F1 Debrief - I Hate Them All

14 February, 2010 at 19:14 (GMT)

Length: 47:38
Size: 43.8 MB
File: debrief134.mp3
Transcript: Coming soon

Coming up this week we discuss moonlighting, licensing issues, ideal tracks, self sponsorship, Virgin’s woes, and F1 fiction.

Intro

It's Valentine's Day and what are we doing? Making a podcast, obviously!

Good Week / Bad Week

A good week for Stefan GP because they still have the belief they will get onto the grid at some point in the first four races. Also a good week for Ron Dennis who was inducted into the Motorsport Magazine Hall of Fame. A bad week for Heikki Kovalainen who had to take a second job for Finnish TV during the Lotus launch, and for team bosses as Bernie Ecclestone would like to license them.

News and Views

Before we talk about the launches, there's a quick update on Silverstone who confirmed they would be running the new MotoGP layout for the race. Damon Hill is not impressed.

Three teams unveiled their new cars this week, with Force India the first to do so. Their online launch was barely a launch with just a few photos making an appearance. The car and livery look exactly the same as last year. Red Bull also have a similar car to last year, and also to Toro Rosso, but you can tell the (magic) hand of Adrian Newey has been on the case. Their launch was marginally better, as the car was at Jerez already.

Finally, Lotus showed them all how it was done with a real life London launch, and the green/yellow livery caused no end of debate. They also have a podcast starring none other than Ted Kravitz (and some Lotus people...).

Here's the updated table of our launch scores:

Team Launch	Christine's Score	Mr C's Score
Mercedes	3	4
Ferrari	6	4
Williams	0	6
McLaren	8	6
Sauber	2	4
Renault	2	4
Toro Rosso	1	3
Virgin Racing	-5	0
Force India	2	2
Red Bull	3	4
Lotus	5	6

We move on to testing talk, but really it was not as exciting as last week due to the weather. Virgin Racing had a terrible time, Michael Schumacher prefers to eat at Ferrari, and they like to run out of fuel on purpose.

Feedback

I'm keen on starting a Mailbag show, but for now, two voicemails kick off the Feedback section. RG is not at all impressed with this year's liveries, whilst Adie had a minor breakdown when the doohickey malfunctioned.

Luis tells us how Formula 1 is in Portugal, Myles credits Ted, Sandy confirms he will photograph the marmots for me, Alberto talks F1 and music, and Steve points out McLaren's latest initiative for bloggers and fans. Also, happy birthday to Zoe.

Housekeeping

The wiki is in a state of disrepair at the moment but I'm working on it. Also I have started writing some fiction, in which you can vote on the outcome.