Sidepodcast

It’s been ages since I felt the need to grab a screenshot from the f1.com live timing screens, but Friday free practice two was just such an occasion.

The day had got off to a bit of a slow start with all teams opting to sit in their garages for the first 25 minutes of session one, and it looked like all of last week’s testing had conspired to make this Friday a dull day.

However, during the break before practice two, I get the impression that a number of teams figured they didn’t have as much information as they needed, because from the off it was action all the way through the second session.

Continue reading…

• File: Episode53.m4a
• Length: 34:29
• Size: 31.7 MB
• Transcript: episode53.pdf

Last week we looked at the drivers taking to the grid, these week we look closer at the 2008 contenders - the teams, how they’ve changed and how they will fare.

Intro

A quick update on the status of my bad luck - this week is better but I have proof that last week was the worst ever.

Good Week / Bad Week

Bernie Ecclestone gets someone onside, Super Aguri can’t find anyone, Fuji are looking to stay in the sport, and which one is Pinocchio Schumacher?

News and Views

Alonso has his main sponsor following him around, so does that means he’s a pay driver? We’re worried about the state of mind of Toyota drivers, they seem unable to stick to an opinion. And we briefly recap a very wet testing session, and discover we’re looking forward to the return of a previously disliked figure.

Continue reading…

During this week’s show we discussed the pending launch of official social networking sites from F1 teams Honda and Renault.

In the end, little came of earthdreams.info, but as our discussion was mostly based on speculation we can’t really blame the team for that. It may still happen, but at the moment it doesn’t look as though there will be much social dreaming from Honda in the short term.

Fan Site

Renault on the other hand did manage to launch their site. I couldn’t access it until today, a full two days after its promised debut, but I’m in now and that’s all that matters.

Continue reading…

Vijay Mallya certainly seems determined to get the name of his team out there, he’s now started television adverts in India. I’ve never seen a Formula 1 team specifically advertising themselves. You quite often see an F1 car zip across the bottom of a Renault advert, for example, but purely to advertise the team?

Here is the advert in it’s full glory [spotted on Rediscover Formula One].

Not that bad, really, is it?

Continue reading…

One of my favourite stories for a long time comes courtesy of Mr Ralf Schumacher. No surprises there, he is usually good for a laugh.

He tested for Force India this week, and let’s be honest, he made a bit of a hash of it. He had mechanical problems (admittedly not his fault), he crashed and almost hit a tyre wall (probably his fault) and ended up at the bottom of the time sheets.

So, what do you do if you are going for a job and you have a really bad interview? Or if you want something quite a lot but realise you’ve ruined any chance you ever had? You pretend that you never wanted it in the first place, of course.

“I don’t think I will be driving for Force India. I want to achieve something and I don’t think I can do that with Force India. I am going home now and we will see.”

Bless his heart. We understand Ralf, we really do.

There were a few complaints here at Sidepodcast Towers about there being a picture of Ralf on the site, so in the interest of being fair and unbiased, here’s another Force India tester.

Order is restored once more.