Sidepodcast - All for F1 and F1 for All

Hello one and all, welcome to Post-F1 Paths, a mini series brought to you by Sidepodcast. This is the fifth episode of seven short shows in which we are travelling through the opportunities available to drivers once they have decided to give up Formula One in favour of something else. We’ve covered a handful of sporting achievements that drivers can aim for after F1, but this time we’re talking about using their fitness for other athletic purposes.

Drivers opting to try their hand at athletics after a successful career in Formula One has never been more relevant than it is this year, with Jenson Button’s triathlete endeavours. The F1 champion was clearly ready for a break from the grind of travelling the world and racing fast cars, so for the 2017 season (barring a one-off Monaco return) he retired from the sport. Instead, Button has been focusing on becoming a triathlete champion.

Now, the athletic competition of running, cycling and swimming isn’t new to Button. He’s participated in many events over the past few years and even holds his own annual charity event open to any and all who want to participate. He’s gradually improved his own skills, and with the added high standards of fitness required to be an F1 driver these days, has never been in a better position to do well in his new career.

Unfortunately, Button was disqualified from his World Ironman efforts despite finishing third in his age category. The impressive performance was diminished when it emerged he had been speeding through a slow zone during the bike phase – something that was a gleeful moment for headline writers, but must have been a disappointment for Button. Still, with reserve driver duties out the way, he can get back to the running, swimming and biking that is now inspiring him.

And if inspiration is what you’re after, then we must look no further than Alex Zanardi. The Italian driver was more well known for his CART efforts in the US, but also participated in over 40 F1 races. A terrible crash saw Zanardi lose both his legs but the accident barely slowed him down. Zanardi was soon behind the wheel again in modified racing cars, but he also took up handcycling.

He started participating, and winning, handcycling marathons. He won a gold medal in the 2012 Paralympics, and followed it up in 2016 with two golds and one silver. He also completed the Ironman World Championship, coming 19th in his age group. Absolutely incredible.

Competing in the Olympics isn’t a new thing for racing drivers, either. One of Formula One’s very few female drivers started out as an Olympian. Divina Galica, who started three F1 races in the 1970s, came fresh from a stint as captain of the British Women’s Olympic Ski Team securing some solid finishes in both the winter Olympics and world championship events. After the Formula One career didn’t work out, Galica returned to the ice and snow, participating in the 1972 Winter Olympics as well.

The challenge of representing your country and competing for a tangible and well-recognised gold medal is understandably appealing to drivers but it’s not all about the Olympics. Other sports are just as fascinating but also come with health warnings. We all remember Mark Webber’s unfortunate cycling accident – sustained whilst participating in an off-season bike race for his foundation in Tasmania – that left him with a broken leg. The one thing that came out of this was a greater insight into the training and rehabilitation that drivers can undergo, as Webber was very open about his progress in healing the leg and training as best as possible to be ready for the upcoming 2009 F1 season.

Webber also, quite notably, cracked his shoulder in a second cycling accident that forced him to drive the final four races of the 2010 season in some discomfort. We know that Webber has bad luck, but it’s also more and more obvious why drivers should perhaps wait until after they’ve finished their racing career before they go all out on another athletic sport.

That’s all for this episode of Post-F1 Paths, thank you, as always, for listening. Do you know of any other drivers who have taken up another sport after their career, or do you think any more of the current batch might try? Let me know at sidepodcast.com/contact, and please do join me again tomorrow for the penultimate episode of Post-F1 Paths.

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This is It Only Takes E Minute, in which Formula E signs a partnership to keep the coolest safety car in motorsport.

Formula E and BMW have agreed an extension to their partnership which has been in existence since the sport began, with the German manufacturer supplying the official vehicles. That's the safety and medical car to you and me, and it's a good looking one. The BMW i is a fully electric car, naturally, and the i8 provides safety car duties whilst the i3 is the smaller medical car.

There are some modifications to the road cars, particularly wireless charging pads. As safety car driver Bruno Correia says: "This system, it's very easy, we just park the car over the pads and it immediately starts to charge. We have to intervene as quick as possible, imagine me coming out of the car to take the cables off, plug it in."

The agreement is for a multi-year partnership, with Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag saying: "It’s a legendary brand in the world of sports and in the car industry and soon we will also have them in the pit lane trying to win."

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Hello there, F1 friends, and welcome to The Great Debates, the latest mini series from Sidepodcast. The intention here is to shine a light on topics that cause conversation amongst everyone involved in F1, always have done and likely always will do. We have covered six topics in our journey so far and now we’re on to our seventh and final debate, and it’s a big one.

There are two specific things about Formula One that, when combined, make it both wonderful and unique – the jam-packed history of the sport dating back to the 1950 inauguration of the world championship and even before that, alongside the ever-increasing pace of change that keeps the sport moving forward.

However, these two brilliant aspects converge upon each other to create one of the hot topics of Formula One that will never be resolved: Can you compare F1 eras? By that, I mean, does it mean anything to say Lewis Hamilton has equalled Ayrton Senna’s record of three world championships? Or that Rubens Barrichello was one of the best drivers ever because he started the most races? Or that Michael Schumacher is a better champion than Juan Manuel Fangio because he has two more titles to his name?

F1 is so bound in data, statistics, facts and figures, that it feels like you can make statements like these and argue your case. But the sport is so different now than when it started, so different now than ten years ago, even.

Senna battled hard for his championships, Hamilton has had a couple of dominant seasons with more time each year to make the difference. Barrichello started young and stayed a long time in F1, but in a series that was expanding its calendar as each year went by allowing for the race starts to rack up. Schumacher was an incredible driver but moulded a team around himself, employed some questionable tactics and may or may not have had some assistance from the governing body along the way. Suddenly they don’t seem so comparable at all.

And yet, they are all doing the same job – driving as fast as possible in cars that are designed to go as fast as possible given certain conditions. They’re in the same sport, and more than anything, we want to compare them, to discuss the relative merits and disappointments, to decide who really was the fastest driver or the greatest champion, the best qualifier or the worst teammate to have.

Even within the same year, things get tricky. It’s a well-known adage that if you want to see how a driver is doing, you can only compare him to his teammate. Same car, same machinery, same situations. That doesn’t even bear fruit, though, as there are other things to consider: team orders, favourable strategies, just that cursed bad luck that plagues some drivers more than others. Comparing teammates on a very basic level is hard enough, let alone crossing the boundaries of seasons and even decades.

But it’s human nature to look for the story behind the achievements. What would the youngest F1 driver mean if he wasn’t breaking a record set by previous drivers? How can we relate to the four consecutive championship wins by Sebastian Vettel if he wasn’t standing on the backs of giants? With such a vast history to draw from, despite its differences, it’s hard not to want to pit one success story against another, or analyse failures based on what’s happened in the past. It may not be accurate but it helps us process the information in front of us. It helps fuel the debates that have taken place and will continue well beyond the end of F1 as we know it.

So in the end, I think the answer is no, you can’t compare F1 eras, but oh boy, that isn’t going to stop us from trying.

That’s all for this episode, and this mini series. The Great Debates has come to an end, although the debates themselves will rumble on indefinitely, I have no doubt. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show, do let me know your feelings about any of the topics discussed within, just visit sidepodcast.com/contact to air your views. Enjoy the conversation, enjoy the sport, and thank you for listening.

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This is The Great Debates, a mini series by Sidepodcast, and you’re listening to the sixth of seven episodes. In this series we’re looking at some of the topics that are endlessly debated, usually with no definitive answer and that’s good because I’m not looking to provide answers, just shed light on the conversation. Yesterday was all about circuits and today we’re continuing that theme but moving to a different aspect of the F1 calendar.

The length of an F1 season has changed drastically over the years. The first F1 World Championship included only seven races that counted towards the final scores. Seasons have ebbed and flowed, with races on New Year’s Day or lengthy winter off-seasons, from the races that do and don’t count towards the championship to the compulsory twenty event seasons of recent years.

In the 1980s, the season was about 13 or 14 races long. When I started watching F1, it was up to 17 or 18, and now, in 2017 we’re talking about 20 and 21 race events, and there are still plenty of locations that would still love to be added to the calendar.

Many F1 fans would say the more races the better, bring it on, a race every weekend if you can. NASCAR seasons contain well over 30 races and other sports, such as tennis, go through a full year with various tournaments on almost constantly. But, of course, there’s an argument to be had that the defined season with a clear start, a clear end, and a reasonable length allows for the narrative of a championship to unfold – the long story of how a driver ends up winning the title, whether it be in dominant form, or with a down-to-the-wire finish. If F1 was on all the time, it would dilute the story, and with the racing itself more often disappointing than not, it would do it no favours to be clogging up the TV screens every weekend.

Whilst to full on F1 fans, more races means more fun, that isn’t the story for everyone. At this point in my F1 fan life, I watch and enjoy when I can but can’t prioritise the sport over real life the way I used to. The more race weekends there are, the more chance there is for real life to intervene and for me to miss out on the fun. Equally, getting new fans on board may be easier if there is a limited set of events to watch – the Crashed Ice format of four or five events a season had us hooked immediately – but then again, there’s more chance of them stumbling upon the sport or giving it another chance if it is on screens more often.

Meanwhile, there’s the teams and drivers to think of. Well, not so much the drivers although there’s no argument that they work hard to be good at what they do. The teams of mechanics and engineers though, are hard at it from the moment they arrive at a location to the moment they leave. Unpacking equipment, setting up cars, repairing cars, managing a race, packing, moving on, and that’s before we even talk about the endless travel and opportunities for jet lag.

The more races there are, the more tired these crews will be. We’ve seen the summer break enforced recently to make sure employees take a break, but they are still visibly tired and clearly ready to stop by the final race of the season. If there are more races added to the already busting calendar, then teams are starting to talk about having to double up on race crews, having relief squads to take over when the A team are too tired to continue. This would increase the costs of participating in F1, which in turn could put some teams off joining in the first place.

This debate is a really tricky one as there is no right answer and not even an answer that seems more logical than the others. It’s truly a matter of opinion how long a race season should last, depending on how the sport affects your life and what you put in and get out of it. However, it’s a debate that we are likely to see take centre stage as the calendar creep we have seen in recent seasons continues, and the strain on the teams starts to become a real issue.

That’s all for this penultimate episode of The Great Debates, which means we have just one more episode in this series to go. Do let me know what you think about this particular topic, or previous debates we’ve discussed, or the show itself, by getting in touch at sidepodcast.com/contact. I’ll be back tomorrow with our final Great Debate – can you guess what it might be?

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Hello and welcome to episode four of Post-F1 Paths, the latest mini series from Sidepodcast that investigates what options are available to F1 drivers once they have decided to step out of the car. So far we’ve covered a few options for those wanting a clean break from F1 but now it’s time to go back to the paddock with a new challenge – being the boss.

We haven’t seen it so much recently, but one of the options awaiting a driver when they decide it’s time to hang up those racing gloves is to become the boss. A wealth of experience of driving, managing race weekends, understanding what it takes to win and living the crazy jet set lifestyle that comes with Formula One is a good grounding for taking over a team. Or is it?

There are plenty of examples of drivers making the step up to team owner, F1 history is littered with them. Some, such as John Surtees, opt to own the team and continue to drive at the same time, which must make post-race debriefing sessions odd – the boss telling himself off. Others, such as Alain Prost, wait until after they’ve retired to grab the reigns.

Prost bought the ex-Ligier team in 1997 and remodelled it as Prost Grand Prix. They had a handful of podiums in the early days but things went downhill after that and the team went bankrupt in 2002. Super Aguri was a team managed by Aguri Suzuki, and they become quite famous for being a backmarker squad, eventually running out of money part way through a season.

It’s not always bad news though. Jack Brabham had considerable success with his Brabham outfit, they scored both constructor and driver titles before the team was eventually sold to Bernie Ecclestone, you might have heard of him. And the most famous and long-lasting of all, of course, is the team founded by one Bruce McLaren. Still running to this day with lots of great results behind them, a huge heritage and plenty of respect throughout the paddock – even if the current McLaren era isn’t exactly going to plan.

As I mentioned at the start, the driver-turned-owner dynamic isn’t something we’ve seen more recently, perhaps because the costs of getting into F1 and the barriers to entry are so high. What we do see more of these days is the driver turned ambassador – someone willing to associate their name with a brand, lend their expertise to a team that needs it, basically give them some gravitas in the paddock.

The most obvious example of this at the moment is Niki Lauda, who has become a stalwart of the Mercedes garages, stalking through the paddock ready to give his opinion at the mere hint of a microphone. There’s a vast amount of talent and experience within that team already, but having someone with Lauda’s CV on board should be a help when things get tricky.

One of the things I assumed having an F1 driver as part of the executive team would help with would be driver management. Someone like Niki Lauda knows what it is to disagree with your teammate, to be caught up in the heat of the battle, to want to win at all costs, regardless of what it does to relationships... and yet still have to make those relationships work. That’s why the fight between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg was even more fascinating over the past few seasons – they must have had plenty of advice from all angles to help them through but still the atmosphere just got worse and worse.

It can’t be easy being on the sidelines once an F1 star has decided to give up the day job, and I imagine you have to have a certain attitude to be able to watch the action in the garages or from the pit wall without wanting to elbow people out the way and jump in the car yourself. But for those that can make it work, it must also be a very rewarding experience – using everything you’ve learned in your driving career to turn around and make a new set of drivers, and perhaps even your own team, ultimately have their own success.

That’s all for this episode of Post-F1 Paths, thank you for joining me along our path this series. I’d love to hear what you think about the success or failure of drivers that have turned team boss, manager or ambassador – is it a good idea or are they better suited behind the helmet? Let me know sidepodcast.com/contact. I will be back tomorrow with another episode, please join me then.

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