Following a rather odd conversation on The Formula 1 Blog with Anonymous, it is becoming increasingly clear that a breakdown of what it would take for Sky to break even is necessary. This is, after all, the main reason why the attempt to transfer the UK rights from free-to-air to pay-TV is likely to have medium-term consequences on non-UK F1 fans. It's a bit rough-and-ready because of the timing, but I will happily tidy up anything that you think needs tidying later.

Wimbledon never fails to get full crowds even though few people in Britain follow tennis otherwise. Silverstone never failed to get full crowds even in years where British F1 figures fell like a stone due to Schumacher dominating. You'd be surprised at how low an audience conversion is needed to fill a stadium, so saying that test cricket grounds are still full doesn't say anything about what's going on with the TV side of things. Attending a cricket match is a special occasion. It does not mean that watching cricket is still bread-and-butter to people. The BARB statistics do not lie and they say that Sky struggles to get a seventh of the audience Radio 4 Longwave does for cricket matches, and that both combined are far lower than cricket got before Sky took over. The numbers end up working for the sport largely because Sky can afford more, but that is reliant on capping the level sports can charge it. That works financially for sports that seriously undervalued themselves (primarily by only considering the BBC pre-Sky, which of course can't run adverts to offset its expenses) but F1 hasn't done that since 1981...

I suppose if one calls 234,000 rugby viewers (2008 League World Cup) with Sky compared to over 2.6 million for the previous version* pre-Sky a success, then rugby might be considered a success. From Sky's perspective, it's a relatively successful sport because the low sanctioning fees means it can make quite a bit from the deal; from the perspective of a rational outsider surveying the effects on the sport's support base, it is a disaster.

The more one looks at the effects of Sky getting involved in sport, the worse it looks for sport. If a sport wants to go from being a majority sport to a minor one, going the pay route's a pretty effective way of doing it. That's been demonstrated time and again.


Advertising is of course part of Sky's arsenal when paying for things. However, Bernie fees are not the only costs it faces, and F1 isn't football. It costs £10 m per year to produce F1 the BBC 2011 way and to do all the extra features Sky has said it'll do, it will need to spend even more than that. ITV couldn't get that much from sponsorship when it had F1 in boom time, so given that Sky isn't having in-race advertising and is operating in a recession, it'll struggle to even meet its production costs through advertising, let alone start tackling marketing, satellite rearrangement fees (yes, making a new channel costs money) and the Bernie fee (which is now four times higher for Sky than the BBC's production fee was). 

Even so, my original calculation of a million new customers being needed assumed, optimistically, that the non-Bernie fees would be entirely covered by advertising. (Before the amount Sky paid was announced, I tended to say "between 0.5 and 0.88 million" when commenting on the internet; I was bargaining on Sky doing some sort of cost calculation prior to purchase). The £40 m from subscriptions prior to F1's arrival has to be ignored on the grounds that they'll have bought other contracts with them. These naturally must be maintained, with the possible exception of programs that directly clash with F1 programming. Other sports may not be as expensive as F1 but they do have acquisition and production fees. Instead, the calculation has to be done from base.

There are two ways of getting Sky F1 - one using the HD pack and the other using Sky Sports. The Entertainment pack cost (common to both routes) has to be ignored because the channels on the pack are funded by it, along with all their programming. Much like the BBC, each Sky channel is funded separately. Terra Nova, for example, is not a free show. Even through the HD route, the HD money is not free because all the programming on Sky has to be converted to HD. If Entertainment and Sports are priced in relation to their values to Sky, then only half the HD top-up can be assumed to be available for F1.

Let's assume that the only sport that the people are interested in is F1 and that HD buyers don't buy any other packages (if we don't, again, the figures look even worse for Sky, as that person's subscription fee would then need to be shared among however many additional contracts corresponded to that individual's customised viewing habits). The cost of Sky Sports 1 and 2 on top of that package is £20 and this is the maximum amount Sky can take in per customer per month with regard to F1. HD, once the half for Entertainment package upgrading is removed, only contributes £6.125 per customer. Only new-to-Sky customers can be assumed to be taking the package for the full 12 months, so only the 7 months where Sky has an exclusive race can be safely counted for Sky's revenue (let's assume for now that Bahrain goes ahead).

I am also going to assume that everyone who watches F1 is a singleton who never has the TV on when entertaining and doesn't have lodgers or other unrelated co-residents similar sneakily "borrowing" a chair during races. Otherwise, each viewer is only contributing part of the subscription payment. I'm also assuming none of these people are bar, pub or club owners because then every patron of the bar/pub/club is contributing towards the subscription.

Remember that the Bernie escalator ensures that prices go up at least 10% every year (that fee quoted for Sky's acquisition will be the first-year price; Bernie rules ensure it goes up and up after that). The £40 m initial annual price becomes £77.95 m by the end of the contract Sky has. If that sounds high, the fee the BBC paid went from £25 m to £40 m a year from one end of its contract to the other (projected but never reached due to renegotiation) end; if it hadn't it probably wouldn't have needed to let F1 go. That's compounding for you.

At the moment, 30% of Sky customers are on HD (therefore using the cheap route) and 70% on SD (therefore would need the expensive route). Being optimistic and assuming this proportion does not move any further towards HD despite more HD subscribers being in Sky's overall business plan, Sky needs 0.95 million new subscribers (rounds up to 1 million to the nearest 100,000 subscribers) that didn't care for any Sky-carried sport bar F1. To break even. Compounding means it doesn't have to get them all immediately - a 2012 figure of 0.53 million is enough for that specific year - but Sky's sales definitely aren't going up by the 10% per year needed simply to keep up with Bernie (they only increased by 3% per year for the last 2 years - it's pretty consistent at the moment). 

Even 0.53 million is over twice as many viewers than Sky gets for any part of its non-football programming. It is unlikely Sky will get the figures it needs because past and present data demonstrates it. This is before considering that every assumption I've just detailed here - advertising revenue, house occupancy, HD, caring about other Sky sports, Bahrain, the extent of Bernie escalator - is more likely to go against Sky than in its favour with regard to making F1 pay, and therefore require even more people to sign.

(For the curious, on the assumptions made in this item, it would take 2.08 m cumulative new customers for Sky to be able to justify taking all 20 races in the first year of the next broadcasting contract of 2018, assuming the minimum number of new customers were signed up as needed to let it break even in each previous year, that no additional fee was made for exclusivity and assuming Sky merely wished to break even with F1 due to its high profile).

Japan F1 is mostly free Fuji TV. There is a pay option (Next) but it gets 1/6 of the audience the free version does (helped by the fact the same provider on the same platform shows the free and pay options - not the case in the UK). Brazil is primarily covered by GloboTV, which is free-to-air and easily beats the pay option for popularity. Italy and Germany used to have pay TV options (through Sky) but they've folded due to lack of interest. Some other countries with smaller audiences have pay-only, and their audiences went through the floor. This has left some channels dropping F1 altogether and others putting it on progressively higher-cost options. That's what always happens with pay TV concerning sports that were previously shown just fine on free-to-air**. The audiences shrink and so the pay TV provider has to rely on cheap rates to keep the option alive. Here's a hint: Bernie will never, ever, provide cheap rates.

So why are the likes of rugby and cricket succeeding despite their TV mistakes? Because other avenues of revenue exploded in the last decade or two. Sponsorship, once quite rare for a series, has become huge money, especially for drinks companies who would struggle to advertise in certain international markets through the standard methods. Ticket prices skyrocketed, turning the weekly patronage of a favourite sport to an occasional treat for the poor without turning away the rich (in fact, with more focus on rich clients as seen in the past decade, the rich are pouring in as they spy networking and hob-nobbing opportunities). The sponsorship alone accounts for why there's more money in disability swimming than ever despite it having no media profile worthy of the name and free tickets to nearly all events. The latter is why the Paddock Club in F1 is worth over 10% of the total income of F1 despite serving a maximum of 5000 people per race.

After all is calculated, Sky's chances of making F1 break even are remote. The chances of Sky keeping a sport that doesn't break even is even remoter. The chances of Bernie finding anyone willing to pay more than Sky pay him now in those circumstances is nil. That means Britain's fees will drop. It's not clear who'd pick up the rights then - it depends who has most to spare at that moment out of the not-recently-"burned" parties. What is clear is that it would cause a domino effect. Other countries would see that pay TV does not work and be able to call Bernie's bluff by not engaging in bidding wars with such channels. It would mean the prices paid by channels would fall through the floor. So would F1's revenues.

F1 would have to either seriously tighten its belt (and hope it's no longer up to the neck in debt) or die.

Quite how not want F1 to kill itself counts as "not loving F1", as Anonymous alleged, remains a mystery.  

* - In case you're wondering, rugby union suffered even worse. The Heineken Cup final, for example went from 9 million in 2005 to below 185,000 in 2007. The only reason it's still on Sky is because the Heineken Cup charges much, much less for its tournament broadcast rights than Bernie does and the BBC is currently trying to sell sports rights rather than buy them.

** - Football, in case you're wondering, was not shown fine free-to-air before Sky got the rights; the BBC could typically only show one match a day - and hardly ever in primetime - due to broadcasting balance requirements, whereas Sky was able to show multiple ones, at any time of day, almost immediately. Being able to see twice as many matches means twice as many people are going to be interested, so it matters less if no single match gets much in the way of viewing figures compared to free-to-air - the sheer number of matches viewable through the multi-channel, more specialised pay TV system meant that many small parts became a bigger sum than the BBC could achieve. Also, people can't advertise on the BBC, so when Britain's favourite sport went to the advertisable platform, advertisers naturally paid top dollar to be associated with the sport. Football is, economically speaking, pay TV's one big sporting success.

The FIA and VW have announced a partnership series called FIA Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup, which will be for young female racers using cars powered by natural gas technology. Guess which of these two unique selling points ended up being the bigger topic of discussion.

If you guessed "natural gas technology"... ...your thinking is laudable from a technical perspective but you would be wrong. 

This blog entry started life as a comment at F1 Kate, which was in response to that announcement. The FIA is serious about doing something to encourage more women into racing, so it seems a good time to cover the obstacles that it faces in achieving that goal.

There are a number of barriers to women participating fully as drivers in motorsport. Removing them would benefit everyone. It wouldn't take affirmative action but it would take a lot of effort, and unfortunately for the FIA it can't directly make many of the necessary changes.

It's already broadened the age range in which one can transfer from karts to cars (it's now about 14-18 instead of being about 16-18), which indirectly resolved the problem where the initial swapover was at a bad time for young women hormonally (men have a similar effect in their late teens but by then they've generally got a working base from which to establish a career - or at least funding).

Overscrutineering is a problem, but that is likely to resolve itself as more women enter the system and succeed. Everything that is new and different gets extra scrutiny in the beginning, and a time will come when women are seen as neither.  

The biggest problems are the perennial issue of funding (which is even worse for women than men because companies perceive them as more of a risk due to lack of previous successful women) and societal attitudes, primarily at the family/close-friend level. Even places where broad societal expectation tends towards equal rights and responsibilities, individuals frequently do not live up to their society's expressed ideals in their day-to-day attitudes.

Men frequently find this statement strange. This is because male and female social circles, particularly in the pre-teen and early teenage situations, are very different. Prior to that age, girls and boys often mix to some extent, so the ambience of a friendship group tends to be more a reflection of who is in it than of any broad stereotype. However, at a certain point the two genders drift apart and form new social groups, partly composed of whoever of their own gender was in the friendship group before and partly with "outsiders". This is the time when girls and boys tend to orient their thinking more towards what they believe is the thinking of (young) women and men. This is shaped by a complicated mixture of the group's dominant individuals, people's interests and their accessibility, the available attractive role models, biology, cultural norms (at the broad ambient "macrosociological" level and, more so, the local "microsociological" level) and what sort of future is on offer for people with given skills, connections and attitudes.

It is beyond the scope of this blog entry to say exactly how all of these promote and demote the possibilities of a given individual getting the necessary social support (or at least avoid sufficient social antagonism) to make a decent attempt at motorsports in the critical teenage phase. However, it is within its scope to say that the ways immediate social networks function is important - and often different depending on gender.

Social groups of young men tend to be  wired towards being tolerant of "specialisms". Men often require less direct social interaction than women and are more tolerant of divergence. This is not to say they don't need any socialising time or that "anything goes". It means they are more likely to accept shared experiences that don't involve constant conversation as valid forms of socialising, and that when they do speak they are more likely to be primarily interested in what each other did rather than how they thought or felt about it. Actions are usually quicker to explain than thoughts or feelings. Furthermore, provided that certain specific group norms are kept, they often instinctively accept each member of the group being quite different. This means they bring different actions, experiences and skills to the group, which means each member of the friendship group brings different "specialisms". Depending on the particulars of the friendship group, these may get more or less detailed, but at the very least, you are apt to get get the leader, the sidekick(s), the comic, the "techy" one, the "cool" one... ...which means there's more likely to be space for "the speedy one" or "the racing one".

A lot of young women's friendship groups are different. Their role models, as encouraged by the dominant force(s) in the group, tend to be a lot more similar to one another than for men. Women tend to expect more direct socialisation, for friends to open their hearts and minds to other women. All this tends to lead to convergence, settling around a comfortable kernel of shared beliefs over a comparatively narrow range of subjects. Shared experiences tend to have to enable and encourage lots of conversation - but only over the same few topics. Having an opinion on the appearance or scent of something, or the suitability of some young man to some equally young woman, takes rather more common and less specific knowledge than having an opinion on, say, whether it's better to take a corner wide or tight... ...and in the typical young woman's friendship group, less specialism means more scope for mass participation and bonding, and therefore more attractiveness to the group.

Specialisms in studying are rarely much of a barrier because the time lost to studying would be lost anyway; arranging a group shopping experience when those going are all meant to be doing GCSE Maths class is a recipe for disaster and the desire for bonding does not preclude the acquisition of common sense, even among its most extreme exponents. Specialisms involving hobbies, especially ones that can't be indulged properly in school, are a much bigger problem from the social perspective.

A young man who decides to race is likely to be tolerated by his friends. Given the cultural approval given to young men in particular going fast, many friendship groups composed of young men would welcome having a "racer" among the group. A young woman deciding to race is likely to be distrusted by friends for having a dangerous desire to do activities that make the conversation-orientated group bonding process common among her likely friendship group difficult. It takes a strong woman who doesn't mind sacrificing their entire social group, an atypical social group that is less interested in conversational sense/gossip-related bonding or some means of making motorsport make sense to the typical young woman's social group. Atypical groups are by definition rare and the first option isn't promising for reasons discussed below, so progress in equality of opportunity most likely rests on the latter option - with the note that "making sense" is a matter of persuading the unconverted rather than changing the sport's essence.

For those suggesting that all women should simply sacrifice their entire social group, note that friends of young racers are often key to getting sponsors from outside the immediate family that are based on that individual racer. Without that, sponsorship of racers often comes down to pure commercialism - and junior racing only offers benefits to pure commercialism to companies willing to take a fair bit of risk that they have a future star on the books. Even a very successful racer in, say, Formula Ford will get little coverage at that level. Many risk-averse sponsors fail to look beyond past patterns when it comes to gender, meaning they do not consider the possibilities of the young woman in front of them the way they would when considering the possibilities of an otherwise-identical young man. This isn't particularly fair - 99.999% of men who hold a racing licence don't make it to F1, but if Joe Bloggs in front of a sponsor has excellent results, a sparkling personality and clear skills in both racing and marketing, a company inclined towards racing as a promotional tool will likely take him on. The broad statistic doesn't matter because the company's only sponsoring one driver. If that driver is the next Sebastian Vettel, or even the next Yuji Ide, that investment will pay off bigstyle.

If Jane Bloggs is there with the same results, personality and skills, the sponsor might consider it... ...but history suggests they'll lower their expectations according to historical expectations and either not sponsor her or expect her to market herself at least somewhat "stereotypically". This makes it more difficult to be taken seriously in a realm where ability, bravado and credibility are vital, which then leads to a downward spiral unless the young lady is lucky enough to be the next Danica Patrick.

A sponsor introduced via a friendly peer circumvents all or most of that. A sponsor linked to a young driver through friendship is more likely to see that person as an individual and make the sponsorship decision accordingly, which tends to result in more sponsorship anyway and a disporportionately positive increase in all kinds of non-traditional prospects. Yes, people with sponsors introduced via parents are the mainstay of sponsors,  You'd be surprised at how many young men have benefitted from having that sort of help... ...which they got because typical male social circles are more welcoming of specialist concentrations. A young female racer may or may not lose such a connection by dispensing with their peer friendships, but it does show that certain advantages in the vitally important commercial sector are being lost due to unequal indirect access to sponsors. The front door is equally open to all, but many of the deals done regarding racing are done through the tradesman's entrance, and due to microsociological pressures, the emphasis remains inadvertently on the man.

It's difficult to make progress if companies are being risk-averse and consider proven prior gender success as more important than individual results. 

It's even more difficult when friends tease, bully and ostracise because the racer is more interested in racing than studies and social fripperies (male social circles, especially in youth, tend to be much more tolerant of specialised dedicated interests than female ones).

If the family refuses to fund a girl to the same extent as it would an equally-talented boy, perhaps due to implicitly understanding the aforementioned microsociological pressures... ...then that girl might as well forget about becoming a professional racer (she'd be better off trying to become an engineer, business manager or even a team boss because those emphasise strengths that current cultural mores are more likely to let a girl acquire for herself).

The FIA needs to try to persuade people, one family and one friendship cluster at a time, to be supportive of the ambitions of their talented youth on an equal basis. It's already had experience of broadcasting messages intended to change societal and individual attitudes through its road safety work, so it should be well placed to persuade people of the benefits of equal access to the world of motorsport filtered primarily by merit and what such an attitude entails.

 Good luck, FIA. It's worthy work with potentially rich rewards.

This is a short plug. I've helped Kate Walker write a post about second practise at the Korean Grand Prix. It's been a pleasure to work with Kate, who is a talented journalist with a good sense of humour. 

...and what to do about it

Yesterday, we saw Force India choose to not run in Q3 at Singapore. This is the second time this season they have taken this option. In DRStrategy, this was recommended as the solution for a team which cannot seriously compete for pole in Q3. There was no possibility of Force India managing a much higher position if it ran than if it didn't, so it was sensible to save a set of tyres to preserve strategy and perhaps pass the more profligate Mercedes team through strategy.

This may seem a rather mercenary attitude, but remember Force India is in a battle between Renault and Sauber over 5th place in the championship. Sauber is very close behind Force India, so it needs points. In addition, Renault is having a lousy weekend in Singapore, making this the best opportunity Force India is likely to have to close the gap between the two. Logically, Force India has to prioritise racing well to qualifying well.

So all is well? Not to judge from the large number of disappointed fans. The best I've seen of their reaction came from @LewisBarthaud:

something needs to be done, this 3 phase format came about to improve the show, you can't call it the "top 10 shootout" with only 7

 

You can't argue with that logic. Also, there's an emotional argument which presumably wouldn't condense into the remaining characters.

There is a massive visceral pleasure in seeing a racing car on track. When there are many racing cars doing likewise and competing powerfully with one another, the pleasure is multiplied. So to take it in reverse, removing 30% of the expected competitors will take out an average of well over 30% of the excitement (exact percentage depending on exactly who "forfeited" the session and who's watching).

This is an example of perverse incentives - the regulations, designed to provide excitement and happiness to the multitudes who watch F1 racing, create the exact opposite effect in qualifying if played out to their logical conclusion.

The first thought might be to penalise those who do not run in Q3 on purpose through a grid penalty. However, this ends up creating perverse incentives of its own. One of the main ways people have been able to overcome the zero-sum passing engendered by DRS is by having more sets of unused soft tyres. What this means is that everyone will, barring unforeseen punctures or crashes, everyone will have the same number of sets of soft tyres remaining. By insisting everyone must have the same number of unused sets of soft tyres, the racing will become even more predictable and samey - under the rippled surface of inconsequential passes. Only someone setting their fastest time with hard tyres will be able to break the cycle.

So that method of making a more exciting qualifying would make a rather dull race. However, this is not an insoluable equation. Changing the way tyre allocations work may help.

My proposal works thus:

- 3 "hard" sets given out on Friday. This will encourage race set-up and endurance work, shift tyre comparison work to Saturday, possibly encourage more teams to use unproven drivers. More importantly for the specific problem under discussion, it means a "soft" set can be awarded later in the weekend without making Pirelli bring any extra tyres. You've got to adapt to cost-cutting...

- 1 "soft" and 1 "hard" tyre set given out at the start of Saturday

-  1 "soft" and 1 "hard" tyre given out at the start of Q1. Any of the three sets of softs given out thus far may be used in qualifying.

- 1 "soft" given out at the start of Q2 - but only to drivers who set a time on the soft given out in Q1.

- 1 "soft" given out at the start of Q3 - but only to drivers who set a time on the soft given out in Q2.

- 2 "soft" and 1 "hard" set given out on Sunday - but only to drivers who set a time on the soft given out in Q3 (or Q1/2 if they were eliminated there). Q3 runners will be permitted to use this instead of the tyre they did their time on, should they be eligible to receive such tyres. Teams will hand back 3 "hard" and 2 "soft" sets of their choice, leaving them with the same number of tyres for the race as they have now.

Stewards' discretion will be used for anyone who makes a genuine attempt to qualify but has a technical issue on-track, crashes on their "sighter" Q1 run on hard tyres or during their soft-tyre run. The idea being that genuine accidents would be treated the same as people who were knocked out at the same stage but completed the soft-tyre run. Anyone of whom foul play is suspected (or had such serious problems that they  wouldn't have used up much/any of the soft tyre's longevity) will receive no such privileges and be treated the same as those who never attempted the run.

This would mean qualifying would influence how many tyres on has available in a more sensible way.

• Someone who didn't run in Q1 on soft tyres would have no unused "soft" tyres.
• Someone who chose not to run in Q2 or Q3 on soft tyres would have 1 set of unused "soft" tyres (the one they got for running in Q1 on softs).
• Someone who chose to run soft tyres in all sessions for which they were eligible would get 2 sets of unused "soft" tyres (for running in Q3).

 This should re-align incentives for the race in favour of having both an exciting qualifying and an exciting race.

The one thing this doesn't prevent is a team not running because they don't think they will lose anything, despite the disincentives in place. This is the frustrating position I am in with my other favourite team, AF Corse. It is in Portugul for the Le Mans Series race but due to some terrible luck involving a lorry accident, a broken tail-lift and an hastily-completed new car presenting problems, is apparently comtemplating a deliberate non-finish for its hitherto most competitive and popular car (the #51 driven by Giancarlo Fisichella and Gianmaria Bruni). It's already team champion, with the #51's drivers also confirmed as individual champions, so they not particularly worried about points. The car is in one piece and is very fast when it works, but could break at any moment and the staff all need to be in America as soon as possible because Petit Le Mans, part of an Intercontinental Le Mans Championship that the team hasn't fully secured yet, is next week and everyone on the the team needs to be there for early scrutineering. I can see the logic but am still upset with the idea a team might forefeit a race where it has somehow managed to qualify 2nd. Much as the people watching the logical withdrawal of the Force Indias from Q3 were upset about them "forfeiting" the last bit of qualifying when they were good enough to at least set representative times. 

Intellectually logical, emotionally tough to accept...

On Thursday I went karting at the Kurburgring again, this time with a carrier bag holding my shoes, earplugs and a spare pair of gloves. My brother didn't kart this time but he and Dad spectated. The staff on reception remembered us well from last time. It turned out they'd even read my blog and liked it, which was nice. 

The briefing this time focused more on the correct lines to take around the circuit because the marshal leading it reckoned I could improve if I could get my lines right more consistently. Given that my times on my previous visit had ping-ponged to some extent, I could understand that line of thinking. To this end, one of the other marshals offered to show me the correct lines.

For the first 20 minutes of my allotted half-hour, I had company on the track. Two other people were already there when I headed out. The marshal was not among them. I got going and tried to get into a rhythm. This happened surprisingly quickly. The first lap was not a complete embarassment and the second one a 34.518 - faster than all but 6 of the laps I'd done on my previous visit.

The next seven laps showed slow but steady improvement, apart from one where I lost the rhythm of the lap entirely. I was faster than the other two karters on circuit and was gradually catching them.

Lap 9 of my run involved a big jump in performance. Having previously done 34.4s, I went down to 33.424, which was 0.4 seconds faster than my previous lap record. I was getting close to one of the other karters and starting to plan how to do the overtake...

The next lap was even faster (33.301) and I was nearly on the guy's rear bumper as I noticed another karter join the track a short way behind me. Knowing that overtaking was forbidden into the banked Karusell, I tried to take a cautious approach into the hairpin. Unfortunately I forgot to take into account that karts don't steer so well when driven slowly. The driver in front of me had a poor line into the turn and was slow coming back onto the power. We both crashed, leaving the somewhat bemused marshal looking back at us with "What did the pair of you think you were doing?" body language.

It took a while for us to get going again. So what do I do next? Crash at the same corner next lap, all by my little lonesome! After that, the marshal caught up with me and I was able to follow him for a few laps. My times went all over the place - as I tried to learn the improved lines for different parts of the circuit, I would lose track of what I was supposed to be doing for others. It's difficult to track another kart closely and maintain quality of driving in your own kart simultaneously. Eventually, I turned in a lap that was considered acceptable and the marshal motioned for me to go past.

A few minutes later, everyone left the track except me because I had 10 minutes more to go. This was going to be a great opportunity to put what I had learned into practise. Except that my fingers were getting tired. I was struggling to turn the kart. I responded to it by slowing down, which of course made the kart gradually less responsive to the turning I was managing to do. I ended up stopping for nearly 4 minutes to let my fingers recover.

After I got going again, I nearly matched my previous fastest time and managed to consistently be within 0.4 seconds of that time on the other laps. I could feel things were much better after my break. On the penultimate lap, I thought something in the glove had worked loose, but carried on regardless - no sense stopping again...

After the chequered flag, I had a "debrief" with Dad and my brother.  They reckoned I hadn't managed to get everything right on a single lap; every time there was at least one corner where I'd made an error. If I'd managed to string my best corners together, they reckoned I could have been over a second faster. Still, the "acceptable" lap turned out to be 33.104 seconds. An improvement of 0.6 seconds on my fastest lap and 1.88 seconds on my average (non-crash/break) lap was good work.

The "debrief" got interrupted when I got round to removing my gloves. Nothing in the glove had got loose. I had simply got a thumbnail-sized blister on the base of my right hand, which had popped. I heard motorsport was dangerous but that wasn't quite what I had in mind... Just to make it worse, I'd left my first-aid kit in my karting bag at home. Good thing the reception staff had plasters.

I am now the 7th-fastest woman to have driven at the Kurburgring, just 0.6 seconds slower than one of the members of staff. Just in case anyone thinks I should replace Felipe Massa, I should point out that there is a junior who, despite using a kart with less than half the engine displacement of the kart I used, has a fastest lap 0.195 seconds faster than me. Clearly I have targets at which to aim...