In the last Sidepodradio post, I touched upon the fact that we raised an awful lot of money for charity. It was much more than we expected, and the astounding generosity of people makes those 12 hours even more special.
It started out as a quick donations drive raising money to cover the cost of production - £120 to be exact. It soon exceeded that, and we knew donating to charity would turn it into the proper radiothon we wanted it to be. As it turns out, the server really didn't hold up as much as we thought, and therefore, it doesn't deserve any money. We'll return that £120 to the kitty, and round it up to the nearest ten, meaning our total for charity is:
£680!
That is an amazing effort, and everyone should give themselves a big pat on the back.
There's just one more step to go through, and that's deciding the motorsport charity who will benefit from the Sidepodradio event. We've had some great suggestions in the wiki, where there are links to find out more about each charity, plus a breakdown of the donations and how we reached the total.
Now, though, it's time for the vote.
Which is the 2009 Sidepodradio charity?
Grand Prix Mechanics Charitable Trust 24% (16 votes)
Wings for Life 36% (24 votes)
The Bruce McLaren Trust 6% (4 votes)
Mark Webber Challenge Foundation 12% (8 votes)
SANDS (as supported by Rob Smedley) 21% (14 votes)
Total voters: 66
Once again, thanks go to everyone who got involved in Sidepodradio from those who were on practically every show to those who just left a single comment. Everyone was part of it, and it's down to all of you that we have raised this money. We'll close the poll at about midday on Wednesday, and let you know the results. Get voting!
Scott has been scouting around the comments for advice on getting into journalism, particularly sporting and motorsports. Who better to ask than Stuart Codling? Here he dispenses some invaluable advice.
“What advice can you give me if I want to start a career in motorsport journalism…?”
Well, Scott, you asked – and there’s no definitive answer, because times they are a-changin’, although there are a few principles that should hold true even in the internet age.
1) Language!
This is a communications industry, so a decent command of the lingo will be your biggest asset. Yes, I know I’m stating the bleedin’ obvious here, but you would be astounded at how many people covet a job in journalism without actually being able to operate its principal medium: English. Trust me – the evidence used to accumulate in big piles on my desk.
I’ve seen some real horrors; writing punctuated so randomly that I could only imagine the author had filled some giant pepper grinder with apostrophes and commas, then sprinkled the contents over the page as if they were putting the finishing touches to a pizza. And although there is some dark amusement to be had in reading that someone claims “attention to detail” as one of their strengths, having pitched you a feature on “Bridgestone vs Mitchell tyres”, depression soon sets in.
For all that they want to write for a living, a lot of prospective scribes don’t read enough. Perhaps it’s because they see writing as a means to an end (the end in this case being involvement in motorsport) and aren’t interested enough to find out how to do it properly. So here’s a tip: read for pleasure, and do it often. It doesn’t have to be Voltaire; Terry Pratchett will do, at a pinch. You’ll learn a lot about grammar, spelling, punctuation, pace and storytelling.
2) Know your audience
As Alex said, nobody is going to give you an F1 hardcard, a wad of plane tickets and some accommodation vouchers, and say, “Here you go; toddle off and watch some races and maybe jot something down afterwards.” As a journalist you are entering into a commercial relationship with your audience. They are your customers. You are writing for them, not for yourself. You can wind them up a bit, but don’t bore them.
So: re-read your work. Is it spelled right? Does it make sense? Is it interesting enough? What can you profitably remove, for the sake of pacing, without detracting from the flow of information? A common error – particularly among writers of motorsport history – is to utterly up-end the fact bucket over the poor reader, leaving them bewildered at the flow of information. Keeping it simple is becoming increasingly important in this era of declining attention spans.
3) Practice
Having a blog is an excellent way of improving your writing because you learn by doing – and, with any luck, you’ll get instant feedback from readers. After all, you don’t run a marathon without doing the hard miles in training first.
4) Get noticed
As Boris Johnson said, “The first duty of a columnist is to be read.” Whether you’re fulfilling a commission for a magazine or newspaper, or writing a blog entry, avoid letting it slide into blah-de-blah. In the consumer age, all people want to do is get to the end of a story and move on to the next – don’t give them an excuse to flick to the end of your piece without reading it.
Say something interesting. Make every sentence count. Play to the gallery occasionally (all successful bloggers do it).
Many people criticise my erstwhile colleague Mr Bishop, but you all know who he is and you care enough about what he says to have read his work. Even if writing a whole story about how he told Ralf Schumacher to Foxtrot Oscar was perhaps, in hindsight, not the most sensible course of action.
5) Get out from behind your keyboard
Social skills are still important. You can’t interview people on Facebook (yet). A worrying number of applicants for journalism jobs are either cripplingly shy or have poorly developed social skills. They are often very good at assembling a story based on internet research, but they founder when they have to do anything face-to-face.
If you want to differentiate your work from everyone else’s – talk to people! You may – perish the thought – learn something that doesn’t come up on the first page of Google. 6) And finally
…as someone who will remain nameless once said to me, before I arrived for a job interview, “All you have to do is turn up and not be a c—t.”
The Italian newspaper La Stampa is reporting that Carlos Slim has put up the cash to secure the team's future. We've been speculating, as I think everyone has, on who the potential buyers could be, and Mr Slim was a top prospect. The rumour that Honda F1's car park had to be cleared to fit in Slim's giant helicopter only added fuel to the fire. The newspaper themselves admit that nothing has been confirmed but if it is true, this is welcome news.
Unfortunately, it looks like Barrichello won't be making a return to the Brackley team with Bruno Senna the favoured driver to take his place. This isn't really a surprise, although it is a shame. Barrichello has appeared to have some real fire in his desire to keep on racing, but some of his recent decorum may have put off the potential buyers.
Assuming all of the above is true, there are still many, many questions we need answering. Maybe we need a list:
What will the team be called?
What beautiful livery will take the Earth Dreams place?
Will Brawn and Fry retain their jobs?
Will the new team turn up for any testing before the season starts?
Will this scare improve their performance at all in 2009?
Finally, if Slim is, as rumoured, the money man behind Piquet, where does this leave Renault?
Are there any other questions I've missed? Please leave your suggestions in the comments.
Having been away from Sidepodcast Towers for too long, it's time to sit back, relax and catch up with the news and events from the past few days. We also discuss our last summer outing at Goodwood.
Intro
If last week's show was good because of him, perhaps it's time to think about going solo?
Good Week / Bad Week
Perhaps not.
Good week for helmets and making friends, but a bad week for Ferrari and F1 in general.
News and Views
We discuss details from the three day test at Hockenheim including Renault's continual engine failures, the comparison between McLaren and Ferrari, and whether the anvil wing/shark fin is going to take over the sport.
Goodwood FoS
With an introduction from Steven Roy, we discuss our weekend, with not as much enthusiasm as expected. Several things didn't live up to expectations, whilst other things were better than we could have hoped. Plus, we got free smoothies, made up a ridiculous pun, and took photos of Vicki Butler-Henderson. No complaints from us... except the few in the show.
Feedback
No feedback because let's be honest, it's only been four days since the last show.
Actually, the title may be a bit misleading. I'm not staying awake for 24 hours, not even for Franck. This thread is here for any Le Mans discussion, although it's not aiming to replicate the Live Comment phenomenon of an F1 race weekend. If you spot anything interesting over the course of the 24 hours, then drop it in the comments and we can all try and stay informed.
Several times last year, I felt like I was a one man marketing machine for Renault's online F1 presence. Not a week went by it seemed without me extolling the virtues of the team's blog, website or even their attempts to embrace Second Life.
This year on the other hand, there couldn't be a more stark contrast in my opinions.
It all went wrong back in January when the team decided to split the 'fan' section from the 'team' section. Presumably this was to satisfy the sponsors and the groups legal team who were probably a bit uneasy about all those fans with their outspoken opinions.
Once the split had occurred though, things appeared to go from bad to worse.
Regarding the 'fans' section - after four months of waiting there still isn't any form of news feed to track either blog updates or user comments, the picture submission section is rarely updated and despite many attempts of trying, the "submit an MP3 podcast" page has never yielded a successful response from ourselves or any other member of the public. It's utterly, utterly useless.
Moving onto the 'team' section, things don't get any better there either. The content area is massive (filling the majority of my screen), slow to download and noisy (a soundtrack plays each time the page loads). Many things are still missing months after the initial release with 'coming soon' flags still featuring in most areas. However, without a doubt, the worst crime by far is the damage done to 'Race Control'.
12 months ago Renault did something amazing, they beat Bernie at his own game and provided fans with some stunning insight into what goes on in a car during practice, qualifying and the race. We talked about it in detail during episode 15 and posted screenshots later in the year.
Essentially what Renault had done was provide all the live information about their cars in a handy window roughly the same size as the official live timing screens. In short, it was an engineers view of the race unfolding. Throughout the year we ran the two windows side-by-side, and sometimes referenced the Renault data post race.
It was brilliant in every possible way, but this year they've got it all wrong.
Alongside the flashy, but bloated new website, the team have debuted a trainwreck of a timing solution. In principle I can see what they've attempted to do, and that is to take what they offered last year to the next level, but in doing so they've ruined the very essence of it. It's hard to describe, so here's a screenshot:
What you're looking at there is an image I grabbed during Free Practice 2 in Bahrain. The track in view is live 3D representation of the each car's location on the circuit, the wheel represents Alonso's steering angle, while the dial indicates revs, speed and gear selection.
All of this information slows my laptop to a crawl, takes up 100% of screen real estate and tells me nothing that a simple two-dimensional circuit map and an animated line graph couldn't tell me in half the time, for a fraction of the effort. It is a triumph of style over substance and leaves me hopelessly frustrated. It is unusable.
To add further insult to injury, none of the data can be reviewed or replayed post-race either.
Given that Pat Symonds spent a considerable amount of effort convincing all and sundry post race in Bahrain that Alonso hadn't lifted and caused the accident with Hamilton, and given that all of that data was actually already available to anyone who wanted it during the race and therefore should've made Pat's job redundant, I can only conclude that absolutely nobody uses Renault's Race Control for it's intended function.
It is beyond useless as a concept, beyond useless as a tool and is an utter waste of everybody's time... including Pat's.
Now can we have the old timing system (and the old blog) back, pretty please?
We’ve had a look at all the good stuff about F1, the speed, the races, the cars. Now it’s time to take a look at the flip side to that – the rule enforcers.
Your boo’s and hiss’s should be aimed at the FIA, who represent the interests of the majority of motorsport worldwide. I’d tell you what it stands for but it’s in French and I probably wouldn’t do it justice. They are based in Paris, y’see.
The FIA’s main remit is to increase motorsport safety, manage championships, specify regulations and set calendars. Basically this means they have to make all the important decisions. They’re also heavily involved in everyday road safety.
Other than Formula 1, they also preside over the World Rally Championship and the World Touring Car Championship. F1 is their highest profile sport though – the one that gets them in the news all the time, for both good and bad reasons.
Within Formula 1, the FIA face a constant battle with the manufacturer’s who wish to spend more money more often, whereas the FIA continue to try to reign in excess spending by introducing restrictions such as two-race engines, and single tyre suppliers. The idea behind the cost-cutting measures is to make sure that the sport can include independent teams such as Williams – a team who’s sole reason for being is to race in F1. Manufacturer’s come and go but it’s the independents who really stay on in people’s hearts.
When a team is doing something a little bit dodgy, that perhaps another team wants to complain about, they take it to the race stewards. These are the people who make the decisions about particular races, including safety cars, flags, and they have the power to start and stop the race. They can be compared to the referee’s in a football game or the umpire in a tennis match. If teams disagree with the steward’s decision, they can escalate their complaint to the International Court of Appeal. This is run by the FIA, and is more like a court case with lawyers and such like. The ICA decision is final.
When it comes to safety, the driver’s get to have their say in the form of the Grand Prix Driver’s Association. This is basically a union for Formula 1 drivers, chaired by a nominated current driver. The GPDA was formed after the death of Ayrton Senna, as a way for drivers to air their views over the state of Formula 1 safety. Often, they don’t agree with the FIA decisions, but with their only power being access to the media, they rarely make a difference.
One final thing that the FIA do which affects us all, is research into motorsport and the environment, including cleaner fuels, and renewable energy. They are involved in several carbon neutrality schemes, for example reforestation projects. This way, they can keep Formula 1 safe and secure for the future.
We mentioned safety briefly today. Our next instalment of the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1 will look at safety in more detail.
This article was originally written for BellaOnline, but is republished here for posterity.
If you've never seen an F1 Grand Prix before, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Admittedly, it can come across as a row of noisy, colourful cars just following each other around a track. But what you need to do is dig down beneath the surface of those cars to really appreciate the skills involved in the sport.
The most obvious thing that separates an F1 car from your regular road car is the speed. At top speeds, in a straight line, an F1 car can do almost 190mph, but obviously around a track they are limited by the corners. Still, they are much faster than any other motorsport.
Another important thing about the car is that it's a single seater, with the driver very low to the ground. This means, there is little separating the driver from the track, except his own skill. The cars are specially designed so they have as little wind resistance as possible. Many manufacturers have wind tunnels at their development factories so they can focus on that exact aspect of design. That's why some of the cars look a bit odd, with holes in the sides, and wings sticking up at the back.
The tyres in F1 are very different to the ones you'll find on your roadcar. They are not built to last - just 300km for one race - and have to meet strict regulations on width and the amount of grooves they have. There are three different types of tyres allowed - wets, intermediates and slicks (for dry conditions) - the main identifying feature being the depth of grooves in the tyre.
When you're watching an F1 race, the main way to distinguish between the cars is their colours, with each team being painted to match the team branding and also incorporate the colours of their sponsors. But each car has more than just paint to identify it from the others, there are subtle differences that are often quite fun to look out for. Like the fact that last year's McLaren had little wings sticking out above the driver so that it looked like a Viking's helmet. Or some of the new 2007 cars that appear to have their wing mirrors in a much more wobbly place.
The main difference between competitors is, of course, the engines. The tiny differences in speed of an engine can mean the difference between pole position and starting back a few rows on the grid. In recent years, the engines have had to withstand two race weekends in one go, otherwise the team suffers a penalty. Quite often, they can't manage this and on weekends when many teams are on their second race - blowouts are quite frequent. This again makes F1 different to normal racecars. They are so finely tuned with such precision that they cannot be relied upon to last for too long. Plus, they go really, really fast!
So, with such precision instrumentation, and such attention to detail in design, there is always something to look out for on an F1 car. Now, if you look at those noisy, colourful cars just following each other around a track, it starts to make a little bit more sense, and be a little bit more appealing.
