Sidepodcast

Live Telemetry and More From F1 Teams This Year

This week, two F1 teams launched revamped websites to coincide with the new season. Both have taken different routes and both have pushed the online F1 experience forward in their own unique way.

AT&T Williams

The new Williams site offers inline commenting on all stories including news items, and iWitness columns. Additionally you can rate posts, and leave feedback on videos. This puts user generated content front and centre within the site. No longer are thoughts from fans tucked in a corner where people in suits hope no-one will spot them.

I love that the Williams teams have done this and the only downside appears to be the need to register before commenting. When Red Bull Racing revamped their site a few weeks back, they too opened comments on posts and multimedia items, but allowed anyone to comment with ease.

Another tantalising section of the Williams site promises driver blog updates throughout the year, apparently Rubens is up first and blogging in Bahrain. This is something we've been calling for since Sidepodcast started way back in 2007, and might just set new standards in F1 coverage.

One notable exemption from the Williams site, is the live timing system, which debuted during winter testing, and that is where McLaren have the edge.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

Team McLaren will to be pushing the technological envelope to it's maximum this weekend in Bahrain, with the launch of their new Race 1.0b Live Data Viewer. A system that will provide live information to fans during every practice session, qualifying and the race.

Credit: mclaren.com

A screenshot of the Race 1.0b live data viewer, offering insight from the pit wall.

McLaren are no strangers to supplying live updates over the web. Last year they came up with a peculiar telemetry widget which detailed information on braking and acceleration changes from both of their drivers on track.

The Race 1.0b (no I don't get the name either) appears to be a vast improvement though. Amongst other things, it promises:

• Live GPS circuit map data
• Detailed car telemetry
• Comments from the pit wall
• Comments from mission control (in Woking)

The accompanying teaser video also suggests driver radio messages will be transcribed and relayed back to us, which will be a massive boon after the commentators have talked all over them.

We are very much looking forward to seeing the 1.0b in action. Whilst we can't pretend to be huge fans of the revamped McLaren web site, the offer of live data more than makes up for the kooky design. In fact it pushes McLaren to the forefront of fan interaction. Can anyone raise them?

A Lap of Bahrain With Mark Webber

Red Bull have produced a stunning track guide for the first race of the Formula One season in Bahrain. Mark Webber is in the hot seat, and the two minute video takes viewers on a lap of the revised Bahrain International Circuit, from the cockpit of the team's F1 Simulator.

• Length: 02:17 
• Size: 26.8 MB 
• File: video27.m4v 
• Transcript: video27.pdf 
• Torrent: video27.torrent 

Production quality in the clip is second to none, and Webber does a fine job of covering the tricky points of the track. F1 simulators are becoming significantly more important as testing becomes ever more restricted, and this footage offers a great insight into the steps a modern F1 driver goes through to prepare for each race of the season.

There is a lot of information to take onboard in the lower third of the screen, and it's worth watching this one more than once. A fantastic effort from those involved and the only worrying thing is that there's nothing left for us to add.

Live: Jerez Testing - Day One (February 2010)

The second round of 2010 F1 testing gets underway today, this time at the Circuito de Jerez located in the city of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Red Bull will likely be the star attraction, unveiling their RB6 chassis to the media for the first time, before action gets underway.

Update: The Williams team today launched an official live timing page for up to the minute test information. This includes driver position, gap, best time, most recent time for both the Williams car and for the rest of the field. See the team's website for more detail.

Credit: f1photos.org (creative commons)

Jenson gets a soaking.

Virgin Racing will be the first "new team" to turn a wheel at a test, when Timo Glock sizes the VR-01 up against the competition. Force India will also be on track, running the VJM03 that was revealed to the world, yesterday.

Tyres will be of specific interest to teams and drivers as the aggressive layout of this circuit will stress rear tyres to a greater extent than last week. Additionally the weather will like play a key part as rain is expected to fall in the region at some point before the end of the test.

On track action begins at 9am CET (8am GMT).

Credit: f1photos.org (creative commons)

Alonso finds little grip in Jerez

Circuit Information

• Track length: 4.428km
• Corners: 13
• Lap record: 1:23.135 (Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Williams, 1997)

Circuito de Jerez is located to the South of Spain, close to border of Portugal.

Drivers and Teams Attending

The following teams and drivers are confirmed for testing on Wednesday

Useful Links

• Official Circuit Homepage
• Williams Live Timing (official timing updates)
• Autosport Live
• F1 Today
• Motor 21
• The F1.com

F1 People Who Are Tweeting from Jerez

Twitter has become the medium for accessing up to the minute testing insight. We recommend keeping an eye on James Allen's Twitter service, as well as the following accounts.

• The Fifth Driver - Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
• Red Bull F1 Spy - Red Bull Racing
• Toro Rosso Spy - Scuderia Toro Rosso
• Mercedes GP Petronas - Mercedes GP
• Inside Ferrari - Ferrari
• Racecar Engineering - Racecar Engineering
• Edd Straw - Autosport
• Jon Noble - Autosport

Don't forget you can also subscribe to Twitter lists containing tweets from F1 Teams, F1 Drivers and the F1 Media.

As ever, keep a close eye on the comments throughout the day, and don't forget real-time commenting to save refreshing this page.

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.

Finite Element Analysis in Formula 1

FEA in Formula 1 - stress and load mesh modelling at its very best.

The Open University offers distance learning for undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications. To support courses, a number of educational resources are made available for free via Apple's iTunesU mobile learning solution. This month an engineering and technology podcast relating to Formula 1 has become available.

The course in question is the catchily titled T884 - An Introduction to Finite Element Analysis which relates to a computational modelling and analysis technique known as Finite Element Analysis, or FEA to its friends. FEA is used by F1 teams in a number of design areas in order to optimise the performance of various elements of a racing car, thus the OU descended on the Red Bull Racing factory in Milton Keynes to help explain how these techniques enable them to reach the front of the grid.

Whilst this iTunesU content is primarily offered as supplemental learning material, the course does amount to 17 videos. Included is insight from Lewis Butler who's the senior structural analyst for the team and who offers a detailed look into how a part such as a wheel hub might first be modelled virtually, in order to predict weaknesses or suggest improvements in the design before manufacture.

Much of the footage appears to have been filmed in the teams factory, and a real chassis is used to demonstrate the finer points of the talk, although the sight of Michelin tyres belies its true age. The short video's are provided in both low and high resolution format, and are backed up by PDF transcripts.

I will admit to being considerably out of my depth 10 minutes into the course, but you will get some fantastic insight into what goes on behind the scenes of a Formula 1 team, and you likely won't be so quick to judge a team the next time a loose wheel comes flying from its hub in Hungary.

Computer Aided Design at this level is an incredibly complex subject to cover, but the series is well produced and presented. That a Formula 1 team can see the benefit in putting effort into such a programme speaks volumes and Red Bull should be congratulated for making a largely inaccessible topic more available.

If you haven't taken a look at iTunesU before, it's a recommended destination, and there's no place better to start than the free Finite Element Analysis course from Red Bull and the Open University.

Vote in the Red Bull Racing Fan Awards 2009

Dank snuck a quick plug into the comments this evening relating to a new competition Red Bull Racing are running. It seems like a fun idea, there are prizes on offer, so we figured we'd give it a proper plug too.

It's that time of year when awards are all the rage and team RBR are no different. The guys and girls from Milton Keynes are asking for your votes in a variety of weird and wonderful categories, the full details of which can be found on the official site.

Questions aren't of the usual multiple choice variety and it took me a while to settle on some answers. Who was the bad boy of 2009? Don't tell us though, save it for Red Bull and fill in the entry form which can be found here.

It should only take a few minutes, and in return you'll be entered into a prize draw with the chance of winning a sackful of Red Bull Racing merchandise. The deadline for voting is midday (GMT) on Monday, December 7th. That feels like ages away, but you may as well get it out of the way and vote now, right?

Also, whilst perusing the official web site, I noticed the team are promoting a Wings for Life charity auction, which features original work from Luke at Motorsport In Print. Once you've filled in your Fan Awards voting form, why not hop on over to the auction site and have a look around.

Heartbroken or Heartless?

This time last year, following on from the Brazilian GP, half our attention was on newly crowned champion Lewis Hamilton, while the other half was on race winner Felipe Massa. The Brazilian had been astoundingly gracious in defeat, losing as he did, the world driver's championship on the last corner of his home Grand Prix.

One year on and all of our attention has been on Jenson Button, who won the championship in style this weekend. The two contenders who just missed out on the title haven't had much look in, not to mention the race winner, Mark Webber.

All the pictures I've seen of the young Sebastian Vettel have featured melancholy expressions, and never a smile. Even in the team photo celebrating Webber's win, where everyone is supposed to cheer loudly, Seb doesn't appear to be in a cheerful mood.

It's understandable, of course, that he is sad to have missed out on the title, but he had already thrown his toys out of the pram on Saturday. A terrible qualifying session wrote him out of what would have been a really tough fight back to the win anyway, so he must have realised that it was asking the impossible. Surely he can't still have believed he would be still able to do it come Sunday? He didn't hold back when it came to post race soundbites either:

"Second is the first loser. I don't really care about second or third."

Compare Seb's mood to Barrichello, though, who has been the perfect gentleman in the face of losing not only his shot for the title but also his second place in the standings. With one race left to go, he has a chance to grab that back, but he wasn't thinking of that. In the Brawn shots, he's smiling, he's happy. He lent Jenson his private plane for goodness sake.

Part of me prefers Rubens' attitude, it is certainly more constructive. He knows it was Button's fight to lose and is happy for his friend. However, I do quite like the fact that sulky Vettel isn't hiding away is his feelings. We often ask for our drivers to show more emotion, we can't be mad when this happens. Even if it does mean he won't be smiling for a few days.

What do you think? Did Massa raise the benchmark for magnanimity in defeat, and did the home crowd raise Barrichello's spirits as it did Felipe's a year earlier? Should Vettel be cheered or chastised for making such dejected comments?

Breaking Virtual Ground

Back in February, Red Bull Racing released an F1 season preview animation entitled Rip Through the Rule Book which featured tour guide Sebastian Vettel covering the important changes in the 2009 regulations. The video was not only massively popular and but also of such quality that we ended up using it twice before the season began.

Recently Maxon, the software company whose Cinema 4D tools were largely responsible for bringing the animation to life, released a behind-the-scenes look at what went into making the production. Tomorrow, AixSponza the creative force that assembled most of the 3D motion for the project, are hosting a workshop at the FMX09 conference in Germany, dedicated to discussing the rendering and compositing involved. That's a lot of talk about a 110 second Formula 1 video.

Initially, we thought the team had hit upon a pretty neat way of explaining a complicated set of rule changes, but the more we learn about the project, the more groundbreaking it appears to have been.

While AixSponza handled the majority of the animation work, Peter Clausen Film & TV oversaw the project's production. The two had previously collaborated on Red Bull's Singapore preview film back in 2008, and managed to reuse much of what they'd created back then. Additionally, RBR were able to provide original CAD data to form the basis of the car. However, during production, the look of the '09 chassis was continuously evolving as 3D work got under way. By all accounts, the problems associated with having the single focus of attention in a continual state of flux, required some innovative use of technology to overcome.

It's a credit to Red Bull that Formula 1 is able to innovate just as much off track, as it does in head-to-head competition. Hopefully the success of the production will inspire the team to invest more time and money into similar ventures in future, although it is a shame that the team who did the best job of explaining how KERS works, have yet to offer that same technology to its drivers.

As a final point, it's nice to see the Cinema 4D software scaling up to create such fantastic looking projects. The spinning earth and various animated flags used within last year's Inside Track videos were created using the very same toolset. If only the creative talent was as easy to come by.

Now Slurpee Gives You Wings

As Carlos pointed out during live commenting earlier today, Red Bull Racing have taken on an almost Indycar-esque look this weekend, as they've deigned to run 7-Eleven branding on the rear end-plates of both of their cars.

In an uncharacteristic move the green and white logos have bumped the more traditional Red Bull Cola logos, leaving the recently introduced beverage with just the bargeboards as a promotional outlet. F1 Wolf also noted that RBR employed a similar marketing ploy during the race in Fuji last year, although you'd have done well to pick them out through the spray.

What is more unusual however, is seeing Toro Rosso carrying commercial sponsorship. They too are running with convenience store logo's on their end-plates, this time in the form of Lawson Station.

Lawson Station are in fact the second largest chain of convenience stores in Japan, behind only 7-Eleven. The two companies are competitors, and Red Bull are clearly playing a marketing blinder in this instance. The weather playing ball thus far is no doubt helping them too.

I do wonder if STR's debut into the grown up world of commercialisation has anything to do with Mateschitz's renewed interest in the sister team, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the first time Berger's boys have run any such bodywork sponsorship since their inception in '06?

Inside Track - Hockenheim

• Length: 06:03 
• Size: 71.5 MB 
• File: track10.m4v 
• Transcript: track10.pdf 
• Torrent: track10.torrent 

Sidepodcast presents a presenter-less look at the German Grand Prix, which returns this year to the incredibly flat Hockenheimring circuit.

In this special edition of the show, join Sebastian Vettel for a once in a lifetime trip around the German track onboard a Red Bull helicopter. Vettel explains how to drive every inch of the course while quietly impressing himself with the spectacular views on offer.

We also catch up with the current state of the ever-so-close championship, but let's be honest, even that isn't enough to distract us from all the flying.

Music played: Paula Toledo, Fly Away

Special thanks to Red Bull Racing and RTV GmbH for the use of their video footage.