Selection box - Head to heads and history heroes - A collection of links from around the web to welcome 2016
Published by Christine
It's 2016, we're tentatively opening the curtains to a brand new year and a new season of F1 racing, and that means people are starting to talk, and more importantly write, about this year's sporting endeavours. Selection box makes a welcome return to highlight some of the little gems you might have missed over the last few days, this time including some thoughts on champions, a look at key designs from 2015, and a glance back even further at some old time liveries.
Let's kick off with a good old fashioned head to head battle - something we're hoping to see a lot more of in 2016. Here, we're comparing two of the most successful champions of recent years.
85 wins. 7 World Championships. Over 150 podiums. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are the two best drivers to have graced F1 since Michael Schumacher’s first retirement, and for me, are two of the Top 10 greatest drivers to ever grace the sport. And with much of the 2016 season being anticipated as a Hamilton vs a Vettel dogfight, now seems as good a time as ever, to compare the two, as many have argued back and forth in the off-season, between who’s best out of the Golden Boy from Stevenage, and the Finger Boy from Germany.
2015 wasn't necessarily everyone's idea of a classic season, but there were some highlights littered throughout the year. One of those was the incredible attention to detail going into the car designs - as ever. Somers takes a closer look at this, picking out the best development work on the grid.
As we already know you cannot simply take a component from one car, tack it onto another and expect it to work. However, for an irreverent look at the development race of 2015 I thought I'd do just that, taking my favourite aspects of the 2015 cars and mashing them into the SomersGP-001.
A bit further back now, and to celebrate the build up to launch season (where we're likely to see exactly the same colours revealed as we've grown used to already), the next link starts a countdown of some of the best liveries from a certain year.
They just don’t do liveries like they used to! To tide you over until the new season starts, we’ll be running through our top 5 iconic F1 liveries from the 90’s. Over the course of the next week we will be uploading a blog per day, detailing just why we love them!
Reminiscing can be fun, and reviewing history can make for fascinating reading, which is where our next link takes us. The motor museum based in the New Forest has started a series of articles chronicling the history of women in motorsport, although in this first one we're talking about just being allowed to ride bicycles!
It was in 1881 that The Society for Rational Dress was founded in London. This was part of the Rational Dress Movement – the aspirational goal of dress reformers determined to free women from the so-called dictates of fashion. The members actively encouraged women to abandon their corsets, full length dresses and skirts and heavy footwear.
Now, let's get straight back to the present, with Pat who has updated his motorsport calendars for the upcoming season. It doesn't matter what kind of motorsport you're into, he likely has a calendar that you can import to your own software and devices. Incredibly useful, and a top job from Pat.
Each year I produce motorsport calendars for use within Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook and many other apps. I have now added as many 2016 motorsport dates as I can find and they are available to use! There are a few notes on my methodology followed by a table showing each racing series: F1, MotoGP, IndyCar, WEC, IMSA, NASCAR, WTCC, BTCC, DTM and many more.
Once the F1 calendar finally gets going, we'll get a glimpse at who has made any improvements over the winter and if anyone can manage to take the fight to Mercedes - and this penultimate link takes on the tricky job of making some predictions of how the grid will look.
It’s winter time and the teams are busy in their factory designing and building new cars for the 2016 season. With the first test starting at the end of February, the big question is: Who moved up the grid and who moved down? Based on the 2015 results and progression made, I would like to take a shot at the new 2016 order of the grid. Taking in account engine switches, new teams and drivers.
Finally, we finish with a startlingly familiar concept - selecting the best of Twitter's output from the previous week. Great idea!
Several drivers hit the gym to prepare for the mammoth 21-race calendar that awaits F1 this year, the world champion celebrated his birthday and tributes were paid following the passing of one of the sport’s famous names.
