Sidepodcast

Introducing the Factbyte Factbox

Sidepodcast is today turning its F1 coverage up to eleven, with the release of the all new Factbyte Factbox. The interactive web panel enables us to provide real-time updates on any live event, be it an F1 session, another motorsport event or live streaming podcast.

Factbyte Factbox (FBFB) was first proposed back in April 2009 and has been something we've been keen to see launched for a very long time. Back in April, we described it thus:

Designed to take live shows and live racing to the next level, the FBFB will provide a secondary stream of information, highlighting any relevant data depending on circumstance. For example, offering up-to-date scoring during a panel show, or listing the closest battles during a race.

Almost one year on and that is exactly what we're launching today. Additionally, we're planning on using the tool to augment future live streaming podcasts, providing real-time show notes and enabling interaction via live voting, results of which will be fed back into recordings.

We should point out that what we're launching today isn't the final iteration of the web panel. It carries a "beta" tag because it is a service that's still undergoing heavy development. However, we felt that this was something that should be available from the very start of the F1 season, and thus we're opening the doors today. We're expecting teething troubles coupled with rapid development for the next few months.

If you're interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, the live commenting page currently houses the FBFB. The plan is to make it available via other pages in due course. Furthermore, we'll be running a live beta test at 21:45 GMT, should anyone be available to offer feedback.

Updated: The live test has now finished, but you can view the full list of updates below:

Don't Be Fooled by the Rocks That I've Got

New York Times writer Brad Spurgeon penned an article for his column on Saturday, where he describes his visit to one of the "F1 Rocks" concerts taking place in Singapore during the course of the past F1 race weekend.

Brad points out that there wasn't an awful lot of synergy between the F1 action and the musical events. The two were situated a significant distance apart from each other, and at times managed to clash such that fans couldn't attend both simultaneously. This insight sparked a big debate in the comments as to the merit of such matters. Somewhere along the line though, I think the point of F1 Rocks seems to have got lost on everyone, Brad included, and from what I've seen and read it should be considered a resounding success on all counts.

Went From a Low to a Lot This Year

First a bit of background, as to what exactly F1 Rocks in Singapore entailed.

The event was put on as a joint venture between LG Electronics and Universal Music. Headline artists included Beyonce, No Doubt and Black Eyed Peas. 30,000+ fans attended three concerts all held at Fort Canning Park, which spanned Thursday to Saturday and which was all done and dusted prior to the F1 race on Sunday.

In addition to the concerts, the biggest of which saw 9,000 people watch the debut performance by Beyonce in Singapore, a television package of the event has been sold to nearly 200 broadcasters. The package includes two, one hour long shows, the first focusing on F1 racing and the second on musical performances.

In short, this event was huge.

I Stayed Grounded as the Amounts Roll In

One of the key things with big events, is that they cost a lot of money to put on. Primarily this is due to the amount of infrastructure, security, and local authority engagement required. Even if F1 Rocks has little or nothing to do with Formula One, staging both events simultaneously will offer organisers certain economies of scale, simply because the city is already being disrupted thanks to those pesky cars running up and down the city streets.

Furthermore, Formula One is gaining massive exposure into markets normally ignorant to it's existence. Audiences who likely have only heard the term F1 in association with a certain singer and her boyfriend, this weekend had the phrase "F1 Rocks" thrown down their throats repeatedly. The immediate association isn't in the slightest bit important, brand awareness is what this endeavor is all about, and I really believe it's working. For a long time we've argued racing needs to look beyond its core fanbase and spread the (now very high) rear wings to markets new. That is exactly what LG are trying to help Bernie/FOM/CVC do here.

In addition, LG has managed to position the F1 brand into online spaces less ventured, including but not limited to an official DailyMotion page (yes online video) and live tweeting from the event. The official homepage goes even deeper into social networking spaces, with Facebook and Spotify integration too.

F1 is winning in other ways too. As we reported on Saturday, the paddock was teeming with fresh faced celebrities. Again, offering exposure not only to the artists involved, but fans of the artists who may be curious to find out where the heck Will.i.am found those huge, huge rear tyres. Watch out for a set of green-striped Bridgestone's appearing in an episode of Pimp My Ride sometime soon.

Rockin' this Business

To a certain point, I do agree that things could have been slightly better. A night race was the ideal venue to debut this concept, but it did mean that in order to run qualifying and a night time concert, fans were denied the opportunity to enjoy both spectacles. I can see at a future Grand Prix this won't be such of a big problem and no doubt lessons have already been learned.

I truly believe that efforts put into organising such a tie up - which in my mind makes a great deal of sense - should be recognised. The sport has to expand, and it won't get everything right all the time.

I'd like to think Bernie gained something from this too. Even if if was only a fatter wallet for now, at least there will be more come.

Do You Like Knowing Race Strategies in Advance?

From the first race of 2009 Formula One season, the FIA are making public the weights of the cars, including race fuel, following on from Saturday's qualifying.

A change has been made to this years sporting regulations, and Article 26.2 now states that:

Within two hours of the end of qualifying practice session the race start weight of all cars eliminated in Q1 and Q2 must be declared by the relevant teams to the technical delegate. These weights, together with the weights of the top ten cars following qualifying, will then be published by the press delegate.

This presumably has been designed to help fans understand which car really is the fastest at the end of the third session of qualifying, but conversely it means one element of strategic surprise has been denied to us for Sunday.

BlogF1 has provided a rather lovely looking table, detailing the contents of today's FIA publication, as well as an analysis of who is running what strategy. Armed with this "new for '09" information, will it make the racing more or less enjoyable?

After a bit of a debate in the comments, the views appeared divided and Dirty Scarab suggested we have poll.

Please do tell us in the comments below why you voted the way you did. If you approve, why is it a good thing, and if you don't what would you change and why?

F1 Digest - Brazil GP

• Length: 13:10 
• Size: 12.1 MB 
• File: digest72.mp3 
• Transcript: digest72.pdf 
• Torrent: digest72.torrent 

They've been working all season for this championship and it literally came down to the wire, closer than any of us could have expected. The last F1 Digest of the season fills you in on everything that happened in those 71 laps.

The Race

It was just epic, right from the start. Only two retirees, and just two bouts of rain, but a lot of pitstops later and it came down to the very last corner of the entire race. We also saw some interesting strategies, with mixed results.

Conclusions

Coulthard and Massa are both understandably miserable, one's F1 career has ended in dismal style, and the other has had a rotten end to a tough year. However, there are always two sides to every story, and we have the joy of Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton to balance it all out.

Live: Speechless... Gonna be a Short Show!

Technically this is the post for the live streaming of the podcast later on this evening, but first we have to watch Top Gear, and apparently there is demand to live comment that, so this is the place.

The race was unbelievable, I can't write too much here because I haven't formulated my thoughts yet. Make sure you start preparing your own, either for the comments, email, voicemail, or live on the show via Skype. We've got a Debrief and a Sidepodpanel to get through, so there'll be plenty of chance to have your say.

We should be going live at 9pm GMT, and hopefully it will be just as good a show as it was a race. We want to be able to send the season off in style.

Live: So What are You Baking for the Race?

It's the last Grand Prix of the season, and we're hosting a two-hour bumper edition of the Parade Lap as an introduction to the deciding race. However, no one wants to talk about that pesky sport business, we all want to know how the cupcake is going.

For those not in the know, the other half of Sidepodcast, the one that doesn't know an oven from an iron, promised to bake a cupcake in order to get two regulars onto tonight's Sidepodpanel. This is where we find out how he got on.

We'll also have the usual weather forecasts, race predictions, thoughts on qualifying, and chilled out music, to lead us nicely into live commenting the race itself.

We'll be going live at 2pm GMT, but feel free to make yourselves at home beforehand, and get those cupcake-gate discussions going. See you soon.

F1 Digest - China GP

• Length: 9:45 
• Size: 9.0 MB 
• File: digest68.mp3 
• Transcript: digest68.pdf 
• Torrent: digest68.torrent 

It couldn't be billed as the most exciting race of the season, but it had it's moments, and F1 Digest is here to fill you in on the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Race

Perhaps we built it up to much, but the penultimate round of the 2008 championship really didn't live up to expectations. It wasn't the worst race of the season, but it certainly wasn't thrill-a-minute either. The Ferrari boys struggled, the BMWs tried to make their way through the field, and all the while Hamilton just pulled away at the front.

Conclusions

Trulli and Bourdais start a war with each other, whilst Raikkonen says he knew what to do. The other teams all seemed to struggle with most drivers having tyre issues, trying to fix it with clever strategies, and failing miserably.

Do You See What I See?

I've got to be honest, when I read a suggestion on Ed Gorman's blog today, that there was a chance some additional Fuji footage might work it's way online via official channels, my response was one of marked cynicism.

But all due credit to the powers that be, because as Dom spotted earlier, Bernie's official site is now carrying raw video footage from the various incidents that drew so much response during the Grand Prix of Japan.

For the very first time in Formula 1's history, you may legally watch a "commentary free" selection of racing incidents via your web browser, from anywhere in the world.

Looking at the page in question, it would appear that either this was a bit of a last minute rush-job, or someone did this begrudgingly. The page looks half finished. It's missing a preview image, features no descriptive text and simply asks the question:

Japanese Grand Prix footage - what do you think?

When played, the video actually offers little new information of note, and doesn't change my opinion on any conclusions we'd already come to. What I am curious about though, is the reason for this contents sudden appearance.

The material could quite conceivably have been slotted into the site's regular post-race promo video without raising any eyebrows, but seeing as the video is accompanied by a rhetorical question, we must assume that somebody is trying to make a bigger deal out of this.

Is this simply Formula One Management picking a good time to score some decent PR points? Is someone unhappy with the way the stewards have been acting recently, or is it an attempt to offer a tiny morsel of transparency from within a usually oblique system? Also, does this set a precedent that says we can now expect all future questionable incidents to be made available for perusal?

There's a lot to be discussed from this move, but what we do know for certain is that Fuji brings out the best in F1 video. It was just over a year ago that stewards first relied on video evidence supplied via YouTube to help make a call relating to a racing incident. The footage came from the Fuji Speedway and in fact the source used was none other than Mr. Gorman's blog.

F1 Digest - Japan GP

• Length: 10:26 
• Size: 9.6 MB 
• File: digest64.mp3 
• Transcript: digest64.pdf 
• Torrent: digest64.torrent 

With just three races to go, the championship battle looked like it was going to be won or lost here. Thankfully, all it's done is got just that little bit closer. Listen to today's F1 Digest for a rundown of all the race action.

The Race

Considering we were expecting a dry race at Fuji to be on the duller side of things, the racing action was amazing. The first corner had an impact throughout the rest of the race, as drivers spent ages trying to restore the chaos of that initial turn.

Conclusions

A few penalties here and there, and a few surprises to be aware of, we take a look through the driver quotes post-race and find out how people are feeling going into the penultimate race of the season.

Inside Track - Fuji Speedway

• Length: 06:05 
• Size: 72.1 MB 
• File: track16.m4v 
• Transcript: track16.pdf 
• Torrent: Coming soon 

Formula 1 continues its relentless tour around the globe, this weekend taking in the sights and sounds of Japan. Fuji Speedway is the destination and while it's not a classic venue by any stretch, the scintillating battle for the title means there could be more to this weekend than meets the eye.

As ever Sidepodcast provides the full rundown of the current state of play, what to expect before Sunday and a detailed look at the track that sits directly beneath a mountain. We catch up with local hero Nakajima as well as hearing the thoughts of a man who knows things.

Special thanks go out to Allianz SE, Toyota Motorsports GmbH, AT&T Williams, Royal Bank of Scotland and RTV GmbH for the use of their video footage.