Favourite Podcasts - 18 - Sidepodcast F1 debrief

I have already featured one podcast from these guys (An Aside With Joe) a few weeks ago, but Christine and Mr C also produce a general F1 podcast every few weeks or so.

The F1 debrief consists of 'Good week, Bad week', a guide to what is going well and badly in F1, a brief review of the last practice and qualifying sessions and an analysis of the race itself.

For the the best bit the listener feedback section at the end, the Sidepodcast community is a geographically diverse, but passionate group of people. From screaming rants about an aspect of F1, to a well crafted poem or song - you never quite know what the Sidepodcast listeners are going to send in next.

It is great fun, and not to be taken seriously, but you will learn one or two things about the sport along the way.

Oh, and Christine may just randomly talk about Pandas for a section. Something for everyone.

Download here at Sidepodcast.

Favourite Podcasts - 11 - An Aside with Joe

Imagine if every few weeks you could speak to someone who knows so much about F1 and motorsport that it would make your head hurt. Imagine if that person had been to every F1 Grand Prix since 1988, had friends and contacts in high places, and shared all his opinions with you over a glass of red wine.

This is the experience you can have with the An Aside With Joe podcast. Every few weeks Mr C and Christine Blachford (from Sidepodcast.com) get veteran F1 journalist Joe Saward on the line and chat for an hour or so about some current issues in the sport.

Joe is opinionated, but always well reasoned and very ahead of the curve. You will hear things weeks before they actually happen. Whether it be driver moves, sales of teams, new developments or other gossip his sources are so good that he will almost always turn out to be right.

He is also great to listen to, he has a slightly grumpy Jack Dee style of delivery, but he is clearly passionate about the sport and it's future. His insight into what it takes to be a sports journalist are also amazing, and invaluable for anyone thing of taking this as a career route.

A must for any F1 fan who wants to get deeper into the sport than the TV coverage or F1 Racing magazine may give you.

Download the podcast at the Sidepodcast site here.

(and if you like this podcast consider subscribing to Joe's web magazine GP+, from what I have seen it looks amazing!)

Favourite Podcasts - 1 - Chequered Flag

This is the first of many BBC podcasts that make up my favourite podcasts, and one of only two F1 related podcasts.

It consists of a podcast version of the 5live pre-race show on Friday nights, and then a short review of the race posted usually a few hours from the end of each race.

The BBC Radio 5live commentary team are much better than the TV team, they seem to take the sport a bit more seriously, with much more in depth analysis and a less patronising tone. The regulars include the commentator David Croft, who holds things together, sportscar driver (and previous F1 test driver) Anthony Davidson, new recruit Natalie Pinkham, mine of F1 Knowledge and F1 historian Maurice Hamilton and occasionally Karun Chandhok, current driver for Team Lotus.

It is always great to get the pre race interviews on the Friday podcast, and it means you can always impress other F1 fans at work on the Saturday with a few random facts or gossip about the race!

Download at the BBC 5live website here.

British Grand Prix - Silverstone 2011

Well what a weekend last weekend was, a full 3 days at Silverstone to see the British Grand Prix! My first ever Grand Prix and we did it in style!

Decided that this was the year, partly because I live quite near the track (within 40 minutes drive) and it's likely I won't live so close in the future, and mostly because my Mum and Dad wanted to buy it for me for my birthday, and my Brother in law was itching to go (and did all the hard work organising!).

We arrived in plenty of time for the first practice session on Friday, and found a grandstand near farm curve to watch from, it was very exciting to see the first cars come out onto track, although they were not quite as loud as I had anticipated. The rain started to come and we moved location to somewhere with a roof, and then the noise hit us, we were sat just as the cars were accelerating onto the straight, I felt deaf in the left ear for at least a few minutes, and realised that plugging into my radio was useful not only to hear what was going on around the track, but also to block some of the noise!

We wandered around the track for a while looking around, and then settled on Woodcote for session 2, a location so good we watched qualifying there the next day as well. An advantage with a roving grandstand ticket such as we had is that you are not tied to a location over the Friday and Saturday, you can pretty much get into all the main grandstands (other than the Vodafone and Santander ones). On race day you need to stick to your seats, but we were lucky in that we had an excellent view there too, looking right down Hanger Straight in one direction and across to Club corner in the other.

We took packed lunch, as food was a bit pricey (as you would expect) but we found the cheapest coffee and still enjoyed some bacon rolls throughout the weekend.

as well as your own lunch I would say that an FM and a DAB radio are also essential, and making sure they are fully charged up. Don't rely on your smart phone to listen to commentary, not only is the track race commentary not online for legal reasons, but if you decide to listen to Crofty on Sports Extra you may find the 3G is not coping with the volume of people doing the same! Without this it is hard to follow what is going on in the sessions or race. You see a lot less at the track than if you were watching it on the BBC, but obviously being there is about the experience, but the radio helps you keep up, and you can always catch up with the race on the TV later!

Obviously some kind of waterproofing is essential as well, and it turns out a poncho, although looking silly, is the most effective way to stay dry (my waterproof coat left we with wet knees!).

Anyway, I will skip forward to the Sunday, we got settled in our seats very early, in time for the GP3 race, we were almost the first in our stand! The support races were sadly a bit dull and processional, but you could still feel the atmosphere building. We were attacked by a wave of tiny annoying flies at several points in the day, not a lot we could do about them but I was heartened to hear that Alonso had been attacked by them as well, not just our grandstand.

I was surprised by the huge support for Mclaren at Silverstone, I guessed they would be a very popular team, but I would say 4 out of 5 people were sporting Mclaren caps or clothing. We did try spotting caps for every team on the grid, and failed to see an HRT cap all weekend! (Virgin were also thin on the ground, and I was surprised to see quite so many Toro Rosso caps!)

After support races the Red Arrows did a display, and at that point the rain came (giving us a break from flies!) It only last 20 minutes of so, but was enough to wet the track, which in places remained wet until the race start.

Alonso then came out in a classic Ferrari, and did a few laps, getting very into it and sliding the car around Stowe corner. He then had to run for the flatbed that was carrying drivers around for the parade lap.

I won't say too much about the race itself, as you probably saw it on TV anyway, but we had a Lotus break down on the Hanger Straight near us, Schumacher gave us a little entertainment with a few overtakes into Stowe, and we had a fantastic view of the last corner battle between Hamilton and Massa!

Really great weekend and I can always say I have been to a Grand Prix, and I am sure I will do it again in the future, perhaps over to Spa for the next one?

A history of Neil in 100 objects - Object 1 - Williams F1 Diecast Model

Motor racing is about the only sport I have really got into, I can watch a small amount of football, or tennis, or athletics, but I soon get bored. However I can watch practice sessions of F1, large chunks of 24 hour races, or half a day of touring cars without any trouble at all.

This model of a Williams F1 FW28 was given to me by my friend Nick, and is a lovely scale model, he was given it from his work at the time (one of the sponsors of the team) and gave it to me saying I was a bigger fan of F1 than he was. A lovely gift which I am sure I will always keep on display.

Williams must be one of my favourite teams in F1, and this was cemented when last year we visited the Williams F1 base in Grove for a great day watching the GP on the big screen, looking around the amazing museum and meeting some of the Williams staff. I wrote my experiences of the day on a blog post at Sidepodcast.

Perhaps one day I will get into another sport, but I can't imagine anything beating the excitement I feel just before those red lights go out on a Sunday afternoon, and this Sunday I will experience that at Silverstone for the first time in real life... excited? Just a bit!!!