Sidepodcast

The pictures we’ve been posting over the three days of testing are all very well and good, but we’ve missed out two of the most important.

Bourdais

He was emerging from the Toro Rosso garage and heading towards the motorhome. I know I said I wasn’t bothered about him anymore, but he seemed to be the nicest man ever.

A crowd gathered around him and blocked his path across the paddock. He stopped, he signed and signed, kept on giving out those autographs and muttering greetings to the surrounding fans, and didn’t stop until everyone had gone. When his way was finally clear, someone approached him with a microphone and asked him if he could spare a couple of seconds. He nodded, but said they had to walk and talk, and he indicated for the person to join him in the motor home.

Why didn’t we think of that?

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• Length: 06:14 
• Size: 71.8 MB 
• File: track8.m4v 
• Transcript: track8.pdf 
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Last year Bernie Ecclestone claimed there would be no more outings to the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, yet Formula One returns there once again. In honour of the track that, despite being almost universally loathed amongst paddock regulars, will not disappear, Sidepodcast takes a spin around rural France to see what’s there to amuse our drivers this time out.

We also catch up with the sole French driver on this year’s grid, Sébastien Bourdais. Hear his thoughts on his debut F1 season, the support of the fans and the French federation as well as racing in Magny-Cours. If one man (other than Bernie) can save France’s place on the racing calendar, it’s likely to be Le Seb.

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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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