Hi, I’m Gavin, otherwise known as RubberGoat, author of the F1 stats blog ‘Making Up The Numbers’ and I am here to welcome you to Wednesday – ’Hump Day’, the middle of the week. It’s all downhill from here, as they say.

Here’s some links for your reading and enjoyment:

• Mr. C. tweeted a link to an excellent story from RaceCar Engineering on How the F-Duct Works. If you want to really geek out on aerodynamics then take a look. But watch out, as it’s a bit of ‘here comes the science’!
• Jake Humphrey seems to be winning the ‘Volcanic Grand Prix’ – the race back to Europe from China, which is turning into some sort of internet version of ‘Around The World in 80 Days’. By the time you read this he will probably be back home in Norwich with his lovely wife, but check out his Twitter Account and some of the other journalists anyway as they have some interesting stories to tell.
• Lewis Hamilton has praised the stewards for their work this year, saying that “I think the FIA and their racing stewards this year, they've been the best that I've probably experienced in Formula 1.” After his antics in the last couple of races, I think he should be buying them beers!
• In non-F1 news, Jon wanted me to mention that it’s Queen Elizabeth’s actual birthday today (as opposed to her other official birthday later in the year). Why can’t we all have two birthdays?
• Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t plug my Fantasy Racers post that I wrote last night, so make sure you take a look and let me know how your teams went and what your strategy is for the next race.

So that’s the daily then. I hope you liked what I had to offer - tomorrow it’s James who will be writing for you, which I am sure you are looking forward to as much as I am.

One final thought – we were discussing the Shuttle Landings in the comments yesterday afternoon and it got me thinking. Who would you like to see from F1 go into Space and why? I would like to see Jenson Button pilot the Space Shuttle – now that she is old, she needs the gentle touch of a driver who is known for looking after his machinery in order to reach the finish line.

Everyone expects chaos from the Australian Grand Prix, but I think this one surpassed even the wildest of expectations. Throw in a bit of rain, some over-eager drivers, and plenty of overtaking, and you've got the ingredients for a great race.

We'll update this post when the Fantasy Racers scores are available, but let us know how you got on.

Hello and welcome to Saturday! It's David Coulthard's birthday today, and the man is in Australia along with the rest of the BBC team, gearing up for qualifying later today. We're doing the same, and there'll be plenty of threads to follow along with later. Meanwhile, here are some things we're talking about:

• Stuart Codling has a presence on the brand new Formula Santander site, which seems to be a slice of F1 news and gossip from the major sponsor of Ferrari, McLaren and several races. Holly Samos is also writing on the website, and although it's not a beauty to look at, and there's still a few kinks to be worked out, it looks like there might be some good content.
• We just wanted to highlight a tweet from Renault who said: Did you know we published blogs from our fans, too? http://cot.ag/c1wUX6 Come on aspiring writers and Renault fans, get scribbling That seems very cool, doesn't it? You'd better get writing, Renault want to hear from you!
• Finally, we did our Fantasy Racers Reminder yesterday, and although it is too late to make changes to your team now, it's worth reading as it's a fabulous guest post from Gavin. If you'd like to feature your team in an upcoming reminder, please let me know, or pop your name as a volunteer in the wiki.
• Whilst we're talking about predictions and such like, don't forget to post your predictions to the Sofa F1 championship as well. Also, remind me to do mine, please!

That should do it for now. Stay tuned to Sidepodcast as we have lots of field reporters running around Albert Park and it's fabulous fun watching their progress. I will see you in the comments.

Don't forget to select your drivers for Australia before the 5pm UK time deadline. Unless you are using Strategy 2, like me, in which case you keep the same drivers throughout. Let us know who you're going for and why, and we'll review everything after the event. For now, I will hand over to Gavin to tell you how his team is shaping up.

Hello there.

First of all, if you are having trouble making your picks, then check out my analysis and form guide for Bahrain. Regarding that race, the RubberGoat Racing System did not have a very good day out - it was soundly beaten by its bitter rivals from Trinidad (the Samsite Squad).

It seems that those who chose a fixed budget and picked good drivers had a distinct advantage - the top 10 teams in the league all chose the fixed strategy.

For RubberGoat Racing (the main team, on a flexible budget), my strategy is to pick the drivers with the highest PPM (points per million). The team had a rrrrubbish day out, ranked only 218th in the league. Therefore, after poor performances for the money they are worth, I have swapped Button, Kobayashi and Hülkenberg for Vettel and Hamilton. Alonso keeps his place from last time.

For Loyal Goats (also on a PPM strategy but on a fixed budget), I have picked a wide spread of drivers I hope will perform well this season. Therefore, my line-up is Alonso, Button, Barrichello and Vettel. This team was my best performing last time (23rd).

For RubberGoat Rich List, which is a flexible team, I have just picked expensive drivers who I think will do well. Therefore I stuck with Alonso and Vettel and changed out Hamilton for Rosberg, just to mix things up and not make it identical to the main team. The Rich list placed 59th last time.

Scuderia Capra Gomma is my fixed strategy team based on the Red Bull and Toro Rosso drivers. They placed 320th last time, as three of its drivers had a bad day (Vettel carried the team). The line-up is Vettel, Webber, Alguersuari and Buemi.

Finally, RubberGoat Rookies is a fixed strategy team using all the rookie drivers – Senna, Chandhok, Kobayashi, di Grassi, Hülkenberg and Petrov. It’s my only team that maxes out the 6-driver limit, but performed really poorly (446th in the league). To illustrate how bad the rookies did, two drivers scored minus points and the whole team only 106 – which is less than Jenson Button scored in the competition.

RubberGoat hopes that its line-up changes in the Premier team make a big difference, and that not many surprises happen this weekend!

So that’s a summary of the RubberGoat Racing System strategy – remember to make your picks before the cut off, and be sure to check my blog after the race for a full roundup of all the Fantasy Racers action.

Fantasy Racers – because F1 is more interesting off the track this year.

Monday, and the day after the day before. F1 is back in business and we've ticked one event off of the 19 race calendar already. It will be a further 11 days before cars take to the track again. It looks like we have some time to kill.

Christine has entrusted me with daily duties, which I interpret to mean "discussing in-depth technical aspects of the site at great length". Something I shall gladly do.

This weekend, marked for Sidepodcast, the culmination of 4-6 months worth of work. During the off-season many hours were spent shoring up weaknesses of the old live commenting system, to enable the smooth experience of the past four days. I'm quite relieved it all worked as expected.

The debut of the Factbyte Factbox marks the new technical direction Sidepodcast.com is heading in. We bought a brand new server from Rackspace to host the system, and after a solid weekend's work, we'll be migrating the rest of the site there shortly. I don't remember the last time we had so few technical issues during a race weekend, and in fact the only downtime experienced was a 60 second server outage caused by the two of us attempting to publish F1 Big Picture and F1 Minute articles simultaneously. In over three years, we've never crossed the blogging streams before, and we should probably avoid it in future.

Back to the subject of F1, what's new for Monday?

• I've just been reading the latest edition of GrandPrix+, which might explain the delay in posting the daily. Joe and David are far more optimistic about what they saw in Bahrain than we have been. I understand races in days of yore used to be slow burners, building to a climax, but does the Playstation generation really have such patience nowadays?
• Lukeh debuted a new report card rating system on his blog, and he's given race number one a resounding 'D', although he is looking positively towards Australia.
• F1Photos offers a unique look at yesterday's first lap incident between Kubica and Sutil. I approve of the frame-by-frame sequence, and hope to see more as the season progresses.
• Finally, Gavin published his comprehensive analysis of the opening Fantasy Racers round. I faired better than I was expecting, so haven't started sulking about my position just yet.

That'll do for me. Don't forget to listen to Christine's F1 Digest roundup today, I don't remember the GP episode appearing as early as Sunday for a very long time. The girl worked incredibly hard throughout the whole of the race weekend, and I stand in awe of her work.

Panda Racing 2010 made a disappointing start to the new season in Fantasy Racers, finishing in just 12th place after the first round of action. In just over two years of competition, this is Sidepodcast's lowest starting position.

New rule changes for 2010, designed to make life easier for smaller teams, has blunted our usual strategy, leaving us flailing outside of the illustrious top ten table. !Singapore F1 are currently the top personal league with an average of 712.6 points, while The Real USF1 are the top team in Panda Racing 2010's own league with 722 points.

Notably the top 24 positions in Panda Racing 2010 are held by teams who selected the option of "fixed drivers" at the start of the season. More Fantasy Racers analysis is available on Making Up The Numbers.

If you've signed up to the league please let us know how you got on.

Fantasy Racers is back and this time it's blog-only! We're not going to be talking about it in the show as the rule changes make it just that little bit too wordy for a short podcast section. However, it's taking pride of place on the blog and this is where you come in. I have selected Strategy 2, which is the option to not change your drivers but have a higher starting budget. Therefore, I will run out of things to say about my team very quickly. I want you to tell me about your team, who you're choosing and why. Email your thoughts to christine@sidepodcast.com and I will publish them in the next reminder thread.

For now, though, we have a league this year called Panda Racing 2010. You can get more information on joining up on this post, and please do! We'd love to have you. My team is called Chief Operating Panda, for obvious reasons. As mentioned above, I'm sticking with the same drivers throughout so my choice was important. I've gone with:

• Fernando Alonso
• Lewis Hamilton
• Sebastian Vettel
• Lucas di Grassi

I think I've got a good mix of championship potential and deliciousness. Who are you going for?

I had a message from Simon, part of which we read out in the latest debrief and part of it I saved for this post, as it related to his Fantasy Racers. Here are his thoughts:

I went for the 45m version, as my internet access is sporadic at best and therefore may not be able to change this during the season. My team is: Kamui, Lewis, The Hulk, Rubens, Kubica.

My reasons: I thought Kamui's performances in the last two races in 2009 were outstanding, the most exciting F1 debut since Lewis. Following the yawnfest that was the arrival of Buemi, Bourdais, Speed etc. etc. it was great to see a young driver with almost no F1 testing drive that well. I am delighted that he secured a drive following the demise of Toyota - so he was a must, my first name on the list.

Then Lewis, because it would be churlish to not have the man who will win the world championship in your fantasy team. Next Nico. I have been very impressed with his performances during pre-season testing and I also have a hunch, or is it just a hope (I miss the good old days of Hill etc.), that Williams will be competitive this year.

This left me with 17m to spend. So I had two choices: get one more top driver (would have been Vettel - I couldn't bring myself to pick someone in a red car!) and then have 5m left - not enough to get another, so wasted money, or get two 'best of the rest ' drivers. Rubens, for the Williams reason mentioned above, and because Rubens came to F1 around the same time I did and I have always liked him. Kubica, because well, I definitely think he fits into the category. Not the best but not the worst.

Fab stuff from Simon. Don't forget you can send me your team decisions: christine@sidepodcast.com. I also want to point you in the direction of Lukeh's blog post about his team Amazini Barresistancello. That one is definitely worth a read.

Also, don't forget to take part in the SofaF1 championship this year, as Alex has worked hard on creating a very interactive page for selections. F1 Wolf has a great predictions game going, and check out Pat's post for other worthy games.

It's Friday and at long last the 2010 Season is underway. In just a few short hours we will be up again, ready to watch Free Practice 1 and from then on, it's all about the racing. Well, hopefully. There's lots of good stuff and many threads to come today, so keep your eyes peeled so you don't miss a thing.

• Jake has written another great blog post, this time talking about time spent with some of the drivers ahead of the weekend's action. I particularly find the Schumacher/Rosberg stuff fascinating because we've seen visual evidence of their distaste for each other now, and... it's scary stuff!
• It's the last day to change your Fantasy Racers teams and whilst there will be a reminder post along later, I thought it was worth mentioning now. Particularly as I want to give a shout out for Pat's fabulous post about the different prediction and fantasy F1 games that are available at the moment. I had no idea there were so many!
• All that stuff about McLaren's rear wing is coming to a head now the teams have gathered together, and there is plenty of discussion about the silver car's extra hole. Scarbs has the detail (for Mr C), whilst Autosport put it into English (for me). Ahh, controversy. Is it November yet?
• In self-promotion news, Mr C wrote a great introduction to the Force India podcast which makes a triumphant return for 2010. More audio from teams is greatly appreciated. The man also posted a breakout regarding Renault's new sponsor, and he actually managed to create a picture with no red in it. Woohoo!

That'll do it for now. I know you're excited already, so instead, why not tell me how and where you are watching Free Practice, if you are. I'll see you in the comments.

• Length: 52:12 
• Size: 48.0 MB 
• File: debrief136.mp3 
• Transcript: Coming soon 

Coming up this week, we discuss team members departing, really dodgy names, Hamilton opening up, an evening with Joe, and those dangerous new teams.

Intro

This time next week the first race of the season will already be over! It's pretty exciting. Before that though, lots of news to get through plus some Fantasy Racers roll calls.

Good Week / Bad Week

It's been a good week for the Korean GP as they reckon they are on schedule, and for Renault who have managed to find a little bit of sponsorship in the form of Lada. It's been a bad week for Force India though, who haven't quite worked out how to use bit.ly yet, and for Willy Rampf who is leaving BMW Sauber.

News and Views

We discuss a few conclusions from testing, although nothing particularly groundbreaking. The fastest drivers, and those that completed the most distance. We contemplate some Ferrari developments and Red Bull stickers. We also wonder whether anything will come of the McLaren aero complaints.

The topic of US F1 can't be avoided any longer, if only because this may be the last time we get to talk about them. Anderson and Windsor appear to be to blame for the sinking of the ship, and with no Stefan GP either, we're looking at a slightly smaller grid. We discuss Campos' new change of name and image, although we don't particularly like it, and we briefly look at Hamilton's new openness now he's out from his father's management.

Feedback

Loads of feedback including: Jonathan sends me a picture of a marmot, Steven wants to know what LOST podcasts we listen to, Toastboy bets on Jenson, Iain looks into his crystal ball, Lisa's spotted a problem with Zencast, John has a Zune, Andy is being volunteered to get involved, Pete says a quick hello, and Simon is travelling the world.

Housekeeping

Bassano leads us in to a brief discussion about the excellent evening out with Joe, plus we plug the competition. All of Sidepodcast is now live so you never have to refresh again. We do a quick reminder about the show notes, plug a couple of fantasy F1 type things, and say goodbye until next week.

Outtakes

Those Fantasy Racers Roll Call sections were a little bit tricky. We knew there would be outtakes galore, but we didn't know there would be six minutes worth! Here they are in two parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Linkage

• ScarbsF1's blog
• Viva F1: Testing
• NY Times: Testing Ends in Jerez, as Bigger Tests Continue for US F1
• Who Are You, Anyway? : Calling Planet Anderson...
• F1 Pulse: Bernie Always Has an Agenda When he Speaks
• The (not so) fast lane: Most Hair-Raising Season Ever?
• Marmot photo from Jonathan
• Media. Future. Change. : A Conversation with Leo and Mr C
• Sidepodcast: Win a Signed Copy of The Grand Prix Saboteurs
• Fantasy Formula One

The weekend is here, and whilst I am still fighting off germs, we're busy gearing up for the racing to start. This is the last weekend before everything kicks off in Bahrain, so I hope you're making the most of it! Here are some of the things we're talking about, in a super duper extended daily:

• A quick plug before we get into the motorsport stuff, I quickly posted a new episode of Media Future Change last night. It had been delayed a few days because of voice issues but finally made it into the public domain. Hope you enjoy listening, and as ever, feedback is always appreciated.
• I finally got round to updating the about page on I Heart Franck to feature more information about who I am, obviously, and how I discovered Monsieur Montagny. Not that I discovered him or am taking credit for his success or anything. I was tempted to write a bit about how I would faint on sight of FKM, but then I remembered he has read the site in the past, and that wouldn't really be a great opening line.
• Whilst we're talking about yummy people, Lucas di Grassi has partnered with some watch people. They sponsor Renault as well, which is slightly odd, although he was a development driver for them. I wonder if this will affect his position in the rankings.
• We often get people asking if we're bringing back the video previews and at the moment the answer is still no. Teams aren't really giving out as much footage as they used to, and now we know why. Red Bull kept it all for themselves! They have shared the packaged video with us, though, and it's pretty awesome. We'll let them off, especially as they intend to do it for every race.
• Don't forget the competition to win a signed copy of Joe's book. It closes on Tuesday, so if you haven't already entered, make sure you do!
• Whilst we're doing reminders, it's worth mentioning the Fantasy Racers league. We'll be doing a roll call of all the teams signed up in this weekend's show, so if you haven't yet joined, are planning to, and want a shout out, make sure you join the Panda Racing league before Sunday.

That should keep you going for now - double the usual number of items! Let us know how your weekend is going, and I will see you in the comments.