Category: Formula One

Anything You Can Do

The latest advertisement from Mercedes is one best-timed and well-pitched pieces of advertising I have seen for a long time.

I haven’t written much here for a while. I don’t really know why but I haven’t gone away – perhaps I am just spending all my time moving my Windows Media library across to iTunes. Yes, I gave up and switched to an iPod Nano. And, after all those trials and tribulations with other music players, I am very happy. I even bought the Nike+ kit so that I can track how far I have run at the gym. Seriously, I’ve tried many of the music players and they just don’t have the ease of use and integration that the iTunes has. It’s the seamless interaction that makes it all work so well.

Still, that’s not why I picked up the keyboard today. Earlier I watched the European Formula One Grand Prix; and boy what a race that was. But I don’t really want to talk about the race itself (I am sure you can read all about it here) but I did want to talk about one of the best pieces of advertising that I have seen a long while.

Even if you are not a petrolhead follower of Formula One – and especially if you are British – you can’t have failed to have read some piece about the Championship scrap between Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso.

The latest advertisement from Mercedes (which is of course the team they both drive for) plays on this rivalry beautifully. Anything you can do, I can do better:

I just think the whole thing is really well pitched and they seem to have had some fun making it.

A New Champion

With limited time to write anything longer, a couple of quick things to note about yesterday’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

Fernando is F1 World Champion 2005Ah, Monday morning and so little time to say anything. Nevertheless, Fernando Alonso’s Formula One Championship title (he’s the youngest ever Formula One champion) can’t go without note [Alonso clinches Formula One title] nor can Christian Klien’s superb qualifying performance [itv.com/f1 – Klien goes from zero to hero]. I preferred the later UK start time for the Grand Prix. 6pm seems like a much more sensible hour.

A New Beginning

In news … Minardi sold to Red Bull Racing.

On Friday, I mentioned that The Guardian was getting its new look tomorrow. You can follow the paper’s editors as they plan prepare tomorrow’s paper at The Editors’ Weblog that has launched on the site.

In tomorrow’s sport section I hope they cover Formula One in some detail. It’s been announced that Red Bull Racing will take over the Minardi team from November. Minardi’s boss, Paul Stoddart, told BBC News “Small privateer teams are probably phasing themselves out … it’s hard to imagine a truly privateer team can break into F1 again”. I think that’s sad for the sport really but the who really has got that much money?

Button On The Podium

At the front, Jenson began to close on Michael Schumacher during the second stint of the race and by lap 30 he was on the Ferrari’’s gearbox.

jenson button bar honda2005 German Grand Prix: Ah what a great day: At the front, Jenson began to close on Michael Schumacher during the second stint of the race and by lap 30 he was on the Ferrari’s gearbox. Over the next 15 laps he tried to force the seven-time world champion into a mistake and on lap 45 it happened: Jenson pulled a masterful overtaking manoeuvre into the hairpin [source]

UPDATE 27 July: I wish I had time to write but for now I will just quote, ‘The Lucky Strike B.A.R Honda team heads east to Budapest for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix hoping to repeat the podium finish achieved in Germany’ [source]

Silverstone, Here I Come

The tent is packed for Silverstone.

My Silverstone Countdown: I’ll be leaving in a couple of hours – tent packed with a car load of food – and I’m getting pretty excited by the prospect of the whole event. Silverstone is so much fun and now David Coulthard is defending it. He ‘has hit out at Silverstone’s critics ahead of his bid to secure Red Bull’s first-ever podium finish in Sunday’s British Grand Prix’ [Source] Who knows if I’ll get a chance to post but keep an eye on the Flickr feed to see any pictures I’ll be sending.

Silverstone Circuit Weather

It’s getting close to the moment I have to pitch a tent near Silverstone.

Silverstone countdown: get familiar with the tracks so you can work out where you would like to be on certain days. I think the people I am going with will know better than me but it’s still fun to watch the speeds. In the meantime, keep an eye on the weather at the Silverstone circuit although I have seen varying reports in different places. Sun? Showers? A year ago tomorrow we were watching them race around the streets of London. Somehow, that would have been much more convenient, don’t you think?

Countdown is Progressing

Counting down to the British Grand Prix.

It’s only three days until I arrive at the British Grand Prix site and so I’m having a fantastic build up. Firstly, I can report that the tent has been purchased and I can – just about – get it up. This is, of course, a great start. Secondly – and don’t tell the bookmakers – but I can tell you Jensen Button isn’t going to win on Sunday. How do I know? He said so. “I have no chance of winning. It won’t happen, we are not capable of doing that”. [Source] The excitement builds …

Formula 1 2004 Race Calendar For Outlook Import

Yet again, I have created a CSV file to import the new Formula One racing season calendar into your Outlook calendar so you never miss a race (unless I got my timings wrong).

Michael Schumacher, driving his Ferrari, won the 2003 Formula One championship on the final race. This weekend, it all starts again with the Australian Grand Prix. It’s about the only sport I follow with anything like an interest, but I won’t be up at 2am for the start of ITV‘s coverage. I may, however, be around at 1.30pm for the repeat showing.

And once again this year, I have trawled the net looking for a list of the year’s races in a format easily importable into Outlook. And once again, I have been frustrated because I couldn’t find it anywhere. Many years ago, before I went Corporate and joined the merry band of worldwide Outlook users, I used Time and Chaos– an excellent organiser. They have a transportable record set ready for the 2004 Formula One season. Yahoo enables you to import the race list into your Yahoo calendar(although the race order on the Yahoo site is different from the official list on the FIA site). None of which is really any use to me.

So, once again, I have created a basic .csv file containing the data, which can easily be imported into Outlook. After last year’s rant, I said I would learn the vCal format, but I didn’t, so it’s a plain-old .csv file for you. If you want to import F1 races into your Outlook calendar, please feel free to use the file.

Once again, I took the race order and timings from the Official FIA site. This year, however, I have modified the times so that they reflect British Summer Time (GMT+1) where required. I can, therefore, use it. I have noted the time zone in the ‘description’ field in Outlook so you can change it locally if you wish. I couldn’t find any time zone field in the .csv format.

If you check different sources of the race calendar, you’ll find slight variations in the timing. Don’t blame me if you miss it and, in my best continuity announcer’s voice, check local listings.

Also, this year I have added information about the distance and laps in the location field.

I have provided the file as a .zip, so you must first extract the .csv from that. Then, in Outlook, you will need to go to the File menu and import the data (import from another program or file) and place it in the calendar. The file is provided as is, and you use it at your own risk. I don’t know any way you can remove it without deleting each entry individually. This year, I have included a category name ‘Formula One’ so you can easily find all the entries this file creates. It should be easier to find them in Outlook and remove them if needed. If you already have a Formula One category in your Outlook calendar, you may want to edit the file before importing so you can change the category name. The file is fairly simple, and you should be able to read it in any spreadsheet program (and even some text file readers will read it).

As always, your comments are welcome, as are suggestions, where an official version of this file can be found.