Sidepodcast

• Length: 10:00 
• Size: 9.2 MB 
• File: digest71.mp3 
• Transcript: digest71.pdf 
• Torrent: digest71.torrent 

The final qualifying for 2008 provided no end of surprises and sets up the grid nicely for the championship battle. It managed to stay dry and still keep us guessing.

Free Practice 3

Alonso repeated his success of yesterday by popping his Renault onto the top of the timesheets in the dying moments of the session, although all eyes were on the McLaren / Ferrari battle - which Hamilton won.

Qualifying

Lots of surprises in store today, with some drivers failing to live up to the crowds expectations, some failing to live up to their own expectations, and some completely surpassing ours.

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• Length: 8:31 
• Size: 7.8 MB 
• File: digest70.mp3 
• Transcript: digest70.pdf 
• Torrent: digest70.torrent 

It was a quiet start to the weekend, with Massa and Alonso getting the first chance at glory. Hamilton wasn’t far behind though, and the damp track sets things up nicely for qualifying.

Free Practice 1

It was all about Massa and Hamilton as they duked it out for the first taste of headlines. Massa won this round, whilst Kimi found himself spinning round.

Free Practice 2

Alonso took some of the heat off the two championship rivals by stealing the top spot, and Trulli also finished well up the order, despite not feeling too well yesterday.

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• Length: 46:30 
• Size: 40.8 MB 
• File: episode79.mp3 
• Enhanced: episode79.m4a 
• Transcript: Coming soon 
• Torrent: episode79.torrent 

The anticipation for Formula 1’s first ever night race has been building since Singapore was announced. Now we rake over all that happened, take a couple of calls, and get feedback from the circuit.

Intro

Doing a show on a full stomach may just calm the hyperactivity.

Good Week / Bad Week

A good week for David Croft and Richard Cregan who have both secured jobs, but a bad week for, well, everyone.

Qualifying

So many incidents, which highlighted issues with the marshals and intrigue about the safety barriers. Also, we discuss Trulli driving the wrong way round the track, and why Ferrari’s can’t turn circles.

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• Length: 11:22 
• Size: 10.4 MB 
• File: digest60.mp3 
• Transcript: digest60.pdf 
• Torrent: digest60.torrent 

What was already an exciting weekend has culminated in a stunning race with more incidents than we’ve seen for a long time. We also got yet another new race winner.

The Race

A much cleaner start than we were expecting, but the action was just saved for later as first Piquet and then Sutil brought out the Safety Car. All the pit stop action meant that Hamilton lost time, Massa lost his dignity, and Alonso lost his losing streak.

Conclusions

Everyone felt like it was a difficult day, especially because it was hot, it was long, and tiring. Really, everything boiled down to where you were at the pit stops, and our drivers tell us how they’re feeling after a lottery of a day.

• Length: 01:30:59 
• Size: 83.4 MB 
• File: parade3.mp3 
• Transcript: Coming soon 
• Torrent: parade3.torrent 

Building up to the race of the year at Singapore, the Parade Lap settles in for an extended 90 minute chill out and chat. Topics on the agenda include who qualified where, just how poor the marshals were and of course, we try a little bit of Tremayning.

The music played in this show:

• Moloko, Sing It Back
• Dylan in the Movies, City Skies
• Di Sheldon, What in the World
• Jeff Caylor, Moving Backwards
• Ramin Streets, Traffic
• Hampshire Guitar Orchestra HAGO, Liberty Bell
• Amy Regan, Carry On
• Info about these artists and more available on the music page.

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So far, we’ve had three sessions of Free Practice, four hours of on-track action, and many, many incidents. Singapore has already far surpassed what I was expecting, so I don’t see how it can’t live up to the hype. Who knows what Qualifying will bring, but this is the place to find out.

The only thing letting the side down at the moment is the abysmal performance of the marshals. On the one hand, it’s incredible to see so many drivers struggling, hitting the walls, and generally having issues. But every time someone goes off, we have to endure the painful sight of incompetent marshals. They look like they’re not quite sure what they’re supposed to do, or as Neil said in the comments, whether they’re even allowed to touch the cars.

Hopefully this isn’t going to be too big a problem, because it’s the only blight on what is already turning out to be a stellar weekend. The scenery continues to be stunning, and I can’t wait to see what qualifying brings.

Alonso looks completely on it so far this weekend, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens with fuel loads. Hamilton is also showing well, as is to be expected, whilst Kovalainen struggles down in the mid-field. Kovi has also used his joker engine change for this race, so hopefully he can pull his socks up a little bit. Raikkonen and Fisichella both saw early ends to their Free Practice session today, and it’s worth keeping an eye on them to see if it affects their qualifying performance.

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• Length: 9:17 
• Size: 8.5 MB 
• File: digest50.mp3 
• Transcript: digest50.pdf 
• Torrent: digest50.torrent 

Obviously it was wet in Spa, it always is, and the drivers struggled their way round two free practice sessions. Tune in to F1 Digest for a full round up of proceedings.

Free Practice 1

A slow start to the day, although we’ve seen worse, gave way to some pretty slippery laps and no major incidents. The laptimes weren’t particularly outstanding, and I don’t think anyone learnt anything from this session.

Free Practice 2

The predicted rain meant things got going very quickly, but the inactivity once the weather hit balanced it out a bit. Plenty of incidents as well, with many drivers meeting the barriers.

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The news about Fernando’s “official fan” has been circulating a while, but I’ve only just got round to looking into it a bit further. It’s quite telling that when I mentioned it to the other half of Sidepodcast recently, he said he thought it was a joke.

So, what’s it all about then?

Bright Eyes

23-year-old Spaniard Álvaro Ademà has been selected as Alonso’s official fan. There’s no real word on how the selection process worked, and I must have missed the call for applications, otherwise I would at least have tried to learn Spanish. However, the lucky fan has secured what could be the best job in the world, following Alonso on the remainder of the season and earning 3,000 Euros a month along the way. The whole idea is an ING thing, although I can’t really find much about it from their point of view either. However, it’s all above board, and Ademà will be blogging his experiences for the rest of the year.

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The girl never stops, she really doesn’t. As Ollie pointed out on this weeks show, Christine has written a guest post for BlogF1 today.

The post is part of a series that compares team mates from the top four teams. Christine was challenged to look at the relationship between Alonso and Piquet Jnr, and yesterday Clive made a fine fist of tackling the BMW boys.

It’s worth five minutes of your time to give them a both read and do check back to see who’s guest blogging on Monday and Tuesday.

The Valencia Circuit Blog today reports that this year’s European Grand Prix will be sponsored by the Spanish telecom giant Telefónica.

The company are already title sponsors for the proper Spanish Grand Prix, so it doesn’t come as a massive surprise that they’d be interested in a second race - especially after more than 38,000 people turned up to watch a test session last week.

Of note, it does appear that not everybody is as thrilled about the prospect of a race through the Spanish streets as we are though. Earlier today hundreds of protesters arrived in the city on bicycles, protesting about the necessary port redevelopments. The arguments against the race included:

• There’s a perfectly good circuit just up the road.
• Construction congestion is making eveyone unhappy, and costs are impacting on public service expenditure.
• Formula 1 isn’t a particularly green sport and they’d rather not be associated with it, ta very much.

At least I think that’s what they were saying, you can read more on the aforementioned blog. If your Spanish is better than mine, please feel free to correct or add anything I’ve overlooked (or got plain wrong).

Alonso originally argued that Ricardo Tormo would be a better place to hold the GP when the street circuit was first announced, and seeing as 10 Formula One teams just spent 3 days driving around the place, it can hardly be said to be in bad shape.

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