Sidepodcast

It would appear that Christian Horner is no longer sugar coating things now that David Coulthard’s tenure at the team is almost up. Having had a very difficult season, Horner admits that the blame is somewhat one-sided:

David has unfortunately had a disappointing year. Nothing has gone his way. Before this year he’d had only a couple of accidents with Red Bull Racing. I think this year he has had 10 and that has cost us and David very dearly in points. Too often we have been relying on one car and that’s been very hard for us.

He adds that the whole team is looking forward to the injection of a bit of enthusiasm from a certain German youngster, and they basically can’t wait for 2009 to roll around.

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• Length: 53:26 
• Size: 47.6 MB 
• File: episode77.mp3 
• Enhanced: episode77.m4a 
• Transcript: Coming soon 
• Torrent: episode77.torrent 

The weekend that Formula 1 needed was exactly what we got, and for once, everything fell into place. This week we discuss Max Mosley, FOTA, and the race in Italy, plus catchup with Fantasy Racers and your feedback.

Intro

It rained in Monza, and 5live almost got washed out, but thankfully, we’re nice and dry!

Good Week / Bad Week

Good week for being timely, and for being the boss, but a bad week for Honda staff and the German Grand Prix.

News and Views

Max Mosley is back, says we’re stupid, and that he’s not going anywhere. Meanwhile, the FOTA get their act together, choose their leaders, and decide what they’re going to do. The big question is, when will they start doing it?

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It’s a rollercoaster ride for Formula 1 drivers at the moment, especially for those who are teetering on the brink of expulsion from their teams. We already know Heidfeld is being observed closely, and with the Alonso-to-BMW rumours getting stronger, he’s probably quite worried right now. Bourdais is also under scrutiny, having been told to shine just that little bit more.

Le Seb has hit back, though, and said to his team that there’s no point keeping him if they think he’s going to adapt to a car that he doesn’t like and isn’t working.

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• Length: 11:26 
• Size: 10.5 MB 
• File: digest56.mp3 
• Transcript: digest56.pdf 
• Torrent: digest56.torrent 

The wet, wet weekend continued into the race, and made things fascinating when it came to tyre strategy. Hamilton could have pulled off a master stroke, but Vettel kept his head.

The Race

Starting behind the safety car could have been a bad omen, but thankfully it wasn’t. It was all about grip, tyres, and who was brave in the lack of visibility. Overtaking was plentiful, most of it down to the one guy.

Conclusions

All decide it was a tough day, which, given the conditions, is hardly surprising. Alonso feels they surpassed their expectations, as does one half of Toro Rosso, but others, such as Williams could have done with a better day.

• Length: 10:52 
• Size: 10.0 MB 
• File: digest55.mp3 
• Transcript: digest55.pdf 
• Torrent: digest55.torrent 

The wet weather continued into Day 2 at Monza, so that Free Practice 3 was a washout, but Qualifying was something to behold. Fisichella and Vettel both making history on the same day.

Free Practice 3

It certainly wasn’t an easy start to the day, with only time for limited wet weather running before the rain really kicked in. A few brave drivers attempted some laps towards the end of the session, but it wasn’t the most action packed session we’ve seen.

Qualifying

You couldn’t make predictions for qualifying at all today. You wouldn’t have guessed that Hamilton and Raikkonen would be stuck in Q2, you wouldn’t have thought Fisichella would be the one getting out of Q1, and our pole-sitter Vettel? What were the odds?

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• Length: 06:03 
• Size: 71.5 MB 
• File: track10.m4v 
• Transcript: track10.pdf 
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Sidepodcast presents a presenter-less look at the German Grand Prix, which returns this year to the incredibly flat Hockenheimring circuit.

In this special edition of the show, join Sebastian Vettel for a once in a lifetime trip around the German track onboard a Red Bull helicopter. Vettel explains how to drive every inch of the course while quietly impressing himself with the spectacular views on offer.

We also catch up with the current state of the ever-so-close championship, but let’s be honest, even that isn’t enough to distract us from all the flying.

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It’s a running joke in almost every single conversation about Formula 1 that Mark Webber is the unluckiest man on the grid. If he’s leading a race, his engine will blow up. If he’s in front of his home crowd, he will spin off spectacularly. If he needs the points, he’ll have someone crash into the back of him. If it’s just a regular day, his gearbox will fail.

My heart goes out to the guy, but I’ve been doing some thinking. It seems to me that he has made the biggest mistake of his life by joining Red Bull. The unluckiest man in F1, joining the unluckiest team?

Let’s discuss.

First, I’d like to wow you with some facts and figures.

In 2005, running two cars, RBR suffered 9 retirements. In 2006, it was 12. In 2007, it was up to 14. One race in to 2008 and they’ve already notched up 2. (Yes, alright so did a lot of teams, but stay with me, here.)

Sister team Toro Rosso had 8 retirements in 2006, 17 the following year and 1 so far this year.

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David Coulthard sat out yesterday’s test in Barcelona because he’d “tweaked” a muscle in his neck. I’m assuming that’s not the medical term for it, but it will do. He was back in action today after some treatment and a good rest.

Sebastian Vettel was given the golden opportunity to move up from Toro Rosso to Red Bull for the day, as STR were only running the one car. Vettel did pretty well, no major incidents and ended up 7^th. Personally, I’m happy he got the chance, as I’m a Vettel fan. However, it does leave some questions in place.

The first question is why Vettel? Why not Bourdais? Autosport’s reporting of the event said:

“…it was an obvious decision to draft in Vettel to run alongside Mark Webber.”

Why obvious? Vettel has slightly more experience than Bourdais, and perhaps they didn’t want to risk any smashes. Maybe it was a reward for all the hard work that Vettel put in last year.

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