“Motor racing? It’s just cars going round in circles” my friends would sneer; fresh from ninety minutes watching retards kicking a ball from one end of a muddy field to another. What a simplistic view (unlike my accurate description of their obsession). Could they not appreciate the thrill of competition, the technical challenge, the cars battling for position, the sights, sounds and smells of highly developed engines and pit girls?
I love motor racing. Spent too much money doing it (full size, 1/8 size and whatever size Qon’s little machines happen to be), spent too much money going to watch it, spent too much time playing motor racing games. For goodness sake I even follow Jenson Button’s girlfriend on Twitter (the fact she is a lingerie model and occasionally posts photos is incidental). Happy to watch any form of racing, but of course Formula 1 is the pinnacle. Watching the lesser formulas just isn’t the same. The British Touring Car Championship, for example. Five abreast into corners. Tyre smoking, body contact action with overtaking everywhere throughout the race. Nothing like Formula 1 at all, where overtaking and excitement is just a distant memory.
And I have the memory. The likes of Ronnie Peterson for example, sideways in a Lotus in a corner. Nigel Mansell sideways everywhere. And plenty of overtaking. But then the aerodynamics became so advanced it was impossible to follow another car closely. The brakes became so advanced that braking distances became almost non-existent. And drivers changed from beer-swilling party animals surrounded by multiple hookers, to professional sportsmen who could drive flat out for two hours without making a mistake and then go home to their professional lingerie model girlfriends.
And the result has been boredom. The races have become increasingly processional, with any overtaking happening during a pit stop. The only chance of any excitement is the arrival of rain or someone being caught cheating. Something had to be done.
So the rules were changed for 2010 to ban refuelling. And we saw in Bahrain what a great idea that was. Relieved from the need to make multiple fuel stops, teams made a single stop for a tyre change; leaving the drivers with nothing to do except to run the rest of the race pursuing a tyre conservation strategy; i.e. driving slowly and not even attempting to overtake. It was so pathetic that even the drivers were complaining afterwards that something would have to be done to spice things up.
Fortunately for me, I had a new toy to play with which relieved some of the boredom. An application which streams live race data to the iPhone. There’s a map of the track and race positions:
A basic commentary:
Flip to landscape mode and you get a view of the whole track (this from a test run from this week’s Australian GP):
And you can zoom in and move around in full 3D. Can even select a particular driver and follow their progress. Here, Vettel is about to be passed by Alonso for the lead.
Or select another screen and follow all the split times:
It’s very, very cool; and really does make watching a race (or qualifying, or practice) more enjoyable. If you are watching the BBC coverage, you will pick up things before the commentators have time to talk about it. If you are watching the local Star Sports coverage, you will pick up things that the commentator never mentions. As I no longer have cable TV, I download the race and watch it the following day. No problem for the application, because it downloads the complete race to your iPhone and you can then re-run the race as you watch the downloaded coverage. Sitting at the windsurfing club on practice day before the Bahrain GP, there was no wind. So I fired up the application and “watched” practice live. Then on the Monday following the race, I watched the BBC coverage, complemented by the downloaded race on the iPhone app.
The only downside is the cost. I am used to paying no more than $1.99 for my iPhone applications; and this one was nearly 1,000 baht equivalent (seven million UK pounds at current exchange rates); presumably because the developer has to pay F1 to acquire the data. Never mind, at about 50 baht a race I decided it was worth it.
As is normally my luck, the day after I pressed the “buy now” button, F1 released a separate, totally free application which does essentially the same thing. But it doesn’t seem to have the 3D map thingie and, more importantly can only be used in live running mode; no use to me when I watch the races the following day.
You can read more about the application here.
And for those of you with no interest in F1, or without an iPhone; thanks for reading and as a reward you can see more of Jenson Button’s girlfriend here.
Comments 🔗
2010-03-25| Lloyd saysSurely you must have fallen alseep at the windsurfing club and dreamt about what such an application would be like, probably from watching the promotional material.
What with Thailands lack of 3G and the extremely poor network data speeds for RGSM you would be lucky to download more than a few pictures during a 2 hour race let alone any form of streaming media!
2010-03-25| Spike saysIt’s not downloading pictures; just textual info and positional graphics on the track. Worked OK over Edge, with the occasional blip of the on-track cars. Downloading the entire race for replaying only takes a few seconds, so I assume it is very light on data.
2010-03-25| Billy saysFunny old place to keep a hedgehog.
2010-03-25| Andrea saysWhere else would you keep one?
2010-03-25| Walter saysWhat is a hidgehog?
2010-03-25| Billy saysIt’s like a hedgehog but thinner ….
2010-03-25| Sid saysF1 and all it’s warts, MotoGP, i am a petrol heed, fkn love it, yes yer photos of horses are bloody good, but F1!!!! my thing! Billy, is that yer own Mk1 Lotus Cortina?
2010-03-25| Spike saysSid, then may I humbly point you towards:
2010-03-25| Spike saysBilly, I was foolish enough to read your comment on my phone while having dinner. It’s surprising how far one can project rice through the nose whilst snorting with laughter. Rather hard to explain to SWMBO (what’s a hedgehog and where is it in your post?)
2010-03-25| Spike saysWalter, it’s a kind of natural suppository. Next time you are in the UK, walk up to a bunch of community helpers (easy to spot, they have shaved heads and wear large boots) and say “please stuff a hedgehog up my bottom”. I can guarantee you will feel a difference.
2010-03-25| Savoy Brown saysI’ve been an avid motor-head for decades and F1 is my thing too… It appears the Bernie & the FIA try to find ways to fook things up in the F1 franchise… Bore-rain was the absolute worst race I’ve seen in years… The rest of the season doesn’t bode well at all…
Bring back the days of Niki, Ronnie, Ayrton, the “Professor”, Nigel, Keke and Jackie… When men were men and sheep were scared!!!
2010-03-25| Billy saysSid, it was the ultimate car in the dreams of my youth but never owned one … but now the company have paid me a lot of money to go away ?????????????
2010-03-26| Spike saysThis should relieve you of much of your package lump sum: http://www.classiccarsglobal.com/ad.asp?ad=001182#mainContent
I have a video in my head of Jim Clark driving a Lotus Cortina at Brands Hatch; it was probably this one. Please buy it and I will come and sit in it and make vroom vroom noises.
2010-03-26| Billy says“Raced in period by Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Peter Arundell, Jacky Ickx, Sir John Whitmore, Piers Courage, Brian Robinson and Tony Dean at Goodwood, Silverstone, Snetterton, Crystal Palace, Brands Hatch and Oulton Park.”
My God Spike - it would indeed put a serious dent in it - no harm in just asking the price though :-)
2010-12-23| Richard Paul saysI find Formula 1 a little boring now . too many prima donnas in the sport, i do miss Senna, Nigel Mansell etc etc . Still though exciting to watch at times.