Warning! Long entry alert!

Note: I do not consider this to be completely finished, but am posting this because it is unclear whether I'll get time to finish prior to Silverstone.

This is the second in a four-part series (the first, on GP2, can be read here). Formula BMW Europe, one of the feeder series for F3, is the subject of this entry.

Formula BMW Europe is in its second year of existence, having been formed by an amalgalation of Formula BMW UK and Formula BMW Germany. Everyone uses a BMW/DesignworksUSA/Mygale chassis, BMW engine and tyres supplied by Michelin.

Of the non-guest drivers who left Formula BMW last year, their destinations were:

- 1 to World Series by Renault
- 5 to F3 Euroseries
- 1 to British F3 (International)
- 1 to F3 Sudamericano
- 2 to Formula Renault UK 2.0
- 1 to Formula Renault UK
- 1 to Toyota Racing New Zealand

Bruno Juncadella may still be racing, but I couldn't figure out where. His brother Daniel is in Formula BMW this year, though.

Thomas Hillsdon, Bastian Graber, Asad Rahman, Kyle Mitchell, Anthony Comas and Juan Cevallos do not appear to be racing anywhere in 2009. Junior formulae can be harsh testing grounds.

The highest-positioned 2008 competitor in the championship this year is Michael Christiansen (who came 6th), who is very much a championship contender this year.

Points are awarded for the first 15 places, in a format of 30-24-20-18-16-14-12-10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. There is also 1 point for pole in each race. The team and driver points do not match up, even on the BMW official site, and no clear reason is given for this.

Teams generally have three drivers each, rather than the two more usual in higher single-seater formulae.

Roster

Eurointernational
Current 2009 position: 1st (91 points)

Felipe Nasr
Current 2009 position: 1st (110 points)

Daniel Juncadella
Current 2009 position: 4th (76 points)

Olivier Lombard
Current 2009 position: 13th (15 points)


Josef Kaufmann Racing
Current 2009 position: 2nd (62 points)

Robin Frijns
Current 2009 position: 3rd (79 points)

Facundo Regalia
Current 2009 position: 10th (27 points)

Kazeem Manzur
Current 2009 position: 11th (24 points)


Mücke Motorsport
Current 2009 position: 3rd (43 points)

Michael Christensen
Current 2009 position: 2nd (80 points)

Timmy Hansen
Current 2009 position: 14th (14 points)

Jack Te Braak
Current 2009 position: 19th position (5 points)


Eifelland Racing
Current 2009 position: 4th (40 points)

Jazeman Jaafar
Current 2009 position: 6th (44 points)

David Mengesdorf
Current 2009 position: 7th (36 points)


Fortec Motorsport
Current 2009 position: 5th (27 points)

Jack Harvey
Current 2009 position: 5th (59 points)

William Buller
Current 2009 position: 17th (7 points)


Fisichella Motor Sport International
Current 2009 position: Equal 6th (13 points)

Ramon Pineiro
Current 2009 position: Equal 11th (16 points)

Doru Sechelariu
Current 2009 position: Equal 11th (16 points)

Kevin Gilardoni
Current 2009 position: 23rd (1 point)


DAMS
Current 2009 position: Equal 6th (13 points)

Jim Pla
Current 2009 position: 8th (30 points)

Javier Tarancon
Current 2009 position: 9th (28 points)

Côme Ledogar
Current 2009 position: 18th (6 points)


Motaworld Racing
Current 2009 position: 8th (6 points)

Ollie Millroy
Current 2009 position: Joint 15th (8 points)

Mikkel Mac
Current 2009 position: 21st (4 points)


Raikkonen Robertson Racing
Current 2009 position: 9th (4.5 points)

Rupert Svendsen-Cook
Current 2009 position: Joint 15th (8 points)

Gregoire Demoustier
Current 2009 position: 22nd position (3 points)

The inspiration for this blog entry is this week's Thursday Thoughts question, posed by Maverick at Sidepodcast:

"Which blog article or articles have you written that you were most pleased with writing and why?"

This is a tough question for me. In the 1301 days since I started blogging, I've written hundreds of entries, some of which have pleased me greatly for different reasons.

In chronological order, the blog entries that have most pleased me are:

Renault and long-term driver strategy - April 29, 2007

This entry broke some boundaries for me. I'd happily discussed general F1 matters, stuff I'd done and stuff relating to Spyker, but this was the first time I'd done a blog entry at length on a team with no particular connection to the one I supported. Also, it was the most speculative blog entry I'd done up to that point.

Writing the entry entailed a lot of consideration of consequences and getting into the mindsets of various people to figure out what the situation was most likely to become. Getting my first link from another blog gave me a lot of confidence (thank you, Ollie!) It was also the entry that "launched" the blog into the minds of readers and established its reputation - I'd been writing articles nearly nine months with a readership in single digits up to that point.

To celebrate, I've reserved April 29 for Renault strategy discussions ever since. One Year On and Two Years On describe Renault's path to stagnancy pretty well, but I feel neither of them are quite as good as the original.

Spyker, Albers and the search for profits - July 10, 2007

This was the first time I felt that I'd managed to make a series work (later entries include driver speculation, sponsorship cookery and a thinly-veiled bit of Winklehock cheerleading. It wasn't a formal series; it just so happened that the Albers affair inspired me to write large amounts about the intersection of money and driving.

As Media Collide (Part 1) - October 26, 2007

I really enjoyed doing the thinking for this one and the ideas just flowed onto the screen. Unfortunately the FOM haven't implemented any of these ideas yet... (Oh, and it's a three-part series, with instalments on the FIA and Mosley on TV).

OK, Now I Believe The Rumour - January 10, 2008

Scoop by hairdo. That is all.

Racing For Ethics - February 24, 2008

This is my favourite blog entry of all. It started out with a news story, steamed in my head for three weeks and after a lot of passionate typing, resolved itself as a call for morality unfolding through the prism of festivals gone wrong, business "ethics" and counter-productive visas.

I felt incredible after I'd finished. Even more so when I saw that my research had caused fellow fans' thinking, and possibly behaviour, to change. Two years after I wrote it, I still smile - and try, so far in vain, to write so well again.

Pros and Cons of Driver Hierarchical Arrangements - July 16, 2008

This was an entry where I felt I made a distinctive contribution to the understanding of a concept in F1. I looked at how teams tended to structure their driver arrangements, categorised them and drew up advantages and disadvantages. While that may sound simple, it is also something I've not seen elsewhere before or since - and something that goes a long way towards explaining the diversity of driver arrangements seen on the grid.

It still doesn't explain everything about them though. Or why I still haven't got round to writing the driver-culture link entry...

Advantages Of Travelling By Rail Instead Of By F1 Car - September 25, 2008

Of the humorous pieces I've written for my blog, this is probably the one that will date slowest. The sheer absurdity of the analogy helped a lot.

Re-Analysing The Championship Duel - November 16, 2008

As soon as I picked up the question of whether Massa had lost through misfortune or something more arose, I knew there was going to be a good blog entry in it. The analysis was a lot of fun and there was a nice mathematical edge to the whole thing. I even ended up attempting to discuss objective v. subjective interpretations of Singaporean performance (in Portuguese) on a Brazillian blog (not easy considering I didn't even have my own Portuguese dictionary at that point...)

Leavetakings

When Honda left F1... ...I found myself thinking a lot about why manufacturers bother doing F1. While it didn't do much for my December 2008 theme of thanksgiving, I felt that it explained the whole sorry affair rather well. Thankfully, Honda did get a buyer as I'd hoped at the end of the article.

(There are some stupid sticky trackbacks here that I can't remove )

My Silverstone Trip (Saturday) - June 30, 2009

My first full live F1 weekend made a huge impression on me. There's an entire swathe of entries about it, covering Thursday, Friday, Sunday and fuel stints.

Saturday, though, was the one I felt captured my feelings and the atmosphere of a magical weekend best. I think I managed to convey that whole sense of a special, shared sporting spectacle.

Fisi To Ferrari - An Emotional Moment

Any topic involving my favourites tends to read fairly well. However, this one was particularly tricky to write because I felt so many conflicting emotions... ...but I couldn't not write about something having that big an effect on me. The resulting entry expresses the bittersweet happiness pretty clearly.

Analysis of the 2010 Technical Regulations

FIA regulation documents, although frustrating, work well for me. They also seem to flow better each time. That said, this document almost defeated me - which made me particularly pleased when the result worked so well as a document.

Warning! Long post alert!

This has been a good week for me in terms of learning about how the other side lives. Several events inspired this post, but it would be fair to state that this is the comment I was originally going to put in BlogF1's entry on improving coverage. However, I decided that a comment that threatened to be longer than the original post is not perhaps the best of ideas.

The Internet has become a hot topic in the F1 world, what with a YouTube video playing a key role at the Japanese GP, Ron Dennis bemoaning the internet phenomenon and me discovering some interesting different ways to watch F1. The latter meant I had three perspectives on the Brazillian GP (or parts of it, at any rate).

I saw Speed TV's coverage of Brazil qualifying this year (long story involving an internet connection and some possibly-illegal behaviour), since ITV wouldn't broadcast live. While some aspects were really irritating (the whole thing was delayed 15 minutes to make way for NASCAR truck qualifying, and they missed loads of Q1 and Q3 due to ads), I envied the Americans their sane and balanced commentary line-up. David Hobbs seems very fair-minded, and although Peter Windsor has some biases, he seems to keep them much more restrained than James Allen.

In addition, I accidentally stumbled on some Spanish commentary some time later. It was on YouTube, and had I known it was a commentary involving copyrighted material, I would have given it a miss. (Well, I am a librarian trained in copyright issues, and if I don't obey the law on this, who will?) The copyright, however, is a separate issue and merits its own post - here's one F1Fanatic made earlier.

I have no idea how the Spaniards put up with their coverage, because the commentators seem to have the habit of talking over one another whenever anything exciting happens. While this may convey the excitement of F1 well, I cannot say that it increased my understanding of what the commentators thought very much. If anyone receiving the Spanish version of F1 races is reading this, please could they enlighten me?

ITV (who I watched for their usual coverage) do have serious bias problems, and is clearly aimed at part-time fans. This increases ratings at the expense of commitment - and you need commitment to stick with F1 any length of time. Thankfully, we have Martin Brundle, but I have taken to watching the music channels for the first half-hour of ITV's hour-long build-up to avoid the outbreaks of Lewisteria the other people on ITV have got. I also stop watching the races as soon as the podium ceremony is done, unless a driver I support other than Hamilton has made it to the podium, for the same reason. Consequentially, I haven't watched any post-race press conferences this year.

There are other problems with the way the media are interacting with the sport and each other.

Most races are currently directed by Bernie's organisation. I sometimes suspect they hired all the Austrian GP camera directors, because the same problems of bias and looking at fresh air are evident in the shots as they were in the coverage of the Austrian rounds before FOM got greedy. If only they'd asked one of the better countries to take over the camera work, we'd have a much better result.

The internet coverage is abysmal. I can't get formula1.com to work on my computer most of the time, so I can't comment on the live timing. What I can say is that on the rare occasion I have been able to get onto the site, the usability for people like me has been virtually non-existent. The FIA's site is not much of an improvement, and is in fact less usable and reliable than in its previous iteration.

While Ollie at BlogF1 may feel inferior on this sort of matter, he shouldn't - his blog is highly accessible and would score well on any internet usability test. Truth is, so are most other F1 blogs, and the majority of forums and other sites on the topic. If all us amateurs can get it right, why can't the FOM and FIA with all their technical firepower backing them up reach the same levels of usability and functionality? The worrying thing is that the FOM and FIA don't even care - their apparent apathy on matters not directly concerning power and money spreads even there, even though their power and money would be increased with usable sites.

The solution for the internet is three-fold:

1) Let people put clips on YouTube and similar free non-downloadable sites, so long as they were short (I believe YouTube's limit is 10 minutes a clip, and I think this is sensible to allow step 2) to work).

2) Have a central place where full races can be watched on a pay-per-race system (perhaps £3-5 per race). These basic races would have just the FOM-recorded video and sound, and would go from the 5-minute mark before races to the end of the race, plus podium and full post-race press conference. For an extra fee (£1, perhaps), the user could access the commentary from the professional provider of their choice, including all pre- and post-race content (this would be identical to whatever that channel broadcast, except without ads and with any content the broadcaster would like that would only work on the Net). The £1 supplement would go entirely to the broadcaster whose content was being viewed. This would set up competition between the broadcasters (all stations like extra money!), would reduce bias considerably (to get more viewers) and garner extra money for FOM (the FOM loves extra money!)

3) The third-party internet world needs to be embraced. Since the protaganists have, for the most part, proved completely unable to understand or cater for the requirements of the obsessive internet-based F1 fan. The likes of itv-f1.com would benefit from acknowledging these sites, perhaps by adding links to more detailed sources at the end of their news items (ITV itself is generally slow on the uptake as well as low on detail). Also, the good sites should be elevated in status, to the point where they are considered the equal of any traditional credentialed source.

The FIA's idea of posting regulations to the internet is good, but it is rather lazy in its uploading of said rules (new 2008 and 2009 Technical Regulations were announced yesterday and still haven't been posted!). Plain-language explanations would not only benefit us - given the problems various teams have had in the last couple of years, it would surely improve the running of the sport as well. But that's another story.