Sidepodcast

It’s the last Grand Prix of the season, and we’re hosting a two-hour bumper edition of the Parade Lap as an introduction to the deciding race. However, no one wants to talk about that pesky sport business, we all want to know how the cupcake is going.

For those not in the know, the other half of Sidepodcast, the one that doesn’t know an oven from an iron, promised to bake a cupcake in order to get two regulars onto tonight’s Sidepodpanel. This is where we find out how he got on.

We’ll also have the usual weather forecasts, race predictions, thoughts on qualifying, and chilled out music, to lead us nicely into live commenting the race itself.

We’ll be going live at 2pm GMT, but feel free to make yourselves at home beforehand, and get those cupcake-gate discussions going. See you soon.

Hands up who thought they were going to get a break after the great racing in Singapore? Me too, but we haven’t had a chance to blink. Following Alonso’s amazing win, we’ve had controversy with the calendar, Ferrari admitting their pit stop failures, and the confirmation of a couple of team lineups.

Now though, it’s time to return to the track and today we’re at Fuji. The poor old Speedway has two major problems. Firstly, almost everyone prefers Suzuka and secondly, there’s the big mountain that threatens the weather at every turn. Last year wasn’t the best race we’ve ever seen, so hopefully the weather will hold off this time around.

At the moment, it’s looking like Saturday is the only day with a chance of precipitation, but forecasts can often be wrong (especially the way I read them), so it’s best to wait and see. If it does rain, we at least will be spared the sight of Bridgestone’s luminous green stripes, but I believe that would be the only benefit.

Elsewhere, we have already discovered that Glock will be taking his freebie engine this weekend, and I’m expecting to hear more announcements as we progress through the Free Practice sessions. There are only three races left, and they can’t use it in Brazil, so now seems like the opportune moment.

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• Length: 3:40 
• Size: 3.5 MB 
• File: ancillary5.mp3 
• Transcript: ancillary5.pdf 
• Torrent: ancillary5.torrent 

Welcome to the Sidepodcast Mini Series Ancillary F1. Already this series we’ve had a look at Bridgestone, Mercedes and Tilke Engineering, and today it’s the turn of another company who help the world of Formula 1 without ever taking home a trophy.

Météo-France is the official national meteorological service in France, and is the weather data supplier for Formula 1 teams. The organisation has been in existence since 1993, with headquarters in Paris, and funds most of it’s 300 million Euro budget with state grants, royalties, and commercial services.

One of those commercial services began in alliance with Toyota. In 1997, the team manager of Toyota was Ange Pasquali, and he brought Météo-France on board to provide weather information for Le Mans. The company soon progressed onto Formula 1.

Eight of the teams currently contribute towards the cost of the weather service, although when the FIA discussed a potential increase in the cost of Formula 1 entry fees recently, it was suggested that teams pay for the system in it’s entirety and estimated its annual cost at 485,000EUR per year.

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I don’t know how the drivers are faring, because my body clock is all messed up, and this is a relatively normal race! Presumably they are all still coping with the European time adjustments (or non-adjustments, as it should be) but we will be able to tell once they jump back into the cars for Free Practice 3.

At the moment, the weather looks to be hazy, the humidity is about 60% and there’s a bit of a wind. My weather source says there’s a chance of a thunderstorm on Saturday night (Singapore time) but it also said that yesterday and we had nice, clear track action.

Talking of which, there was plenty to behold. I imagine Webber will want to get some more running in this morning, as he was limited yesterday following his crash. I don’t think the track will be empty though, as all the drivers hit the streets of Singapore to get a feel for what it will be like. Today will see the track at it’s closest to what it will be in qualifying, and they need to get all the data they can.

If I can tell the time right, which I’m not sure I can, the gap between FP3 and Qualifying is shortened, although not as manic as yesterday’s simple hour between sessions. We’re hoping to see a bit more organisation between the marshals, as it looks like they could really slow things down. It also appears the drivers had a really long briefing with Charlie Whiting yesterday with a whole host of complaints (my guess is Bourdais was particularly vocal) about the track, so it will be interesting to see if anything is done.

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• Length: 01:06:39 
• Size: 61.2 MB 
• File: parade2.mp3 
• Transcript: Coming soon 
• Torrent: parade2.torrent 

Ahead of Italy, we gather together for a relaxing discussion about press releases, chicane regulations and of course, the weather. Plus there’s a champagne competition a couple of expert callers, and as always, some good songs.

The music played in this show:

• Amy MacDonald, Mr Rock & Roll
• Ingrid Michaelson, The Way I Am
• Kristoffer Ragnstam, Swing That Tambourine
• Lost in Rome, Katherine
• The Maine, The Town’s Been Talkin’
• Adrina Thorpe, Fly, Fly, Fly
• Info about these artists and more available on the music page.

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We’ve seen more interesting practice sessions, I’m sure, but the drivers who took to the track can’t be outdone for bravery. Once more it was wet in Italy, and that looks to be the theme for the whole weekend. We have time now for the rain to ease up before qualifying begins, but whether it will do so, and what that means for the track, are the big questions.

It’s been a long time since Hamilton finished at the bottom of a timesheet, but it doesn’t really count for anything. He completed 8 laps, whereas the Ferrari boys only managed 9 between them. I don’t know how much you can learn from a track that is that wet, but it might be useful once the qualifying sessions kick off.

There’s not much else to say about Free Practice, so let’s look forward to qualifying. If anyone can acurately predict the top five, I will be majorly impressed. It may turn out to be a straight forward running with the usual suspects finishing at the top, but somehow, I doubt it. Chances are we will see drivers out early to put in banker laps, regardless of what the weather is doing.

Hamilton’s last couple of laps in the pouring rain saw him on a 1:50, whereas pole position last year was just under a 1:22. There’s a big gap there for all the other drivers to squeeze into position, and I can’t wait to see who ends up where.

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Stuart is being our man on the ground in Italy this weekend, and has already given us a weather update for the morning.

Not looking great out there at the moment. Track temp is 20 and air temp is 22. There was a thunderstorm overnight but the track surface is drying already.

On the other hand, there’s barely any wind so there may not be much change.

Hopefully it won’t be like yesterday, because although it was quite amusing to see a river pouring down the pit lane, it wasn’t particularly helpful. When we did get some sensible running in FP2, it appeared that Ferrari may have had the upper hand with Kimi on top. McLaren have been keen to point out they were running heavy fuel loads, concentrating on race setup, and not that bothered about grabbing any headlines.

FP3 usually sees a lot more experimentation with the tyres, as the track is the closest it’s going to be to qualifying before the afternoon. Last year we had the soft and medium compound, but this year Bridgestone has moved one step up and brought along the hard and medium tyres this time round. This will no doubt be helpful for riding the kerbs, and avoid any blistering that might become a problem.

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• Length: 59:52 
• Size: 55.0 MB 
• File: parade1.mp3 
• Transcript: parade1.pdf 
• Torrent: parade1.torrent 

The first ever pre-race Parade Lap from Sidepodcast debuted ahead of the Belgium GP. An hour long live chat with music and F1 discussion, to get things going before the action began. This week we did a couple of shout-outs, talked about the predictions for the upcoming race, what Honda have to do to get better and discussed who was having what for breakfast.

The music played in this show:

• Brother Love, Turn it Up
• Love = Action, In the Rain
• Ayla Brown, Know You Better
• Pudge, Christine, Christine, Christine
• Jennifer Richman, Better Days
• Jeff Coffey, Write About Me
• Info about these artists and more available on the music page.

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• Length: 11:02 
• Size: 10.2 MB 
• File: digest23.mp3 
• Transcript: digest23.pdf 
• Torrent: digest23.torrent 

A bit of rain always spices things up somewhat, and whilst it held off for qualifying, we saw what could happen in FP3. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Free Practice 3

Kovalainen is the first of today’s barrier victims, although he still managed to retain the fastest time, thanks to the weather.

Qualifying

Coulthard was the second to clout the barrier in a series way, heading off track at a swift rate and leaving his wheel behind.

Conclusions

The teams seem to agree that today was pretty tough with the weather, so some are hoping for clear skies tomorrow and others are keeping their fingers crossed for more rain.

As pointed out by both Lou and Steven in the comments, long range weather forecasts are predicting rain for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Now these things are normally somewhat inaccurate, but it is raining there right now and weather.com has showers listed for both the Saturday and Sunday of next weekend.

Accuweather is even predicting thunderstorms on Sunday! In short it looks like it could be wet.

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