Sidepodcast

Saturday dawns and good lord a number of teams have a lot of work to do!

Today’s final session is 60 minutes long, the weekend’s gear ratios have now been selected, race engines and gearboxes come into play and with any luck we’ll find out who has the pace on a light fuel run.

Yesterday teams faced problems with cold temperatures, a green (and sometimes wet) track, but what challenges will today bring? At the moment it’s dry out there, but cloudy and there’s little chance of rain early on in the day.

It doesn’t need repeating (oh, go on then) that we’ll be following live timing online, and as ITV don’t cover this session, it’s TVlizer coverage for us this morning.

Additionally 5Live are covering practice on 5Live Sports Extra.

Shout if you’re about, and if you have better visuals than us, please let us know.

The usual process of including guest posts on a blog is for the owner to ask some of their favourite writers to come up with a piece or two to be featured. As you well know, Sidepodcast likes to do things a different way. The Facebook Group has plenty of fascinating discussions going on, and we want to bring those to the main site. The idea is for you guys to write your opinions and entries over on the group, and then we pick the best ones for feature over here on Sidepodcast. Sort of self-selecting guest bloggers, if you will. If you want to get your name in bright lights, just join the group and get writing. We read everything and everyone will be considered.

This second guest entry is by Dan Brunell, talking about Lewis Hamilton and the hype.

One of the good things about living on the west side of the Atlantic is that Hamilton-mania doesn’t reach my fair ears that much. Sometimes I will read someone lashing out on a blog, the random Telegraph/Times/BBC article or the occasional voice on the SPEED channel with unending praise. I consider myself lucky. The British press coverage of Hamilton is overwhelming sometimes. It’s to the point where it frays some nerves. On top of that, there seems to be some deeper resentment of not just his press coverage, but at the speed with which he has achieved his success. Is all this really Hamilton’s fault? Do the people who hate Hamilton hate him, the ease with which he achieved success, or his media coverage?

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The usual process of including guest posts on a blog is for the owner to ask some of their favourite writers to come up with a piece or two to be featured. As you well know, Sidepodcast likes to do things a different way. The Facebook Group has plenty of fascinating discussions going on, and we want to bring those to the main site. The idea is for you guys to write your opinions and entries over on the group, and then we pick the best ones for feature over here on Sidepodcast. Sort of self-selecting guest bloggers, if you will. If you want to get your name in bright lights, just join the group and get writing. We read everything and everyone will be considered.

The first blog entry comes courtosy of Dan Brunell, our guest blogger guinea pig, and focuses on the plight of Super Aguri and what it means for the future of F1.

As “me” and Christine have so eloquently pointed out, Super Aguri is in serious trouble. If they last the year it will be an achievement. If they get someone to buy them it would be a miracle. However, is their slow demise a sign of things to come in F1?

It’s an understatement to say that F1 is an expensive sport. Advertising arrangements with some teams are in the tens of millions of pounds. Manufacturers themselves pour in hundreds of millions of pounds. The strong economy of the last few years have allowed many auto manufacturers and companies to spend their efforts in F1. However, as the economy goes from bull to bear and wallets get tightened; their hefty spending on F1 might be one of the first things to go from the ledger sheet.

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