy said:
Tell Christine that she has no chance of getting this prize if I win it. I don’t care how much she begs.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:53 #116 - Stuart C said:
Unknown. But ING are doing a fan survey (like the FIA/AMD one the other year). I’ll let you know when it goes live.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:55 #117 - me said:
i don’t think we mention williams enough on the live show, do you?
August 27th, 2008 at 21:56 #118 - me said:
appreciate it.
any idea if they’re planning to spit on the results and do the exact opposite too?
August 27th, 2008 at 21:56 #119 - Scott Woodwiss said:
by the way, just off topic, what’s the question count from people for my interview?
August 27th, 2008 at 21:59 #120 - Christine said:
Ooh, I’d forgotten. I think perhaps so did everyone else
August 27th, 2008 at 22:03 #121 - Steven Roy said:
Philips shavers are sponsoring the comp so think about product placement.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:04 #122 - me said:
ooh, i have a beard. brilliant.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:06 #123 - me said:
erm, that’s as far as i’ve got.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:08 #124 - Scott Woodwiss said:
we knew that already
And you sometimes wear a cap, go to whsmiths for autosport magazine and has a cog. We’re getting closer, guys! 
August 27th, 2008 at 22:09 #125 - me said:
scott, have you any idea what the heck this last comment on youtube means:
http://uk.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=8L3MhSz0CVo&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3D8L3MhSz0CVo
norwich union??
August 27th, 2008 at 22:10 #126 - me said:
scott, what you need to do is pay lou for the picture she has of me…
August 27th, 2008 at 22:14 #127 - Stuart C said:
YouTube commenters belong to a higher order of madness…
August 27th, 2008 at 22:17 #128 - Scott Woodwiss said:
ah never mind about that, just my mate messing around. trying to get a job at norwich union but i’ve done 2 interviews and both came back negative. got another one next tuesday.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:19 #129 - me said:
ahh, ok. mind if i delete it? it doesn’t really add to the conversation.
good luck on tuesday btw.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:20 #130 - Steven Roy said:
I thought sidepodcast had given up on youtube
August 27th, 2008 at 22:22 #131 - me said:
in fairness to youtube. if the producers of videos keep a handle on the conversation, they can be quite reasonable. ours generally seemed ok in the time we used it.
it doesn’t help that youtube rewards producers for having so many comments mind you. hardly encourages moderation.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:23 #132 - me said:
we no longer add new videos. but we’re not taking existing shows down because some f1 sites have embedded them and that would make us no better than bernie.
it means people can still leave comments, which means we still have to moderate them.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:41 #133 - Alex Andronov said:
Interestingly these things work the same way for us as they do for the teams (you said you and the teams noticed things on google alerts – we do the same). I have a blog, and one of my posts was mentioned on F1 Fanatic. Then Keith was interviewed by Sidepodcast, then… Well then I read Clive, Stephen Roy, Doctor Vee, Ollie… etc. But in essence the largest criticism for the team sites that I can see is that while the blogs tend to interact together and pull people in the teams are expecting people to come.
My guess is that it’s less about inviting people to events once a year and more about regularly mentioning articles by the top bloggers. “As I was reading / listening on …” It’s a common courtesy on sites these days to not steal. To not try and seem loftier by not mentioning other sites. The key thing is to roll up your sleeves and admit the connections. By doing that you get far more people coming back to you.
It’s true that lots of people don’t do anything more than watch the races. But the people who were buying index issues of magazines a few years ago are the people who are feeling part of a community without you now. And it will be the casual purchasers of the magazines in a few years further. Or at least it will be if you don’t pay them the attention that they deserve.
August 27th, 2008 at 22:45 #134 - Alex Andronov said:
And just to say Stuart… The simple thing of you taking part in the community here goes a long way towards helping me feel good about your magazine
August 27th, 2008 at 22:56 #135 - me said:
as does offering bloggers pints
August 27th, 2008 at 22:57 #136 - Alex Andronov said:
I did almost say “helping me feel good about your organ” but I thought that might be misconstrued
August 27th, 2008 at 22:57 #137 - Steven Roy said:
Just posted my best time for the Williams comp on dropio. Not that I am trying to provoke a competitive response. I think I would class my time as slower than Ricardo Rosset so I am confident that I can take a lot of time out of it. Given that my fastest lap is 6 seconds better than the lap that followed it I think it is safe to say I am not giving away vital set up info
August 27th, 2008 at 22:57 #138 - Alex Andronov said:
That’s the real trick!
August 27th, 2008 at 23:16 #139 - me said:
my first lap was almost 2mins. gonna have to give shavers a lot of mentions on sunday.
August 27th, 2008 at 23:18 #140 - Steven Roy said:
I started off with the fast shaver then switched to the one with handling then thought sod it use the one that can go straight through the puddles.
August 27th, 2008 at 23:19 #141 - me said:
noted. gimmie 6mins
August 27th, 2008 at 23:21 #142 - Ollie said:
@Alex: I’ve been enjoying a casual conversation on Identi.ca with “me” and was pointed over here. Just to post publicly on the site though, I totally agree with the following:
…And your comment immediately previous, as well.
In this day and age, where the Internet is encroaching on ‘traditional’ printed media, it needs ‘forward-thinking’ people to understand how best to achieve the balance between readers who want information from different mediums, even sources.
I haven’t followed this conversation all the way, but wanted to add this in to basically say, wise words, well said.
Edit: And the community aspect between us F1-bloggers astounds me every single day. It really does.
August 27th, 2008 at 23:24 #143 - me said:
it’s gonna be an expensive round SC!
August 27th, 2008 at 23:38 #144 - me said:
okay that didn’t work.
officially, i’m hopeless at this.
August 27th, 2008 at 23:52 #145 - me said:
talking of which, we’re going to have to do a post about this at some point, but christine and i are completely sold on the twitter replacement identi.ca.
if you’re into microblogging you might like to check it out. if you’ve been following us on twitter, we’re no longer there. sorry.
August 28th, 2008 at 00:23 #146 - Ollie said:
In catching up with this very interesting thread…
I take it all back, Alex. (Joke)
Without wanting to sound rude, arrogant or egotistical in any way, shape or form (for I hope this is not my usual style)…
From my experience, this is 100% accurate, if not more so than the numbers suggested. But anyone who even understands the basic where’s and why’s of the Internet will understand that pageviews do not equal engaged readers/users/purchasers of anything online.
At a pinch, I’ll accept that (based on slowly improving content). However, referring to previous comments about the Renault site, the information is useless if not presented properly. Cross-browser compatibility anyone? Poorly coded and innaccessible websites that actually break UK web-access legislation/law.
W3C International Policy Portal.
I’m not gonna say I follow this, before everybody jumps on my back. Partly because I do not yet understand it all (although I aspire to, one day), and mostly because I am not a multi-million dollar business. Unlike some…
And to pick myself back up from I was… poorly laid out websites that look like something Little Timmy designed in pre-school with his crayon set. Broken links, flash that doesn’t work properly, stupid effects that just annoy every usuer but one. And regarding Autosport, frickin’ adverts that hide half the poorly written content in the first place. (My ultimate pet peeve.)
Maybe I’m being too harsh, but there are standards, and my impression is that the creators of the team’s websites are called Little Timmy. I do (just about) agree with the content though, and Renault should be praised for trying a variety of different ways to get information across to their fans and increase their web-presence. As should others. But Renault’s interraction thing this year was just attrocious. I visited, attempted to sign up, wasn’t sure if I’d been successful and it went even further downhill from there.
“If you’re gonna do something, do it right.”
Please understand, I actually enjoyed your comment Stuart, and I hope you don’t think I have taken anything out on you. I certainly don’t mean to sound rude, not to someone who makes such an effort as yourself, to involve yourself in an online community when no doubt, you have enough to do as it is. What irks me something rotten is when a company who have a turnover of god-knows-what cannot get something as simple as a website right. And to then think that once it’s created, there is no need to involve themselves with those who they are trying to attract in the first place.
I write this comment in the hope that Little Timmy from each of the teams reads it and understands that within the Internet there is a huge possibility to market themselves in an effective, intelligent and accessible manner that will further attract themselve new fans and ‘purchasers’. And not just of themselves, but of Formula One as a whole.
August 28th, 2008 at 00:36 #147 - Ollie said:
Heh, missed the opportunity to edit out my typos; I got involved once again in Identi.ca. Blast you social web! And talking of the social aspects of the Internet…
August 28th, 2008 at 00:47 #148 - me said:
appreciate you doing that, thanks.
it was autosport.com that pushed me down the ad-blocking route. and now i doubt they get any money when i view their pages. so i’m with you there, everything in moderation.
i’ve got to be honest with you. as good intentioned as these laws were meant to be, accessibility on the web is hopelessly thought out and hopelessly implemented (and by that i mean the people who wrote the standards and the browser developers who implemented them).
the rules are far too complicated, mostly contradictory and thus only hurt those they were designed to help. we try to transcribe everything we do, but beyond that we’ve got to wait until technology catches up with reality.
August 28th, 2008 at 01:15 #149 - Ollie said:
I agree. I truly do. But go back 3 or 4 years and it was a completely different story. Very few standards, rarely practiced and even littler thought put into them. (I’m allowed to say littler ‘cos I am
)
Without really wanting to get into a debate about standards at 1am… without people pushing to improve this area of the Internet and adopting, analysing and progressing this, my website is not being read by as many people as possible. And I want my website to be read by as many people as possible.
To be honest, I probably go as far as you with standards (and I appreciate yours are more complex being a predominantly audio based service). But at the end of the day, I have a budget of £10/month which pays my hosting fees. But with common sense I can produce a site that is more accessible than a company with a budget of, well, I hate to think. I believe my articles are better presented to a wider audience than some of the team’s sites. And I’m a nobody. Sidepodcast can include itself in this as well, as can many, many others. I firmly believe that we F1-bloggers often put the MSM (teams included) to utter shame. And without the inside knowledge, that is damn impressive.
My ultimate point being: Formula One teams and drivers have the ability to produce amazing content and present it to their audience superbly. Alas, I honestly don’t think they care. And they’re missing out big time. But as the post I’m writing right now will eventually say; it’s their loss and our gain.
August 28th, 2008 at 01:26 #150 - me said:
as sidepodcast’s 3rd ever commentor, you’re somebody to us.
i hope you include bernie in that post
August 28th, 2008 at 01:37 #151 - Ollie said:
Oh my, do I actually want to click that link? I sent out an email to Steven Roy from the Steven Roy Show earlier, thanking him for his quality contributions to BlogF1 and pointed out that his first comment fell on the very exact day of BlogF1’s second birthday. I wonder if he clicked that link as well…?
Edit: Okay, that was cool. I remember being the first commenter on the old Sidepodcast forum as well. But the now I feel very old all of a sudden.
August 28th, 2008 at 01:39 #152 - me said:
your opening gambit included the phrase:
“Schumacher: A very fast but sadly-tainted genius.”
need i say more?
August 28th, 2008 at 01:46 #153 - Ollie said:
Quite.Possibly? Depends on your viewpoint, I guess.I actually remember and often quote in real life Christine’s follow-up:
I usually skip the whole “hatred” part. I’m too much of a diplomat sometimes.
August 28th, 2008 at 01:53 #154 - me said:
i don’t deny it (although perhaps “hate” is a bit strong). if he hadn’t retired, i doubt we’d be doing this now. although having said that, for the first time ever he made me laugh last sunday.
mostly i think because he got over himself and finally spoke to brundle on the grid (that was another reason for disliking him).
August 28th, 2008 at 02:00 #155 - Scott said:
Alejandro Agag, Campos’ business partner, is the managing director of QPR. It’s a small world, eh?
August 28th, 2008 at 02:01 #156 - me said:
suspiciously so.
August 28th, 2008 at 02:09 #157 - Steven Roy said:
I should have known that. I wonder if Adrian knows he has made this deal or whether it was all arranged at the wekend’s match.
Oliie,
I have had way more than enough arguments about Schumacher over the years to get drawn into another one. Let’s say my view broadly is similar to yours although I think Stuart Codling’s comment on Jabby Crombac’s comment on Schumacher summed him up nicely. It is amazing what Crombac could express with just one word.
Now unlike you lot I have to go to bed. & remember it is not a real shave unless it is with a Philips shaver
August 28th, 2008 at 07:05 #158 - Alex Andronov said:
I do read your personal blog Ollie if that helps!
August 28th, 2008 at 08:36 #159 - Christine said:
Did you ever think that was a sentence you’d write?
August 28th, 2008 at 08:56 #160 - Alex Andronov said:
Ferrari got clean away with their dangerous release of Philipe Massa’s car. Despite there only being a whisker’s breadth between the cars Ferrari were only fined. Many had predicted they would have their points cut. It was in the opinion of many a very close shave.
I personally would like to say I haven’t seen a shave as close as that without a Philips Shaver.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:00 #161 - Alex Andronov said:
At what point did Christine stop being Chris? Was it just to stop people thinking me was Chris?
August 28th, 2008 at 09:06 #162 - Alex Andronov said:
This is bizarre listening to the first sidepodcast episode…
It’s about Kimi struggling to qualify well, and drivers heading off with the fuel hose still attached.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:09 #163 - Christine said:
No, no, no, no! Don’t listen to the first episodes. I’ll die of embarrassment.
Re the name. I always wanted to be called Chris. I had my way for about two episodes, before ‘me’ convinced me to use Christine. And it turns out he was right because I much prefer it.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:10 #164 - Stuart C said:
Morning all,
Very interesting stuff overnight.
Well, some far-sighted soul (not me) arranged for our stand at the ASI to be right by the bar. After a hard day of yattering into a microphone the vocal chords must be soothed.
Bloggers certainly operate without many of the constraints of the traditional media. The response to the spanking story earlier in the year was a case in point: a veritable orgy of comment (pardon the phraseology) while us mainstream types were interrupting our lawyers’ breakfasts with niggling-but-important dialogue such as “Is it really him? Will we breach any statutes by following it up?”
Ads tend to work on click-throughs, though, which is why most of the independent news sites follow up on any old noise. No new content = fewer views = less money coming in.
Campos and Agag made an awful lot of money a few years ago by snapping up the rights to the Spanish F1 TV coverage for a pittance when there was no interest in it – just before a young chap called Alonso, managed by a fellow named Campos, got his F1 break via a chap named Briatore (also ‘involved’ in QPR!), thereby making those TV rights worth substantially more valuable than they had been… Funny old world.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:14 #165 - Alex Andronov said:
Funnily enough I think “me” has changed the most.
His voice even sounds different. Are you sure you didn’t swap him mid season like with the Stig?
I think Christine suits you better too.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:16 #166 - Alex Andronov said:
What are the chances of that happening eh?
August 28th, 2008 at 09:17 #167 - Christine said:
I think perhaps it’s because I used to make him read stuff out loud. He works best when not constrained to lifting the written word off the page.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:27 #168 - Alex Andronov said:
Ah that makes sense. Sometimes he seems to get bored in the middle of his own sentences
I promise to stop listening now. It’s Me’s fault anyway he provided the link!
You both sound much more natural these days which is a very good thing
August 28th, 2008 at 09:48 #169 - me said:
that doesn’t surprise me.
before we started, christine was already doing a little audio work and i knew she had a pretty good voice. i on the other hand was never meant to be in charge of a microphone.
18 months on, and still can’t read out loud
it is embarrassing, but that’s what they are there for. same as the video archives (some truly awful early stuff in there). i suspect we’ll look back on the live stuff one day and cringe just as much.
August 28th, 2008 at 09:50 #170 - me said:
i do what??
August 28th, 2008 at 10:12 #171 - Alex Andronov said:
Well now what I said sounds much worse than I meant it. Sometimes you seemed in that first podcast to trail off towards the end of your sentences getting lower in the tone of your voice.
Now it seems that you are more excited by what you are saying so your voice tends to go up towards the end. Not AQI, but… You simply sound more enthused now I think.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:21 #172 - Alex Andronov said:
And yes that should have been “seemed” not “seems”, but I was still listening to the first podcast at the time so the tense was right (in my head).
August 28th, 2008 at 10:35 #173 - me said:
ahh, cool
lemmie know if i do it in future though.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:38 #174 - Alex Andronov said:
I doubt you will. It was this that was making me think you sounded so different in the olden days.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:02 #175 - me said:
thinking back (and i haven’t listened for ages), but i used to forget to breathe.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:16 #176 - Flibster said:
Just listened to the 2006 review podcasts.
There seemed to be a lot of dribbling in Buttons direction going on.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:19 #177 - Christine said:
STOP IT!!
Oh, ‘me’ is so dead for linking to the early work. It’s fine that it’s up there, but we don’t want to go pointing people in that direction.
Jeez louise.
Is there an emoticon for ‘furiously blushing’?
August 28th, 2008 at 11:30 #178 - Alex Andronov said:
To be fair it really was a very suave overtaking manoeuvre that Jenson did
Sorry Christine…
August 28th, 2008 at 11:35 #179 - Alex Andronov said:
I think this might work:
Not that you really need to blush. It’s not that embarrassing – honest!
August 28th, 2008 at 11:37 #180 - Steven Roy said:
I read the comments on that first podcast last night but if it is so interesting I will sort out some time to listen to it later.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:38 #181 - Alex Andronov said:
oh dear!
August 28th, 2008 at 11:43 #182 - Steven Roy said:
There was a discussion going on a couple of days ago about doing live commenting on an old race in the off season. Maybe we could get everyone together and do live commenting on an old podcast.
Just a suggestion. I must dig through some of the stuff from before I found this site. I always planned to but this may just have provided the motivation.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:46 #183 - Alex Andronov said:
Lou seems to really like one of the old British Grand Prix ones.
We are in so much trouble.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:49 #184 - Christine said:
Wonderful. I am so glad this is catching on.
It’s kinda like when your mum gets out the baby photos for your significant other.
You know they exist, you were just hoping that they’d be forgotten.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:52 #185 - me said:
both british gp podcasts turned out pretty well. i wouldn’t call it old though
i’ve linked to old shows in the past. this has never happened before?
sorry.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:52 #186 - Alex Andronov said:
Me… Just a suggestion. I’d stop uploading those baby photos to flickr…
By the way, the blush is : oops : without the spaces between the colons. Or perhaps ;oops; with colons instead of semicolons.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:53 #187 - Alex Andronov said:
That’s why I worry that it might be my fault…
August 28th, 2008 at 12:06 #188 - Episode 74 - You’re Not Supposed to be Here, I Haven’t Changed Alonso | F1 NEWS said:
[...] Episode 74 – You’re Not Supposed to be Here, I Haven’t Changed Alonso [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 12:07 #189 - Alianora La Canta said:
Going over the Dewey decimal system at the school’s library would be my bet…. {Jordan Allen – 156 comments ago}
Good point. Maybe it was a library school? I don’t know, because I woke up before the dream got any further…
The only thing I can think of and it is pure speculation is that the politicians from Valencia wanted the track to get all the publicity from its first race and bunged McNally a few quid to forego his rights. {Steven Roy – 149 comments ago}
Interesting one. Allsport, who are responsible for trackside advertising, used to be owned by Paddy McNally, but is now owned by the Formula One Group (according to Wikipedia, this has been the case for two years). Therefore CVC is the current owner of the organisation. As of 2004, it cost an average of $1m to have 16 billboards and a bridge. They had six or seven advertisers at the time, but they could have had more had they chosen to – and surely CVC will pressure Allsport to have more (and charge more) to pay the bills. So it would have cost over $10m for Valencia to have had no advertising this year, and probably more like $20-30m.
Mind you, if they really are trying to make this the new Monaco, then it might be that Paddy McNally extended to them the same offer as Monaco (the Monegasque authorities are allowed to sell their own advertising, one of several perks unique to the Principality).
Also, I think the lack of advertising may have made the problem of identifying which corner was which worse. I know I never figured the difference between any of them except Turn 1 (at the start), Turn 10 (immediately after the bridge) and Turn 25 (which had the pit lane entrance as a giveaway).
I wonder what Bernie could have done if the teams had decided to take their yachts out to work on them. {Steven Roy – 146 comments ago}
Vijay Mallya brought his boat out and it didn’t seem to cause a problem with Bernie, so presumably Bernie would have been powerless to stop the teams coming out with their yachts.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:13 #190 - Steven Roy said:
Thanks Ali,
I didn’t know Paddy McNally had disappeared from the scene. I am surprised I didn’t notice that.
It was when I was thinking about how difficult corner identification was that I realised there were no ads.
Vijay’s boat doesn’t have 40 foot long adverts down the side of it so I am sure Bernie has no objection to it.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:21 #191 - me said:
it also came in via the sea, whereas the cup yachts would have to launch from land, and thus pass right through the motorhomes. i could see vijay himself objecting to that.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:28 #192 - Steven Roy said:
If I had been Bernie I would have been on to the America’s Cup teams and their sponsors and offered them a deal. They pay a few quid and in return they get world wide TV coverage to a brand new audience. The F1 teams may have objected but what is difference to them between trackside adverts and off track adverts.
I would rather have looked at yachts than an industrial estate.
August 28th, 2008 at 13:30 #193 - lou said:
They are mean
I’ll accept money in turn for a photo of ‘me’
It wont be cheap though…
August 28th, 2008 at 14:21 #194 - Jordan Allen said:
Well since I do not think that Chris has ever called herself “Christopher” we can obviously deduce that she can still call herself “Chris”.
People stopped think that “Me” was called “Chris” when they started assigning the name of “Pat”, then they gave up on that and he was assinged the name of “Dan”, then “Sam”, and finally “Mike”. The next one’s “Nick”…..
August 28th, 2008 at 16:06 #195 - Flibster said:
How about going through alphabetically – start with Alphonse?
August 28th, 2008 at 17:27 #196 - Scott Woodwiss said:
while i remember it, a friend of mine is going to put some f1 highlights of certain races up on drop.io, so i can download them to make a video. hope that’s ok
August 28th, 2008 at 17:45 #197 - Jordan Allen said:
It was based on most common “English” either/or names. Thus, Chris (Christopher/Christine), Pat (Patrick/Patrica), Dan (Daniel/Daneilla), Sam (Samuel/Samanthra) to the more observe Mike (Michael/Michelle) and finally Nick (Nicholas/Nicole)…
August 28th, 2008 at 17:51 #198 - Steven Roy said:
Jordan?
August 28th, 2008 at 17:55 #199 - Jordan Allen said:
What happened then? Did Button not crash that day?
.
August 28th, 2008 at 18:11 #200 - Jordan Allen said:
Not really. pre-late 1980’s “Jordan” was not really that common. I took it for granted that if I heard the name Jordan that meant somone was after me. Jordan has not really become that popular as a guy’s name until first Michael Jordan played some basketball and that cursed Jordan came along from the pre-teen group “New Kids On The Block”. (I curse you more, Fat One!”) A few years later the number of times I heard my nmaed cursed when up through the roof at the local supermaeket. Sure enough some young mother is chsing a little brat around….
I have not heard of Jordan used as a gals name until about the late 1990’s. When that model “Jordan” started posing around the Jordan pits….
So I figure there going to be a 20 year spread where “Jordan” is going to be abnormally common, but after that the common names will go back to the “Tom Dick and Harrys of the world.
Whoever, If I have turly inspired your life to the extent that you wish to name your offspring after me, I will not contest your decision. Just make sure that the daughter’s middle name is “Mercedes” and if you have a son, please take “Ford” as the middle name.
August 28th, 2008 at 18:22 #201 - Alex Andronov said:
There’s always Alex. Just saying…
August 28th, 2008 at 18:31 #202 - Jordan Allen said:
See, Steven, even “Alex” is more common than “Jordan”, and the weird thing is with that name, it is harder to find the Alexanders than the Alexandrias……
August 28th, 2008 at 18:39 #203 - Steven Roy said:
Just out of curiosity why do you think ‘me’s’ name is ambidextrous?
August 28th, 2008 at 18:48 #204 - Dan Brunell said:
It’s times like this I wish I was a millionare…
LINK: http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=USA&screen=lotdetailsNoFlash&iSaleItemNo=3965994&iSaleNo=16133&iSaleSectionNo=2
August 28th, 2008 at 18:49 #205 - Alex Andronov said:
I have to say this whole conversation has probably got a bit out of hand…
August 28th, 2008 at 18:57 #206 - me said:
there were a lot of 1 year old lewis’ at silverstone this year.
August 28th, 2008 at 18:58 #207 - me said:
August 28th, 2008 at 20:31 #208 - lou said:
That’s mean
August 28th, 2008 at 21:52 #209 - Jordan Allen said:
Alex:
That is proof positive that “ME” real name is not “Ambidextrous” as this conversion would safely be in BOTH of me’s equally capaable hands if he were named “Ambidextrous”.
August 28th, 2008 at 22:03 #210 - Steven Roy said:
This conversation is becoming infantile. Speaking of which when do we get to see Christine’s baby photos?
August 29th, 2008 at 03:12 #211 - Alianora La Canta said:
So, being unsafe is fine now. As long as you don’t get a sporting advantage… {Flibster – 148 comments ago}
So it’s official. The Sporting Regulations as written no longer govern F1. Which means that the high-level FIA members have now lost control of the regulations, and that it is now completely in the hands of four stewards. Does the FIA even realise that it can no longer plausibly appeal its own stewards as a result of this decision, even if the written rules back the FIA up?
The mind boggles…
do you think they’ve already engraved massa’s name on the wdc trophy? {me – 147 comments ago}
Hopefully not. Though I suspect the only reason they haven’t is in case Raikkonen breaks out of his mid-season lull and overhauls Felipe
I do hope they got a discount on the next batch of engines though. {Flibster – 140 comments ago}
I hope so too. Given that the Ferraris seem to be magnetically attracted to Adrian’s car, I’d suggest a 50% discount on the engine-and-KERS package would be appropriate.
Is the Massa/Sutil pitlane incident “unsafe” enough to equate Hamilton crashing into Kimi (who is waiting for a red light to change) and therefore should suffer from a 10 place grid penality next race? {Jordan Allen – 138 comments ago}
Yes. Although I think he punished himself pretty comprehensively in any case, it would have been entirely reasonable for the FIA to give a 10-place penalty on the grid to Lewis, given that none of the other three punishments were of any applicability to a situation when Hamilton immediately DNFed.
Or is the Mass/Sutil pitlane incident “unsafe” enough to give Massa a 15 second, 25 second or a drive-thru penity, in which case, the race becomes a processional James Allen/Lewis Hamilton lovefest about now Hamilton gets another “Senna-sque” win? {Jordan Allen – 138 comments ago}
I expected a drive-through (and then hoped for a 10-place drop when the delay was announced). And if the subsequent Hamilton-led race was dull, we can blame the state of F1 performance and James Allen for it. Regulation breaches have to be punished consistently.
i don’t think alonso’s friday penalty was warranted unless some unseen-by-us rule change occurred during the three week break {me – 135 comments ago}
I can confirm that the Sporting Regulations haven’t changed since May.
I have no idea how the procedure for announcing a stewards investigation works. {Steven Roy – 127 comments ago}
The stewards stay in the Race Control building for the duration of the race weekend. This building is required by Appendix 4 of the Sporting Regulations. That’s all four stewards. While I cannot confirm whether Alan Donnelly literally stands over the other three stewards, he is supposed to be in the same building.
Race Control also houses the clerk of the course and radio contacts with the Safety Car and the marshal posts.
The basic mechanism for announcing an investigation is thus:
- Marshal spots suspicious event
- The marshal who isn’t waving a flag radios race control
- Radio control sends a messenger (I assume it’s a real messenger given the disastrous recent e-mail trials) to the clerk of the course, assuming the clerk of the course hasn’t decided to take radio messages directly (which he is entitled, but not obliged, to do)
- Clerk of the course decides whether it is worth bothering the stewards with the event (there may be a discussion with the deputy clerk of the course, who is based in race control but can move elsewhere during the weekend if necessary)
- If the clerk’s opinion is that the event should be upgraded to an Incident, the deputy clerk of the course or a more junior messenger is sent to the stewards’ office
- A message is sent by race control to state that the incident is under investigation
This close working is why the clerk of the course and the stewards stay in the same building.
If they wanted to play as safe as suggested, Ferrari would have to have waited until Sutil cleared pit lane, which would have Hamilton far to close for comfort. {Jordan Allen – 121 comments ago}
Yes, that’s what happens when teams play by the rules. Which is why they need to be enforced – because if they weren’t enforced, the ability of the race to continue would have impeded (you can’t race with a blocked pitlane, which would have happened had Massa and Sutil collided). In other circumstances, pitlane injuries could have occurred.
dear ing renault f1 team, i have but one suggestion for you web site next year… fix it! {me – 120 comments ago}
I also wish the survey hadn’t assumed I was a regular user of the site – after all, the main site doesn’t even work properly on my computer…
where my room has a view overlooking MacDonald’s car park (I got up from my chair just then to check where the apostrophe should go {Stuart C – 117 comments ago}
There were two McDonald brothers, so it should technically go after the s. Sadly, the version McDonald’s uses is only appropriate if there had been one McDonald brother.
August 29th, 2008 at 03:22 #212 - me said:
yeah, there were a couple of leading questions in there
August 29th, 2008 at 06:50 #213 - Jordan Allen said:
Ah, the wonderful difference between “coulda and did”….
I was comparing a stupid accident made by Hamilton to a non-accident by Massa/Sutil. As you cleary saw, there was no accident, no fault can be blamed, and therefore no penality should be applied to Massa.
But again, look at were they are. The first pit box behind the exit. There should be no mechanics on the pit lane in front of Massa as there is no pit boxes and therefore no car to service. Massa wanted to move into the clean side of the pit lane but Sutil was there.So Massa went straight ahead. Massa at some point will notice that he is boxing himself in due to the merging concrete barrier on his right side. Massa drops in behind Sutil.
I will leave it up to you to figure out if Massa was smart enough to go s little slower than Sutil, so that Massa can drop back behind Sutil or brake near the barrier. I do not really care, but he got behind Sutil.
Finally. Massa went side-by-side with Sutil becasue it was quite safe to do so, until the barrier started to merge. Massa knew that his way was clear as he did not have a lollipop in front of his face during the pit stop. (You do not have to be looking at that LCD, the glare will tell you the colour of the light, and it is proability to bright anyway.) Massa could have been able to scan the pit lane for any hazzards anyway.
A clear road and a pit wide that is wide enough for two cars. Sounds normal to me. Just like a motoristmergeing on to the highway.
Ahh, and now Ali, in a round-about way, sees my point. A blocked pitlane would have happened had Massa and Sutil colloded. I agree with that, and a penality would be deserved, something like a 10-placed grid drop, Right Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Rosberg?
See, my problem is NO ACCIDENT OCCURRED, BECASUE MASSA SAW SUTIL ON HIS LEFT AND THE WALL ON HIS RIGHT AND FRONT AND MOVED BEHIND SUTIL.
Good Driving has not hurt anyone yet. What you saw in the pitlane, was textbook good driving.
August 29th, 2008 at 09:26 #214 - Alex Andronov said:
Why is there a traffic light at the end of the pit lane? Are you saying drivers shouldn’t be penalised if they drive through that but manage to avoid an accident?
August 29th, 2008 at 12:39 #215 - Alianora La Canta said:
Warning! Long comment alert!
However, one F1 team is currently engaging in a charm offensive with what we might call the ’second string’ websites (ie news sites with no access, such as Planet F1, Buspass, etc). {Stuart C – 125 comments ago}
Who are Buspass? I’ve heard of Pitpass.com – are you punning on their name or referring to something else entirely?
How have you arrived at your preferences? {Stuart C – 124 comments ago}
In my case, I started in 2000 with Yahoo!’s news portal. Two years later, I got my own computer internet-enabled and discovered the delights of grandprix.com. During the 2003 off-season, I got seriously bored and stumbled upon the Home of F1 forum via a Yahoo! search (I’d lurked on forumula1.com before that, but was put off by commentors who were astounded about the colour of Damon Hill’s hair…)
This arrangement suited me fine until a forum war occurred in 2005. This resulted into the forum splitting. I ended up being part of both the old forum and the Formula1home.com forum.
At about the same time, I started lurking on the Jordan forum at SportNetwork (which is now the Force India forum at SportNetwork), which I found via a link provided in a Talkback feature in pitpass.com. This turned out to be a good place to find news, because the multilingual members could point us to items from Russia, Holland and India about the team. I am now running their predictions competition.
The main expansion of my F1 internet horizons occurred when I became a co-admin at Formula1home.com and, in August 2006, was given a blog. Once I had my blog in a fit state to be seen, I decided that it might be worth a look at some other blogs to improve my blog’s reach (until then, all my blog comments had come from within the forum). Using a Yahoo! search, I found F1 Fanatic, started commenting and went through every F1 blog link on the site systematically. Finding about four that interested me enough to comment on in turn (BlogF1, FunF1, F1 Latest (the predecesor to F1 Insight) and The Worst Sports Blog Ever). Gradually word got out, people started commenting in my blog and I’ve followed up those links. I’ve also followed up the links of some commenters who post in the other blogs.
I started off using ITV, Autosport, grandprix.com and crash.net etc but I have gradually found myself switching to forums, blogs and sidepodcast. {Steven Roy – 122 comments ago}
I still use several news sites, but I’ve found that forums and blogs each have their own contribution to make to the whole. It takes an awful lot of information to get a full view of F1, and I’ve learned it’s not just news anymore.
I rarely go near a team site unless someone points me to something on it. The only exception was for the above reviews which resulted in me deciding not to visit most of them again for a very long time. {Steven Roy – 122 comments ago}
Reading the reviews and testing the sites made me feel lucky to be a Force India fan, as it appeared to be one of only two sites (the other being Williams) worth a return visit. The fact that one is seriously into social networking and the other is experimenting with Web 2.0 stuff tells you that there is a big divide between the teams which “get” the internet and those who don’t. Either they’re doing all the bells and whistles or they’re not even at the stage of creating a properly functional and accessible site.
I hesitate to guess at the exact proportions but you would be amazed at how many people enjoy F1 but aren’t quite fanatical enough to spend a goodly proportion of their waking hours scouring the web for facts and opinions. {Stuart C – 120 comments ago}
I can imagine it’s a lot – apart from my web statistics, I know my dad fits the category you’ve just mentioned (he gets most of the news from me and about 2 minutes every couple of days on the Yahoo! portal).
I think it’s a bit dangerous to take the views of blog posters (by nature vociferous and opinionated) at face value without a counterbalancing look {Stuart C – 104 comments ago}
Good point. We do tend to be pretty noisy, which can drown out those who prefer to give their opinion in a quieter fashion…
Well, at least we’ll get to see if the new concessionaires in our cafe can make coffee that doesn’t taste like it’s already been through the machine 20 times. {Stuart C – 104 comments ago}
That sounds horrible. I’m not surprised that you want an improvement in the coffee!
YouTube commenters belong to a higher order of madness… {Stuart C – 89 comments ago}
I noticed. One of several reasons why I decided not to put any of my podcasts up there (the main other one being that I couldn’t figure out how to get anything to upload on to that site in the first place…)
But Renault’s interraction thing this year was just attrocious. I visited, attempted to sign up, wasn’t sure if I’d been successful and it went even further downhill from there. {Ollie – 70 comments ago}
Having taken eight months to convince the server at the Fisichella Forum to let me post, I can sympathise. The only thing I can say in mitigation about my own experience was that I do feel like it’s worth the time I spend there now. But signing up for stuff should be easy. If requiring a log in to comment at a blog is so off-putting, how off-putting must it be to not know if you’re signed up – or needing an age to complete the sign-up?
Broken links, flash that doesn’t work properly, stupid effects that just annoy every usuer but one. And regarding Autosport, frickin’ adverts that hide half the poorly written content in the first place. {Ollie – 70 comments ago}
It’s ridiculous that the teams and drivers, who probably pay thousands of pounds for their sites to be designed, get in return sites that work worse than some independent sites that would have cost less than £100 for initial set-up even if the site owners had been paid professional rates for their work.
From my experience, this is 100% accurate, if not more so than the numbers suggested. But anyone who even understands the basic where’s and why’s of the Internet will understand that pageviews do not equal engaged readers/users/purchasers of anything online. {Ollie – 70 comments ago}
I know I have an average of 45 full-time-equivalent viewers from my statistics, but only half-a-dozen of them regularly comment. However, this surely hides quite a few people who took one look at the site and never revisited (and quite a few spammers!) as well as some regulars.
the rules are far too complicated, mostly contradictory and thus only hurt those they were designed to help. {me – 69 comments ago}
A lot of the rules are either coding issues (stuff relating to tags, text and technologies) or fairly easy to explain (make sure there’s decent contrast between background and text, label links accurately). However some of it is virtually impossible to implement for certain kinds of site (how is a live streaming site supposed to subtitle its content?) and a lot of it is contradicted by the advice received for making good sites.
In my Designing Usable Web Sites class, accessibility principles were forever being conflicted by design principles, leading to lots of arguments from me, confused looks from the other students and low marks in general for the module. If the people who are supposed to be checking web accessibility (for the module was supposed to be an introduction to that kind of role) don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, the rest of us don’t have much chance.
My ultimate point being: Formula One teams and drivers have the ability to produce amazing content and present it to their audience superbly. Alas, I honestly don’t think they care. And they’re missing out big time. But as the post I’m writing right now will eventually say; it’s their loss and our gain. {Ollie – 68 comments ago}
Most of them don’t appear to care, that is true. Apart from the occasional one where the staff have been known to drop in on forum conversation, there seems to be a vast divide between users and site owners/organisers. In a Web 2.0 world, F1 professionals are still firmly rooted in Web 1.0, mid-90s attitudes. I suspect most of them don’t even realise that’s the problem. Considering that this is a high-tech sport, that’s very strange.
But yes, the extra viewers to my blog generated by the inability of the F1 fraternity to provide information in a timely, accessible (note to the FIA: PDFs don’t always work on my computer) and interesting manner is appreciated.
without people pushing to improve this area of the Internet and adopting, analysing and progressing this, my website is not being read by as many people as possible. And I want my website to be read by as many people as possible. {Ollie – 68 comments ago}
There’s another benefit to building an accessible site. Search engine spiders find it easier to interpret the content, so accessible sites tend to do better on searches and therefore give themselves a better chance of garnering viewers that way.
I’m quite interested in accessibility standards, but I’m hampered by having no budget at all (my blog is hosted by a forum, the mirrors are hosted by two different social networking sites and the wiki is hosted by the wiki provider for free) and the fact that my main blog is virtually non-adjustable (it doesn’t even appear to have ALT tag options, which is a bit worrying).
That said, I’ve found a free automated web accessibility test at Cynthia Says. Apart from the expected complaints about IMG tags, I discovered that my template uses the Border attribute, which is apparently deprecated (I’m sure it wasn’t when I studied HTML, but times change). It also links different resources with the same text on the same page (and has adjacent anchors), which is apparently a no-no.
It complained that the head of my site had no META tags (which is because the tags are incorporated into the forum and are supposed to apply to the whole site – that needs investigating).
The test seriously does not like the SELECT bits in the Calender (which highlight which days I’ve put up content).
Apart from that, it was happy. It’s nice to know that apart from choosing a template of somewhat questionable accessibility (which I’m stuck with because the others I can choose from are worse), I haven’t done anything to make my site inaccessible.
I believe my articles are better presented to a wider audience than some of the team’s sites. {Ollie – 68 comments ago}
That’s very true. Some of the teams and drivers haven’t even figured out how to make a site that loads on my computer yet, let alone on my mobile (which can’t access Flash or Java, and struggles with pictures). And some of the sites I can access are very difficult for me to access (yes, Honda, I mean you). That’s with just a relatively mild developmental disability and a slightly temperamental computer that doesn’t have the software blocks usually associated with, say, libraries (which is another element of the digital divide that some teams and drivers haven’t entirely grappled with – my local public library computers tend to log out when asked to download Shockwave…) I’m sure if I had more serious disabilities, I’d have a much harder time on the internet…
Did you ever think that was a sentence you’d write? {Christine – 53 comments ago}
I think Steven Roy was gently mocking a typical F1 driver’s description of their race weekend…
Well, some far-sighted soul (not me) arranged for our stand at the ASI to be right by the bar. After a hard day of yattering into a microphone the vocal chords must be soothed. {Stuart C – 48 comments ago}
That was very good planning – must remember that tip in the unlikely circumstance that I ever need to rent out an ASI stand. Mind you, as one of the largest and most loyal stand-holders, the F1 Racing people do deserve a few perks
while us mainstream types were interrupting our lawyers’ breakfasts with niggling-but-important dialogue such as “Is it really him? Will we breach any statutes by following it up?” {Stuart C – 48 comments ago}
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who seriously doubted Max would do anything remotely like that until he admitted it. And yes, it is a lot easier to prosecute a mainstream journalist than a blogger (even though in theory the same law applies to both forms of communication), partly because bloggers rarely have any money to take and partly because it’s easier for a determined blogger to hide their tracks. Publishing a reputable (and ABC-circulation-level) magazine generally requires such things as a blatantly obvious and functional postal address…
I didn’t know Paddy McNally had disappeared from the scene. I am surprised I didn’t notice that. {Steven Roy – 17 comments ago}
Probably because we were all too busy wondering about the consequences of the banks selling up to CVC at the time. I didn’t realise until yesterday either and came across the 2007 UK Rich List as it pertains to F1, which Paddy is very squarely in.
it also came in via the sea, whereas the cup yachts would have to launch from land, and thus pass right through the motorhomes. i could see vijay himself objecting to that. {me – 16 comments ago}
Good point. Maybe the F1 bods thought it would be less embarassing to them if they cited something as vague as “sponsorship”…
As you cleary saw, there was no accident, no fault can be blamed, and therefore no penality should be applied to Massa. {Jordan Allen – 2 comments ago}
A lot nearly happened (a blocked pit lane at the very least, and likely damage to the course car – possibly even some risk to anyone in the course car if it was occupied) and I very much blame it on whoever at Ferrari forgot to check the state of the fast lane before letting Massa go. A punishment was in order, for the crime is unsafe release (causing an accident is punishable separately).
But again, look at were they are. The first pit box behind the exit. {Jordan Allen – 2 comments ago}
There is no “unless it’s the first pit box” exception to the rule. Any release putting one car in the path of another is unsafe, even if Massa made it less dangerous by running in an area he wouldn’t normally be allowed to use (and shouldn’t have used then either due to the bay in front being for the FIA’s use only). There may have been no mechanics, but there could have been FIA officials because the FIA are perfectly entitled to put some in that position in the regulations. There was certainly a course car, and Massa can be thankful that it was parked as neatly as it was. But the neatness of how a course car is parked is not supposed to affect the outcome of the race.
The rules are clear. Pit lane releases are supposed to be done in such a way that the question of figuring out which of two cars alongside in the pit lane never arises except when mechanically necessary.
Ahh, and now Ali, in a round-about way, sees my point. {Jordan Allen – 2 comments ago}
a) you’ve changed your original position (from “no penalty” to “penalty”)
b) since Hamilton and Rosberg got 10-place grid drops for their actions in the Canada pit lane, that reinforces my original position
c) the FIA still isn’t empowered to fine Ferrari. It should have given one of the four penalties in the regulations. That’s the substance of my point
d) that was not good driving I saw, but bad pit lane management which forced serious evasive manuvers to negate.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:40 #216 - Alianora La Canta said:
I’ve just spent an hour typing in a comment and it’s completely disappeared. Please could someone rescue it from the spam? (By the way, Lorelle’s site is very much not spam and is about blog tips for Wordpress users!)
August 29th, 2008 at 12:47 #217 - Christine said:
Have found it for you.
Don’t know whether it’s worth posting shorter comments but more of them, in case we can’t get to the spam queue so quickly.
August 29th, 2008 at 13:04 #218 - Steven Roy said:
Actually Ali the quote was literally accurate. Williams are running a competition on their site where the prize is to drive last year’s FW29 at Silverstone. I have never known an F1 team to offer that kind of prize before. The competition is sponsored by Philips and the winners are the people who complete a three lap race round a bathroom driving a Philips shaver. The fastest sidepodcast times are starting to appear on drop.io. The intro to the competition is at http://www.williamsf1.com/news/view/581
When I do long comments anywhere now I tend to highlight and copy them. If they disappear I paste them into a Word doc just in case. May be worth a try.
August 29th, 2008 at 13:46 #219 - me said:
upgraded the akismet spam thingy last night. since then genuine comments going into spam and splog sites are getting through
i’m not sure we’ve ever lost a comment, but keeping a backup is always handy.
August 29th, 2008 at 13:54 #220 - me said:
that’s funny. when i read the original comment, my brain self corrected that word
doesn’t bode well for the future that.
ohh, nice find. this site failed. oops.
August 29th, 2008 at 13:56 #221 - Jordan Allen said:
I think a traffic light is at the end of a pit lane in order to tell the cars to stop for the safety car and a queue of cars to pass by the pit lane exit. Such was the case of Montreal.
Here the case was it was a clear green race track and the pit lane traffic light was not needed. Franky, as a RACING driver, you should have a mindset that you need to get out of pit lane as quickly as possible.
August 29th, 2008 at 14:55 #222 - Le BOL said:
Needless to say I’m scared to death when it comes to flying, I hate it. Jimmy Page used to get completely drunk bacause of the same phobia, then he’d be wheeled onto Led Zeppelin’s personal plane.
Dammit, your dream was funnier than mine!
August 29th, 2008 at 16:22 #223 - Jordan Allen said:
The hardest thing about flying as a commerical pilot is trying to figure out exactly which of the two side-by side red light sin the middle of the cockpit is the “low fuel when lit” and which one is the “open mic to the passenger’s compartment when lit.” I always get those two confused as it varies from aircraft to aircraft…..
.
Yes, Lou, that was a mean pilot’s joke.
August 29th, 2008 at 16:30 #224 - Jordan Allen said:
a) No I have not changed my original position of no penality.(I will need to restate my reasons in light of this FIA-reserved box.) If I can find something in the regulations ablout penailities for entering into this box, it would be helpful. But the charge will be for entering this box.
b) If Hamilton accident and Massa’s whatever merit the same punishment then what we are saying is Hamilton can keep crashing into the back of his main championship rivals, and only suffer 10 place grid drops. He currently has a freeie over Massa provided Raikkonen wins at Spa, and then with five races to go will Ferrari choose Raikkonen (67) or Massa (64). I highly doubt the FIA will remove a championship from someone, regardless of how it was gained. Massa’s offense sdoes not compare anywhere near to this and if you have a choice between two options for a lesser offence, choose the softer of the two. Since Ali will only follow the regs. 10 place drop or no penalty. I pick no penalty. Orders are Orders, and no sentence is the lighter sentence.
c) the FIA still isn’t empowered to fine Ferrari. It should have given one of the four penalties in the regulations. That’s the substance of my point
That’s beautiful. We can not go after the Team. (ferrari) so we will hang the innocent so that “justice” is done. cue The “Marseillaise”
–
I am strangly quite happy to see that the spirit of Maximilien Robespierre is alive and well in Ali. (If we exceute people quickly enough, by sheer numbers we will come across a guilty party…I just happen to have this guillotine thinggy here that gives people closer shaves than a Philips shaver…
And seeing how my neck is on the line whenever Sidepocast’s “People’s Representative of the Comittee of Public Safety” is on patrol,
Vive La France! Vive La Révolution!
d) that was not good driving I saw, but bad pit lane management which forced serious evasive manuvers to negate
Whatever “serious evasive manuvers” is by going straight, an accident was avoided. Good driving in my book. Bad driving would have resulted in an accident.
August 29th, 2008 at 17:03 #225 - Jordan Allen said:
August 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pmJordan Allen said:
Alianora La Canta said:
a) you’ve changed your original position (from “no penalty” to “penalty”)
ai) No I have not changed my original position of no penality of an unsafe position, exiting the pit lane. Avoiding an accident should not give me (the driver) the same penality as casuing an accident, else why brother avioding the accident in the first place, you might even take out your nearest championship rival with you as Hamilton did in Montreal.
aii) If there is any regualtions for entering this FIA-reserved box in front front of the Ferrari box and there resultant penailities they will have to be consulted separatey. That does bring up an intersting case if what happens if you overshoot your pitbox and a bit of the car ends up in another teams pitbox when we get back to slicks.
The thing is when the lollipop goes to “go” what is the driver supposed to do? Go.
August 29th, 2008 at 17:46 #226 - Jordan Allen said:
I am not qualified expect on this, but I think those people who suffer from a fear of flying are actually suffer from a fear of loss of control. Now I am pretty sure that you can not book any useful time in a real flight sim, but see if you can get inside of any airplane’s cockpit on staic display at the local museum intil you get comfortabel with all the controls. Then book an introductory flight at some flying school. Once you are up, the Instructor usually turns full control over to you. As long as you keep the airplane in the middle of the sky (The edges of sky are defined as the ground, man-made structures, mountains and outer space), your okay.
August 29th, 2008 at 17:56 #227 - me said:
personally, i only fear incompetent pilots
August 29th, 2008 at 18:03 #228 - Jordan Allen said:
Your fear is misplaced “Me”. Incompetent pilots can only cause one fatal crash. Incompetent Air Traffic Controllers on the other hand. . . .
(
August 29th, 2008 at 18:20 #229 - Steven Roy said:
Very sneaky subliminal plug. I was reading the bits of the F1 Racing Ferrari special earlier and noticed a full page ad for this competition. I don’t know who designed the ad but there is nothing on it to grab your attention. I only read it because it had a Philips logo and anything with a Philips logo is usually worth reading.
August 29th, 2008 at 19:01 #230 - Jordan Allen said:
Yes, I will go to great lengths to get “a-head” of my rivals in this competition. Even bad puns.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:10 #231 - Alianora La Canta said:
Don’t know whether it’s worth posting shorter comments but more of them, in case we can’t get to the spam queue so quickly. {Christine – 14 comments ago}
That’s probably a good idea anyway – I hadn’t realised it at the time, but the comment ended up about nine screens long…
August 30th, 2008 at 11:18 #232 - Alianora La Canta said:
When I do long comments anywhere now I tend to highlight and copy them. If they disappear I paste them into a Word doc just in case. May be worth a try. {Steven Roy – 14 comments ago}
This would be a good thing to do (and in fact I copy some of my longer posts to Wordpad already).
* – long story involving electricity bills. Please don’t ask.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:20 #233 - Alianora La Canta said:
upgraded the akismet spam thingy last night. since then genuine comments going into spam and splog sites are getting through {me – 14 comments ago}
Sorry to hear that. Hope the problem manages to resolve itself soon – splogs are a horrible curse upon the internet.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:24 #234 - Alianora La Canta said:
ohh, nice find. this site failed. oops. {me – 14 comments ago}
Considering the vast number of things Cynthia Says checks for, I’m not entirely surprised. Like they said in The Matrix, “Everyone fails the first time”.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:39 #235 - Alianora La Canta said:
If I can find something in the regulations ablout penailities for entering into this box, it would be helpful. But the charge will be for entering this box. {Jordan Allen – 10 comments ago}
Bizarrely enough, the regulation that barred Massa from entering that part of the inner lane is in the Weighing section of the Sporting Regulations:
Garage is interpreted as including the inner lane of the area adjacent to the garage, otherwise every team would break Article 29.1 a) every race:
Felipe Massa did not have specific permission to enter the FIA garage at that time. He is not a scrutineer or official. Therefore breached Article 26.1 e).
Article 16.1 states that
Therefore Massa should have been penalised for entering the FIA garage.
Since it is not permitted to enter the FIA garage without specific permission, the pit lane release remains unsafe and therefore should be penalised separately. So that’s two penalties Massa should have received…
Nobody is arguing that the FIA have written the regulations in an entirely sensible manner. But Massa and Ferrari broke them and should have faced the correct consequences.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:58 #236 - Alianora La Canta said:
If Hamilton accident and Massa’s whatever merit the same punishment then what we are saying is Hamilton can keep crashing into the back of his main championship rivals, and only suffer 10 place grid drops. {Jordan Allen – 11 comments ago}
They were different events. Massa (or rather his team) were guilty of an unsafe release. Hamilton was guilty of causing an accident (his pit-lane release was safe, but causing an accident is itself penalisable under the Regulations). You can argue whether the regulations breaches are equivalent, but it would have been difficult to penalise Hamilton further than he was for his incident without invoking suspended or actual race bans – something the FIA refuses to do these days and arguably excessive since Raikkonen’s pit lane release looked unsafe to me (in that he nearly collided with Kubica coming out of the pits).
And that little incident underlines why unsafe pit lane releases should be penalised consistently according to the Regulations. Maybe if Ferrari had known that sending Raikkonen into Kubica’s path would be penalised significantly in the first place, they wouldn’t have been alongside each other when Hamilton messed up his pit lane run, there would have been no accident and Raikkonen might have won the race. Granted, Hamilton might have also have won it in theory, but his reckless driving would probably have merited a penalty under Article 40.7 irrespective of whether an accident was caused, which would have lost him the race and quite a few points.
What I am saying is that punishing drivers who DNF is difficult, but punishing those who are still running some time after the incident in question occurs consistently would help a lot. Though I will admit that if the FIA becomes more prepared to consider suspended bans for serious offences (and applies these fairly and consistently), that would help too.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:09 #237 - Alianora La Canta said:
He [Hamilton] currently has a freeie over Massa provided Raikkonen wins at Spa, and then with five races to go will Ferrari choose Raikkonen (67) or Massa (64). {Jordan Allen – 12 comments ago}
That presupposes that Raikkonen will win at Spa (a difficult thing to guarantee – a dry circuit would probably benefit Ferrari or BMW depending on Safety Car interventions and a wet one McLaren) and that Ferrari is inclined to go down the 1-2 route. Hamilton may have had a freeie over Massa had a penalty been issued, but the exact value of the freeie is difficult to calculate at this juncture.
The thing is that Raikkonen isn’t cut out to be a No. 2, even if he decides to accede to it in public. His approach to racing is to give it what he’s got without regard to psuedopolitical or tactical consequences. This is why he tends to have a less reliable car than his team-mates, but it is also why he defeated Massa last year.
Massa can be a No. 2, but is currently performing better. Name me a driver who is willing to accede to No. 2 status when they are blatantly faster than the intended No. 1 driver at the time of asking and I will name you someone who is not going to be in F1 much longer, and probably shouldn’t be there anyway.
I suspect that Ferrari will basically do a 1.5-1.5 arrangement until one driver mathematically cannot claim the championship. This gives them the added advantage that they can play the moral angle against McLaren, who are in an implied 1-2 situation right now. That could prove useful if they need to sway an FIA court at some point before the end of the season.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:12 #238 - Alianora La Canta said:
I highly doubt the FIA will remove a championship from someone, regardless of how it was gained. {Jordan Allen – 13 comments ago}
They removed a Constructor’s Championship from McLaren last year, so I think they would be quite willing to remove championships this year – as long as they felt they could do it without upsetting “public opinion” too much.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:18 #239 - Alianora La Canta said:
Since Ali will only follow the regs. 10 place drop or no penalty. I pick no penalty. Orders are Orders, and no sentence is the lighter sentence. {Jordan Allen – 14 comments ago}
The only way the FIA could have issued no penalty without breaching the regulations themselves was to use the Article 16.2 get-out clause of declaring Ferrari not guilty in the first place. Otherwise the interpretation of Article 16.2 contradicts Article 16.3. Article 16.2 is probably there to cover the FIA when someone argues that the stewards missed an obviously penalisable incident – the stewards can simply turn round and say they didn’t see enough evidence to establish guilt.
Internally inconsistent regulations are not new to the FIA, but since there is a logically consistent way of interpreting the regulations in this instance, I would have to say the moment the FIA announced that Ferrari was guilty, their only options were a 25-second penalty or a 10-place grid drop. Which is the lighter punishment is debatable, but the FIA removed the “no penalty” option when they declared Ferrari guilty.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:23 #240 - Alianora La Canta said:
c) the FIA still isn’t empowered to fine Ferrari. It should have given one of the four penalties in the regulations. That’s the substance of my point {Alianora La Canta – 24 comments ago}
That’s beautiful. We can not go after the Team. (ferrari) so we will hang the innocent so that “justice” is done. cue The “Marseillaise” {Jordan Allen – 15 comments ago}
Punishments against the driver penalise the team equally – after all there is a Constructor’s Championship as well as a Driver’s Championship – so dishing out one of the punishments in the regulations is not “We can not go after the team” but “We will punish the team in a sporting way”. It is punishing the guilty (and depending on the nature of the incident, the driver may also be guilty). There are 600 or more people at the Ferrari factory who did not contribute to the incident, but nobody complains when they are punished for something over which they had no control. Teams win together and lose together (at least if they’re working properly).
August 30th, 2008 at 12:28 #241 - Alianora La Canta said:
I am strangly quite happy to see that the spirit of Maximilien Robespierre is alive and well in Ali. {Jordan Allen – 16 comments ago}
Not in that sense (I want a revolution, but mostly to replace the F1 portion of the FIA with a governing body that can at least manage competency in the task of governing F1). For the reason given in the previous post, punishing teams will always involve punishing the innocent along with the guilty (except in the very rare instance when every single member of the team was involved in some act against the regulations). If you punish individuals without punishing the team’s innocent members, you basically limit yourself to fines and bans from the pitlane. And even then compensation would have to be given to the team for any bans in the form of ensuring the same number of passes are available and that the replacement is of equal competence…
August 30th, 2008 at 12:30 #242 - Alianora La Canta said:
Whatever “serious evasive manuvers” is by going straight, an accident was avoided. {Jordan Allen – 16 comments ago}
Breaking another regulation by heading into the FIA section of the pit lane surely has to count as serious evasive manuevers.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:38 #243 - Alianora La Canta said:
Avoiding an accident should not give me (the driver) the same penality as casuing an accident, else why brother avioding the accident in the first place, {Jordan Allen – 16 comments ago}
Unsafe pit lane releases have to result in penalties, otherwise there’s no incentive for teams to avoid collisions in the pit lane. As proven in Montreal, no amount of skilful driving on the part of the driver unsafely released will protect him sometimes. When Raikkonen heard that Hamilton had been given a 10-place penalty for crashing into him, do you really think that he was thinking “Oh goodie, that makes up for the 6-or-more points I lost through the incident?” Would he have thought that if a suspended ban was given? Or an outright one? I suspect not.
Even a ban immediately carried out is only of sporting use to the victim if the victim scores more points in the race(s) when the ban occurs than in the race where the incident occurred – and nobody can guarantee that. As I said seven comments ago, had Ferrari acted like unsafe pit lane releases were consistently penalised in Montreal, there would have been no accident, Raikkonen would have scored his points and everyone would have been happy (except, perhaps, for Hamilton supporters).
Prevention is better than cure, because the ability of any governing body to fully compensate someone who loses a pile of points through someone else’s mistake is extremely limited.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:40 #244 - Alianora La Canta said:
That does bring up an intersting case if what happens if you overshoot your pitbox and a bit of the car ends up in another teams pitbox when we get back to slicks. {Jordan Allen – 17 comments ago}
Simple – issue a penalty. That’s presumably what would happen now, and the introduction of slicks does not exactly reduce the danger involved in a car entering another team’s part of the pit lane.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:41 #245 - Alianora La Canta said:
The thing is when the lollipop goes to “go” what is the driver supposed to do? Go. {Jordan Allen – 18 comments ago}
Jordan, you’ll be pleased to know we both agree on this, and that Massa as an individual was completely innocent (the argument is elsewhere in the handling of the case).
August 30th, 2008 at 12:44 #246 - Alianora La Canta said:
Oh, and could Christine and me please give me some feedback as to whether the style of chopping long comments into smaller bits this way is more tolerable than the old method of sticking everything in all at once? (There’s nothing in the spam from my computer right now, if that helps answer the question).
August 30th, 2008 at 13:48 #247 - me said:
seems fine to me. it’ll also make you a formidable opponent in the top commentators list
August 30th, 2008 at 14:50 #248 - Alianora La Canta said:
Thanks for the feedback, me. Commenting one quote snippet at a time will be how I do comments here in future, then
August 30th, 2008 at 15:36 #249 - Jordan Allen said:
We do agree on something? okay, I will that and run,….
August 30th, 2008 at 16:22 #250 - Jordan Allen said:
Mme/Mlle Sidepodcast People’s Representative of the Committee of Public Safety Alia:
“Massa as an individual was completely innocent” but we still need to penalizing him to the fullest extent because we only have the one option of the 10 place grid drop for being released in an unsafe manner by the team, for this heads will roll.
La Revolution is off to a fine start, You do realize that where the guillotine was at the old Place de la Révolution has been renamed Place de la Concorde and your zest your historical “purity” might tip off Max and Bernie and the rest of the FIA big wigs in their main office.
Sidepodcast might be going thorough “…the best of times.” or “…the worst of times.”
August 31st, 2008 at 11:15 #251 - Alianora La Canta said:
“Massa as an individual was completely innocent” but we still need to penalizing him to the fullest extent {Jordan Allen – previous comment}
That complaint only works if there is an alternative that punishes those people and only those people who were responsible for the regulation breach. No such penalty appears to exist here; even if you ignored the fact that all the FIA punishments permitted punish the innocent along with the guilty, you are still left with figuring out who at Ferrari didn’t check for Sutil’s presence (do you blame the override guy? The people who designed the unit to depend on only one override guy? The driver (theoretically possible, even if we’ve established it wasn’t the driver this time)?
And then how do you punish in a way that the team will notice (noting that the regulations specifically say the team (as a whole) is responsible for the safe release of cars from the pit lane? Fines are not going to deter because they are not a sporting punishment. Individual-level bans might be noticed, but only by the individuals; the team will still pressure them towards releasing cars whether it’s safe for them to do so or not because of the sporting advantages of ignoring the regulation.
Also remember that the “no punishment” method penalises the innocent, because it encourages accidents involving people who comply with the regulations (as nearly happened to Sutil in Valencia and definitely happened to Raikkonen in Canada). Ferrari have already lost six points or more through the FIA’s inconsistency – nullifying the sporting element of the punishment will only make matters worse, for Ferrari and for other teams.
Since punishing only the guilty is not an option, the option of punishing using the sporting punishment of a drive-through penalty or 25-second post-race penalty punishes the least number of innocent people (one definitely and several hundred possible, unless you use the FIA definition of a competitor, in which case nobody) is the punishment that causes the least unfair harm.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:16 #252 - Alianora La Canta said:
You do realize that where the guillotine was at the old Place de la Révolution has been renamed Place de la Concorde {Jordan Allen – 2 comments ago}
I do, and given the FIA’s behaviour of randomly punishing and letting people off the hook, I think it’s quite apt that it’s stationed there.