Sidepodcast

Sidepodradio - The Nostradamus Effect

Our guest post spot today is filled by RG, who wants to talk to you about his Sidepodradio show - The Nostradamus Effect. Let me make my own prediction for you - you're going to want to listen to this show.

Sunday 20th September 2009 is coming way too quickly, and unless you couldn’t tell by now, it is Sidepodradio Day (if you couldn’t tell by now, then you obviously didn’t read the title, or even the little introduction given by Mrs C). And I, will be attempting to do what people have tried to do for centuries, predict the future, and I shall be given half an hour to do it in. (More or less determining how well Mr C does at cooking). I present to you, The Nostradamus Effect.

So what is the principle of the show? Well, simply, to predict. Use my gut instinct to predict things from the world of Formula 1, the world of sport and even simply the world. So far I have a few ideas jotted down in my notebook; those ideas will remain a top secret until the show is aired.

However, I do want to get the audience involved, hopefully after I have rabbited on for the first part of the show. How to get involved I hear you ask. Well, simply enough, e-mail the folks at Sidepodcast at christine@sidepodcast.com, or go to the wiki page where there have been suggestions from Jordan and Steven already,  or you can voicemail them at 0128 28 TRACK or search them on Skype. But please do pm me over the wiki as I do have an inability to predict on the spot. Time is short.

With contact details out of the way I can exclusively reveal I will be trying an ambitious prediction right at the end of the show. I believe ambitious may be pushing it, this is one thing I really don’t want to reveal until the show, so don’t try and get it out of me. You won’t get it out of me as easily as, well, you know what.

The show starts at 18:30 BST, or as I’m using it, whenever the dust settles from The Cooking Show which will air before mine. Thanks for letting me predict at you.

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?

A Question of Mastermind

In a bizarre mix of A Question of Sport and Mastermind, the BBC are running a series of sport-themed Mastermind shows, where the participants are quizzed on their favourite teams and players. The latest show involves student Ben Croucher tackling the subject of Formula 1 from 2000 to 2007. If you are in the UK and can access the BBC iPlayer, it can be viewed here until the 31st July.

But don't go there yet!

As a bit of Friday night fun, I have transcribed the questions for your viewing pleasure, and thought we could host ourselves our very own pub quiz. Except, this isn't a pub, there's no prizes, and I have stolen the questions.

But hush. It's just a bit of fun. If you Google the answers, you're only cheating yourselves, etc, etc. Let us know how you get on in the comments. The answers are hidden in grey at the end of each question. Enjoy.

1. Jenson Button drove for which team in 2000, his first season in Formula 1? Williams
2. How many races did Michael Schumacher win in 2000 when he became the first Ferrari champion since Jody Scheckter in 1979? 9
3. Which city did Lewis Hamilton celebrate the first of his four victories in his inaugural season? Montreal
4. Which driver gave the Super Aguri team it's sole four points in the constructors championship in the 2007 season? Takuma Sato
5. Which country did Michael Schumacher achieve the last of his 91 Formula 1 Grand Prix wins? China
6. Who finished sixth in the Australian Grand Prix of 2007, having started last on the grid? (FYI, Ben passed on this one) Felipe Massa
7. In March 2003, Fernando Alonso started on pole position for the first time. At which Grand Prix circuit did he achieve this landmark? Sepang International Circuit
8. Which driver retired at the end of 2001 after 202 Grands Prix, only one of which he won? Jean Alesi
9. When Ralf Schumacher sustained two fractures in his spinal column, which official test driver replaced him at the 2004 French Grand Prix? Marc Gene
10. Who won the British Grand Prix on St. George's Day becoming the first British winner of the new decade? David Coulthard
11. All but three teams withdrew from the 2005 US Grand Prix over a tyre safety issue. Ferrari and Jordan-Toyota were two that did compete, which team was the third? (Poor old Ben was allowing the pressure to get to him slightly here, saying Jordan. Damn it.) Minardi
12. In 2003, which driver failed to finish in 9 races but also had his first Formula 1 victory when he won the Brazilian Grand Prix? Giancarlo Fisichella
13. Lewis Hamilton's first Grand Prix win in 2007 came almost a year after fellow Briton Jenson Button won a Grand Prix on which circuit? Hungaroring
14. In 2004, Michael Schumacher won the first five races of the season. Which Renault driver stopped it being a run of six by winning at Monaco? Jarno Trulli
15. What is the name of the driver who made his debut in the 2007 US Grand Prix, aged 19? He finished in 8th place. Sebastian Vettel
16. The former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve drove for Renault in three Grand Prix in 2004 season. Two were in China and Brazil, in which country was the third? Japan

Ben got 14.
I only managed 5, but we have already established that I can't remember anything.
How did you do?

Update: Have just finished watching the rest of the show, and Ben came third out of four. Rubbish. I guess his general knowledge of other sports let him down. However, I'm even more annoyed that the only girl finished fourth. Gah. Letting the side down. Not that I could have done even remotely better, as I demonstrated above.

Everybody Play the Game

I don’t want any more sabotage accusations flying around Sidepodcast HQ this week, so here is your timely reminder to have a look at your Fantasy Racers teams.

Open Up Your Mind, Let Me Step Inside

Personally, I’m going into the French Grand Prix with an all German team. That’s right, I managed to snap up all the German individuals on the grid, with no one left behind, and no other nationalities involved.

Here’s my team, for your viewing pleasure but please don’t take this as advice, because we all know I’m not exactly top of the league right now:

Best team ever, I'm sure you'll agree.

It's a Free, Free World

Don’t forget to go and update your team. You’ve got until 5pm UK time tomorrow, so you might want to wait until at least one Free Practice session has taken place. Then you can base your picks on actual facts, rather than just on a whim, like I do.

If you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Just visit this link, set up your new team and start choosing your drivers. It's free to register, and there's just the usual email requirements, nothing sinister.

If you feel confident enough to share, please enlighten us as to your choices in the comments, and feel free to ridicule me as much as you like.

Sidepodcast Diaries 3 - The Hype

I managed to go four days without mentioning the Lewis Hamilton hype.

Transcript

Christine: Hi everyone, I've just been to the shop to pick up this, Autosport commemorative issue 14-page Lewis Hamilton special. So let's have a look at what we've got in here. Race report, Lewis' career in pictures, like we hadn't seen that already, what Ron Dennis thought, what Lewis thinks, what Lewis' dad thinks, what Jackie Stewart and Stirling Moss think about it. Oh, and by the way, Robert Kubica had a crash. [screenshot of magazine - small picture]

I don't know if it's just that I've been really good at avoiding the media, or if there hasn't been as much as we expected, but all I've seen is on Monday morning my neighbour's newspaper was lying against his front door, and it wasn't even the headline, it was on the front page. Lewis Hamilton, Britain's Greatest Hero, Newest Talent, all that stuff. And also they said it on Radio 1, which I was only listening to to hear if they said it because they usually are all about the football. But they talked about it on the News and Sport, so that was good.

Lewis is going to be at Goodwood, as we know. It's going to be absolutely manic. I can't believe how quickly Goodwood has come upon us, it seems like only 5 minutes ago that we were there last year and now it's almost time again. I'm so excited, we're gonna be there all three days. It's gonna be really good, although I have just realised that I wanna wear a Sidepodcast t-shirt for three days but I only have one. Yea.