MotoGP back to Eurosport

Gotta love the about-face. First Dorna takes the rights from Eurosport to sell them to FTAs, then they do a deal with Eurosport France causing uproar among fans in the UK and beyond.

Autosport.com and others are reporting that Dorna have changed their minds due to pressure from fans (and Toby Moody) and will indeed once again show 125cc, 250cc and MotoGP races during 2009. The support events will be live and the main event will be delayed on British Eurosport. I don't know the status of the other local Eurosport services so I'm afraid you'll have to check that yourselves.

2009 MotoGP Coverage (UK)

BBC:
All MotoGP races are live on BBC2. These are followed on the Red Button by MotoGP Extra, an analysis programme. Also on the Red Button are the 125 and 250 races as well as qualifying for all classes. Commentary will be as before: Charlie Cox and Steve Parrish.

British Eurosport:
All MotoGP races are delayed on British Eurosport*. 125 and 250 will be live as will all Friday and Saturday practices. The big news: The Toby & Julian Show will return!

* I expect this to mean the main channel, not Eurosport 2.

Both broadcasters will make the races available online after the event, via BBC iPlayer and Eurosport Player respectively.

Weekend Preview: 28 Feb - 1 March

This week is a stock car week so if that's not your thing you may as well move along. I'm not planning to stay long either, I'd rather talk about sportscars and the ACO's entry list so I'm off to do that now!

* * * *

NASCAR Sprint Cup
- Shelby 427 (3/36)
- Las Vegas Motor Speedway
- Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
- www.nascar.com

427 laps or 427 miles? What sort of distance is that? They either picked it with a random number generator, or I smell a sponsorship tie-in of some kind.

British air time: 9.30pm GMT, Sky Sports 3
American air time: 3.30pm ET, FOX

Now we already know from two weeks ago that 3.30pm ET = 8.30pm GMT so we're missing an hour. Sky have put it on a tape delay due to live rugby coverage. They've got live golf on SS1, live cricket on SS2 and live Spanish footie on Xtra, so they've run out of room - a busy Sunday night for Sky! The other thing I just thought of - maybe FOX has an hour of pre-race and Sky is jumping straight from rugby to the green flag.
By the way, The Sum of All Fears is on Film4 at the same time, you should watch that instead, that's a great film.
It's quite a friendly time so if I'm about I'll see if I can jump in.


The Nationwide boys take to the track on Saturday. Americans can see it on ESPN2, I'm fairly sure there has been no late UK deal so no coverage for us for the first time in years.


Speedcar Series
- Dubai (2) (4/6)
- Dubai Autodrome
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- www.speedcarseries.com

Speedcar visits Dubai for a second time in their current season but this time it will head the bill, what with GP2 Asia taking a long break before Malaysia.

TV coverage: none but try the website

Other
I've decided to shunt smaller things to a little section at the end else things are going to get very crowded as we get to mid-March. Yes I know Speedcar ought to go here, it will next time!

New Zealand V8 Supercars
- Manfield (6/7)


And although I never usually do bikes unless it is MotoGP, the World Superbikes are starting their season this weekend at Philip Island in Australia. There's live coverage on Eurosport at 4am with repeats at a more sensible time. I'm sure there's US coverage on Speed or ESPN or some place.

BBC F1 coverage announced

The BBC officially revealed their plans for the 2009 Formula 1 season today, confirming much of what has been rumoured over the last few months (particularly on the F1 thread of the DigitalSpy forums). This is the most comprehensive coverage of Formula 1 ever seen on free-to-air TV in this country, and rivals the pay-monthly options in Germany and Italy.

Note: This is UK only. There will be no live coverage on BBC World or BBC America.

Sources:
Announcement here and press pack here (4 pages, remember to click through!).


First the broadcast team. This was announced in November and I posted short profiles in my post at the time (not to mention a video of The Chain). This is a recap of the line-up:


Television
Anchor: Jake Humphrey
Pre/Post-Race Analysts: David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan
Commentary: Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle
Pitlane: Ted Kravitz and Lee McKenzie

Coverage switches from ITV1 to BBC1. Humphrey brings a different style to the anchorman role, while Legard coming from radio is a much more laid back presence in the hot seat than his two predecessors. Brundle brings his lengthy F1, Sportscar, and now TV experience back to the commentary box. Kravitz also joins from ITV with McKenzie coming from coverage of A1GP and GP2. DC and EJ should be a hoot in the post-race analysis whenever anything controversial happens!


Radio
Commentary: David Croft and Anthony Davidson
Pitlane: Holly Samos

BBC Radio 5 Live continues on from last year. Croft and Samos continue as before while Maurice Hamilton (no relation to Lewis) is replaced by the excellent but out-of-work F1 driver Davidson, who lost his drive when Super Aguri went under and ended up guesting for BBC Radio coverage last season. To be honest I rarely listen to this coverage as I'm watching the TV.


Online
Blogs from the commentary legend that is Murray Walker, current driver Mark Webber, the current on-screen team and their producer(?) as part of an overall relaunch of the Motorsport section of the website, which has been pretty poor over the last couple of years.

Next... the details!


Sessions
(I'll recap how you can receive these channels at the end of this post.)

- Every F1 race of 2009 will air live on BBC One and Radio 5 Live.

- Every qualifying session will air live on BBC One and 5 Live, except for Brazil which will be on BBC Two due to the time zones interfering with the beginning of primetime.

- Every race and qualifying session that happens before 10am UK will get a repeat showing that afternoon. ITV has done this for some time.

- There will be a highlights show on BBC Three every Sunday evening at 7pm (not Brazil). ITV last year showed highlights at midnight.

- Each race will be available on BBC iPlayer for up to 7 days after the event. Once downloaded you can keep it for up to 30 days. I think the BBC3 highlights package will also be available if you're short on time.

- Every Friday and Saturday practice session will air live on the BBC Red Button and online, and 5 Live Sports Extra. No word on whether the TV will feature radio commentary, for the moment I am assuming it will. ITV last year did not have any commentary on their online feed.


Red Button
BBC Interactive's Red Button service for Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin customers will feature some special delights:

- A choice of commentary: either the TV or Radio feed. Hell of choice between Brundle and Davidson, as well as being quick drivers they are both natural broadcasters.

- All practice sessions will be on the red button, not on BBC 1, 2, 3.

- After qualifying and race coverage has finished on BBC1 there will be an 'Interactive Forum' on the RB. This is a phone/text/email show with talk from DC and EJ.

- During the race there will be a choice of screens:
1) The main BBC One feed with choice of commentary;
2) Split screen featuring the main feed in one window, onboards in a second window, and a leaderboard;
3) Rolling highlights of the race so far;

Those on the DigitalSpy forum think #2 will be similar to Premiere in Germany, which looks like this:

(with thanks to whoever I stole that from)

Um. Can I just say? Ultra-cool!

No word yet on whether this will be extended for qualifying, or jut race-only, but it's pretty cool either way.

I am seething a little here because I don't get the interactive service until Digital Switchover occurs in my region in May. Luckily those streams are online! They'll be geo-locked to UK-only but I'm sure the techies among you will figure out a way around that. And it means my first Red Button trials will occur during the Monaco Grand Prix - kick ass!


Other
There is a very high degree of likeliness that we will see a Top Gear F1 Special sooner rather than later. Lee McK has already done the lap! I'm having visions of the TG team wandering around the F1 paddock, not during race coverage but as a part of the next series.

5 Live will have a preview show on Friday nights of race weekends, as they have done for a while now. Also continuing is the post-race Chequered Flag podcast featuring driver interviews. I have to say I've completely missed the boat on both of those shows, I will try and catch up with them this year. All you international readers should be able to download the podcast freely.

NO COMMERICAL BREAKS DURING THE ACTION!

Okay I think that's everything, but I'm sure to have missed something - please let me know in the comments!


How To Get These Channels

TV:
BBC1 and BBC2 are obviously available everywhere, if you don't know how to get those you aren't in the UK so none of this post applies to you...
BBC3 and Red Button are on digital TV only. You should be able to find BBC3 easily enough on Freeview, Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media. To go Interactive just hit Red during any F1 broadcast.

Radio:
5 Live is on 909 and 693 Medium Wave, DAB and online.
5 Live Sports Extra is on DAB and online.

I'm not sure the online feed for radio will work , it's historically been blacked out during F1, so use the TV feed.

I'm sure any American/Canadian/other readers will be turning to our mutual friend Justin for a little help if they don't like their own domestic feed..


* * *
PS - Meesh sez the USF1 announcement was a washout so I'll not recap that today, head over to her blog instead.
PPS - Got my tax exam result last week. Pass. *Yay*

UOWWB Questions

I've been remiss on not answering the United Open Wheel Word Butcher questions of the last couple of weeks and there's another one up today, so let's run through some quickie answers:

Many IRL drivers from last season have not been officially signed to a deal for 2009. This includes Ryan Hunter-Reay, Oriol Servia, Justin Wilson, Darren Manning, Buddy Rice, AJ Foyt IV, Bruno Junqueira, Enrique Bernoldi, Jaime Camara, Milka Duno, Townsend Bell, Mario Dominguez, and a few others. How many of these drivers will be driving in the IRL this season?

This question was posted on Feb 9th and obviously we now know the fates of Wilson, Duno and hopefully Junky (I think he'll get the other Coyne car). I think Camara is in with Conquest again, he's listed to test with them tomorrow but I don't know if he's confirmed.
I don't see many of these others getting drives without funding. I'm pretty sure Manning is in sportscars, RHR and Servia definitely need to be in the series but I don't see anything rumoured on the other blogs/sites. So we're getting some good guys back, some are sitting out who shouldn't be sitting out, and others... I don't really care about!

If you were given one wish and could change anything about auto racing, what would you're one wish be?

Two words: Economic Recovery!!
At this point all the stuff we'd usually discuss about drivers, teams, tracks, events, sponsors, etc - these things are just niceties right now. We just need to survive. It's that bad. So essentially what I'd change is the attitudes in some parts of racing right now who seem to have their heads in the sand, thinking this is just going to go away by itself.

"Of the unemployed drivers in the Indycar Series (see below) which two would you employ to join your racing team"
* Ryan Hunter-Reay
* Oriol Servia
* Justin Wilson
* Darren Manning
* Buddy Rice
* AJ Foyt IV
* Bruno Junqueira
* Enrique Bernoldi
* Jaime Camara
* Townsend Bell
* Mario Dominguez
* Jay Howard
* Alex Lloyd
* Tomas Scheckter

We can strike Wilson and Camara as taken for Coyne and Conquest, I don't think they are 100% official yet but they are almost there.

So to answer the question: I'll take Ryan Hunter-Reay and Darren Manning, please. Servia is a close call but Manning nicks it for patriotic and personality/PR reasons - and I'll take RHR any day, he's the business.

* * *
Interesting day tomorrow, we've got announcements from the BBC F1 team on what they have planned, we'll have something from Peter Windsor's USF1 operation, and perhaps something will come from the former Honda F1 team as I believe their Mercedes engine option timed out today. While all this happens the IndyCars will have their first test of the year, at the Homestead oval, which will be about as useful as any test of any car in terms of form guides but it'll give us something to talk about.

I'll do a round-up at this time tomorrow, if some of that hasn't happened yet then tough!

In the meantime if you're on Twitter you should add these:
LeeMcK (Lee McKenzie, BBC's F1 pit reporter for 2009)
BMWSauberF1Team
Vision Racing
HVM Racing

Tell me if you know any more!

On The Limit

I've been toying with the idea of an occasional series spotlighting videos of onboard laps, perhaps one a week, perhaps featuring an upcoming racetrack or someone in the news at the moment - and generally enjoy drivers pushing at the limit of their ability.

I've just seen a video which has prompted me to start the series a few days early. Head over to http://www.nofenders.net/ and check out the vid of Robert Doornbos in the 2007 CCWS Assen event.

I plan to use this feature in lieu of writing my own 'track guide' before F1 or IRL events, for I am lazy and this is the easy route.

Weekend Preview: 21-22 February 2009

It's all about A1 and NASCAR this weekend, and in the UK both of these will air live on Sky Sports 2.




A1GP World Cup
- Gauteng (5/?)
- Kyalami
- South Africa
- Website: www.a1gp.com

The World Cup of Motorsport pays its first visit to Kyalami, although for some reason A1GP calls it Gauteng. South African rounds were previously held on a street track by the beach in Durban which was far too narrow, there were always silly little crashes at the hairpin first turn, but despite that it was still entertaining! Let's see how the newer bigger cars get on at the former home of the South African Grand Prix.
(I put a question mark in the # of rounds section above, 'cos really, who knows?)

British air time: Sunday 11:30am GMT, Sky Sports 2
Elsewhere: check listings or use a1gp.com


NASCAR Sprint Cup
- Auto Club 500 (2/36)
- Auto Club Speedway (which is really California Speedway)
- Fontana, California, United States
- www.nascar.com

I'm not sure why, but NASCAR thought it would be idea to make the teams drive from Florida to California in a few days between a couple of 500 mile races. Good plan, NASCAR, nothing like tiring out your teams at the very beginning of a 36 race season. Tune in to see how the boys cope. It'll be late here and I'll be sleeping.

British air time: 11pm GMT, Sky Sports 2
American air time: 5pm EST, FOX


Support races at Fontana include:

Saturday:
NASCAR Nationwide Series
- Stater Bros 300

:shrug: I know nothing.

British air time: Not found.
American air time: Saturday 7pm EST, ESPN2


NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
- San Bernadino County 200

Is that a local county? If they are sponsoring it, times must be tight..

British air time: Not found.
American air time: Saturday 3pm, FOX

Seems the 3rd tier event gets to run on Fox while the 2nd tier doesn't, not sure of the logic but there you go.

* * *

This is all very interesting but probably the most interesting events of the next seven days happens on Tuesday where we will have two important announcements:

1) USF1 making an announcement on SPEED.
2) BBC announcing full details of their F1 coverage, I'm looking forward to that more than the USF1!

Okay, have a great weekend.

A roof over your head

So.. I watched the Daytona 500 last night. You may have seen my Twitter feed at the time (see side panel) and my comments on Meesh's recent post.

I think some of those experienced NASCAR fans following me on Twitter might have been getting a bit annoyed at my newbie-ness. I was going for the 'F1/IRL fan discovers N-Word ovals' take, because that's what it was. I'm not going to apologise for that, I make it clear that I'm not a NASCAR fan, so if I annoyed you that's your own fault for following me! (Yes, I am a bit of a racing snob.)

Someone even asked how long I'd been following racing so surprised were they at my reaction to the US feed I was watching. It was tongue-in-cheek (err, I think?) but perhaps not realising that British sports coverage doesn't have sponsored discussion topics and anthropomorphic camera angles - or maybe it was to suggest I'm a noob for not being aware of the $$ in N-Word. Perhaps it was said not knowing I was British although I'm not sure why - I bang on about it far too often.

I just couldn't believe how many ad breaks were taken, and during the coverage how many times a sponsor was mentioned. They couldn't go more than 20 seconds without mentioning a brand name! It was ridiculous. Talk about over-commercialisation of sports.. and they say the Premier League has got it bad.

Just to rub it in to my American readers, our Formula 1 coverage switches to BBC1 this year - no commercials AT ALL! (apart from lots of BBC self-promotion)

Back to Daytona, and once I found a steady video feed quite late into the race I did actually enjoy it. I'm not stupid enough to expect real racing on a restrictor plate track, you need to look for strategy and leave the driving to another race. Some great strategic racing was developing before a yellow flag was thrown because a car was sent into the infield. I didn't see much debris on the track on this occasion, but that yellow did breed further yellows (for bigger incidents) which spoiled the flow of the race for me, and that persisted until the red flag for rain. As many sites and blogs have noted, it was an anticlimax.

I don't know why I persisted with the less-good feed for so long. I think it contributed to my lack of enjoyment for the first half of the event, however others have noted on other blogs (and on Twitter) that NASCAR races aren't actually that interesting or enjoyable until 50 to go anyway, so maybe it wasn't the video feed...

In summary, it was more enjoyable as a whole than I was expecting and you can't blame them for stopping for rain. If anything the stupid start time did them in. 3.30pm? Madness. Races should always start on the hour unless they are on the undercard. I'll be trying NASCAR ovals at random intervals again this year, follow my Twitter if you can bear it.


Full disclosure: On Twitter I said I'd not seen a full NASCAR race before. That was a little white lie. I've watched Watkins Glen, and I watched a chunk of Nationwide at Montreal last year. I had never seen a full NASCAR oval event before. I used to watch the odd highlights package - they cut so much out you couldn't figure out what was happening so I gave up on that idea fairly quickly.


Before the oval action I took in BTCC at Brands Hatch (Indy) and DTM at Barcelona, both recordings of events held in September, and still found time to go to the laundrette.
The DTM was boring once it had settled down, the field got far too spread out although I liked the battle between Paul Di Resta and Timo Scheider early on.
The BTCC at the short layout of Brands is always fast and frenetic and this was no exception! It won the day for me in terms of tin top entertainment. Giovanardi is a worthy champion and it is a shame to see his adversaries SEAT leave.

Tonight I'm watching WTCC at Imola, the first time I've seen the place since the redevelopment. They've done a great job with the revisions but F1 was right not to go back, even though the revisions were only done to please Bernie. It's a good bike and touring car track but is in no way suited to big open wheel cars. WTCC isn't as entertaining as BTCC but watching Thommo working hard for some good results was fun.

After this sudden binge of racing I'll probably take a break from watching any for a few days - I still have plenty on my hard drive - BTC and WTC have short races which is why I've got through so many this weekend. Knowing me I'll probably be on the podcasts tomorrow instead!

Weekend Preview: 14-15 February 2009

After a short quiet period following the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, racing gets under way again this weekend and at the same venue, this time for the Daytona 500. This weekend truly marks the beginning of months of uninterrupted competition throughout 2009 - I can't see a completely clear weekend again for months - three cheers for racing!


* * * * Main Event

NASCAR Sprint Cup
- Daytona 500 (1/36)
- Daytona International Speedway
- Daytona, Florida, United States
- www.nascar.com

When we reach the weekend of the Daytona 500 we know the racing season is well and truly upon us. There have been a lot of changes in what is a very short off-season relative to other series, with mergers, driver deals and sponsor changes aplenty. I'm not going to insult you by fumbling my way around this because I know very little about NASCAR, although I am tempted to watch the 500 out of curiosity.

I've watched NASCAR before but never a full race. The UK network Five airs a short highlights show of about an hour, in the depths of the night midweek. I got hold of some of those shows last year and it was interesting to watch - for that length of time. I don't think I can last three or four hours of droning around in packs waiting for big accidents to happen, which is why I'd prefer to try a full NASCAR race at a non-restrictor track. Perhaps some of you NASCAR fans could recommend an event to watch, and remind me nearer the time.

The event is actually already under way, with the Gatorade Duels already having been completed earlier this evening. I'm not entirely sure what they achieved because they've already had qualifying and the quali process at Daytona is mega-weird.


The Daytona 500 will air live on Sky Sports 2 and in Hi-Def on Sky Sports HD2. Coverage begins at 8pm Sunday. I should note that in 2008 Daytona was in HD and the rest of the year was SD only, there is no word yet on whether that will be repeated this year.

American coverage is on FOX at 3.30pm ET. So that's half an hour LESS pre-race build-up than we get here.. hmm. Walk through this with me will-ya? Say it's 3pm in Florida. Add 5 hours to get British time. 3 + 5 = 8pm Am I missing something here? Maybe they are doing that strange American thing of having the race build-up on a completely different channel beforehand, and I missed the listing.


Support races:

Saturday:
NASCAR Nationwide Series
- Camping World 300

The Nationwide Series gets under way on Saturday afternoon local time.

American air time: 1pm ET, ESPN2
British air time: Not found. This race used to be on the North American Sports Network (NASN), which changed to ESPN America over the winter and they don't seem to be covering it this time. I'm hunting around forums as I pull this post together and nobody else can find coverage either.


Friday:
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
- NextEra Energy Resources 250

The trucks-that-aren't-trucks-but-are-really-pickups kick off the proper racing this weekend, as opposed to the 'racing to qualify'.

American air time: 8pm ET, SPEED
British air time: Not found.


* * * * Other Events

FIA World Rally Championship
- Rally Norway (2/12)
- Hamar, Norway
- Website: www.wrc.com
- Twitter: @OfficialWRC
- Video: YouTube and Joost

Every other racing series may only just be waking up, and some are several weeks off yet, but WRC is already on to it's second event of the year as they head north to Norway. It looks like they've had some heavy snowfall and the drivers are very happy to have a 'proper' snow rally for once. The last few years have seen very little snow on what are supposed to be full winter rallies and the guys can't wait to get stuck in, metaphorically speaking.

The Production WRC entrants are also competing on this event.

I should mention that WRC's commerical rights are controlled by David Richards (yes, that one) and it looks like his team is doing a good job of embracing new media! Ironically one of the broadcast partners is a channel called 'Dave' (so-named because everyone has a friend called Dave).

There are daily updates on Eurosport from Friday to Sunday, and an event roundup on Dave on Sunday at 6pm.


GP2 Asia Series
- Qatar (4/6)
- Losail International Circuit
- Doha, Qatar, UAE
- Website: www.gp2series.com

The GP2 Asia boys head over to Qatar for more fun in the desert. Yet more driver changes mean this series isn't really being taken as seriously as the main GP2 Series, though it does serve as a performance indicator for the coming year and a lot of guys are getting some good practice in. The extra track time is certainly helping some of them.

The event is supported once again by the Speedcar Series which is holding a night race.

NOTE - as with all Middle Eastern GP2 Asia events the Feature race is on Friday and the Sprint is on Saturday.

Coverage is on Eurosport at 10.30am on Saturday, I believe this is the live sprint race - it may also have some footage from the feature race because there doesn't seem to be anything at all on Friday.
There appears to be absolutely no coverage at all of Speedcar (there may be something in locally).


Okay that's it. I've decided I will not be posting all the little logos and icons when the main season gets under way, it takes too long!

Next week: A1GP and more NASCAR.

Audi R15

This one came from nowhere - Autosport.com have got an 'exclusive secret spy shot' of the new Audi R15 TDI.

It's an interesting looking car with a stubby wide nose, Autosport compares it to the Renault F1 car. It has apparently been running since before Christmas.

Audi say the driver line-ups for the two cars going to Sebring will be:
#1 A McNish, R Capello, T Kristenen
#2 L Luhr, M Rockenfeller, M Werner
(I assume those will be the car numbers)

Have a read of the article. When the car is officially launched I'll do a more in-depth post. The number of quotes gives me a feeling this was more of a planned leak rather than a super-secret spy shot.. What, in the week of the Pug launch?? Never!

New F1 rules for 2009 - quick and dirty

This CGI video appeared online at the weekend. Sebastian Vettel from Red Bull Racing explains the differences between the 2008 and 2009 cars in an idiot-proof manner! The 'exploding car' graphics are a huge help too.

http://www.itv-f1.com/VideoWorldwide.aspx

If you haven't seen it yet go and check it out. If you saw it on YouTube go to this ITV link instead because it should be of a higher quality.

I'll summarise the changes in March in the run up to the first race of the year, but if you only have a passing interest in F1 you should watch this 2 minute video instead of wading through a chunk of text.

EDIT - hit Sidepodcast's F1 Debrief #93 for a full-on techie explanation of KERS as well as a roundup of the latest news in F1. You can play on-site or download the MP3 or M4A version, you can even get it via torrent if that's your thing. I get the MP3 edition to play at my convenience - it even scrobbles in Last.fm, how cool is that? The podcast lasts one hour precisely, which is an ideal size (the full hour isn't all about KERS).

Launch Season: Peugeot 908

Peugeot 908 HDi FAP

The 2009 edition of the Peugeot 908 was launched yesterday.

The car looks substantially the same as last year, albeit with a rear wing 400mm narrower per the ACO's regulations for this season. Pug's engineers say they've been working on the engine mapping, cooling and traction control systems. Partly this is due to the new rules cutting power by 10% on last year, and partly this is because Peugeot really struggled with overheating last year. It cost them the win at Le Mans because the airflow when it was raining wasn't sufficient to cool the engine. There were other factors as well of course, like their crazy tyre decisions and inexperienced drivers (many were new to sportscars, anyway), but the cooling was a major factor.

Also in 'cooling news', the roof sports a 'reflective chromelike aluminium covering' according to Olivier Quesnel.



A surprise announcement on the driver front, to me at least, was the unveiling of Sebastien Bourdais and David Brabham. Bourdais was rumoured on Thursday night, which was a surprise to me because nobody has dovetailed a full F1 season with an attack on Le Mans for many, many years. The last to try the F1/LM crossover was Franck Montagny (fairly recently too, say 4 years?) but he was just an F1 test driver. at the time.
Brabs wasn't on my radar at all for this, maybe I missed a comment on Midweek Motorsport (I'm still an episode behind) or other sources. I had thought he was still signed to drive the Acura and perhaps he is, which is why he won't appear at Sebring.

The full driver line-up:
S Bourdais, D Brabham, M Gene, C Klien, P Lamy, N Minassian, F Montagny, S Sarrazin, A Wurz.


It's still a fantastic-looking car.


Peugeot confirmed their plans for the first half of 2009: they will take two cars to the 12 Hours of Sebring in March, and three cars to the 1000km of Spa-Francorchamps in May before sending all three to Le Mans. There is no word on what will become of the team after Le Mans. In my opinion they'll see what Audi does, and how they perform against Audi (and Aston!) in the big race.

Drivers confirmed for Sebring:
Car 7: Minassian / Lamy / Bourdais
Car 8: Montagny / Sarrazin / Klien

This leaves Gene, Brabham and Wurz for the 3rd car if the line-ups remain the same. Line-ups for Spa will be confirmed at a later date.

Photo credit: Peugeot Sport

PS - yes, I know I didn't post about the new Acura. They aren't going to Le Mans. Yet..
PPS - I'm begging you here, PLEASE get the name right. "Le Mans". There are TWO WORDS. Writing "LeMans" (or "Lemans" which is worse) really does annoy me! I don't mind it on Twitter because of the character limit. A pet peeve of mine, just like hyphenating 'F1'.

Launch Season: Red Bull RB5

Red Bull-Renault RB5

This morning Red Bull Racing became the 7th Formula 1 team to launch their 2009 car. (See links to the other launches at the end of this post.) As is the fashion these days the car was unveiled in situ in the pitlane of an Iberian race track, in this case Jerez in Spain.

The car completed 14 laps before running was halted to investigate a temperature anomaly. No lap times were released.

It's a good looking car, helping by the great Red Bull colour scheme which looks even better on these cleaner cars than it did on the previous generation 'aero era' cars (Red Bull had one of the best paint jobs in the paddock last year, IMO). Like many of the '09 cars the back end is very small and the bodywork ends quite early, leaving the rear exposed.

What interests me is the position and length of the nose, it's like a spear! It seems remarkably high up and I'm surprised the FIA will allow it, if I were driving for another team I wouldn't want to have one of these cars run into me.



RBR will again race with the Renault engine. Renault have been allowed to make some tweaks to their unit because they were the only ones not to do so last year, taking the regulation about "don't develop your engine" to the letter unlike other teams. As of now no development may be done to anybody's engine.

Red Bull also confirmed the location of their battery/capacitor KERS system, which is sited underneath the fuel tank for centre-of-gravity and weight distribution reasons. If I were driving I'd be a little bit scared for 'large, predominantly untested electrical storage device next to 60kg of petroleum' reasons. They've already been instructed to sit still in the event of an accident, until a marshal turns off he KERS. I wonder what Niki Lauda thinks about being told to sit in a car while it burns around you..

Mark Webber (AUS) and Sebastien Vettel (D) are the drivers. Webber will as usual be looking for an improved year where he'll be able to demonstrate his undoubted speed without getting involved in stupid incidents or bad car reliability. Vettel is simply looking to kick his arse, simple as that! It'll be a fascinating year watching these two. I think Vettel will nick it - but Webber will make him work hard for it. David Coulthard remains with the team in a consultancy and testing role, dovetailing with his new BBC analyst duties (more on that in a BBC announcement on the 24th - very exciting!!). The other key personnel remain the same.




I think Red Bull Racing have a good shot at moving up the order this year and fulfilling some of that latent potential we all know they have.

Scuderia Toro Rosso and Force India F1 remain the only teams not to have launched as yet. If the Team Formerly Known As Honda does make it to Melbourne then that will be the location for their team launch, much as Super Aguri did last year. A sad state of affairs.

I'll be back with something tomorrow.

Photo credit: RedBullRacing.com / Getty Images

Previous car launches:
Ferrari
Toyota
McLaren
Williams
Renault
BMW

Weekend Preview: 7 & 8 February 2009

Weekend Preview: 7th & 8th February 2009

A quiet weekend this one, with one single solitary event in all of world motorsports and that's a preseason non-championship NASCAR event. FORIX lists 'indoor trials bikes' which they've never had before, but I'm not counting that because I care even less about that than the roundy-round taxis. They don't show the NASCAR presumably because it isn't a championship event.


NASCAR [website]
Budweiser Shootout (non-championship)
Daytona International Speedway
Daytona, Florida, United States

I don't think this falls under the Sprint Cup moniker, since it isn't a championship event and thus doesn't count toward Cup points. Anyway, there is apparently a lot of fuss in N-World because the format of the race has changed. Until now it was made up of last season's pole winners plus past winners of the Shootout, but this year in a blatant attempt to keep the carmakers happy it will be based on the top six owner points for each manufacturer, plus a few wildcards. Hmm.. there goes another incentive to do well this year.

The Shootout is stupid anyway, it is just a high profile drafting test session with prize money, right? Do they other guys get at least a real test to make up for it? I doubt it. I guess they at least announce the competition yellow in advance, so that's something.


This event will be aired live on Sky Sports Xtra at 1am Saturday night (or Sunday morning for the pedantic) - but don't worry, there are three repeats on Sky Sports 3 and Xtra during Sunday, you lucky beggars. Those repeats are: 11am (SS3), 2.30pm (SS3) and 6pm (SSX).

In the US it will air live on FOX at 8pm ET. I don't know about HD in the US, it isn't in HD here.


Next week is more interesting with the Daytona 500 and support races, as well as GP2 Asia and World Rally.


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Notes
Most of my small handful of readers reside in North America, so I'll try to include US air times when I can. Most of the time I expect they'll also apply to Canada. I will of course focus on the British broadcast times first and foremost, many of which will also apply to much of the rest of Europe.

I think the Red Bull F1 launch is on Monday so that'll be interesting to see, and it looks like Bourdais will get the Toro Rosso seat.

Lots of news

Sorry for the short quiet period there - I had a great weekend of Wii, much beer and an engagement party (not mine!). Unfortunately that wiped out the last couple of nights as I had to do my college work then instead of in a block at the weekend.

A lot has happened in the six days since I last posted, it seems as though the racing world has just suddenly realised there's a season upon us in six or eight weeks.

Here are some snapshots:

F1
- Someone seems to be actually working on an American Formula 1 team. The idea has come and gone over the last couple of decades but nobody has really tried it since Penske in the 70s, and his cars were based an hour from me in Poole, England. Rumours suggest this 'USF1' team will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina with an operating base in Bilbao, Spain. I'm taking this with a pinch of salt until further notice. I didn't believe the Prodrive F1 entry until very late on and I won't with these guys, and that's down to a) their choice of splitting across two continents, b) the fact no bona fide indie has entered since who knows when (not counting Aguri), and c) uh, hello, recession? What is in their favour is the new agreements about 'cheap' engines and drivetrains.

- FOTA and the FIA have agreed to engines costing no more than 5 million Euros and a drivetrain (gearbox etc) 1.5 million Euros. They also agreed that any team may choose to use the control Cosworth/Xtrac option currently in development - you might remember Mad Max originally intended every team to use it. Discussions continue this week.

- The Singapore GP organisers plan to adjust the layout of the circuit for this year. The pitlane entry and exit will be moved away from the racing line, turn one will be tightened to create a harder braking area, and other turns will be reprofiled.

- The great Teddy Mayer has died aged 73. Mayer was the man in control of McLaren between the death of Bruce McLaren in 1970 (he helped Bruce found the team) until Ron Dennis bought his way in in 1982. McLaren were active in F1, CanAm and USAC/CART and won the Indy 500 with Johnny Rutherford. After McLaren, Mayer moved back to America where he set up a team in CART, hiring Tom Sneva who nearly won the title with them. After a stint with Beatrice back in F1, Mayer joined Penske where he remained until his retirement in 2007. His son Tim is the COO of the American Le Mans Series and IMSA.
Please read this obituary at Motorsport.com, with thanks to No Fenders for pointing it out.


IRL
- Multiple reports had Robert Doornbos signing with Newman Haas Lanigan, however his own site denied this - for the time being. Reading between the lines it seems they are still discussing the finer points of the contract.

- Yet more reports, originating from Robin Miller I think, have Milka Duno also joining N/H/L.... which will be interesting. It seems an odd choice to me and I wouldn't have put that team down as a ridebuying team, so I guess times really are hard.

- Five car manufacturers were unveiled as being in discussion with the IRL about future engine regulations. These were Honda, Audi, VW, Porsche and Fiat. Obviously 3 of those are actually under the same ownership now. The Fiat link is interesting, originally it was supposed to be their Alfa Romeo brand but perhaps with the recent Chrysler tie-in they may feel Fiat is the better marketing platform.


GP2
- Bruno Senna confirmed to Autosport.com that he will not be returning to GP2. The GP2 driver market has been hanging on his decision, expecting that with the Honda F1 team now defunct he would return for another year. Bruno seems to think he has a shot either at Toro Rosso, or is pinning his hopes on someone buying the ex-Honda team outright. I think he made the wrong choice - unless F1's 3-car rule comes into effect in which case he'll look very smart indeed. Or just lucky.

- Ocean Racing (formerly BCN) has signed Karun Chandhok for the 2009 main series.


Sportscars
- The ACO has received 82 applications for this year's Le Mans 24 Hours. There are only 55 spots. 15 places have already been allocated through invitations based on results at the 2008 Le Mans, Petit Le Mans and the championships of the LMS and ALMS. This leaves 67 entries for 40 places. The ACO will select 55 entrants and 8 reserves and announce them at the end of this month. I'm tempted to do a little blog post about that when it happens.


Loads more has happened but it's half past midnight and I want to go to bed!


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Back tomorrow with Weekend Preview - although I think the Bud Shootout is the only thing on.

By the way, I don't know who of you is from Bristowe, Virginia and keeps visiting every two hours but please stop, you're fucking up my Feedjit stats. Just once (or twice) a day will be fine. Ta. You're probably a bot.