Alt+F1: 01 - 03/10/2014 - Preseason Primer

Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog!

Just listened to the podcast, great stuff! I'm thinking of getting into F1 this year after about 10 years off, and this was a good primer of what's happening right now (along with the article on the site). Looking forward to more podcasts as the season progresses!

Mind. Blown.

Start your engines... Its time for ALT+F1!!

Awesome show guys.

Just one small correction on qualifying this year (other than the length of each stage): there has been a change as far as tyres go. The top 10 drivers actually start the race on the set of tyres they set the best time in Q2 with. They're given a throwaway set for Q3 so they don't have to be conservative at all.

I like that because it means nobody has an excuse not to run in Q3, which as you know has been a bit of an issue over the last couple of seasons. It also opens up the possibility of a top team being too conservative on their Q2 runs in an effort to save their race tyres, and ending up missing out on Q3 altogether.

Well...why not?

Really looking forward to this. I've been watching F1 for about 3 years now.. I'm going to the Austin race for the first time this year. Very excited. Giantbomb meetup there?

This was a pretty great start for this podcast. Probably not overloading people who are new to F1 with too much information, but getting across most vital points on regulations, some of the technical aspects and on a few drivers.

I'd really like to know who Danny's and Drew's favorite teams and drivers actually are though. Danny got somewhat into it, without being too specific sadly, and no word from Drew yet.

Hopefully it's gonna be a close season, with Red Bull a bit behind (after the last few years, I really don't want to see them recover from their training session problems any time soon, also I just don't like Sebastian Vettel), and Mercedes and Ferrari battling for the championships.

I've always been a fan of Mercedes and especially of Kimi Räikkönen (and in the last few years of Fernando Alonso also), so here's hoping for Mercedes to take the team's championship and Kimi the driver's championship. Glad to see some other Kimi fans here too.

Anyways I'm looking forward to more of these as the season goes along. Keep up the good work, Danny and Drew.

This better not be a one off. Otherwise I might feel a bit down.

I don't care for any kind of racing, yet

@quantical: They're at least doing one for each race.

As a life long F1 fan i can say you guys nailed it. Looking forward to more.

no call Mercedes, Mercedes. Petronas is an oil company.

Loving it!!!! Love F1, Love Giant Bomb!!! Now we just need drew to stream him playing F1 2013!!!

I feel like you guys need a 3rd though... partly to make it a little more lively... and partly to check your facts :P

Drew, Danny, F1... THIS PODCAST WAS MADE FOR ME.

I'm so looking forward to F1 now that maybe and hopefully Vettel's having trouble. ^_^

This is fantastic (so is the podcast art). Good work, gentlemen. Now we just need a MotoGP podcast...

I love that art cover! Going to have to listen to this on the way home.

Does F1 largely only host races in some of the worst spots in the world? Bahrain? Sochi? Brutal. I don't know if even FIFA is willing to work out of Bahrain these days.

As a British person I find it strange that F1 isn't as well known outside of mostly the EU and a few select other countries. I always assumed it was huge everywhere given the coverage it gets here and the money involved.

Holy shit. As an F1 fan and a GiantBomb fan, my mind is BLOWN right now. Thank you guys for doing this! You have at least one person who will listen to every damn post of this podcast. Keep it going!

DREW!!

Awesome! Props gonna start up F1 2013 to get hyped for this weekend and listen to this.

This is wonderful, so much better than I could have imagined. A really great introduction to F1, going over lots of important things to expect about a race weekend, from the cars, tracks etc. There was the odd inaccuracy, but nothing important. All I would say is call Mercedes Mercedes, don't bother with the Petronas.

I knew I would like Danny's take on F1 as soon as he said that last year wasnt boring despite the domination, because there was racing throughout the pack, F1 is so much more than just who wins.

Everywhere I see F1 content its just so incredibly partisan, from the TV coverage which is so nationalistic, forums which make sony and microsoft fanboys look rational, and other podcasts which turn into bitch fests when their favourite driver isnt winning. F1 isnt like most sports, you are missing out completely if you are only watching to support a team/driver.

F1 is probably the largest auto sport internationally, but its one of those things that Americans just dont seem to give a shit about. Sorta like how most Americans dont really give a shit about real football (soccer) which is by far the most popular sport internationally but love american football which it seems like nobody else in the world pays attention to. Nascar is the auto sport equivalent of american football and for some reason Americans are enamored by watching cars go around an oval for hundreds of laps

I don't think this will cause a full-on leap from "vague interest" to "rabid obsession" in the same way the Power Bombcast did, but I do enjoy some F1 and I'm very much looking forward to this podcast.

Alonso hasn't won a championship with Ferrari. Kimi on the other hand was the last person to win the driver's championship racing for Ferrari in 2007.

But I love this feature.

Like Danny said, sadly, a very huge part of F1 is money. And all the races in weird places come down to the host countries paying the FIA a shit ton of money, or in a very few cases, where there's a huge fan community, which again means lots of money.

I hope this hits iTunes at some point

I felt as if I belonged here for some reason...

Small correction. Danny, you've confused 'the paddock' with Parc Fermé. The paddock is where all the corporate hospitality happens and where the drivers and personnel hang out when they're not on track. Parc Fermé is where the cars are held to prevent changes to setup once those are locked in. Literally a "secure (car) park".

As someone who used to be really into F1 (I stopped caring when they started making up the video game rules and banning a lot of the progressive technology to make things more 'competitive') it's interesting to see someone who doesn't really know the scene react to information I take for granted (engine deals, strange rules, history...). I might start watching again this season just to see this develop :). I'll be rooting for Raikonnen in that case, with Webber gone he's one of the few remaining pilots that have some personality and just want to enjoy their jobs.

I do have to disagree with the statement that F1 is mostly about straight line speed and that they corner very slow. F1 is all about cornering fast. Even more, they HAVE to corner fast because that is the only way the aerodynamics work. Except during the really tight, slow turns, it would actually be more difficult to corner slow because they would spin out due to the lack of downforce...

Two of the coolest men talking about one of the coolest sports. Nirvana.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable podcast
looking forward to future installments

@jensonb said:

Appreciate the clarification. Keep em coming, I rather not repeat my errors!

Danny mentioned at the one point about F1 being a big money sport, and yeah, they basically go to whoever is willing to pay the most to host races. Part of the problem with the classic older tracks is that the infrastructure in some spots was 30-40 years old, with poor roads in for spectators (Silverstone is a classic example of this, it used to take hours to get out of there on a Sunday after the race) and lacking the high standard of facility that Bernie Ecclestone and the teams now demand. So we lost races in France, and were threatened with classic races in Belgium and Britain (Spa is up there with Monaco as the drivers favourite on the calendar). And we gained races in places which are willing to invest hundreds of millions on a new race track and all the infrastructure to go with it, which is why you end up in places that aren't exactly best pals with democracy like China and Bahrain.

But of course these countries don't have the fanbase that F1 has in Europe thanks to 60+ years of racing, so you end up with Korea spending $260m on a racetrack, nobody turning out to watch at a beautiful venue (in the middle of nowhere) with a capacity of 130,000, which is off the calendar after just 4 years. A similar thing happened with Turkey, which has vanished from the calendar.

So yeah, F1 has never been shy about jumping in bed with shady regimes, it is all about Bernie Ecclestone making as much cash as he can. He's about as moral as a very immoral thing.

Anyway, very enjoyable first show guys. I have fallen out of love with F1 lately but with thing Vettel dominance even potentially over I'm looking forward to the start of another season and you fellas have me excited about it. I got into the sport thanks to my mother, who started watching because it was on Sunday nights when newly born me made her stay up late, so she caught the highlights and got hooked. I dropped out during the years of Schumi's utter dominance, got back into it after stopping a job which meant working most Sundays for a few years, but lost the love when Vettel basically became the new Michael. Which is an awesome feat by both him and Red Bull, but I do like it when there is a little less domination at the front of the grid when I'm having to wake up at 3am to watch races from Japan or Australia

Well, the FIFA said they didn't care that the stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar were built by slaves and that was "just the way things are done over there". That's quite a bit worse I'd say... But both of those companies have always had a distinct lack of respect for humans.

Today is a great day for hardcore Formula One fans who are also Giantbomb dot com subscribers the world over.

@tomba_be: Yes I reacted to that as well. A lot of street car can drive as fast as an F1 can in a straight line, F1 cars are known for corner speed, fast acceleration and heavy braking.

Calling the Mercedes factory team Petronas, really? I've never heard anyone do that. :P Thought everyone just called them Mercedes.

It's weird to listen to an introduction to F1 after watching F1 for 15 years. They got a lot of small bits wrong but who can blame them. Should be good for newcomers :)

Jerez - is in Spain and not in the USA

Hamilton won '08 title because of changing weather conditions.

Kimi was not at Ferrari for 5 years

Danny, you know a lot, just not enough. Not to be picky, but there are definitely a lot of things that were just plain wrong.

But i'm glad giantbomb is doing this.

Yay I've been looking forward to this.

@dannyodwyer: ok two more small corrections. Vettel has won four championships, and Jerez is in Spain. They where the only two I noticed.

Fantastic choice of 90s racing-intro music, by the way.

One more quick correction: While ERS-K is used for much longer per lap and delivers a huge amount more power, I believe it is no longer controlled by the driver (though maybe this is optional, I'm not entirely sure). It will be controlled by the ECU to deliver all that extra power at strategic places throughout the lap/over a race distance.

Loved every second of it! Let's hope you don't run out of steam once the races get overly boring.

As an Irish citizen I am offended that you guys did not use the name Irish car bombcast.

Outside of that small oversight, Great podcast guys.

@khann: You are correct, the ECU now distributes the boost throughout the lap, meaning the cars are running with hybrid drive. This applies to all the energy stored in the Energy Store, coming from both the ERS- K and the ERS-H

Edit: More properly, MGU-K and MGU-H. MGU stands for Motor Generator Unit.

We can all learn from each other!