Sidepodcast

Back in mid-January we had a bit of a discussion on the show, regarding some of the nonsense Ron Dennis was spouting during the unveiling of McLaren’s 2008 challenger in Stuttgart.

One of the points we questioned was the following statement:

It is Lewis’ birthday today, we’ve gone to a lot of trouble… he is 23, it is the MP4-23 and he will carry 23 on the car, but that is more by accident than judgement I must say

At the time the official FIA entry list had Hamilton above Kovalainen, meaning Lewis would actually be driving the 22 car, leaving number 23 for Heikki.

Given there was some confusion about who exactly was correct, we thought we’d leave it until the cars arrived in Australia where we could see for ourselves.

When Lewis rolled out of the pitlane earlier today, he was driving this car:

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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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McLaren launched their new car today. Whilst it’s fair to say I understand more about these things than I ever have before, I still have to admit that I leave the geeky stuff to, well, the geek, and spend my time looking at the pretty pictures.

I may have mentioned this in our video, but Heikki does not look right. It’s like someone has shoe-horned him into those clothes, and he’s just grinning and bearing it.

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Two days ago Christian Horner confirmed that Red Bull’s RB4 chassis will make its track debut in January. That in itself isn’t a particularly fascinating fact - announcements about new car launches rarely are. What is worth mentioning though, is the team’s new video, released today on YouTube.

A 30 second time-lapse sequence shows staff entering and leaving the factory in Milton Keynes and then confirms the car’s launch date to be 16th January 2008. The video is attributed to a user named sequencepostprod, which we can probably assume is related to the television company Sequence Post Production (SPP).

UK Formula 1 fans will probably recognise SPP as the team behind some of ITV’s title credits as well Martin Brundle’s “F1 Insight” series. Presumably the team have been brought in to work on the launch, but it’s odd that the video doesn’t feature on Red Bull’s homepage alongside the other official showreels, not to mention the fact that the production company decided to release it under their own name first.

Here’s the full clip in case you haven’t already seen it:

I wonder if this means Formula 1 teams are finally getting to grips with viral videos and social networking?

We’re looking forward to 2008 already.