This Blog Has Moved

After 18 fantastic months here on Blogger, Too Much Racing has a new home over at Wordpress. I've really enjoyed using Blogger to learn about blogging, developing my style and making contacts all over the blogosphere. It is a great place if you want an uncomplicated space for writing, but I feel it is now time for me to move somewhere with more functions and customisation options.

Thank you to everybody for your help and incredible support over the last 18 months. It has been a great journey and I'm really looking forward to what 2010 brings! You can read more on this at the new site.

Please update your bookmarks and links: http://toomuchracing.wordpress.com/

You can update your RSS feeds with: http://toomuchracing.wordpress.com/feed/

And that is it - see you at the new site!

Inspiration Required

I hope you'll permit me a moment of non-racing talk, this is quite a self-serving post and I apologise for that!

After 18 months of blogging here on the Blogger platform I have decided to move over to Wordpress. This won't be a for a couple of weeks as I have yet to open an account with them, it'll definitely be by the end of this month.

Why?

I've had a good time using Blogger. It is a great introduction into the world of blogging and if you are a newbie as I was, I recommend it. There aren't a hundred controls and settings to get lost in, you just set up the layout and the colours and start writing. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have a blog and it was great to try it out, gradually adding and tweaking bits here and there. Now I feel the content I want to put on the blog means I need to have those extra controls you find on other services, hence the need to move.

This is where you come in.

I've long felt the name 'Too Much Racing' has been too negative. It was always intended to convey my inability to cover as much of the sport as I wanted to and I think it does that, unfortunately it also comes over as quite negative and as if I'm complaining about all the racing. I'm not, I love it!

I need a new name for the new blog. I am struggling to find one. In fact I've been struggling with this for a while and have asked for opinions in various places, when I came to the obvious conclusion - comments make a blog what it is, so why not ask the commenters here?

Do you have any ideas for a name suitable for the new blog? Like this blog it will cover or at least intend to cover F1, IndyCar, GP2, Le Mans, other sportcars, and hopefully more. The main focus is F1 and I like to dip into the other stuff when time allows.

Guidelines:
- Preferably indicates it is a multi-series blog.
- Positive or neutral-sounding.
- Nothing overly cheesy (I can come up with those myself!).
- It can be any length as long as it can be shortened for domain name and Twitter purposes.

Naturally I make no guarantees that it'll get used, and I get to use the name for free..

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

A New Year

Happy New Year!

I am looking forward to the 2010 racing season, it'll be a good one.

F1 has the return of Schumacher, the uniting of the last two World Champions at McLaren and Alonso moving to Ferrari, with the added interest of Sauber's return to independent status, Toro Rosso building their own car, the addition of the new teams and drivers, and watching to see if Williams and Force India can capitalise on all of these things.

IndyCar has a new title sponsor which should really help the series grow domestically, which in turn should help it internationally. Ganassi and Penske will be the teams to beat again and it'll be interesting to follow the Andretti team's progress after their restructuring, can they challenge as they once did?

Sportscars features the new Intercontinental Cup and I hope we'll see several teams attempt all of those rounds despite the economic downturn. It could be the prelude to something big and that should excite us all greatly!

It looks like rallying is on the road to recovery now that the FIA is starting to realise it was killing WRC, and along with the IRC we should see some good competition this year.

Touring cars... is shot to pieces, sorry. Manufacturers pulling out and fields of independent teams, not really a great selling point. I'm sure it'll be bumper-to-bumper as always, but will anybody care?

I don't know what's going on in MotoGP, WSBK, NASCAR or DTM, I've fallen behind on news. Then there's the new GT1 World Championship, which might be good or it might not be. We'll see.

* *
Moving on to this blog, I'd like to thank everybody who reads and comments here, it really does mean a lot and I hope you stick around into 2010. I plan to blog even more during this season!

I am planning to spend January reviewing the 2009 IndyCar and GP2 seasons race by race as part of the 'Race Review' feature. These entries are heavily delayed, initially by studying preventing me from watching them and then by other work or racing news getting in the way, however I should now have time to complete these posts albeit probably in a shortened form. I may well throw some other races in from time to time although we are quickly running out of off-season!

I am persisting with these despite the delay because I would like to refine them into a workable format ready for the coming season, and the best way to do that is to just keep knocking them out. Eventually they will be at the sort of length to get across the information without being overly long which they have been in the past, this in turn will mean I can cover more races.

Towards the end of the month and into February I will move into 'Preview' mode and cover the F1 car launches and tests, as well as any other interesting car launches and team news from elsewhere in racing.

I hope you join me on the journey of the 2010 season!

One Year On

Eighteen Months Ago I Was Just a Fan.
When the 2008 season started I was just discovering blogs after years residing in a newsgroup community, and reading the news and rumours on the popular racing news websites such as Autosport.com and GrandPrix.com.

This was the time of the death of Champ Car and the absorption into the IndyCar Series, I had been watching both in 2007 for the first time in about six years, and when they came together - while sad about CC going down - I was tremendously excited that they'd finally done it! The problem? I couldn't find many other people who were excited with me within my existing racing circles - so I looked elsewhere for news and rumour and gossip about the merger. Who was moving over? Who wasn't going to make it? I NEEDED to know.

The first places I found were MyNameIsIRL and Pressdog, very quickly followed by IsItMayYet? and Meesh's blog which Pressdog has since dubbed "SHWIT!".
If there were any F1 bloggers working as hard as this quartet I hadn't discovered them by this stage, although in fairness my F1 needs were already catered for elsewhere.

In actual fact, some of the above began to start talking about F1 in the absence of Champ Car, because they wanted a second series to cover alongside IRL. It was interesting reading their experiences as they learned the ropes, coming from a completely different perspective to the one I'm so used to here in the UK. I found myself commenting on their posts with increasing regularity and length, usually about F1 or connecting an IRL thing to F1, because that's what I knew. Sometimes I tried to explain something about F1 they didn't know (and sometimes pretended not to know for comedic effect, which I'd missed!!) in return for their excellent posts educating me about the world and culture of IndyCar racing.

These bloggers also frequently post notes which they write during the races. I thought this was a fantastic idea but by mid-season I'd identified something - they were all commenting on the same feed! Not too much of a problem because they each have their own views... yet I couldn't help but think the F1 coverage I was receiving was better than what was being described to me, and that I could offer a different take on IndyCar, perhaps describe a similar journey as above but with that series.

Over a period of a few weeks I gained the desire to write similar posts from the UK perspective and TV feed, because not only would it be different to the above but I also hadn't seen anyone else approach the UK feed from that angle before. Not that I expected many readers, it was just a nice idea to have somewhere to keep a record of my thoughts.

I'm also interested in a broad range of motorsports and I'd hoped to be able to relate F1/IRL goings-on to what else was happening in racing. To be fair this only really came up trumps when Mike Conway moved to America and nobody there knew who he was, whereas I'd spent two years watching him in GP2.
That's probably the highlight of the last year for me. In the preseason break I'd described him in more than one place as fast but erratic, looks odds-on for a really good finish before the magnets pull him into a wall, or a light knock just ends his race. I haven't been able to pay as much attention as I would have liked, but I'm getting the impression this is how his 2009 has been so I'm pretty chuffed with the original assessment!

So by July '08 all I needed was the guts to actually start it. In the first week of August I decided to bite the bullet, set up a blog and write an introduction.

One Year On
It seems to have been reasonably popular. I mentioned the site around a few places and was amazed to find people not only visiting, but returning! I was getting 10-15 regular readers every week after just a few months. It trailed off heavily over winter, I got the impression it was the same for everyone though, yet as soon as the F1 car launches started happening in early 2009 the number of readers actually rose above previous levels! I was stunned. This was helped in no small part by copious plugs from the bloggers I talked about above.

Then a friend from the F1 community I was on at the time suggested I check out Sidepodcast. Not only a podcast about F1 - bear in mind I'd never listened to a podcast in my life before - but also an interactive community with daily discussion about racing and everything else in life. I said hi. Was asked to plug the blog. Not only did readership jump again (!!!) but I found a really great group of people to hang out with, many of whom now have their own blogs. SPC were even kind enough to plug the blog on the show, more than once!

By the time the F1 season started in March I'd joined Twitter, connected with lots of other bloggers in comments or on Twitter, appeared on various Sidepodcast and PlanetIRL podcasts and I even got a mention on Midweek Motorsport!

These days I'm getting roughly 40 regular readers and I'm truly amazed to have as many as that, especially since the blog has been pretty quiet since the season started because I have been working on accountancy studies (which are thankfully over for the time being). I honestly expected to stay at just a small handful of readers, if that, because I'd started this as somewhere to keep a note of my thoughts.

I hope to continue this for the forseeable future, and in fact I've got a lot planned as I begin what I call the Big Massive Catch-Up to watch a lot of the racing I missed while studying. I'm in two minds over whether I'll post much about that, right now I'm leaning towards very short updates on all but F1 and IndyCar. I'll probably skip most of the news because this has never been a news site. I do plan to write notes on the IndyCar races but they won't be as long or verbose as last year or like the other bloggers' notes. I hope you stick with me!

So, there's only one thing left to do:

For their regular links, comments, tweets and general encouragement, my thanks goes to:
Bill / Pressdog
Jeff / MyNameIsIRL
Meesh / SHWIT!
Christine & Mr.C / Sidepodcast (and everyone there!)
Dex / MidweekMotorsport @RLM
Kohl / PlanetIRL
Allen / FuriousWedge
Andy / TheSpeedGeek
Gavin / F1Numbers
Duncan / vee8
Everyone else in the sidebar and anyone who has linked me (I can't list you all!!), and last and not least to all the other readers and commenters who have dropped by over the last 12 months.

Here's to another year!

Quick update

I'm currently revising for an exam I'm sitting on Friday (taxation, yay!), hence the recent lack of updates. I haven't watched many of my recordings either. I did see GP2 at the Hungaroring a week ago, which was fairly tedious actually. The only decent racing at the Hungaroring happens when it rains, which is hardly ever. I ignored most of it while I was doing coursework. It was that sort of race. Think IRL at Sonoma, you won't be far off.

Much more interesting was the Live Fast Racing podcast, and I'm still two behind, I listened to #19 about two days before they released #21. I will catch up! Jeff has one as well now, which I'm looking forward to hearing (sorry for not getting around to it yet).

After this exam I'll catch up on podcasts and a couple of races, and write the first in a series of 'top driver' posts. I haven't decided whether I'll do Top Tens or just the ones I think did well, could be 8, could be 11... I mean what if there aren't ten? Or what if it was a great year and the 11th is actually really good?
What I'd like to do is finish it off with the Top Drivers Of The Year (all series combined), a la the annual Autosport Xmas Bumper Issue. I feel I should do some form of quantitive analysis in Excel, a few years ago I would have. But I think I'll do this the old-fashioned way - gut feel.


Music recommendation: Sigur Rós - Hoppipola
On condition you only watch that video on a cold night, with lights turned down low, preferably wearing headphones. It might be best to ignore the vid and just listen.

See also:
Untitled 1 [Vaka] and especially Svefn-g-Englar.

There are lots of others, go from there to the tracks page and press the little play buttons, anything at random.

I promise to suggest something more up tempo and rockier next time!

Catching up on some news

Check out Pressdog, MyNameIsIRL and other bloggers (as well as Sarah Fisher) on Trackside with Kevin & Cavin which is a weekly IndyCar radio show in the Indianapolis area and online. Proviso: I haven't listened to it yet. I'm currently listening to Live Fast Racing podcast 18 which I know is a few weeks old now but also features Bill and Jeff and is really very good indeed.
Lots of chat about IRL, a little about F1, all good.

A busy week in the world F1 in this first week of the off-season. I'd intended to do smaller updates during the week but my accounts studies got in the way so I hope this works as a summary.


Force India
A big reshuffle in progress at the team formerly known as Jordan, with Colin Kolles (the dentist) and Mike Gascoyne (the rottweiler) both leaving at the behest of Vijay Mallya, a guy who makes Flavio Briatore look modest, but I like him. You gotta like a guy who owns a beer company and an airline. Force India will announce a new management structure on Monday.

Probably bigger news is that they have parted ways with Ferrari. Unannounced but expected is a switch to Mercedes engines and gearbox. Some sites suggest they'll also take McLaren customer chassis. I don't buy that because this team has been against customer cars for years regardless of what name was above the door.


Driver Update
Toro Rosso will be testing Takuma Sato again this month and it could be that he is being lined up to replace Sebastian Vettel.
Bruno Senna and Lucas di Grassi will both test for Honda which may lead to Barrichello losing his drive. This has led to suggestions of Rubens Barrichello moving to Toro Rosso. Sebastien Bourdais' place isn't necessarily fixed so they could take Sato AND Barrichello.
Nobody seems to be rumouring anything about Sutil's seat at Force India which I'm sure is still available. I'm pretty sure Fisichella is locked in. Up and coming team (since 1991!) so it's a seat that may just prove useful to someone.


TMR Rocks
So I rule all and that's official. I mean what did I say the other day?
Check it out:

I propose a Superlicence for race stewards. I want these people to have had experience officiating F1 Grands Prix, or have performed a similar role in another top line or feeder championship for at least a year. I want there to be a permanent steward who attends every GP and chairs the stewards' meetings, as Tony Scott-Andrews did.

Aaand what did the FIA announce this week?

The FIA also announced that trainee stewards - nominated by their nation's governing body and selected by the FIA - will attend five grands prix next season in an observation role. Any national stewards officiating on a Formula One race for the first time must have observed at least one grand prix in this way to obtain their stewards' super licence. A short CV of all trainee stewards will also be posted on the FIA website. The FIA also confirmed that ex-racers are eligible to obtain their national stewarding licence and graduate to the super licence.

So yeah, listen to me, I'm a pompous F1 fan who knows it all! Yeah. Or...not.


New Deputy
The FIA has appointed Nick Craw as Deputy President for Sport, replacing Marco Piccinini. Craw is the president of ACCUS, the American national sporting representative at the FIA (on behalf of NASCAR, IRL, ALMS, etc). This is a good thing for me because Piccinini is ex-Ferrari so to my mind that removes a layer of perceived bias. And there is again an American that has something to do with F1!


Yet Another Schedule
The FIA has released yet another version of the F1 calendar for '09. I can't remember the last time they've released so many of them. This time they've shunted China to April to fall between Malaysia and Bahrain. Everything at the end of the year moves up 2 weeks to fill in the gap.
There is no news regarding Canada, the last I heard a deal could still be done if the money can be found.

EDIT
I was playing around with Feedburner last night after I posted this. Let me know if it causes any problems as I'm not sure what I'm doing..

Too Much Racing

I started this blog under the name of 'Too Much Racing' because that's what I was doing - watching too much motorsport every week. It soon came to take on another meaning: there is Too Much for one blogger to cover! There's also Too Much for one person to watch even if they aren't writing about it. I am not complaining - believe me this is a nice problem to have! I never want to have to change the name of this blog to 'Not Enough Racing'.

In an average week I would read Autosport magazine, Autosport.com, GrandPrix.com and a few other news sites before hitting the (many) blogs, and of course the F1NGers group. I would watch at least one 'big' event per weekend (an F1 or IndyCar race usually) along with a 'smaller' event after work one evening (say a touring car meeting of 2 or 3 x 25 minutes).

Since the summer the real world has intervened and I've struggled to keep up with anything other than F1 and IndyCar, and I'm 6 weeks behind on Autosport magazines, though I always keep up-to-date with their website.
On the other hand I feel more integrated with the world rather than being sat in front of the TV and PC all the time!

Want I want to know from you all is this: How you do it? I'm sure you all have busy lives to lead, how do you follow so much in so little time?

Are podcasts the answer? So far I listen to FastMachines.com Radio (which is very good). I'd like to listen to others such as Live Fast Radio and Midweek Motorsport but at 2 hours apiece they are just too long for me personally at the moment (sorry guys).. though I will try a bit harder. I like FastMachines because they do a wrapup of the weekend in about 45 minutes to an hour.

I know in the US you have Wind Tunnel. I know that because I find my own way to watch it and it is a good programme. I think MotorsTV should start a European edition and have it link up with the Speed show from time to time.

Perhaps if I spent less time reading and writing blogs I might have more time to watch the racing, but I don't see myself changing. Then again a year ago I didn't even consider writing a blog.


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I caught up with some World Touring Car action this week, albeit from June! It was from Brno in the Czech Republic, where Alex Zanardi won the first race and finished 2nd in the second race! Brilliant performance achieved on merit, great to see it. I missed his first win since 'The Crash' so I'm very pleased to have seen the second. The gap between the two wins was too long and there was a LOT of emotion from the team, and frankly everyone no matter what shirt they wore, as he got out of the car after both races.
They were good races too, WTCC's best of the year up to that point. The boys are in Japan this weekend before heading to Macau, while I'm four months behind them.. Let's get Surfers Paradise (IRL) and Interlagos (F1) out of the way and then I can do a mega catch-up of everything I've stored up to watch over the winter.

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Another way to occupy my time is to play prediction games, an interest of mine since about 15 years ago playing F1 games in newspapers. I don't do that any more, having switched to internet games a long while ago.

I currently play two of them. One is F1Tipping and the other is an interesting new game set up by Andy from The SpeedGeek's Motorsport Blog, called ARFL. Check out his blog for full details about the game which covers F1, IndyCar, ALMS and NASCAR. I only joined a couple of weeks ago and already I'm familiar with how it all works, it may seem complex on the surface but it really isn't, just play for one week and you've got it. Then the fun starts!

I did used to help run a prediction game on the F1NGers group until I ran out of time for it, so I can appreciate how difficult and time-consuming it can be to run something like this. I can also see that Andy puts a lot of work into this one. He's looking for new teams, make sure you sign up for '09.

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Okay, long post today. I'm aware that complaining of a long podcast and then writing a long blog post is probably not the best idea but I don't really care.

I'm gonna disappear until Monday because I don't want to know the result of the IndyCar race until I see the race myself. If the IRL online feed was good I'd consider getting up at 4am, but not for the Leader Cam. It drove me nuts at Homestead not seeing the rest of the field, so I've not used it since.

Enjoy Surfers, and the Valencia MotoGP!