November 2013 recap - Season send-off - F1 draws to its conclusion as we head into the winter off-season

Published 1 December 2013 by Christine

The 2013 Formula One season drew to its conclusion in November, not quite hitting the heady heights of a championship showdown, but signing off with an emotional outing in Brazil. With it came a very busy month of racing, with little time for anything else, but that was okay - we had to make the most of F1 while it was still on!

Formula One in November

Three hectic events last month started with the slightly less exciting Abu Dhabi race, moving on through the States before heading down to Brazil, for the always thrilling action from Interlagos.

Date	Event
3 Nov	Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
17 Nov	United States Grand Prix
24 Nov	Brazil Grand Prix

Shows in November

With the races comes the F1 Digest preview, with two final episodes to finish off the 2013 season.

Sidepodcast in November

Just in time for the final race of the year, we introduced a new concept for the Factbyte Factbox - the Weekend logbook. Providing an overview for the entire race weekend, the coverage started on Thursday, and shared useful links, updates and tweets to give an instant catchup as the sessions unfolded. The Brazil event was just a pilot, testing whether it was possible and useful, and we certainly think it was both of those things. Hopefully we can do more with this in 2014.

We've also taken the opportunity this month to consolidate the fun and fabulous F1 Big Picture into Sidepodcast itself. We had huge plans to make the separate site a big and brilliant place to be, but after two years of getting no attention whatsoever, we sort of have to admit that isn't going to happen. And the design of the website is so shockingly bad and due an overhaul that it hurts my eyes to go there. So, bringing it into Sidepodcast seems the sensible thing to do and can hopefully make it slightly more manageable and perhaps easier to update in the future. There's work still to be done on the design and usability here, but that's easier to do now it's 'in-house' and hopefully it will be less of an eyesore. That's kind of what you'd hope with a project dedicated to the best visuals!

Features in November

Our superstar feature writers Adam and Stuart wrapped up their season of brilliant work with articles for the final few rounds of the season. Adam selected his driver highlights from the Abu Dhabi race, the Circuit of the Americas, and of course, the final race in Brazil.

Stuart's artwork continued to delight, with paddock postcards from the twilight racing at Yas Marina, where we had a peek inside the court room with Bernie Ecclestone, and the US Grand Prix, where we learned the truth about the sabotage talk at Williams.

Posts in November

Along with the ongoing Christine's Rankings fight, this month saw great guest posts from Lukeh and Alex, both analysing the current situation in F1 and events surrounding it.