February 2014 recap - Testing dominates over winter sports - Rankings returns, the sidebar is updated and it's snowy in the events
Published by Christine
February has been a month of watching and waiting. Two final weeks of pre-season testing were undertaken by the teams, with varying degrees of success. We rounded up each day with a post, as we waited to see who would come out on top, and who would be struggling with time running out before Australia. There have been a few site tweaks, and some great guest posts, plus Christine's Rankings made its 2014 return!
Formula One in February
Two days of the final week of testing slip into March, but there are six days covered below. Even from just the headlines you can see it has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for everyone involved! It's really whetting the appetite for the season ahead.
F1Minute in February
This month it's all been about testing, and whilst there wasn't an F1Minute for every single day of action, there were a handful of roundups that kept you up to speed with what was happening out in Bahrain. There's also news about F1 as a whole, and a lot of Williams updates as they gather momentum for 2014.
- F1 global TV viewing figures see 10% drop in 2013
- Formula One Teams' Association call it a day
- Renault Sport believe power problems are solved
- Rob Smedley joins Williams F1 for 2014
- Ross Brawn confirms retirement from Formula One
- Silvestro joins Sauber aiming for 2015 F1 seat
- Williams shore up sponsors with Petrobras and more
Sidepodcast in February
You know the new season of F1 is just around the corner, when the brand new Pocket F1 Handbook is released to guide you through all the changes and information you need to know. I won't expound too much here, as Mr C did a great job selling my wares earlier in the month. Do purchase a copy though, if you want a handy reference to the 2014 drivers, teams, rules and tracks and everything in between!
Meanwhile, Mr C himself has been nice and busy coding a few changes to the site. After a brief pause to comment the excellent Winter Olympics, he started tweaking. The sidebar has seen some attention, including a consolidated list of recent content posted to Sidepodcast. This replaces the three boxes where posts, features and events were separated. It borrows the 3D spinning effect from the events, which enables you to rotate the list of recent articles and find out the dates and times for upcoming live commenting threads. The new sidebar widget is larger than the previous iteration, and therefore you can get more facts for your money on the reverse. We did this because Sidepodcast is bursting with content now with the inclusion of F1Minute and F1 Big Picture. This overarching list should enable you to keep up with pictures, audio, posts, features, collections, and more, all in one place.
Additionally, we've revisited social media buttons after Mr C removed them in a big old huff because they were slowing down the webpage. Every single story on Sidepodcast now features the ability to share the link with buttons at the bottom, so get sharing - if only to prove Mr C wrong after he declared them pointless. The abillity to share comments has been enhanced with the addition of a little Twitter bird logo image, which is particularly pretty on the Recent comments page.
Features in February
Two of our fabulous writers put fingers to keyboard this month, with Steven bringing back the Safety Matters column to look closer at the huge accident that took place during the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
Talk on Corners also made a return in February, with Chris taking a look at which drivers and team members have moved where, and what that means for the paddock in 2014. With most teams trying to minimise change, some have had more success than others, and that could make all the difference when the racing action gets going.
Posts in February
Christine's Rankings returned this month, with a preview post and the first roundup of points handed out. We also looked at who has been strong in testing and who may be looking smug, plus had a great guest post about Formula E.
- A race a day keeps the F1 blues at bay
- Back to basics
- Every lap counts as final pre-season test begins
- F1 teams get set for testing in Bahrain
- Formula E: The motorsports sandwich?
- Friday Fun - Formula One makes new Friends
- Obliged to do a selfie - Christine's Rankings, Week 1
- Who's the most engaging of them all?
Hidden gems in February
Things got very sporting in the live events as we await the return of Formula One. As previously mentioned, the Winter Olympics was exceedingly popular, and we also commented the return of Crashed Ice as well as the somewhat lacklustre Super Bowl.
With Ross's excellent Formula E post, we collected together all the content we've posted regarding the new electric series and it turns out it was quite a lot! February was also a good month for teams posting pre-season videos, with both the Mercedes rule changes video and the Lotus unwilling passenger piece getting our attention.
Finally, I have collected together the stories from the month in a handy Readlist - which is a site which bundles the pages together into an ebook, which you can then send to the device of your choice, Kindle, iBooks, etc. It's handy for offline reading, or referring back to when you're not near a browser. I updated the January post with a collection, and you can click below for the posts from this month too.
