Sidepodcast

Hot on the heels of his Champagne Challenge two weeks ago, Stuart has again suggested a task to keep us occupied during the Sunday morning before racing begins. So this weekend we’re Tremayning.

Admittedly it’s not a phrase we’d come across before, but apparently Tremayning is a popular pastime amongst paddock insiders, who ought probably be making better use of their time debating the various merits of Lewis vs. Kimi or softs vs. super-softs.

We’re in no position to make judgement on frivolous F1 activities of course, so what does Tremayning actually involve? Well, I’m glad you asked because Stuart kindly phoned in a description and a demo to get the ball rolling:

So in short, the key points to emulating the legendary David Tremayne are:

• You should dress entirely in black
• You must get needlessly angry about a mundane subject
• You must talk through clenched teeth
• You will ideally start and finish each rant with a growl

Easy right? Okay, maybe not as simple as shouting “champagne”, and certainly a little trickier than your average ITV competition, but by far the toughest thing is figuring out which tiresome subject gets your goat the most.

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• Length: 48:14 
• Size: 44.3 MB 
• File: episode68.mp3 
• Enhanced: episode68.m4a 
• Transcript: episode68.pdf 
• Torrent: episode68.torrent 

A few days late, due to us both attending various days of the Silverstone test. Of course, that means this show is packed full of the gossip from the track.

Intro

Apologies for being slightly late, but there’s plenty to talk about.

Good Week / Bad Week

Good week for Raikkonen’s engine and BMW demonstrations, but a bad week for BMW and the FIA.

News and Views

We quickly run through the World Council findings at their Paris meeting last week, including the calendar, entry fees and Formula 2.

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• Length: 8:34 
• Size: 7.9 MB 
• File: digest29.mp3 
• Transcript: digest29.pdf 
• Torrent: digest29.torrent 

You either love or hate this track, and within today’s F1 Digest preview, we experience both sides of the coin and see who falls on which side of the fence.

Vital Statistics

• Date: 22nd June
• Circuit: Magny-Cours
• Length: 4.4km
• Laps: 70
• 2007 Winner: Kimi Raikkonen

Preview

It’s very quiet out there in paddock land, mostly because the team’s are really not digging the French circuit right now. Some say they are, but there isn’t the usual excitement that a Grand Prix stirs up.

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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It was with particular disappointment that I read of Super Aguri’s struggles getting into the Istanbul paddock yesterday. My dismay came not from the desire to see the team find a safe passage to race next Sunday, but rather because I hoped they had just stayed home this week.

I appreciate this is an incredibly harsh thing to be thinking, and I’m also aware that amongst F1 fans I’m in the minority here. The problem for me is this whole process has now been publicly dragged out for far too long, leaving the Oxfordshire outfit with little dignity at the end of the day.

It’s been pointed out to me by several people during the past couple of weeks that it was SS United defaulting on sponsorship payments, that led the team into their current predicament. We know Aguri lost almost $30 million after the contributing company failed to make an expected second payment, but there was also an additional $10 million missing from the coffers after Giedo van der Garde’s sponsors failed to honour any payment.

Now these two issues may be entirely unconnected, but I’m seeing a pattern emerging here. Someone must be responsible for the failure to land the supposed income and it isn’t helped by the fact that to all intents and purposes SS United Group don’t appear to exist.

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