sofaF1

Has to be Alex Wurz on the itv-f1 website..

“I can assure you I am not here for the short term. In Formula 1 terms, that means medium to long term.”

Genius.


http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=41693

Or for that matter the present.

Televsion is dying. The cost of distribution is exorbitant and more and more programs will be streamed over the Internet. The only thing that's safe on television is live and interactive. So F1 is safe - it's live.

Traditional televsion makers face a situation where a recorded version on the Internet might infringe on their intellectual property and the ability for the program makers to make money from broadcast (ads are paid for viewers) and DVD sales.

But you can't watch the race in advance on the Internet. And basically F1 has low resale appeal. The annual DVD of the year will still sell to fans regardless. So to make more money you need more fans.

Bernie knows this of course. He uses very spurious numbers to create the tv viewing figures he needs. He in fact includes people who simply watch the news as viewers if they have a five second clip of F1. This makes no sense to sports fans but it does to sponsors. Those people are watching their brand in the news.

Now if only there was a way that F1 videos could reach millions of new fans who might learn about F1 but certainly would watch a video with branded cars in it. And what if that system could even tell you how many people watched so you could sell that exposure to the advertisers.

There is a truth emerging from the social networking era of marketing: personal recomendations are far more powerful than anything an ad man can cook up. You are far less likely to do something if an advert asks you to do something than if a friend asks you to do something. That is why embedding of videos works so well, people are effectively making personal recommendations.

Bernie shouldn't issue take-down orders to YouTube. He does it because he sees F1 as his and that you're stealing it. There's a way through this though, his own company can upload the clips. Then he retains the copyright.

Personally I would like total freedom to use the clips as I'd like. Bernie should see that this is the best way to harness the "personal recommendation" aspect of this. But that might be a bit too radical. All the major news networks in the states are harnessing the power or YouTube to help grow their brand (they too are the early adopters because news is live and therefore safe) - perhaps now CBS and NBC are in on the game it might start seeming more kosher?

If you log on to autosport.com nowadays your eyes may be distracted by the flickering images that have appeared on the right. They now show video clips of recent news. Hopefully when the races start we'll have some kind of preview and review shows to see. This sort of development has surely been in the pipeline for a while, but may have been delayed by problems of licensing and bandwidth. Perhaps this hasn't even been solved. F1.com have their own videos now too. But how good is the quality of either of these going to be? Are they going to show what you want? What do you want?

We seem to still be a long way behind motoGP.com in these terms, but we're an age behind what is going on in America. Check out the MLB mosaic. You can watch six baseball games live, and have a player alert that tells you when your favourite players are coming up so you can switch to them. This seems so easily transferable to F1, that surely it can't be long until we have it too?

So, Hamilton signs himself to McLaren for another five years. He says he wants to spend his whole F1 career there. Is this a good thing?

He doesn't know any other teams, and it appears he doesn't want to. Schumacher, at least, had experience of two other teams before signing for Ferrari. Is Hamilton's inexperienced monogamy wise? Villeneuve signed his career away when he put himself into BAR, but we only know that with hindsight. It could have worked.

Driver contracts are complex things - I'm fairly sure there are performance clauses on both sides of them, but there can never be any guarantee that the team you sign with one year will be the same in the next. It might get worse, it might get better. Button knows this from his wranglings with Williams. All the promises of 'I have faith in these guys making a fast car' sound incredibly hollow. But maybe driver consistency forces team performance? In the case of Hamilton, regarding his ability and his personality, it just might work.

McLaren have always been about the persuit of perfection. They have always strived to go for the ultimate in speed and technology even at the expense of reliability. Mark Hughes in Autosport this week even manages to eek an admission to this out of the team. That all changed last year with a car that was fast and reliable. A car that was reliable first and fast second.

But the problem came last year in the driver department. Who could have known that Lewis would be so good?

But the question is this. If McLaren listened to Alonso about the reliability and cooling as has been suggested why didn't they listen to him about holding back Lewis? If they had listened Alonso would have won the title. As it was Kimi won.

On the car side they learned from the begining of the season what a compromise on speed can bring you: reliability.

On the driver side they didn't learn the lesson and they lost.

Alonso copied Schumacher's game and beat him at it. McLaren were unable to do it because they ignored one of the fundamental rules - only one driver can win the title.

It might not be very fair to Lewis - but what's fair got to do with it?

McLaren isn't a charity - as far as I know - they were there to win.

The problem was that Lewis was just too good.

Last week's poll:


Makes it look like Nakajima is the man to watch for 2008.

And this week's poll is all about Honda and Ross Brawn. We want to know how quickly we'll see Ross work his magic at Honda.

Ron Dennis has been at the helm of McLaren for a seriously long time.
In all but name the connection to Bruce McLaren's team is nil. It is Ron's team through and through. So why are people trying to get rid of him?

Well obviously McLaren had a difficult year last year politically and internally he had a bit of a fight on his hands but McLaren almost won.

It seems the pressure for him to retire early is completely external.
You have the British press on the one hand who were slighted by being refused access to Lewis. And the Spanish press who feel Denis betrayed Alonso.

And mainly you have Max. Max claimed last week that he actually liked Ron but that he hated the way Ron treated the sport. (I wonder if Max knows what people think about the way he treats the sport?) But he may have a point. Ron only has self interest at heart, he can't imagine what Frank Williams feels like at the back of the grid - fighting for survival. When Ron fights all of the cost cutting measures he does it because he isn't humble. That's what Max seems to be saying.

If only, Max seemed to be saying, we could show Ron what it is like at the wrong end of the paddock. What it's like to have an external constraint on your car design. But Max doesn't have to dream it's happening.

Max doesn't want rid of Ron yet. He wants to teach him a lesson first.

Robert Kubica has admitted that his greatest sporting hero is none other than Britain's Ronnie "the Rocket" O'Sullivan.

I think this is a smart move from a PR point of view. Usually drivers admire other drivers and that's tricky. The press always draw you into making slighly queasy comparisons with your hero - from last year Lewis talking about Senna comes to mind.

But it's probably just true. Just because you like racing doesn't make you like watching racing. And this information makes me like Kubida even more.

There's been a bit of a debate amongst the drivers about the removal of traction control. Usually the drivers all want things made safer - but the racers in them know that if they're any good they might be able I gain an advantage. Massa said that he thought it would be unsafe and Kimi basically called him a wuss (although he didn't specifically name names).

Personally in safety matters I usually listen to DC. He seems to strike a good balance. He's happy about traction control and concerned about non-heated tires (which were slated for next year).

Traction control exemplifies the problems of running modern F1. Some people think F1 should employ the absolute pinnacle of car technology of at the very least the stuff you can get in road cars (a lot of road cars have traction control) and they want the technology almost to the point of negating the drivers input. Others at the other extreme think everyone should be driving around in the same car so the driver is everything.

The reality is that F1 is somewhere in between and always has been.

Overall though the most important thing is that I want my racing to be good racing which is entertaining. And part of entertaining me is not killing any of the drivers.

Alonso and Lewis decide to start new team together

Super Aguri win first race

Beards outlawed - Couthard unable to race

Ralf wins world championship - Michael takes what he said back

Mosley makes sensible suggestion

What are your suggestions?

Also, while we're here I've finally changed the poll!

Which driver will be the revelation of the season? Ie. Who will we be saying "an amazing season from so and so? I haven't got space for all the drivers. I'll move some around if you request it in the comments but Lewis, Alonso and Kimi are out of this because that would be continuing form.

There is an advert for ING which they keep showing on MSNBC (well I work at a bank and we have the TV on - with the sound dipped - all the time).

On it they show how their sponsorship of F1 team Renault has helped them "work as a team", and to show how much of a team they are they show Renault team memebers like Pat Symonds and Heikki Kovalainen.

Whoops - as we know Heikki is already "working as a team" over at McLaren.

One of the key contributing factors to McLaren's sucess last year was their cars ability to idle for long periods of time without stalling or overheating (expect a lot of teams to be getting better at this - Ferrari were pretty much there by the end of the season).

But this year it will be even more important. The main time such an advantage was used was while the cars were sitting at the end of the pit straight waiting for the final session of qualifying to begin.
This year this will be even more crucial for McLaren because they have been relegated to the wrong end of the pit lane due to the spy scandal.

Last year there was a lot of back and forth between McLaren and Ferrari whenever Lewis got ready they'd try and get one of their cars out ahead of Alonso who was coming next. By the end of the season they managed it a couple of times. But they were very close to each other last year. Now they'll have a pretty long warning that Lewis is on his way. It will be pretty easy for Ferrari to nip in possibly even ahead of Lewis.

So there are only one option for McLaren they need to make their ability to sit idlely so long that Ferrari can't go out when McLaren do.

Or... I hear rumours that there have been proposals from one team to change the qualifying procedure. Hmmm.

So is Jenson any good or not?

After slating him for many years he actually seemed to have a pretty good season last year. He grew a beard, bought a camper van and seemed to have confronted a number of his demons. He actually went quite a bit quicker than his car at times.

All of this seemed to be a good starting point for 2008. Especially as his famed smooth style will probably work well now that there won't be traction control.

I was starting to think better things about Jenson and then during the off season something happened. I watched Lewis Hamilton on Top Gear.

Lewis, with an oily and wet track, went as fast as Jenson had in the dry.

I know it isn't the same as driving an F1 car but surely it's a sign.

No budget constraints just pick:

Two drivers
One car
One race team (engineers etc)
One team principal
One car design (colour, decals etc)

I'm not planning on running this through the season, just thought it would be interesting to see what everyone thought.

With the points system being how it is Formula One is about consistency above all which is something that Kimi Raikkonen has often struggled to get over.

But as Kimi returns to Formula One as world champion his rivals are all facing more change than him.

Lewis Hamilton

At McLaren Lewis will face a new team-mate, he may struggle to set up the car as the experience level of the pair of drivers will be so much lower, a new position in the pit lane (with a much smaller garage), a car which may well have been compromised to allow it to pass the scrutineering of the FIA and a smaller budget.

Fernando Alonso

At Renault he will be returning to what he thinks of as a familiar team. But a lot of changes have happened here as well. Something stopped them from making a winning car in 2007, and although Alonso will be bringing his famous 0.6s a lap it might not be enough for an instant return to form. Presumably a lot of people at Renault had their noses put out of joint by Alonso's departure at the end of 2006, will they be able to accept him back? Of course Flav accepts him back, but what about everyone else? Can they rally behind him as he needs? And what of the thorny issue of number 1 status?

His new team mate, Nelson Piquet Jr is bound to want to instantly prove that he's no patsy to Alonso. And this could lead to exactly the same situation that the drivers faced at McLaren last year. Should we expect to see Piquet ignoring team orders at some point?

Lastly on this subject, if Renault are able to pick up their form their rivals are bound to play a bit dirty. I can easily imagine McLaren and Ferrari asking the FIA to investigate team orders at Renault any time they finish well. Even if they aren't doing anything of the kind the constant investigations could well destabilise the team.

BMW

BMW are the other team with consistency behind them. Although it's more difficult to pick a lead driver. The other thing in BMW's favour is something they have in common with Renault. Neither team was racing near anyone for the last part of the season. It was easy for them both to write off further development for 2007 and concentrate on 2008. BMW had less distance to climb and so it might well be possible for them to keep at least one of Kimi, Lewis or Alonso behind them. Maybe even two.


Conclusion

But while it's too early to say categorically, you'd have to tip Ferrari and Kimi in particular for the title. The consistency they have is probably their biggest advantage.