LariatTom

I've been on a bit of a reading binge over the last few weeks because we have super limited access in the flat at the moment and I deliberately filled my Kindle with books before leaving. So I read Foley's first book and really enjoyed it and I've been reading the 1PW book for the last week or so. I quite like the concept of having the story told through people who were there and whenever there are little bits of dispute, you can get both sides of the story and figure out what the truth probably was. I missed the vast majority of 1PW's history through not really being aware of British wrestling so I've learned a lot and now that I'm getting to the part that I'm familiar with, I'm sure I'll keep enjoying it the rest of the way through.

I think Regal's book might be next on the list. It's a toss-up between that and Jericho's second book.

I don't think there's been much said about this so far, and this seems about as good a place as any to post since we are in the Deathmatch interest thread, but is anyone planning on making the trip over to Germany for the wXw/CZW weekender at the beginning of November? I'm almost certainly going to make the trip from Hamburg to Oberhausen to catch the Saturday and Sunday shows at the very least, and probably try to take a day off work to travel down and make the Friday show as well.

The first four names announced for the European Tournament of Death on the Sunday (4/11) are Jimmy Havoc, DJ Hyde, Matt Tremont and Mike Schwarz. Seems a relatively harmless way to spend my 21st!

Probably not. At least, not for the foreseeable future.

They'd thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at that team since 2002 and had very little to show for it apart from a couple of pole positions and some podium finishes. I think they left the sport feeling that they should have won at least one race, but even one race win from 8 years of racing isn't much to shout about.

They've entered LMP1 this year, and while they'll be the first to admit that they weren't expecting to have to perform much and use this as a learning year ahead of 2013, the loss of Peugeot at the beginning of the year forced them to be able to compete and take the fight to Audi. Remember, Le Mans was their first race and while both cars retired with mechanical problems, they were impressively quick. At Silverstone last month, they were once again very quick and probably ought to have won that race if they hadn't have been unlucky with the timing of a safety car and having higher fuel consumption. Being on pole today, they've got to be aiming for a win.

Take it one step further to the new P1 regulations for 2014. That's going to be using technology that Toyota can take from the race track and implement on their road cars in the years to come with things like an increase in the allowance of energy recovery systems and hybrid power. They're seemingly very happy with their motorsport program at the moment, I can't see why they'd want to return to F1.

The FIA World Endurance Championship begins a string of flyaway races over the next few weeks with the 1000km/6 Hours of Sao Paulo this evening. Toyota have managed to put their car on pole position for LMP1 ahead of the Audi cars. The Toyota have got the fastest car outright and it's only really fuel consumption which cost them at Silverstone. If they can manage their pace and not have to make an extra pit stop in the race, they're looking good for the win.

If you're interested in catching that, the green flag is just over an hour away at 4pm (assuming my timings are correct) with full coverage available at fiawec.com and on Radio Le Mans.

After that, if you're prepared to pull an all nighter the final round of the 2012 Indycar championship is at the 2 mile long Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Texas. Will Power has a 17 point lead over Ryan Hunter-Reay in the title race and with it being an oval race over 500 miles, anything can happen. That's live on Sky Sports 1 tonight and then there are highlight shows on Sunday at more sensible times throughout the day across the SS channels.

It looks as though Mercedes had too much tyre wear on the mediums, as once they put the hard tyre on both Schumacher and Rosberg were on the sort of race pace that they'd showed during Friday...but by that point, they'd lost too much ground to be able to make an impact. The car is just puts far too much wear on the tyres to be able to make an impact during the race, and it often seems to be the case that once they switch to the harder compound, they're able to run without major problems.

Kimi is still being incredibly consistent and putting in the results. He definitely needs a win if he wants to be a serious title contender, but one win could well be enough to make the difference. For me, Button is out of the running now and both Red Bulls need a string of top results otherwise they risk dropping out of the fight too. The alternator problems that RBR and Lotus have had are crazy since it's a fairly basic piece of kit on the car but it seems prone to failing. Renault could do with having a look at this before the flyaway races if Vettel is to have any chance of staying in contention.

I do wonder what Alonso would have managed if he hadn't had a problem with the rear of the car during Q3. They were alluding to the fact that Alonso felt a 23.5 was possible from him today which, had he managed it would have put him on pole by a long way. With Massa being so impressive, it does make you wonder whether Alonso could have stuck it on pole. He's always at his most dangerous when he's out of position and in a fight, so I'm expecting big things from him tomorrow to come fighting through the field.

Mclaren's long fuel runs didn't look fantastic yesterday. They were solid, but if yesterday's times are anything to go by then Mercedes are potentially leading the way and could be able to pull a bit of a surprise. Provided he has a clean race without any technical problems, Schumacher's looking pretty good for a podium finish, and I think he'll beat one of the Mclaren cars.

If you can, I highly recommend watching GP3 and GP2 tomorrow morning. The GP2 race was won today by Luca Filippi who hasn't competed in the category for a year for a variety of reasons, but he was utterly dominant. That title is still up for grabs with Valsecchi looking favourite to win after Razia failed to finish today. GP3 has drama galore as it's their final championship weekend (and also the last weekend for the current generation car). Championship leader Mitch Evans retired at the start of the race after a poor start and then damaged the steering by going over a kerb so he was unable to continue, which left Antonio Felix Da Costa looking as though he was going to take the championship lead until his car had a problem too. So neither of those guys scored points while Daniel Abt won the race and kept himself in contention ahead of the final race. Abt starts tomorrow's sprint race from 8th while Evans will be starting dead last. Abt needs a win and for Evans to not score any points. It's a slim chance, but it's possible...and it's going to be a great race!

Alex Zanardi might be one of my favourite people in the history of sport. Comes back from an accident that no one could even dream of surviving after losing both of his legs and something like 3/4 of his blood at Lausitzring in a terrifying crash to race in touring cars, retires from motorsport and then decides he'd like to give hand cycling a try, almost wins the New York marathon at his first attempt and now wins Paralympic gold. He said a few weeks ago that if he won gold, he'd be looking for his next challenge and if reports are correct, he's got his eye on attempting to race at Indy next year in a modified car.

For a guy who was so talented, he always seemed to be in F1 at the wrong time. His US record speaks for itself though.

Hamilton to Mercedes might seem like a bit of a strange move, but Hamilton could probably do with a fresh start to give his career a kick. There's always that possibility of him 'doing a Schumacher' and taking Mercedes from the upper midfield to title winners. Alonso did it at Renault, I think Hamilton needs to do it too. I don't know if the rumour is true though, and if it is, I'd hope that Rosberg is swapping seats with him. For me, the money is still on Schumacher sticking around for at least another year with the option of a second. If Schumacher does leave, Hamilton will probably take the seat. Remember, Mclaren have to pay for their engines next year and have already said they can't match Hamilton's current deal. Throw in his demands of wanting to keep his own trophies and the tweets over last weekend, and signs point to him leaving relatively soon.

The stewards panel changes from race to race. There are (I think) three stewards who sit at a race and a driver expert, who this weekend was Eliseo Salazar (who had his big moment in F1 when Nelson Piquet tried to kick the shit out of him at Hockenheim in the 1980s). The decision to ban Grosjean is an interesting one...I can see why it has been done since it was a dangerous move and we nearly saw a major injury to Alonso, but the actual wording of the stewards' decision is what gets me. "Eliminating title contenders" is what gets me. I'll just re-post what I wrote on another forum last night after driving standards came up:

There's definitely some dodgy driving in GP2 and GP3, but I think that a lot of the time, they do that sort of thing because they've seen that by and large, you can get away with that sort of thing in F1. You'll either get a drive through penalty or a grid penalty at the next race.

 

Banning Grosjean with the reason being for taking out two title contenders is ridiculous. It was a reckless incident, and to be fair to him, he's accepted responsibility and taken his punishment. In an ideal world, there's be some sort of consistency with stewards and punishments and any incident involving a title contender would be treated with the same severity.

 

Take it one step further, make it known to drivers in the lower formulae that they can't get away with causing accidents. If they do, they'll be punished. Do that, aim to improve driving standards and get rid of reckless accidents so that when the few drivers that do progress to F1 finally get there, they aren't making these sorts of errors.

 

Of course, it's the FIA we're talking about, so it'll never happen.

As I said, the wording of saying that his eliminating title contenders is the main reason for the race ban is what gets me. Does that mean that the stewards rate Alonso and co. and their health as being more important than say, Pic and Petrov? If Grosjean had hit them on lap 1, would there still be the same punishment? Also, it's an accident at the start of the race...there's always that risk of an incident happening. Even if they went from a rolling start like in a lot of other forms of motorsport, while the risk of incident is reduced, it still remains.

I'm not condoning the accident or saying that Grosjean doesn't deserve his punishment, and to his credit, he has accepted it. But the standard of both driving in F1 and stewarding has to be brought into question. Standards need to improve across junior formulae and stewards need to be consistent with punishments. If (for example) Perez takes out Vettel and Raikkonen going into T1 at Monza on Sunday, I would expect him to be given a race ban too because he has taken out title contenders. If Maldonado has another accident, I would expect a race ban.

There's no consistency.

The argument for closed canopies in F1 has been brought up again now and it's looking fairly likely that we'll see them introduced in the next few years (probably 2014) now to try and prevent any serious injuries/deaths in future.

As always thank you Tom. What does NGTC stand for?

Seems your at Spa this weekend?

 

Wow. The one week I pay zero attention to qualifying,and it goes all loopy!

I wish. I moved to Germany on Thursday which scuppered any plans I had of going to Spa (which is now second on my motorsport To Do list for the next year after going to Le Mans). I'll never knock British coverage of F1 again though, RTL definitely love their ad breaks!

No problem, if I can answer things, I'll answer them. I'd like to think I've got a fairly decent knowledge of all/most things motorsport so I may as well put it to use. NGTC stands for Next Generation Touring Car.

What a day of action from Spa, and it's only Saturday! Button finally found the balance in his Mclaren to claim his first pole for the team at his 50th attempt (which seems ludicrous) while the main title contenders all seemed to struggle. Alonso qualifies 6th and starts 5th with pretty much all of his rivals starting behind him with the exception of Kimi. Kobayashi pulls a front row start out of seemingly nowhere and with Perez 4th, they look in great shape for tomorrow. Vettel doesn't make Q3, Mercedes are the 8th fastest car with Rosberg in 23rd after a gearbox change and dropping out in Q1 while Schumacher could only make P13. Ridiculous.

Then GP2 and GP3. Nigel Melker crashed his Ocean car at Eau Rouge in a terrifying accident which caused a safety car and then a red flag while the marshals had to rebuild the tyre barrier at the top of the hill. That caused about a 35 minute delay and then just as things were about to kick off again, the start was delayed as the medical helicopter wasn't back at the circuit yet. So we had about an hour of dead air to fill which Buxton and di Grassi did brilliantly, fielding an impromptu Q&A session (including my question about the next generation of cars having KERS and/or DRS), giving shout outs to people and talking about their favourite Belgian food, beer, naming corners and commenting on drivers taking a comfort break against a wall.

GP3 finally started and were told that the race would be shortened to just 25 minutes because of the delays from GP2. The race itself only lasts 4 laps and just over 8 minutes as Ocean's GP3 team had another horrifying moment as Cregan was send backwards into a wall at Pouhon after being trapped by Brundle and Fumanelli colliding and his car coming off worst. Apparently, that impact was registered at 140mph by the team. Both drivers are relatively ok apart from bruising, but the cars were written off so they'll both be unlikely to start the sprint races tomorrow morning.

Watching the BTCC highlights. Lots of rubbing racing going on. The first race was full of incident and the finish for third was incredibly close. Not sure I agree with the result. Looked different from the pictures. What do they mean by Super 2000 spec cars? There seems to be a discrepancy between the Super 2000 spec cars and the others. Why is that allowed? Matt Jackson opening his door to allow the exhaust gasses to escape was pretty amazing. He actually felt he could have finished the race like that. Good job TOCA were paying attention.BMW EBay were dominant.

DTM at Zandvoort showing afterwards on ITV 4.

 

What's happening in the Belgium GP?

The Super 2000 spec cars are essentially old cars. There is a discrepancy between those and the new NGTC models because the new cars are just much better. They've got more modern technology and the simple fact that they're turbo means that they've got a straight line speed advantage. I think it was Plato moaning (as usual) last year at most races saying that he couldn't keep up with the NGTC cars in his old S2000 and, as usual, decided that the best way to usually combat that was trying to knock everyone else off track.

The Super 2000 cars should be all but gone by the end of this year. Most teams are using NGTC cars in the BTCC these days.

I caught that DTM race last weekend after realising my laptop enables me to watch ARD live for some reason. It shouldn't, but it does. That was a dull race. It always offered to be a bit more exciting, but nothing really came of it. I haven't watched the ITV highlight packages, but I do wonder if they find a way to make the races seem interesting.

Davidson isn't back in the Toyota after his Le Mans crash. He's only just started getting back into the Mercedes sim as part of his rehab. He's at Silverstone this weekend as a Toyota driver, but he isn't participating in the race.

Just a reminder that this is on this weekend

http://www.festival-of-motoring.co.uk/

 

Anything else happening?

The 'big' motorsport event of weekend comes from Silverstone courtesy of the World Endurance Championship. All of the usual favourites from sports car racing with the Audi/Toyota battle set to take place once again (though it may well just be Audi vs Audi if practice is anything to go by). Toyota have an interesting concept on the rear wing though which has generated some interest. Support races come from the Classic Endurance Racing series and two rounds of Formula Renault 3.5.

First race of that weekend is at 1pm on Eurosport with FR3.5 and the second race taking place tomorrow. The WEC race is a 6 hour race tomorrow afternoon with full coverage on Motors TV, Audi TV and the WEC website. If you can't watch the pictures, then Radio Le Mans are doing their usual complete coverage of the weekend and will be giving uninterrupted coverage.

That'll be my viewing for tomorrow. I might flick over for bits and pieces of the BTCC meeting depending on which support races take my fancy, or I'll record it and then skim through it on Monday evening.

LariatTom. Do you believe that Loeb is valuable to WRC? I don't really know how people view him in other countries. In the UK however. As much as we can appreciate him for his skill. The fact that he is not British and comes across as fairly dour. Serves to make the WRC as a whole quite boring. We really are missing a driver who is able to capture the public's imagination.

It's a tough one. He's been utterly dominant in the sport for years to the point where no one can really get close to him. Eight consecutive titles and he's surely going to win title number 9 this year. After that, I still think he'll leave the sport and start taking his GT racing more seriously but only time will tell. He's valuable to the WRC for the fact that he's a recognisable name in modern day rally, but the WRC is a bit of a non-entity to be perfectly honest, so it's difficult to decide what is valuable to WRC. Crowds are way down, there's virtually no TV coverage, the sport gets almost no coverage in the press unless there's a huge accident and even in motorsport magazines, it doesn't exactly demand a lot of space.

He essentially became the rallying version of Schumacher for his dominance of the sport. Red Bull coming in as the promoter should hopefully be able to make things interesting, and with him quite possibly leaving the sport, they'll need something to give it a boost to try and give the sport some sort of appeal.

How would people view the likes of Travis Pastrana becoming more prominent internationally? Apparently from next year Red Bull will be taking over promotion of WRC. I can see more X Games style presentation coming. Good or bad?

I doubt we'll see more of an X Games presentation with rallycross taking over the entire sport, but it'll most likely start to have some sort of role in the sport with it replacing a few of the special stages. They are the sort of thing that they could get on TV with some appeal of rally cars on a short course, a few jumps and some cool slow motion shots of the cars drifting through corners. That's what can get coverage, but a rethink of the sport and how to make it appealing to a modern audience is needed.

Red Bull have just become the new promoter of the WRC, so hopefully that'll give it a boost of some sorts. Time will tell as to what changes they make (if any) though there are suggestions that Sky Sports are going to show coverage of the rest of this season's championship. The series needs changes and it needs them urgently. The sport gets virtually no coverage and even magazines like Autosport are reluctant to give more than a page to the sport. Loeb retiring will probably make the series more competitive in that there might be more competition for the championship, but it loses some appeal with Loeb if/when he goes. There are still rumblings that Citroen might pull out too.

This weekend there's BTCC action with the usual support package from Snetterton which will be on ITV4 on Sunday. Aside from that, I know there's NASCAR Nationwide, the continuation of the Race for the Chase for the Cup for the Thing (NASCAR Sprint Cup) and Grand-Am all coming from Watkins Glen this weekend (which you can catch on Motors TV) and the ADAC GT Masters from Austria's Red Bull Ring though I don't think there's any TV coverage of that unless you speak German. That's about it as far as I know on the televised side of things. There's bound to be something I've missed.

That line seems a bit too obvious for something Moffat-penned, don't you think?

 

I can see it being a deliberate swerve and 'the eleventh' being something different, like a planet or a new alien.

 

Possibly, I still think that it's a case of putting the wheels in motion for Smith's inevitable exit, starts raising the anticipation well before even contemplating setting a date.

That was what they did with Tennant too, didn't they? "He will knock four times" and all that. I remember there being at least a year of build for Tennant's exit from the show, and even know it was known that he was leaving the show, it was through the episodes with him knowing that the end was coming. I quite like this sort of build because it means that, provided we don't get a swerve, we already have a vague idea of how Smith leaves the show, but we have no idea how or when we get there.

I can't wait for this new series to start. I'm hoping that the date for the end of August is correct, though I'll be at Futureshock that night so wouldn't get to see it anyway. I'm going to have to download the series since I'm moving to Germany a few days later, but this will be something to look forward to. That trailer released a few days ago was epic.

Loeb is probably going to retire from the WRC at the end of the year once he's wrapped up another world title. There's a clause in his Citroen contract which allows him to leave if he wins this title and the rumours are that he's going to activate it and move on to other things. With him spending his spare time this season racing in French Carrera Cup races and having his own LMP2 team, he'll probably look to move into sports car racing and have a full time go at that. He's got history at Le Mans and if he can't challenge for overall victories, he'll probably fancy winning the LMP2 class.

The season, and myself, badly needs a Kimi R

I'm yet to see F1 qualifying, or the support races from today since I've been playing cricket. I'm catching up on the feature races tomorrow morning before the sprint races with a lovely 6am start.

I was going to watch qualifying, but I've gone for the Blancpain Endurance race which is on at the moment with the 24 Hours of Spa. Torrential rain at the moment, and these guys are driving around Spa in the rain. A huge field of 66 GT3 cars (which is bigger than Le Mans for those keeping tabs). In spreading my wings more in the last two years, I've really become a sucker for sports car racing and these endurance races. This'll stay on until I fall asleep I reckon.

I don't know if it's running through the night or whether they're only broadcasting during certain hours, but anyone interested in watching it can catch the live stream: http://tv.audi.com/#/01

First time I watched the Sky showing of F1 due to the free weekend, I prefer the Beeb's F1 show.

 

Me too, no Martin fucking Brundle to put up with.

 

Lee Mckenzie on the BBC too. No Lnaky bloke this week. Hopefully its the same for Hungary.

Jakey's covering the Olympics. Not too bad for a guy who started off on children's TV when I was growing up! I still think I prefer the Sky commentary package to be completely honest. Brundle is still one of the best colour commentators the sport has seen and Crofty has got used to not talking for the radio. They still make a few mistakes though which annoy me slightly. I mean, on Sunday I spotted that it the debris at Turn 1 was caused by Massa losing his front wing almost instantly. They were still trying to figure it out right until the moment they saw Massa's Ferrari entering the pits, and they'll confuse drivers in certain teams, but that's almost always corrected. I can't complain too much, they're doing live TV to a huge audience and I'm sat at home watching it.

BBC have a better build-up show I think. On the live races, I'll flick between the two depending on which feature appeals most at the time and then stick to Sky from Brundle's grid walk onwards. McNish has proven himself to be a really good commentator in Davidson's absence which is surprising and his analysis in the Skypad has been second to none. They need to keep him around once Ant is back full time because he really adds something. Johnny Herbert is another analyst who I never expected to be any good at the job, and his commentary in FP3 was informative and entertaining.

Straight on to Budapest this weekend. If Alonso can pull off another good result here, he could be looking fairly comfortable ahead of the summer break. We're only half way through the season, but with the season being so close now and everyone seeming to find their form, having the equivalent of a win in points advantage could be very useful as they finish up in Europe and head around the world. For the first time this season, I'm starting to believe that Alonso is marching towards title number three.

I cannot see past Vettel or Alonso tomorrow. First time all year Hamilton has been out qualified by Button.

 

I agree with the above about the importance of Pole, but it seems like Hamilton when he got earlier in the year could not convert it. Hamilton is along with Alonso for me the best 2 drivers on the grid, its a shame McLaren have been a shambles this year.

I can see what you're saying about Hamilton not being able to convert pole earlier in the season, but it's not too bad really. In Australia, he was beaten into Turn 1 by Button and the race was pretty much over from that point as Button was able to get a bit more from the car. Hamilton was then unlucky with the timing of his pit stop in relation to the Safety Car meaning he lost another position to Vettel and finished in third. If it weren't for that bit of luck, he would have been second. In Malaysia, the rain came and made the race far from the normal. He led that race until the rain delay, and again when they resumed racing and quite possibly would have won had they not had a slow stop. So he's not been able to convert pole, but one of those was due to bad luck and the other was a poor pit stop. When he had the pole-that-never-was in Spain, he had the quickest car as shown by a fight through the field to finished 4th. No doubt he would have won that race had he started from pole.

Like I say, there's usually around a 50% conversion rate of poles to victories, so on that basis...Malaysia is probably the win that got away.

Wet Qualifying today made everything interesting and we're fairly certain to see a dry race tomorrow which should mix things a bit. Schumacher's definitely still got it in him when the conditions are a bit mixed. At least in Silverstone, they had a wet set-up which helped to explain why he went backwards in the race. If the Mercedes looks after the rears tomorrow, he should be on for some good points. Both Lotus cars coming through the field, Webber fighting back from a grid penalty and Vettel trying to beat Alonso and claim his first ever home win...should be a good one tomorrow!

Oh, and since I ended up talking about it with Monkee a few weeks ago, I decided to start doing a bit of F1 writing which I've sneakily linked to. How exciting! Hopefully got more bits and pieces coming over the next few weeks about major innovations throughout Formula 1 and maybe something about the current crop of GP2 drivers.

German coverage helps my degree since I'm doing a German degree. Almost seems too straightforward to put it like that, but just throwing myself into a program for an hour and a half or so where there's nothing but German is pretty useful. Same way a lot of people learning English will do so through watching TV and listening to music since it's a quick way to pick up on pronunciation of words, structures etc.

The Norisring is actually a street circuit in Nuremberg on the grounds of the old Nazi party rallies. Bit of a unique setting for a race.

Yeah, that's the European Le Mans Series at Donington. If you can get down there, it's always a stacked race weekend with a couple of support series alongside the main six hour race. The stuff on Motors last Sunday was the American Le Mans Series race from Lime Rock. I caught the second half of that race live since they have an international live stream on their website for people outside the US who want to watch, which is a really good idea. Web streaming seems to be a solid idea that's catching on in the motorsport world at the moment, particularly in sports cars. You've got the ALMS streaming their races, the World Endurance Championship has streams of their races most of the time, the FIA GT1 World (which uses neither GT1 cars or is actually a world championship) and GT3 European championships are streamed on YouTube and Dailymotion and the same is said for the Blancpain Endurance Series.

I know ESPN show the full DTM races live (most of the time), so do Sky have some sort of highlights package or do they show the races in full but delayed by a few days? Never knew they showed it, so I'm genuinely interested to know. To be honest, I watch the races through German TV on ARD since I've got a satellite that picks up most German channels and I find it useful for my degree in a mildly geeky kind of way. DTM's been cracking so far this year. The new cars and the return of BMW to the series has added some excitement to a championship that had become...well, a bit dull in recent years. Norisring always throws up a great race because of the 'point-and-squirt' nature of the layout (and it's just a really cool setting for a race), so that's always one to catch.

ELMS at Donington Park this weekend for the 6 hour race if anyone's interested, and Formula Student is on at Silverstone for anyone in the area. Only 18 entries with12 LMP2 entries and just two entries apiece for Prototype Challenge, GT Pro and GT Am classes which is a bit of a shame. Not sure if there's TV coverage of it, possibly on Motors TV, but Radio Le Mans will be doing full coverage of the weekend on their website.

You're right that the BRDC don't own most of the fields around the circuit that are used as parking, it's all privately owned by farmers and the like which is why I wouldn't have suggested tarmac. Then again, chipping might not work either. A lot of it isn't feasible since you can't predict weather like we've been having over the last few weeks.

Bit of a delay for Qualifying since the rain returning in epic fashion. As things stand, the crowd are going crazy for Bernd Maylander doing few laps in the Safety Car to judge track conditions. By the sounds of it, we've got another 40 minutes or so until the FIA reckon we can get Qualifying underway. Amazingly, there's nothing in the Sporting Regulations for a solution to this if they're not able to restart the session. If the session hadn't started at all, I think it would have been based on Championship standings but since the session officially started, it's a tricky scenario whereby I think they need to complete the session, run it tomorrow morning or find a solution that the teams can agree on. Whether that means that the remaining 17 cars start based on their current positions or in championship order is up to the teams. Hopefully we get the session completed...

Mayhem at Silverstone yesterday, it's completely ridiculous. The BRDC have spent so much on improving the track in recent years with the track expansion to include the new arena section and the new Silverstone Wing (both of which are admittedly brilliant), and they've installed two or three new grandstands to cope with demand for tickets in the last few years, but they've done fuck all to improve the parking. It seems they thought that continuing to use grassy fields would be a suitable way of trying to fit thousands of cars in the nearby area. Surprise surprise, when we get a decent amount of rain, then it all falls to shit as cars are unable to park and people spent hours queuing trying to get anywhere near the circuit. Not helped by a car breaking down and a lot of people attempting to get into campsites without pre-booking, something that fails to make sense to me, but it's still carnage. Surely if you are expecting record crowds and rain to be a part of the weekend, spend some money on improving the parking situation on the land that you own, even if that's just putting chipping down or those mass foam jigsaw style pieces which I've seen elsewhere to help save the grass and prevent muddy carnage.

People have been told to stay away today in the hope of saving what's left of the car parks for tomorrow's race. We'll see how successful that is. Silverstone need to have a major look at their system after this race and find ways to try and prevent this happening again. They may have a long-term contract for another 15 years, but if the fans can't get into the track then it means nothing.

Rant aside, the weather still looks like it'll play a role in this weekend. I think the forecast is still for a wet race tomorrow and there's a good chance we'll get rain just in time for qualifying. The GP2 guys were showing just how little grip there was out there in the heavy rain during their practice and qualifying session yesterday but to their credit, there were very few incidents with only one or two major incidents that I can recall.

If we get a wet race, I think it's Hamilton's to lose. He's been committed from the first lap in the rain yesterday and although Friday means very little, he seems to be more willing to push the car in heavy rain and go towards the limit of the car. Not that it'll make much difference. If we see rain like yesterday, the race will spend a long time under the safety car.

I won't disagree with you. Her single seater record is far from impressive, and I wouldn't be surprised if money played a role in her getting the role as test driver. Even outside of Superleague Formula and looking at other categories, it wasn't that great. But then you look at guys like Kobayashi in F1 at the moment who never really set the world alight in most of his career prior to F1 with the exception of winning the Formula Renault championships and he's a very good driver. I wouldn't say she could have done that, and I maintain that she never would have raced anyway since there are far more talented people who can pay for a drive if needed, but you never know.

Go for it! A guy I know has been doing a Red Bull blog for ages and getting in with the team over the last 2 years via Twitter and stuff and now they've just hired him as web content editor for their website! Persevere and make contacts and you'll get there. I will warn you though, getting to know the sport from the back end does kill the passion a bit and you get to see the horrible side of things as well. Knowing more about the inner workings killed my passion a bit. It used to be a hobby to watch a race but it became too much and I wasn't enjoying it as much any more. It's hard to explain but last year was a bit of a chore for me which is why I'd not really planned on doing a race this year. My passion is coming back but not as much as it used to be. My ambition was to work in F1 somehow - marketing, design or PR - but I'm so glad I'm not there, it's too back-stabbing and political. I prefer to watch from the sidelines.

 

Don't let that put you off though, if that's what you want to do then go for it. If it's what you want then you'll get there

Thanks for the advice! I'm putting some serious thought about start a secondary blog focusing solely on motorsport and writing stuff on there, see if I can get that out there, get some readership behind it, plug the crap out of it using social media and see if I can make something happen for myself. Like you, I might find I prefer watching races solely as a hobby and something to enjoy, but I've always enjoyed going deeper with it, wanting to know every last little bit of information possible. We'll see what happens I guess.