Sidepodcast

I hope a picture paints a thousand words, because I have much to say but I’m just too tired. Here’s a few more shots from the first day of Silverstone testing.

Nelson Piquet

Up close and personal with Nelshino. The guy was in a surprisingly good mood until his engine went ‘pop’ on the main straight around 3 o’clock and that was after he had a slow start to the morning session.

When sitting in the pits the helmet visor can be used much like a pair of sunglasses, obscuring the drivers eyes as he waits patiently for the mechanics to go about their business. It was nice of him to open the lid for a brief moment before he set off for another run.

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As Christine pointed out in her F1 Digest show earlier, during yesterday’s race in Canada, Jenson Button entered the pit lane whilst it was closed under safety car conditions, and then exited without receiving a penalty.

Despite much due-diligence I’ve yet to find a single explanation for this anywhere. However, I have a vague idea that Button’s stop may have been a stroke of genius on Honda’s part, or at least, they may have found a way of exploiting a loophole in the regulations.

Retracing the Steps

Let’s take a quick look at the early part of Jenson Button’s Canadian Grand Prix.

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Honda recently announced that they have achieved ISO 14001 certification, something that the entire Honda brand is working towards. ISO’s have always been a bit of a mystery to me. I can see the hard work that goes into them, but I’ve never really understood the concept. I did some introductory work on ISOs for a small business, and from what I could tell it was all about putting systems in place, and not really about achieving anything. As long as you’ve got a flow chart, it doesn’t really matter what happens afterwards.

I may be completely wrong on this, but the official ISO 14001 site can’t even clarify. It says [emphasis mine]:

ISO 14001:2004 does not specify levels of environmental performance. If it specified levels of environmental performance, they would have to be specific to each business activity and this would require a specific EMS standard for each business. That is not the intention.

I can understand the logic, of course, but if you’re not setting specific targets, I don’t see how you can measure the environmental efforts of a company. What this says to me is that Honda have managed to make themselves an officially green team (although they did that with the shorts!) without actually having to meet any green targets.

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• File: Episode55.m4a
• Length: 15:04
• Size: 14.0 MB
• Transcript: episode55.pdf

Just seven days to go, this episode is of the shorter variety, as we at Sidepodcast get everything ready for next week’s podcast explosion.

Intro

The seasons almost upon us, can’t quite contain our excitement.

Good Week / Bad Week

ITV find their sponsor, whilst Force India aren’t quite free of Spyker yet. Mercedes have a new safety car, and Nigel Stepney is in the bad books.

News and Views

Trulli’s mood and some sneaky last minute preparations from Honda, Ferrari, Williams and Red Bull. Bridgestone do more white lines and we share our predictions.

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• 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.

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Back in November, we pointed out that although Honda Racing have a dedicated YouTube channel, it usually lags woefully behind their own Honda Racing TV efforts. This week is no exception, as YouTube is still devoid of any RA108 launch goodness despite clips being available since midday yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong, as nice as their own website may be, and as keen as they are to have people watch videos on there, the viewing experience isn’t as good as it could be. For example, while the playback quality should be commended, it’s impossible to rewind / scrub forward, there’s no fullscreen option, and we have no way of linking directly to an individual show from here. Oh, and don’t even think about sharing the video with anyone else either.

If Bernie ever gets around to putting F1 races online, I swear he’ll base his business model around Honda’s video player.

Regardless, yesterday’s launch videos happen to be worth a cursory glance, so instead we’ll rely on the handywork of PunkStar5150, who has managed to find the “upload” button and get them onto YouTube.

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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.

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It may not actually be possible to envisage a worse looking set of wheels than the 2007 ‘Earth Car’. Thankfully, the team from Brackley haven’t made the same mistake twice.

Okay, it’s not a beautiful car, but it could’ve been worse.

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As a quick recap of the tale we all know so well, Alex Wurz used to be a racer, then he was pushed aside in favour of Jenson Button and became a test driver.

For many, many years.

2007 saw his return to driving in anger, but he called it a day one race before the end of the season. So where does that leave us now? With Wurz returning to the safety of test driving with perennial grid-struggler’s Honda.

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I’ve just been dipping into the latest issue of F1 Racing, the one with Lewis Hamilton looking mean and moody on the front cover. I started from the back, as I always do, consuming Nick Heidfeld’s recollections of meeting Shaquille O’Neal, the anatomy of a pit stop, and Ross Brawn’s to do list.

Tucked away in that last article are two sentences that are both incredibly enlightening, and at the same time, comedy gold.

“The former senior technical director, Shuhei Nakamoto (now deputy MD technical reporting to Ross Brawn)… had no prior F1 experience.”

“Nakamoto admits he didn’t grasp the nuances of downforce…”

Hang on a second, the technical director didn’t understand downforce? Doesn’t this seem slightly odd and/or scary?

I don’t know the interview technique for positions of this level, perhaps they don’t ask about your aerodynamic knowledge, assuming that if you’re applying for the job, you might have a clue what was going on. I’m wondering what my chances are of blagging my way in to a top level job.

It’s no wonder Honda struggled so badly last year, isn’t it?