Sidepodcast

I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t find personal pronouns that difficult. If you’re talking about yourself you say I, if you’re talking to someone, it’s you. If you didn’t learn this from speaking out loud your whole life, then you’ll probably have learnt it practicing some verb tables.

Whilst the action at Valencia kept us all talking about what happened in the pit lane, I was more interested in what those in the pit lane were talking about.

I’ve found something slightly fascinating about the personal pronouns the drivers used over the weekend. For the longest time, we have had to listen to the corporate line from teams and drivers. Sharing in the joy and the pain in equal measures.

Now it seems things are changing, and as the competition hots up, all this “It’s not you, it’s me” business seems to be over. My first example is Raikkonen, who is still bemoaning his lack of pace going into a Grand Prix.

We need to get things sorted in qualifying…

Yes, you do, Kimi. Okay, perhaps this can be excused because it may just be a mechanical problem that means he hasn’t qualified on pole since France. I think perhaps he knows that it is something he needs to sort out himself though. The team certainly believe that Raikkonen has his own issues to sort out.

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Please do not forget to update your Fantasy Racers team.

How I do look forward to the Friday of a race weekend, when I get to share my latest scheme for my Fantasy Racers team.

You’ve got until 5 o’clock BST to alter your teams, which gives you a good few hours. You can even wait until after FP2 if you so desire.

Personally, I have no need to watch those drivers pootling round that track, I can make all the decisions I need based on a simple system. This week it is all the drivers whose surname falls between A and C.

Here is my team:

I predict that this will not be a strong weekend for Sidepodcast Racers, but I have faith in the arbitrary system. Anything can happen at a new track.

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Please do not forget to update your Fantasy Racers team.

Ah, it’s that time of the week again, where we must review our Fantasy Racers selections.

I have done some extensive research, and evaluated all the drivers comparitively during Free Practice 1 in Hungary. I have decided upon, drum roll please, a completely arbitrary selection. You knew that already, though, didn’t you?

Here’s mine:

My thought process this time was to pick the cheapest drivers and stack my team full of them. Discounting the Super Aguri boys (because even I’m not crazy enough to choose a driver that’s not even racing), I started at the cheapest - Sutil - and kept clicking the next most expensive driver until I ran out of cash. I’m quite annoyed I have some money left over, but I don’t want to spoil the system.

So, don’t forget to visit Fantasy Racers and update your team, or sign up if you haven’t already and want to feel the satisfaction of beating Sidepodcast Racers. Let us know what your team is in the comments, and feel free to poke fun at my selection.

• Length: 8:16 
• Size: 7.7 MB 
• File: digest41.mp3 
• Transcript: digest41.pdf 
• Torrent: digest41.torrent 

It’s that time of year again, when F1 descends upon Hungary. All the drivers appear to like it, but is it a matter of protesting just that little bit too much?

Vital Statistics

• Date: 3rd August
• Circuit: Hungaroring
• Length: 4.4km
• Laps: 70
• 2007 Winner: Lewis Hamilton

Preview

Glock returns to action and is looking forward to the race, as many of our drivers are. It seems that Hungary was a time of firsts for a lot of them, first win for Button, first race for Vettel. Nakajima is slightly nervous as he’s never driven on the track in an F1 car before. All this, plus a dusty track and no overtaking should lead to a less than stellar race.

Once again, we’re reviewing other people’s websites, this time looking closely at the teams to see how they fare. The first five can be found here, in Part 1 of the series, and this is Part 2, looking at the final five. I’ll be checking out how good they are from a fan’s point of view, whilst the geeky one will lift the hood on the technical bits.

Toyota

There’s more detail here about the car than anywhere I’ve seen so far, Toyota don’t seem afraid to share things with the fans. There’s an incredibly deep interactive experience looking at the team’s setup for Grands Prix, the motorhome, etc. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of connecting with their fans, but there are videos, images, wallpapers, and a nice set of features that will keep you reading for a short while.

Toyota’s site is stuffed to the rafters with content. With technical details, images, videos and an immersive factory tour, you’ll want make sure you have some free time before visiting this place.

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The girl never stops, she really doesn’t. As Ollie pointed out on this weeks show, Christine has written a guest post for BlogF1 today.

The post is part of a series that compares team mates from the top four teams. Christine was challenged to look at the relationship between Alonso and Piquet Jnr, and yesterday Clive made a fine fist of tackling the BMW boys.

It’s worth five minutes of your time to give them a both read and do check back to see who’s guest blogging on Monday and Tuesday.