Sidepodcast

Force India "Win a Lot of Races" in the Simulator

Credit: Force India

Adrian Sutil surveys the Bahrain scenery ahead of the season opening Grand Prix.

Just in time for the start of the season, Force India have released a new 33 minute audio podcast. The format has changed significantly from last year, and there is a new feed to subscribe to. In the first episode, drivers Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi talk about the upcoming season, while Friday man Paul di Resta discusses testing.

The newly promoted Mark Smith, who recently replaced outgoing Technical Director James Key, offers insight into what the team have planned for the first race of the year. Updates include an aerodynamic package tested during the last two days in Barcelona, focusing on front and rear wing improvements plus changes to the diffuser. Smith says the team consider themselves to be in a mid-grid position and are looking to move forward.

The most enlightening section of the show comprises of an interview with Team Manager, Andy Stevenson. Talk turns to regulation changes including the reduction in available tyres and the banning of refuelling. Andy raises a number of important points relating to pit stops, including:

• He doesn't think we'll see any sub two-second pits stops at the start of the season
• His team have rehearsed pit stops over 1,500 times during the winter
• Drivers absolutely must hit their pit marks this year, there is no time to adjust wheel gun positioning
• The stopping tolerance drivers are working to is a 5mm margin of error.

Stevenson also noted that teams will only have a few seconds to make strategy calls this year. In the past it was possible to predict to the nearest lap when someone might stop, but in 2010 they'll have no idea. He's also confident they've done their homework when it comes to strategy.

"We are running race simulations daily with [our engineers], and throwing scenarios at them and seeing where we come out. The nice thing to say is we win a lot of races in the simulator."

The podcast wraps up with a chat with the left rear wheel gunner, Chris King. He'll be one of 12 people changing the tyres at a race, and while he's "happy with his wheel" he notes the extra pressure on the role this year. Worryingly he quotes a three to four second turnaround at this point in time.

You can listen to the full show here and either subscribe in iTunes or directly to the feed. We noted after the release of the recent Lotus podcast, that audio output from teams is likely to increase this season and it's good to see Force India are still committed to their podcast.

Thursday Thoughts - What Features From Other Series' Would Benefit F1?

This week, Turkey Machine has taken up the Thursday Thoughts baton and presents us with this question:

What features or regulations from other racing series would benefit F1, and why?

Immediately, I panicked, because it's no secret that I watch very few other motorsport series unless they have a certain Frenchman in them. That, of course, is my way in, though. The Le Mans 24 Hours has quite a lot of bits and pieces that would be interesting to see featured in F1.

One of the most fascinating concepts that Le Mans introduced recently is the diesel powered cars. The idea has been around for a while, but Audi built the first victory winning diesel for the 2006 race, and the fuel has really taken off since then. Peugeot built a competitor to match, and the pair of them have been going head to head each year without a sniff of petrol.

For every disadvantage the diesel has, particularly being heavy and sluggish, there are advantages, and one that particularly applies to F1 is the fuel economy. With the ban of refuelling coming in for this season and beyond, fuel economy is going to be one of the most important factors of a race. Every drop of liquid on board can add time to a lap, so perhaps a switch to diesel could start a revolution.

The other element of Le Mans racing that fascinates me is the pit stops. A car has to be shut off as it refuels, which obviously makes things a lot safer for the personnel involved. F1 has no refuelling at the moment, so that isn't really an important factor, but something worth noting for the future.

There aren't enormous amounts of personnel involved in a Le Mans pit stop, compared to the army of mechanics trained to service an F1 car. A pair of mechanics run round to each corner of the car, changing the tyres. Just two men. It's quite amusing watching them dash around the car, and I think this would add something to F1 pit stops, particularly if there is to be no other action going on.

It would be particularly good if it was the same two men at each team for every race. The pressure would be on them to do a perfect job, we would be able to see who was good and who let the side down. You could even end up learning their names! Making F1 more human was an added bonus I hadn't considered when I thought this idea up.

Of course, the other thing that F1 needs to take from Le Mans is Franck, but I believe that to be a whole other blog post!

Will.i.am Wheelman

It would appear that F1 has gone mainstream.

We have all been discussing Bernie's F1 Rocks concert idea since it first came up - mostly wondering whether it would have the effect he was after. Making Formula 1 a more rounded event with plenty to entertain everyone is a good idea, and we have discussed this at length previously.

Now it is happening though, it's actually a little bit scary.

I have spent the entire day explaining to Mr C who Lindsay Lohan, Fergie, and N*E*R*D are, whilst he had great fun yesterday trying to explain the concept of ZZ Top to me. This F1 Rocks business has put a divide straight down the middle of Sidepodcast Headquarters.

Meanwhile, we have seen the 'Rocks stars infiltrating our beloved garages. Beyonce took a trip down the pit lane, posing for photographs in and around the McLaren garage. Black Eyed Peas spent part of their day with Force India, and actually got involved with a pit stop.

That is some good work by Will.i.am Wheelman there. If he wasn't so busy singing, he could possibly have a go in the race. Also, I would quite like it if the Backstreet Boys could have a go at the pit stop business. Pretty please?

Ms. Lohan, who is fronting the whole event, has been talking about her knowledge of F1, which seems to be lacking a little, but she's eager to learn.

"I'd love to learn more about Formula 1 and racing. I actually studied NASCAR for almost a year when I was doing Herbie."

This is a film that we actually both have heard of - albeit different versions. The first thing she needs to learn, of course, is that F1 is nothing like NASCAR.

She may not know as much about F1 as we do, but she's certainly on the same level as me when it comes to music.

"I hadn't heard of Simple Minds before, but I will be aware of them after this."

Which leaves Mr C is more disillusioned by the whole concept than ever.

All in all, this sudden invasion of music and popular culture into the normally quite stuffy Formula 1 has taken us quite by surprise. I think I like it.

Days that Shook the F1 World - Brabham Introduce Refuelling

• Length: 3:21 
• Size: 3.1 MB 
• File: day12.mp3 
• Transcript: day12.pdf 
• Torrent: day12.torrent 

Welcome to the second series of Days that Shook the F1 World, brought to you by Sidepodcast. We’re halfway through now, and ready to look at another important date in Formula 1’s history – 15th August 1982.

The date in question is the Austrian Grand Prix, which was the 13th round of the season. However, the story begins a few races beforehand. Up until this point, the pit lane was a place to stop if a car was struggling. Fixing punctures, sorting out broken wings, generally to be avoided.

In 1982, the Brabham team, under the expert guidance of one Bernie Ecclestone, decided to utilise the pit lane for their own benefit. The BT49 was using BMW engines, and needed a lot of fuel to get through an entire race distance. Chief Designer Gordon Murray worked out that if you purposefully stopped halfway through the race and filled up with fuel, then you could run the two stints much lighter, and hopefully faster, than everybody else. It also meant that the tyre compounds could be softer, as they could be changed at the halfway point. It seemed like an obvious and easy solution, and the team tried it out at Brands Hatch.

It started out as it should, with Piquet in the Brabham leading nicely. His aim was to build up enough of a lead to allow time for a pit stop, before rejoining in first place. Unfortunately, after only nine laps, there was a problem with the fuel injection and Piquet retired from the race. His teammate Patrese was involved in a collision and also retired.

They tried again at the next Grand Prix in France. On the second lap, the Brabham’s shot past the leading Renault to pull out a nice gap. Once again, Patrese retired from the race with his car in flames, whilst Piquet continued. He didn’t quite make the halfway point, though, as the team suffered their second engine failure of the race.

Brabham moved swiftly on to the German Grand Prix. Things were looking good, with Piquet once again taking a nice, early lead and stretching out a gap. Patrese had to pit early due to a mechanical problem, which ruined his strategy. Piquet was getting ready to come in for his pit stop, until a collision knocked him out of the race.

Would they ever make it work? Roll on the Austrian GP. The Brabham boys qualified on the front row of the grid, which allowed them to sprint off into the distance. Piquet’s tyres were ruined, but Patrese managed to get to the pit lane as planned. It took 14 seconds for a tyre change and for the Brabham to be pumped half full of fuel. Success. Almost. Patrese’s engine couldn’t last the entire race distance and they faced a double retirement once more.

Nevertheless, the strategy had proved successful and by the next season, planned pit stops were the way forward. Of course, these days, the cars couldn’t do a full race distance if they tried, and pit stops provide the basis for a successful race strategy. The FIA have proposed regulations for 2010 that include banning refueling, which has caused great debate amongst fans and teams alike.

That’s all for this fifth episode of the second series. As suggested, refueling is a subject that comes up for debate on Sidepodcast over and over again, so if you have any opinions on the subject, feel free to share them in the comments, or even better, leave us a voicemail on 0121 28 87225. See you tomorrow.

Theme music: Causeway, Change in My Lifetime.

Guide to Formula 1 - Series Omnibus

• Length: 23:08 
• Size: 21.3 MB 
• File: guideomnibus.mp3 
• Transcript: guideomnibus.pdf 
• Torrent: guideomnibus.torrent 

Welcome to the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1. This is the omnibus edition, where the seven separate shows (originally released over seven days) are brought together in one place.

Here are the links to the individual show notes:

1. Introduction
2. Race Weekend
3. Pit Stops
4. F1 Cars
5. The FIA
6. Safety
7. Attending a Race

This was the first mini series Sidepodcast ever released, originally in 2007, and served as a good introduction to the sport for those who had never watched before.

Barrichello's Double Pit Stop Penalty

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

In the first round of the championship, at Australia, Rubens Barrichello had a disastrous pit stop. Firstly, he had to come in when pit stops were not allowed, under a safety car lap. He would have run out of fuel otherwise, and the team decided that it was worth taking the penalty rather than stopping out on track.

During the actual pit stop, the lollipop man raised the signal too early, and Barrichello pulled away with the fuel rig still attached to the car. This knocked over a couple of mechanics, and some minor injuries were sustained.
Whilst looking in his mirrors to see the disaster behind him, Barrichello missed the pit lane light which was red. Running through the red light means an instant disqualification – although the stewards didn’t actually decide he had run through the light until the end of the race.

Barrichello later said he couldn’t see the red light, that it wasn’t bright enough, big enough, or in the right place. He said it was too easy to run past it, because by the time he saw it, it was too late and he’d already gone.
Teams are also starting to raise questions about the validity of the safety car/pit lane rules. They say it’s an unfair strain on their strategies – they cannot plan for when a safety car will be out, so how can they make sure their cars won’t run out of fuel?

This week, in Malaysia, Barrichello fell foul of another pit lane rule – the speed limit. Speeding in the pit lane is an automatic drive through penalty, meaning Barrichello has to come in one extra time, but can only go straight through the pit lane without stopping for fuel or tyres. This effectively ruined his race.

Afterwards, Barrichello said he couldn’t see the pit lane markers.

It’s slightly worrying that for two races in a row, the Honda driver has got pit lane penalties and both times he has complained that he couldn’t see the item in question. No one else appears to have had this problem, so we have to start wondering whether Barrichello is starting to struggle with the job.

He’s the most experienced man on the grid, so you would think he would know better than to speed in the pit lane. But on the other hand, everyone makes mistakes. It’s a tough call and perhaps for now, it’s just something to keep an eye on in the future.

History of F1 - 1900s to 1940s

• Length: 3:34 
• Size: 3.3 MB 
• File: history1.mp3 
• Transcript: history1.pdf 
• Torrent: history1.torrent 

Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. This series will take us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when Formula 1 was all about honour, it was a gentleman’s sport, and it mostly involved getting to the end of the road without falling in a pothole. We’ll travel through time (not literally, of course), to see how Formula 1 became the corporate and money-orientated sport that it is today.

The F1 championship, and all the official records, date back to the 1950s, but the essence of F1 can be traced all the way back to the early 1900s. Back then it involved heavy cars. Drivers would be accompanied by a mechanic because reliability was such a problem, and the track was just a simple road in France. I say simple, but actually, the races were long and tough. The first proper motor race was called the Paris-Bordeaux because… well, it went from Paris to Bordeaux. It was 1200km, and the winner achieved it in 48 hours. Average speeds were a rocketing 29.9 miles per hour. 1901 saw the first race with Grand Prix in the title, the French Grand Prix, taking place at Le Mans. This time they covered the 700 miles at a much speedier 63 miles per hour.

Our first important milestone occurs in 1908. Previously the cars had wheels and spokes that were permanently attached and often breaking. Now, detachable tyre rims were introduced so that mechanics could play around with them and keep their cars in the race. Shallow bunkers were built at the side of the roads, at pre-arranged places, so the drivers could pull over and allow the tyres to be changed. These were called pits. Ah… the first pit stops were now taking place. The ability to change tyres didn’t make the cars any easier on the rubber though, as the winning Mercedes of the 1908 French Grand Prix went through ten sets of tyres. Perhaps not impressive by today’s standards, but he would have been changing tyres because he had to.

During World War 1, racing was stopped in Europe, so a lot of the drivers went to the States to participate in the Indy 500. After the war, Grand Prix began to take place in both Le Mans and Lyons, with France being the main hosts for motorsport. The racing bug spread though, with Monaco and Belgium both hosting their own GPs. Notable winners were Ferrari, Mercedes, and Bugatti, all ahead of their compatriots in engineering terms.

Just before the Second World War, interest in Grand Prix racing fell to an all time low, due to the Depression and the impending war. However, the instigator of the fighting, Adolf Hitler, actually funded quite a lot of the technological development in racing, with both Audi and Mercedes benefiting from government support. Germans began to take the power of racing away from the French and the Italians, and introduced new techniques, including aerodynamic research, and special mixtures of fuel.

A legendary driver, Tazio Nuvolari from Italy, began to shine as he won everything he entered. He won the first race to feature a qualifying format – the Monaco Grand Prix in 1933 - but his greatest achievement was at the German Nurburgring in 1935, where he beat nine up to date cars with a four year old Alfa Romeo. The first Formula 1 racing superstar was born.

That’s all for our first episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1. In the next show, we’ll have a look at the 1950s, when the official F1 championships began to take place.

Theme music: Friction Bailey, Hope in my History.

F1 Guide (Part 3) - Pit Stops

• Length: 3:29 
• Size: 3.3 MB 
• File: guide3.mp3 
• Transcript: guide3.pdf 
• Torrent: guide3.torrent 

Welcome to the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1.

Pit stops are a funny thing – absolutely necessary to keep the cars running for the length of the race, but ultimately a bit of an inconvenience.

The pit lane runs alongside the start/finish straight, with the entrance just before and the exit just after the line. The teams set up their garages there, with mechanics waiting to assist their team and engineers monitoring all that is happening out on track. Given the amount of people milling around the pit straight, a speed limit is imposed to try and improve safety.

The pit crew is not insubstantial. Some teams have as many as 22 people ready and waiting for each pit stop, including three on each wheel, two on the fuel rig, two with jacks, some people clearing the sidepods and the lollipop guy. In a normal racing pit stop, the car will be flagged to come into the lane via radio. It used to be that signs were held out by the pit crew over the race track, but technology has made that all but redundant. You do find the odd occasion when the radios aren’t working and someone is risking their arms out on the pit wall.

Anyway, the car comes in to the pit lane and crosses a white line signalling an immediate reduction in speed. Drivers are often penalised for speeding in the pit lane. The lollipop man will be furthest away from the garage, indicating to his car where to pull in, and the driver will pull to a stop in the marked box. Immediately, the car is jacked up so that the wheels can be changed, and it will also be refuelled, and any adjustments made to tyre pressures and wing positions.

The average pit stop is probably about 6-8 seconds, and to get through the pit stop and out in front of your opponent, you probably need a 30 second advantage.

Teams can run any combination of pit stop strategies, fuelling their cars longer to run a one-stop strategy, or keeping the weight of the car down but having to stop two or even three times. There is no limit to the number of times a car has to pit, but the size of the fuel tank dictates that they must stop at least once during a race.

Sometimes, pit stops occur more often than the race engineer planned. When a car is in trouble and can manage to get back to the pit lane, mechanics can try their best to fix it and get it back out on track, albeit further down the running order. Often a car will limp into the pits and retire, if it makes it back to the garage at all.

If a driver breaks a rule, the stewards can impose a drive-through penalty which means the car has to visit the pit lane without stopping at his garage. Because of the speed limits within the pit lane, this can be disastrous.

The sport of F1 is notoriously lacking in overtaking – when it does happen it’s usually quite an event – and so a lot of the jostling for position takes place in the pits. It can be based around strategy, but for those cars at the front of the grid, a good lead is essential. Each lap that you stay out longer than your opponent, will gain you a few seconds advantage. That’s because you will still be running light, whilst the other driver will be full of fuel and heavier. So, of course, decisions need to be made about how heavy you will run to start with, which in turn impacts on your qualifying position as well.

It’s then that you start to see what a rich tapestry the sport really is, where seemingly off-hand decisions can result in a podium position or a retirement from the race. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the pit lane.

In our fourth instalment of the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1, we’ll be looking at how a Formula 1 car is different to that car out in your garage.

Theme music: Cedar Falls, Car Crash.

F1 Guide (Part 1) - Introduction

• Length: 3:26 
• Size: 3.2 MB 
• File: guide1.mp3 
• Transcript: guide1.pdf 
• Torrent: guide1.torrent 

Welcome to the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1. This series is aimed at complete newbies to Formula 1, people who have never seen a race, or who had no idea what was happening when they did watch one. Trust me, I went through a year of watching every race without knowing who was who or why they were doing what they were doing. I know what you’re going through. Once I made the decision to figure it all out though, it wasn’t long before things started to click into place. And now I want to help you have the same experience.

So let’s start at the very beginning and take a look at where Formula 1 fits in the world.

In the early 1900s, F1 began with rickety cars and older gentleman drivers, but the actual F1 Championship didn’t begin until the 1950s. As the decades passed and the Championship developed, it soon became clear that Formula 1 was the pinnacle of motorsport. The cars were the fastest, the technology was the most advanced and the drivers were at the peak of their fitness coming from countries all across the world.

With the introduction of sponsorship, F1 took on its more commercial form and can now be considered big business – with figures reaching millions and billions with ease. With big business comes politics and sometimes it’s who you know and how much money you have that gets you what you want. F1 is riddled with conspiracy theorists – I will admit to being one of them – but depending on how immersed you want to get in the Formula 1 world, that side of things is easily ignored.

What really matters is what happens on the track.

Travelling across the globe for about eight months of the year, Formula 1 visits countries large and small, rich and not-quite-so-rich, with colourful backdrops, glamorous visitors and plenty of local culture to be soaked up. Covering Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a Formula 1 weekend is an intense ride, from early testing, to the closing laps of the race.

The basic structure features a race every fortnight. Sometimes the calendar is played with a little bit and there are races on back-to-back weekends, or sometimes you have to go a few weeks before seeing the familiar faces again. Once it is time for another race, you can monitor the news for your favourite team as they arrive at the destination. I’ll get into the details of the weekend another time, but in brief, Friday involves practice sessions, Saturday is for qualifying and Sunday is race day. Then there is just time to digest the events of the weekend and catch up with all the press releases, before the teams are moving off to their next destination.

I won’t lie and tell you there is never a dull moment in Formula 1. Being a fan is a frustrating business. The winter months can pass with no news whatsoever, and unless there is a race on that week, there’s very little to keep you occupied. You have to be dedicated to find news that will keep you interested when nothing is going on. The races themselves are also quite sporadic. You can be leaping with excitement during the frantic action of the pit stops, and then there can be many laps just watching the traffic go by.

But when you catch that fantastic overtaking move, or end up on the edge of your seat to see who comes out on top, it is absolutely, 100% worth it.

I think that’s enough for our introduction – join me next time for a more in depth look at the race weekend.

Theme music: Cedar Falls, Car Crash.

Tyre Distinctions

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

One of the new rules for 2007 is a single tyre supplier. After a long time supplying the majority of the F1 teams, Michelin bowed out of the sport to allow Bridgestone to be the sole tyre manufacturer. This has meant a lot of teams having many adjustments to make and a lot of testing to do to adjust to the new addition to their cars. It doesn’t appear to have affected any of them too badly though, and they’re all getting ready for the season to start next week.

In an effort to make the sport more visible and for their to be less variables for the fans to get confused about, the FIA have also decided it’s time that teams displayed which tyre they are using at any particular point in the race.

There are two types of tyre for 2007 – a hard compound and a soft compound. During a dry race, each driver will at some point, need to use one of each, and then they can use any variation they like. It will be good to see the guys in the pit lane actually doing something useful, like changing tyres, instead of just checking the sidepods for debris.

So that everyone can distinguish between the two, one compound will have a white tyre wall. This kind of practice has already been popular in other motorsports such as Champ Car but it is the first time it has come to the fore in F1.

Some of the teams argued against the ruling, saying that it would give their rivals an advantage of knowing what setup they were running on. They soon changed their minds though, when they realised that if all the teams can see all the other teams tyres, no one will have an unfair advantage.

Needless to say, it does benefit the fans. In previous years, we have been told what tyre the driver is running on by the commentators or just by simple guesswork. It’s usually a highly guarded secret by the race engineers, and yet another thing they keep quiet so they can feel superior to the rest of us. Now it will be immediately obvious who is running what and make life a lot easier.

It does make you wonder how far they are going to go though, with a uniform tyre for all and a set number of tyres they have to use. Will there be any decisions left to be made by the team?