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Atom Date: March 4 2010
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.