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?

The Best of Sidepodcast 2009, and a Big Thank You

During 2009, Sidepodcast managed to publish 1,319 posts on this website. That's more content in the past 12 months than we managed in the previous two years of blogging combined. A considerable amount of that content came from over 20 guest writers who contributed their thoughts and ideas and to whom we will be eternally grateful.

To celebrate such a fantastic year, and because we're feeling more than a little nostalgic on this eve of '10, we've pulled together some of our favourite topics from 2009.

Thank You for the Memories

• An Audience With Mark Webber - January started well, meeting and greeting Mark Webber
• Always Look at the Bigger Picture - The big idea for '09
• Design and Share Your Fantasy Race Tracks - Anyone can do better than Tilke, right?
• Websites You Can Trust - F1 journalism comes under the microscope
• Episode 93 - KERS For 5 Year Olds - Everything you needed to know about KERS
• Character Cup - 2009 Winner, Fernando Alonso - He's quite the character
• McLaren Testing at Kemble - We knew they were in trouble from this point on
• When Did You Lose Interest? - An historical look at F1 supporters
• 2009 Australia Predictions Montage - How did you fare?
• A View of Sepang - Journeyer's visit to the Malaysian GP
• Heard It on the Radio - Christine talks to BBC national radio
• There's an Official Formula 1 iPhone App, and It Rocks! - F1 coverage changed for the better
• Winning Isn't Everything - Lou gets a cog too
• Circuit Cup - 2009 Winner, Spa - The best track by miles
• Print Is Dead - Our take on the future of media
• A Live Tour of Albert Park - Amy goes live from a deserted park in Australia
• We Heart Lukeh - Lukeh provided us laughs aplenty in 2009
• Sidepodfilmclub - Talladega Nights - The inaugural filmclub evening
• Will.i.am Wheelman - Possibly our best headline of the year
• 2009 Championship Contender - Jenson Button - A look at the man before he became the man
• Sidepodradio Gives You Wings for Life - Red Bull Racing liked the cupcakes
• Happy Birthday Daily Thread - One year on and still going strong
• When Giggles Met Murray and Stirling - He only went and messed up his tie
• Things I Learnt From Watching Franck - Everybody does it better than Formula 1
• Formula 1 2009 (Wii) Review - Finally a proper F1 game hits the shelves
• The Illustrated 2009 F1 Season Review - Currently the highest rated post on Sidepodcast
• Live: After Eight - The last live show of the year and a festive one at that
• F1 Advent Calendar 2009 - Roundup - The F1 season, all wrapped up

We've shared some fantastic experiences this past year and we're promised many more in 2010.

Thank You for the Music

As this is the one time of year when Christine allows me to give thanks, and running the risk of missing someone important, Sidepodcast would like to share the love. The two of us would like to extend a huge thank you to all guest writers, to everyone who's helped transcribe a show, especially Amy for leading the effort, and to every person who pledged a donation this year. Much appreciation goes out to anyone who took time to pick up the phone, send an email, or leave a comment, especially if you did so for the first time.

Thank you to the participants of Sidepodradio, to those who tuned in and anyone who gave so much to charity that day. A special note of gratitude to Steven Roy for volunteering anyone and everyone who dared show an interest and to RG for the initial inspiration. A huge Sidepodthanks goes to the bestest host of the parade lap, Alex (Giggles) Andronov, without whom there would have been no pre-race shows this year, and to Katherine and Hyde Park for opening their doors to us.

Major kudos to Lisa McCormick and to Rob Smedley for both being especially lovely. The same goes to the 5Live team for providing such fabulous coverage that saved the season. To Danny from Fantasy Racers, and to anyone who's plugged, promoted or shared the Sidepodcast word, we also say cheers.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to everybody who offered their support back in the summer of discontent and encouraged us to continue, we quite literally would not be here today without you. A hat tip must also go towards Racecar Engineering and F1 Racing for featuring our McLaren photographs and to Stuart C for providing an education in journalism at no charge.

A special mention goes out to Joe Saward, a man who has given so much to Formula 1 for so many years and who this year, extended a generous hand in our direction.

Finally I give a huge hug to Ms Christine Blachford, for producing what are by far the best F1 podcasts on the internet and also for putting up with her co-host for another year.

Lord knows I hope we haven't missed anyone from that list, but just in case, Sidepodcast raises a virtual glass to everyone - may Formula 1 be good to you in 2010.

Scream if You Wanna Go Faster

It's been a while since we talked technical, and since 2009 is rapidly coming to a close, I figured now would be a good time to blog about website updates - where we are, and what we're currently working on.

I'm well aware that things would get done a whole lot quicker if we stopped discussing what we plan to do and just got on and did it. I'm also acutely aware that these kind of self serving posts can be intensely boring to read, so allow me to present to you a colourful graph.

Credit: Sidepodcast.com

Average homepage response time for sidepodcast.com

Exciting, isn't it? Unlike your average company sales graph, in this case, smaller is most definitely better and faster. As the caption on the chart states, the data is displaying the average time it takes for this site's homepage to respond in milliseconds, over time. Back in September, site performance was bad and pages took an age to load, but since then we released two major performance upgrades, both of which improved the situation dramatically.

We now have something of a sensible platform to build upon. It may not be perfect - the whole look of this place is somewhat bland at the moment, and we still have reliability issues to resolve during intense commenting sessions - internally though, we've drawn a line under the project marked 'performance' and while there will always be minor tweaks available, the big gains have been achieved.

Starring Christine... on the Internet

In amongst the upgrades a few features have sneaked in under the door. Lets take a look at those too.

Star ratings have been added to individual posts, and we'll be using those to gauge not only how well a post was received, but also how good or bad a podcast was. Additionally we may use the information to figure out how well a particular series is doing, or how a guest post has gone down.

In short, ratings are an important feature of Sidepodcast. While we appreciate all feedback, ratings are an especially useful way of giving us a quick indication, especially if you're the shy type who'd rather not leave a comment.

Show No Mercy

One of this year's ideas that helped launch the Playground was Show Selector and that has finally been integrated into the main site. A visit to the Shows page will give you the opportunity to create a custom subscription feed containing only the shows that you're interested in.

We're assuming that for the most part the main podcast feed will still contain all of the edited shows we put out but if you'd like to be more selective when it comes to what you listen to or watch, then Show Selector is the place to go.

Stream of Consciousness

We're trialling a new method of streaming video content starting this week. If you head on over to the most recent live show replay the video should begin almost the second you hit play and then allow you to jump to any point in the recording without needing to download the whole show before hand. If all goes well with the trial, we'll roll this feature out to other videos on the site in due course.

That pretty much covers where we're at. Aside from fixing minor issues, we don't have any immediate plans to make further changes in the short term. We're still thinking about revamping live blogging / live commenting using the infrastructure provided by Google Wave, but thus far the technology is a little too unstable for its own good. Fingers crossed something will be working by the time the F1 circus reaches Bahrain.

An update to the look and feel of the site is still pending, but we might hold back on that until the beginning of the season. In the meantime another challenge waiting in the wings will be to make similar performance improvements to our other sites F1 Minute and Media. Future. Change. We'll blog about changes on those sites as they occur.

Thank you to everybody who's put up with any usability annoyances that have come up prior to and since September, and please don't be afraid to yell if something isn't right.

Here's to a faster 2010.

2009 F1 New Years Resolutions Revisited

Yesterday, we looked back at some of the predictions we made at the end of last year, and how very wrong we were about the season we just experienced. Now it's time to revisit the New Year Resolutions we made, regarding how we would watch and enjoy Formula 1 in 2009.

Mr C and I both made five separate resolutions, and let's start with his.

Promises, Promises

1. Give the new regulations a chance.
2. Take stuff out of Beta.
3. Stop moaning about the website hosting problems we regularly experience and actually do something about it.
4. Give Heikki a second chance as a McLaren driver.
5. Try much, much harder in the Fantasy Racers league.

Well, we did try and give the regulations a new chance, but they achieved very few of their stated aims and left us disappointed in the direction the sport has been taking. Next year isn't looking any more promising in that respect so no more second chances on that front.

The website hosting issue is still very much there but we have taken to moaning about it less because Mr C has been working hard on Sidepodcast 3.0 to put less strain on the poor, little, unable to cope, hosting company. Point number two is funny because unless I'm mistaken, all of the Beta code has been sneakily rebranded and put in the playground. Beta is a feature, and with it a resolution failure.

The Fantasy Racers league did see much more effort being put into it, if only because rule changes made a relaxed approach impossible. Mr C gave up entirely before the European leg of the season ended, so another resolute failure there.

Regarding, Heikki, well... I'll let the man himself talk to you about the young Finn.

I gave him a second chance as a McLaren driver and he did worse in 2009 than even he can comprehend.

Now, let's take a look at my resolutions.

Try, Try Again

1. Watch every single Free Practice session.
2. Find merit in a driver's abilities and performance instead of simply how good they look.
3. Keep up to date with podcast transcripts.
4. Bring back Sidepodcast Diaries.
5. Make predictions... when asked.

I had a similar Free Practice experience as I did last year, in that I saw most of them but missed a few. There's a pesky thing called real life that sometimes gets in the way. The FP sessions seem to have taken on less significance for us this year, though, so I'm not as worried about it as I was this time last year.

Regarding the podcast transcripts, all I can say is thanks to our volunteers. Sidepodcast Diaries did make a comeback, but fell by the wayside when Formula 1 became less fun in the middle of the year. They may or may not make a third comeback in the New Year.

I did make predictions when I was asked, although I can't say I enjoyed it. I'm not so worried about getting things wrong anymore, because, let's face it, Formula 1 is basically one big surprise.

The resolution I have left until last is about driver's abilities and performances. Hmm. No, I am still fickle.

If you made any resolutions, either in the the original post or elsewhere, please let us know how you got on. Are you better or worse at keeping them than we are?

I hope you'll join us at the end of December, when we set about making yet more unreasonable promises for 2010.

Daily: 1st November 2009

It's a brand new month, and we are looking at a brand new circuit for the final race of the year. Abu Dhabi has looked stunning but so far the action has left quite a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, there is plenty to talk about as the season draws to a close:

• Yesterday, Mr C finally got round to writing his post about the recent site updates, which he was supposed to do when he released them mid-week. Still, it's worth having a quick read if you want to know what we're trying to achieve and why it has taken us so long to get round to it. Don't forget to leave your thoughts and feedback at any time, we are always open to ideas.
• Campos META confirmed the speculation that they have signed up Bruno Senna for 2010. They seem very impressed with the young driver, who has risen through the motorsport ranks very quickly. I haven't watched him in any lower formulae but have heard concerns that he may not be ready. What do you guys think? There's a breakout thread waiting for your comments.
• Another thread we opened up yesterday was to discuss the lighting situation in Abu Dhabi. It seems to work very well, but it is so vastly different to Singapore that it has made me pause for thought. In one of my digest shows, I also picked up that Heidfeld did say it was brighter in Singapore, but that here it hasn't been a problem so far.

That'll do it for now. Don't forget that there is an extra special super duper two hour Parade Lap season finale extravaganza starting at 10am Sidepodtime today. In fact, here's a trailer for it, as created by host Alex:

We'll be waiting for you and I will see you in the comments.

Renault Race Control

During yesterday's Free Practice live commenting session, discussion turned to McLaren's new telemetry widget. A tool that is at best underwhelming and at worst, broken. It didn't appear to be working at all when we tried it, and had it been, the information conveyed doesn't appear to be that insightful.

By comparison, Renault's live Race Control console is leaps and bounds ahead of the things McLaren are attempting, and has been for over two years.

We've covered Race Control several times around here in the past, but it might be worth a quick refresher for anyone who hasn't discovered the beauty of live data, pushed direct from the garages of an F1 team during each and every session.

I think I've had Renault's live timing page open during every session of the 2009 season. It offers a fantastic array of otherwise impossible to come by data on what's happening at Renault during the course of the weekend. Each race has a dedicated page providing track maps, up-to-date weather information and pre-race statistics such as fuel consumption per lap, and throttle usage.

After each session, detailed results are provided. More detailed in fact than the official FOM data, including the maximum speed of every driver and their ideal fastest lap. The results are interactive, you can drill down for a limited amount of additional information, although the emphasis remains on the red / yellow / blue / white / orange team.

That's all well and good, but the site really comes to life when there's action to be found on track. The circuit map lights up whenever Alonso (or the other guy) takes to the asphalt, showing both car's track position. In some ways this content has been superseded by the official F1 iPhone application which positions all cars, but Renault were doing this first and their cars appear to move at a more consistent pace.

Elsewhere within the console, super-detailed stats are available for both drivers - including gear selection, speed, steering angle, braking and g-forces the drivers are being subjected to at the time. Again this information is interactive and you can pick the relevant pieces you're interested in. I wouldn't mind the ability to overlay more than two series for comparison, but it's still considerably more insight than any other team are willing to provide right now.

Finally, the consoles provide lap-by-lap timing figures which can be cross-referenced each time a car crosses the timing beam. If you need to know who's on a long run and how each lap compares, the detail is fantastic.

We've long been asking for both FOM and other teams to follow Renault's lead, to no avail. We should therefore congratulate McLaren for at least giving it some thought. Calling out to Bernie, of course, is a complete waste of effort and bandwidth.

I love that Renault take the effort to provide this content, and I wouldn't be without it any more. If you've not tried it before, please do take a look this weekend, it's free so what have you got to lose? Let us know what you think if it's your first time, similarly if you're as addicted as I am let us know your favourite bits.

Hats off to Renault F1 for showing Bernie how it's done these past 30 months.

Daily: 19th July 2009

It seems to be a weekend of no news so far, which is on the one hand a bit of a relief, but on the other, makes the daily a little bit tricky. That means I have to fall back to Wikipedia for news, and apparently today is the day that the Mary Rose sank off the coast of Portsmouth in 1545. Now you know.

• The only news I could find is that Heikki has been busy and after spending yesterday posing on a child's bike to promote a new clothing range, he is now in Moscow demonstrating for Team McLaren. No bikes in sight though, which will mean no repeat pictures like we saw yesterday.
• It's all go on the wiki, as we've tidied up the section about this very site. There are quite often changes to the live commenting and tweaks to the site itself which you may or may not be aware of, so the page is there to keep you up to date. If you're having troubles, you can also submit bugs, and we're always open to suggestions for future features. Take a look and see what you think.
• Whilst I was on the wiki, I also noticed the I Spy game, which must be about ready to start again, what with the shuttle being in space and all. Steven Roy has been giving us frequent (and awesome) updates about what is going on up there, but he seems to be missing out the fact that they're bound to be playing I Spy.

That'll do it for now, there will be a debrief streaming later on today assuming we can find something to talk about. Until then, I will see you in the comments.

Website Review - BBC Formula 1

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

The BBC used to have rights to show Formula One in the UK, but for the last 13 years the coverage has been provided by ITV. The BBC website for F1 formed part of their Sports site, and although the news was factual and engaging, the stories were often a few days late, and didn't go into too much detail. I used to say that you could tell when a story was really important because it showed up on the BBC.

For 2009, though, BBC have won the broadcast rights to F1 back from ITV, and that includes TV, radio, mobile and online coverage. Last week, they launched a redesigned site, and moved the links on the Sports homepage to second, underneath football. This already shows much more dedication than they had previously.

But what is on the site itself? There is all the news, as previously featured, although with more regularity, and slightly more in depth features. There will be a few columnists, including the journalists who are involved with making the TV and radio coverage, plus Mark Webber will provide a driver's perspective.

Although the news has increased, I do have a slight problem with the design. A black background always makes it difficult to read text, whether it is a stark white or charcoal grey font. I understand the desire to make the site different from the football or cricket section, but it doesn't make for easy reading. However, hopefully the content will be good enough to make it worthwhile.

There is also a picture of the week feature from respected photographer Darren Heath. Although it is called picture of the week, it looks like the series will feature a photograph from Heath's collection after each race. His pictures are usually stunning, with a different viewpoint than the usual car and tarmac approach. At the moment, until the season gets going, the picture is one of Massa on the podium at Brazil, and it sends shivers down my spine remembering that moment.

Hopefully, this year will be just as good, and the BBC can capitalise on a great season, by making their website one of the best.

F1 Websites You Can Trust

Conversation in the comments has this afternoon turned to the subject of 'trust on the web'. James Allen today debunked a recent story regarding the supposed vote from the Mercedes parent company Daimler, to remain in F1. Allen achieved this amazing feat of investigative journalism by picking up the phone and asking someone, begging the inevitable question - if he can do it, why couldn't anyone else?

We have been pretty vocal on this site as to our dislike of the news syndication agency GMM. We actively avoid quoting any story sourced from the company and encourage anyone in the comments to do the same.

GMM may or may not have been to blame for the proliferation of the "Mercedes vote" story making it's ill-informed way around the web, but clearly it's managed to cause a mass of confusion amongst F1 fans. Therefore, what we'd like to do, is compile a list of all the respectable and trustworthy news sites, that F1 fans can rely on for their Formula news. We may not get them all, but at least it's something that can be used as a starting point for the future.

F1 News You Can Trust

• The Official Formula 1 Website
• Federation Internationale de l'Automobile
• Reuters
• BBC Sport
• Autosport
• Grandprix.com
• ITV-F1
• GPUpdate
• The Times
• ESPN Racing
• Racecar Engineering
• James Allen's Blog
• Brad Spurgeon's Blog
• Ed Gorman's Blog
• Every official team and driver website...

Now, clearly there must be more than a handful of respectable F1 news sites on the internet, but those are the ones we can be sure of at the moment. Please, please let us know in the comments if there are others you trust implicitly, especially if there are any non-English sources we're not familiar with.

More from the Comments

• Pitpass
• Turun Sanomat
• auto motor und sport
• motorsport aktuell
• Guardian F1
• Motor Sport Magazine
• Renault Blog
• Simon Arron's Blog
• Darren Heath's Blog

It would likely be easier (and more fun) to name and shame those homepage's that knowingly regurgitate rubbish in exchange for advertising dollars. Stuart suggested a Sidepodboycott against the most prolific offenders, but as much as that appeals we're all about the positives today, so let us know your favourites.

What's the Business Case for ITV's F1 Website?

With the UK's Formula One television rights now in the hands of the BBC, we were expecting ITV's online F1 presence to disappear at the start of this year. Surprisingly ITV-F1 is still going strong.

It was pointed out to viewers at the end of the season, that the team had every intention of continuing with the site, but seeing as they no longer have any exclusive access, nor any unique video content, it's hard to see why they would bother?

Commercial Matters

The most likely answer is the site still brings in enough advertising revenue to justify it's costs. However, the main promotion for said site was a television program which regularly publicised it. Without any ongoing plugs, shouldn't the number of readers begin to drop like a stone?

Make no mistake, the British commercial broadcasters online popularity was massive. Googling the phrase F1 sees ITV listed second behind only Bernie's official homepage, and here's how Google Trends rates them compared to Autosport and F1 Live (who sit beneath them in the search results).

According to that data, ITV ranked second behind F1 Live throughout 2008, but ahead of Autosport. We can't see the most up-to-date information, but towards the end of November, after the season was over, they were clearly falling ever further into the clutches of Autosport's grasp.

You can see the chart in more detail on the trends website. It's hard to gauge just how reliable the figures are, but we were discussing web statistics in the comments recently, and by comparison they appeared to be the most reliable of those freely available.

I'm Not Dead Yet

With declining figures and no cost effective means with which to further promote the homepage, I assumed it would only be a matter of time before the thing was axed. At least, that was until I read an interview with Mark Blundell yesterday.

Talking to Crash.net, Mark revealed he still has a year left to run on his contract with ITV and they're looking at doing something a little bit different, but still motorsport related in the future.

It seems the broadcaster really hasn't given up on the project just yet, but if what we're led to believe is true, and the company really didn't want to deal with F1 any longer, why on earth are they hanging on in there. Drivers on their books and a website with content updated as recently as Thursday, it doesn't make sense.