Sidepodcast

Daily: 13th February 2010

The weekend is here, but there is no respite from the F1 action, as testing continues for a fourth day at Jerez. Well, I say it continues, but so far we have seen most of the running hampered by the weather. I can't imagine today will be much different, but we will keep our eyes peeled. Elsewhere, here are some of the things we're talking about:

• Lotus launched their new car yesterday in London, and it has caused quite a vast array of opinions regarding the livery, the look of the car, and the general feel of bringing back an old name into the sport. Have your say in the breakout thread, catch up with the details on F1 Minute, and get a closer look over at F1 Big Picture.
• If you're at a loose end over the weekend, why not have a read of the latest part of my story? Life in the Fast Lane is a ten part piece of fiction, in which you get to control the direction of the story at the end of each part. We're onto the third section now, and you get to make a strategy call for the driver in question.
• Just as a heads up, I am currently in the middle of reorganising the wiki, which basically entails moving the pages about a lot, merging information so we don't have half empty pages, and deleting a couple of unnecessary pages as well. It was getting in a bit of a mess, and I've made it a lot worse, but I have a plan. You can keep on using it normally, but just be aware you might find things aren't where you left them.

That should do it for now. Giggles has confirmed there won't be a radio show this week, so no live streaming over the weekend, but I will see you in the comments.

Red Bull Racing Launch the RB6

Wednesday morning saw the launch of the eagerly anticipated Red Bull Racing RB6. As many F1 teams this year launch cars that bear more than a passing resemblance to the 2009 Red Bull chassis, all eyes were on Adrian Newey's masterpiece to see if he managed to develop his design yet further.

The Renault powered car was unveiled to the media at 8:30am local time (7:30am GMT), prior to taking to the track for today's F1 test in Jerez. As with previous launches this year, images of the new car leaked online in advance of the official launch.

Credit: Red Bull Racing

The new Red Bull RB6, featuring a heavily sculpted nose channel and revised front wing.

The car is being described by the team as an evolution of the RB5, and doesn't appear to offer anything out of the ordinary. Newey himself pointed out the team "have been able to design the rear suspension and gearbox with the double diffuser in mind".

Credit: Red Bull Racing

An alternate view of the new RB6.

Both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber are sporting revised helmet designs for the new season. Webber's Arai helmet features largely similar colours to previous years, but adds an Australian emblem on the back. Vettel meanwhile has come out with a design that mimics the look of a can of Red Bull.

Credit: Red Bull Racing

Vettel's Red Bull can helmet, complete with list of ingredients and suggestions for recycling.

The styling of the helmet goes so far as to add a list of ingredients alongside a health warning. The top includes a large ring pull.

Credit: Red Bull Racing

The top of Sebastian Vettel's helmet shows lid of a Red Bull can including blue ring pull.

This post will be updated with pictures, video and information as it becomes available.

Daily: 30th January 2010

Today is Saturday, the penultimate day of January and the start of the weekend. Most importantly this means we can sleep. Both halves of Sidepodcast are officially under the weather today, and the lovely Christine is suffering the most.

Despite us working at less than full capacity on Friday, there were plenty of events to discuss both inside and outside of the F1 scene.

• Kimi got his full time rallying career off the ground on Friday, and we're committing to covering his progress this year, starting with a dedicated Arctic Rally thread. It's a new and confusing category of motor sport for us to fathom, and Räikkönen appears to have much to learn too.
• Yesterday's Friday Fun topic got everybody reminiscing on classic Formula 1 launch parties in year's gone by. I'll happily go on record and say things certainly seemed more exciting back in my day.
• The McLaren team threw back the covers on their 2010 challenger the MP4-25 less than 24 hours ago, but an early leak of press images via Dank on Twitter took the edge off the silver machine's unveiling. That said, the rest of the event in Newbury went off without a hitch, with the live stream offering far more useful coverage than Ferrari's pathetic efforts the previous day.
• If you haven't already, please take a look at Adie's write-up from a day inside Vodafone HQ. It's commendable that McLaren took the initiative to open doors and recognise bloggers efforts to break into mainstream F1 journalism. Although it has been noted that the team from Woking happily opened someone else's factory doors, rather than their own.
• As a final word on launches, I recommend reading Joe's thoughts on viewing from the comfort of one's armchair. With zero hope of an exclusive, why would professional journalists travel from far and wide to experience the same thing as those watching at home (or even less if you factor in the leaked photographs)? There's plenty more to be discussed on this subject, do watch for more posts later today.

Apologies to anyone waiting on F1 Minute or F1 Big Picture, I may be trusted to handle a stand-in daily post, but my talents only stretch so far (plus I charge by the hour, don't ya know?). Here's wishing Christine a speedy recovery.

Mercedes-Benz F1 Livery Launch Replay

The battle for the most interactive F1 launch appears to be well and truly and on. This morning Ferrari announced they will be broadcasting the launch of their 2010 Formula 1 car online on Thursday, while McLaren have created a special microsite for their own announcement later this week.

In the meantime, current multimedia forerunners Mercedes have published a replay of their live streaming launch video. The whole show is almost 22 minutes in length, highlights some slightly dodgy lighting and the first half of the video features a German language soundtrack. If you missed it the first time though, and didn't manage to catch the debut of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher in their 2010 outfits, this is worth watching.

Let's hope that the remaining F1 teams step up and offer fans a similar service for each of the remaining events.

F1 2010 Launch Coverage

Any semblance of an off-season is well and truly gone now, as we duck under the 50 day season start countdown, and prepare ourselves for upcoming team launches and testing. This week sees no less than five F1 teams unveil the designs they will race around the world this year.

As usual Sidepodcast will be covering all the announcements as they happen and there will be a dedicated thread per team, appearing in advance of each launch. During events we'll post photographs, video and embedded streaming (if teams allow it), before wrapping up what we've learnt at the end of the day.

Additionally we'll be tracking conversations on Twitter and as ever, please keep your insights, thoughts and observations coming in the comments. This year promises to offer the most connected and interactive experience Formula 1 has ever seen.

The first launch kicks off on Monday, with Mercedes being the first to break cover for their "team launch". The Sidepodcast Calendar lists all of the currently announced dates, but here's a quick reminder of what we're looking forward to.

Of note, there are rumours suggesting Mercedes may run their car for the first time on 1 February in Valencia, along with Williams. The calendar is continually updated with new information as it's available.

To ensure you don't miss out on any launch coverage this year, make sure you subscribe to the Sidepodcast Feed.

FOTA Abandon Joint Launch Plan

After originally proposing the idea of a single group launch with all teams represented in Valencia, the Formula One Teams Association have now deferred that plan for 12 months. Partly because it is expected that a number of new entrants will struggle to have their cars ready in time.

FOTA said in a statement today that:

The joint car launch project has been postponed to 2011, in order to ensure a totally successful event.

The teams will be organising individual car launches for the 2010 season.

Journalist Stuart Codling had already preempted the annoucement and noted a number of flaws in the plan: "...pretty much everyone except Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren were unhappy that they would be swept off the news agenda. There was no PR value in it for the smaller teams."

FOTA now has a whole season in which to re-evaluate the idea. In the meantime, individual low key launches are expected from each team.

Toro Rosso Launch STR4

This article was originally written for BellaOnline, but is republished here for posterity.

With the Brawn GP car unveiled with no specific launch, Toro Rosso became the last team to release their 2009 car into the wild. Having dominated some of the earlier winter tests using a previous car spec to everyone else, it was time for them to show us what the STR4 could do.

Released at the start of this week's Barcelona test, the launch saw drivers Sebastien Buemi and Sebastien Bourdais take the covers off the car, and pose for photos. The STR4 then hit the track for some laps.

Technical Director Giorgio Ascanelli was adamant that the car is not simply a rebadged RB5, as the teams use different engines. The Red Bull is designed to house a Renault, and the Toro Rosso has been built around a Ferrari engine, so he claims they are very different. Unfortunately, their paint jobs really are quite similar, dark blue with the Red Bull logo, and so spotting the difference out on track might be hard.

The team confirmed they won't be running KERS for the first two races of the season, at least, which coincides with what a lot of the other teams are saying. They also admitted they want to repeat the success of 2008, although clearly a win might be asking a little too much. Buemi is confident that he can do well, but wants to shake off any comparisons to Vettel before they even start. Bourdais, meanwhile, is grateful for the opportunity of another chance in Formula 1, but will be kept busy taking part in the Le Mans 24 Hour race as well.

The good news is that despite the economic times, and many teams cutting back, Toro Rosso will be increasing their staff slightly in the coming months. They want to build up their design department, presumably to make sure that any doubts about the "rebadged RB5" problem really do go away.

Toro Rosso are a team with a lot of question marks hanging around them at the moment. They are for sale, as Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz doesn't want two teams. They are coming off the back of a very strong year, but that was probably due to having a very strong driver. They have strong links with Red Bull but also want to start to distance themselves from their sister team. It will be a tough year for them, I think, but a fascinating one to watch.

Red Bull RB5 Unveiled

Red Bull Racing unveiled their 2009 challenger the RB5 in Jerez this morning, and isn't she a beauty? As discussed earlier today the designers have gone to town with this car, which features the busiest front wings of all the 2009 designs.

The car also carries aggressively contoured uprights near the wing mirrors and a nose with an unusually high aero profile and a groove pressed into the central section.

The radiator inlets look tiny in the photographs, while the wing mirrors are situated wide of the drivers vision. As yet there's no sign of the shark-fin engine cover that we've seen running on the Renault and Toyota already this year.

I'm a huge fan of the colour scheme too, the deep blue works very well with the black of the tyres and for some reason the cola promotion blends in better than in previous years.

Also interesting is the location of the driver numbers which are found on the sidepod uprights, but if someone could explain what the device hanging from the underside of the car's nose in the first picture does, we'd be most grateful.

Update: General consensus suggests the device might be used as some kind of ballast, or could possibly contain laser equipment for monitoring ride-height.

Webber and Vettel both attended the unveiling at the Jerez circuit. Sebastian sported a fetching hat before donning his helmet and taking to the track for a first outing in the RB5.

Things may not have gone entirely as planned though, as the car was spotted being loaded onto the back of flatbed truck by mid-afternoon. Reports suggest the problem was temperature related, so the tight chassis packaging is already paying dividends then.

Please do also let us know what you think of the new machine in the comments. Is this the best livery of the year and more importantly, is it a race winning car?

Thoughts Ahead of the Red Bull Launch

We're not entirely sure what time Red Bull are planning to reveal their 2009 car this morning, but an educated guess says it'll be around 9am GMT. Before then though, it might be worth having a quick round-up of gossip and expectations prior to the event.

On Friday the team released a preview video detailing the changes to rule book for this year. The animation offered a sneak peek as to what we might experience livery wise and Dave confirmed the video features a close approximation of how the car will look.

Ian from Racing Bulls recently posted a list of Technical Specifications of the RB5 which covers the finer points of the new machine alongside a small teaser image.

Additionally, and I'm not sure if this has been covered elsewhere on the web, but we have it on good authority that the Newey pencil has been working its magic and the RB5 might just feature amongst other things:

• An unusually sculpted nose
• A complex multi-planed front wing arrangement

It should be noted that the above information didn't come from anyone who's commented on this site before, and may or may not be exclusive to Sidepodcast. However, given that a team only get to launch a new car once a year the rest of the rumours are probably best left unprinted.

Vettel is due to debut the new machinery on track in a couple of hours, and we may just find ourselves looking at one of the best looking cars on the grid.

BMW F1.09 Launched in Valencia

BMW Sauber's official response to the 2009 regulations broke cover this morning in Valencia.

Kubica was the first to take the new set of wheels for a spin, with a quick installation lap at the Spanish track. The team intend to commence a full testing schedule later today.

We've seen early revisions of the F1.09 chassis running during pre-season testing already, and the bodywork unveiled today doesn't offer too many surprises. The front wing still looks like it will require heavy contouring before the season starts, while the rear is clean and functional.

No major changes on the livery front, either. The team are sticking with the tried and tested blue on white effect. There does appear to be a surprising lack of sponsorship on car at the moment, especially around the engine cover section.

As ever, we're keen to hear what you make of the latest creation to come out of Hinwil. Does it look like a multiple race winner, and can you see the team fighting for a championship in the F1.09?