SofaF1

We don’t know how many times Renualt will win this year but we seem confident that it will happen at least once.

With Ferrari seemingly way out in front, the inevitable claims of cheating have come tagging along behind. Jarno Trulli from Toyota has hinted strongly that he thinks the Ferrari’s can turn in wherever they want. He seems to be suggesting that they have got round the traction control ban. Whereas Max says they haven’t because it’s impossible.

I’m inclined to think it unlikely because it explains the increased disparity between the speeds of Kimi (who didn’t like traction control
– and is going faster) and Massa (who says he misses it and is going slower).

But what do you think? Have a vote in our poll.

The new suggestion being debated in the Formula 1 world is that there will be a budget cap for teams. It seems like a really easy way to level the playing field. But of course it is a completely flawed model (as far as I can tell).

If Ferrari have the fastest car today and Force India have the slowest.

They are both allowed to spend the same amount of money each year.

Which car in ten years will be the fastest and which will be the slowest?

The same cars. If nobody is allowed to spend more money how can one team improve over another?

The budget cuts are ostensibly to keep the small teams in the sport. There is a much easier way of doing this.

The prize money shouldn’t be prize money, it should become participation money. Every team should get an equal cut of the pot simply for taking part. That would be much fairer to all concerned. And would mean that it would be harder for a back-marker to go bust.

So racism has reared it’s ugly head. I totally agree that the FIA should stamp hard on this kind of behaviour. Sweeping it under the carpet is not the answer.

I have been kind of surprised at some of the reaction which seems to almost suggest that F1 hadn’t had any racist incidents until this week. It almost sounds like they are complaining about a black guy coming into their sport and causing this racism.

Anyway as many have said, in a time when the FIA seems to make a large number of boneheaded decisions, this seems to have been handled very well. Spain know’s it’s on probation.

So the collective brain of SofaF1 readers thinks consistent points are the best Jenson can hope for in 2008 – and I’m inclined to agree with you.

But what about Renault and Alonso? He said after his first test that he felt the Renault was a second off of the pace. With it looking like BMW may have miss-stepped even a slight improvement might move Renault back to the number 3 spot. So this poll is about this years Renault, what’s going to happen?

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.