Sidepodcast

Daily: 20th January 2010

Mid-way through the week already, and we have reached the twentieth day of this brand new year. It's Will Wright's birthday today and I'm only telling you that because he created The Sims, and The Sims is brilliant. Now, moving on to more Formula 1 related things, here are some of the items we're currently talking about:

• The BBC Olympics blog has an interesting post about how the GB cycling team relates to the McLaren Technology Centre. It's one of those: "F1 is useful to other technologies, honest" type posts, but it makes for good reading if you have a spare five minutes.
• We were intrigued by the news about Pedro de la Rosa yesterday, particularly his signing over the anticipated Heidfeld announcement. We talked about it in the breakout thread, there's a Pedalo shaped F1 Big Picture, and RG has written about the news, coming to the conclusion that it's not all bad.
• The official F1 site have a history piece up about Mercedes, and how they fit into the bigger motorsport picture. There's nothing new in there, but it's a great recap of how they've got where they are - which is basically taking over the grid. This piece reminded me of the mini series episode I did on the Safety Car and Medical Car, both powered by Mercedes.

Anyway, that should keep you going for now. As I said, we're mid-way through the week, so it's all downhill from here. I'll see you in the comments.

It's Just a Personality Contest

In 2007, it was so obvious that Lewis Hamilton was going to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. No one had seen such a stunning start to a sporting career, and he had reinvigorated plenty of Briton’s interest in motor racing.

Then Joe Calzaghe started punching his way into the public’s hearts, and everyone forgot about their F1 hero. He finished up second, but who ever remembers second place in this kind of competition?

The question is, can Hamilton make it this year? He’s well on his way to a maiden championship title, with only one real rival for it. He’s been winning all over the place, featured in all the newspapers, handing out some awards, and generally increasing his popularity.

Granted Lewis also left the country and bemoaned being famous, but that doesn't seem to have damaged his status too much.

The problem with this year is a small little thing called the Olympics. Our athletes won our highest medal tally for over 100 years, and we brought home plenty of lovely gold.

With the Games fresh in our minds, and lingering due to our hosting duties in 2012, it’s highly likely that Mr Hamilton will be usurped again. I'm not a betting expert, and the bracketed odds are bound to change, but the BBC list swimming champ Rebecca Adlington (2-1), cyclist Chris Hoy (5-2) and sailor Ben Ainslie (20-1) amongst those in with a chance. Hamilton (5-2) is right up there with the best of them.

Personally, I was thinking about voting for Olympic Cyclist Bradley Wiggins, if only because his nickname is The Wiggler. Bradley ‘The Wiggler’ Wiggins. Can’t really ask for more, can you?

There’s also Andy Murray, who’s been on top tennis form this year. But he’s not really very good at winning friends and influencing people, so I’m not sure whether to encourage him or not. I do have until the 14th December to decide, of course.

As it stands, there have been six Formula 1 wins: Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, and two each for Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill. I’m sure Hamilton will want to add his name to the list, but it’s a tough year with so much competition. If he wins this year’s championship title, though, it might boost his odds just that little bit.

It’s not all about odds though, as the public get the vote and the final say. Us Brits are known to be quite a fickle bunch as well (who me?), so in the three months Lewis has left to make an impression, anything could happen.

F1 at the Olympics

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

With the Olympics in Beijing being a success, thoughts now turn to the 2012 competition to be held in the UK. As ever, some sports might be retired from the lineup and new ones could be introduced. Speculation was mounting for a short while that Formula 1, or at least some kind of motorsport, could make an appearance at the Olympics, but that doesn't seem likely.

Firstly, there's the matter that the Olympics is about human endeavour and therefore discourages any sports that have machinery doing all the work. There are exceptions to the rule, obviously, but that may be more to do with the history of the games, and a new sport would have a tougher road to inclusion.

Secondly, it would have to be a version of Formula 1 that centres on nationalities. To make it a fair competition, the cars would all have to be the same, and this would be more in the realm of A1 GP rather than Formula 1. If you were to use Formula 1 teams, questions would rise over whether the driver's nationality or the team's country should get the medal, and I believe it would all be too complicated to make it worthwhile.

The final problem really lies in the fact that anyone can have a go at diving or tennis, and get good at it. Getting into motorsport can be difficult and costly, and is therefore slightly out of sync with the feeling of the Olympics. Although now it is quite a professional competition, the Olympics is all about letting everyone have a go, and capturing the spirit of the underdog.

For now, it seems as though we will have to live without our drivers getting gold, silver and bronze medals. It seems a shame, because motorsport is an activity that fans can easily get behind. Whilst something like diving can be all about interpretation, and the gymnastic judging has been called into question, in a race, it's clear who's winning. The introduction of BMX racing into the games has been a success, so it doesn't seem out of the question that racing cars could follow.

Perhaps we'll see a form of motorsport at the Olympics one day, but it seems the games aren't quite ready to accept four wheels just yet.

When We Walked in Fields of Gold

There's plenty of talk going round at the moment about the possibility of a London Grand Prix in 2012 to be included in the Olympics. I've been watching some of the Olympic coverage, alright, a lot of it, and there are a few incidents I've seen that show good reason for this not to happen.

Running For No Reason

In the gymnastics hall, a Russian girl was taking part in the vault. She ran up, did her stuff and executed a perfect landing. She jogged to her trainer and waited for the result. The wait was interminable, and the judges were clearly arguing about something. In the end, it turns out that she ran when the judges weren't ready and she was awarded a zero score. When the competition works on an average of your scores, a zero is pretty devastating.

What would happen if this occurred during a race? Perhaps there'd be complaints that a car jumped the start, and Charlie Whiting would have to say - "Sorry guys, I wasn't looking? Let's award him no points anyway."

A Different Kind of Pole Position

In the pole vault competition, a Brazilian entrant had to pass one of her attempts because she couldn't find her pole. The long bendy sticks are gathered together by officials and kept under lock and key, to be brought out only in time for the competition. Now, all the stories I have read on this fail to tell me what happened in the end, so I'm assuming the pole was found and life carried on normally. I'd imagine there would have been more of a fuss, otherwise.

This is a pretty serious error, though, on the part of organisers. Imagine if the drivers turned up on the morning of the London Grand Prix, only for Piquet to peek into the parc fermé garage and go "Where's my car?"

Age Ain't Nothing But A Number

Back at the gym, the women's uneven bar contest saw a very young Chinese girl take the win, beating out the slightly older USA competitor. They finished with the same score, but China got the gold based on a tie-break scoring situation. Now it turns out there is controversy about this girl's age. At several events, and in newspapers previously, she has been credited as being 13, which would make her 14 at the time of the games. However, her passport reads 16 - the age required to take part. Although this has been investigated, and no further action is being taken, it still remains suspicious.

Imagine, a controversy about who the actual winner is, and who the moral winner is, in F1 this would just... Actually, that sounds about right.

All in all, in my view, it's clear that the Olympics and Formula 1 are very different, and any Grand Prix that occurs specifically for the 2012 event would have to be treated as such. What do you think? Is racing for a gold medal a good idea?