When it was announced that Michael Schumacher was preparing to replace Felipe Massa at Ferrari while the Brazilian convalesces, the great ideological gulf among F1 fans suddenly re-emerged. I can’t remember seeing such strong reactions on any issue about any subject, let alone F1.

For some people, Michael Schumacher might as well be Jesus. You could produce video evidence of him killing a kitten and he would still be the greatest man on earth. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t appreciate genius when they see it?

For others, there is nothing that can redeem Michael Schumacher. He is a serial cheat whose team-mates were all hamstrung and whose seven World Drivers’ Championships are among the least deserving ever awarded. You must surely see that he is the most evil man on earth?

My view is slightly more nuanced. He was a bit of both. His record speaks for itself, and he must take credit especially for his ability to build a team around him. But I hated the way he went about racing.

Incidentally, for a fair-minded assessment of Michael Schumacher, I highly recommend James Allen’s book, The Edge of Greatness. I always thought James Allen as a commentator was too biased in favour of Schumacher, but his book displays a very measured and nuanced assessment of his qualities as a driver, and his failings as a sportsperson.

I must come straight out and say that I have never been a fan of Michael Schumacher. Never. And for me, his talent was tainted by his tendency to bend the rules whenever he had the slightest opportunity.

I don’t even rate him much as a racer. For me, his wheel-to-wheel skills were rather poor, and he disguised this by being overly aggressive. That was why he often panicked under pressure, such as at Jerez in 1997. If he found himself in the midfield, he sometimes had very clumsy races indeed — his botched move on Takuma Sato at Suzuka in 2003 springs to mind.

Schumacher was famous for relying on Ross Brawn strategies to “overtake in the pitlane” rather than try to make a genuine overtaking move. I highly doubt that Schumacher would have won as many Championships if refuelling wasn’t legal. I won’t lie: 2000–2004 were my least favourite years of watching F1 since I first fell in love with the sport in the mid-1990s.

Since Schumacher left F1 I do feel as though I have started to enjoy F1 a lot more. Even though some of the drivers are not perfect in terms of their adherence to the rules or their spirit of fair competition, it feels a lot less like a dark cloud such as Rascassegate will come rumbling over the hills at any moment.

Now, of course, he is back in F1 and it has changed again. It amuses me greatly that even weeks before his first grand prix back is due to start, he already sought ways to cheat, to unfairly gain an advantage over his competitors. It says it all about him in one action.

Williams are not my favourite team either, but they were totally right to block this blatant infringement of the rules. Just a couple of weeks before, Toro Rosso’s new driver Jaime Alguersuari was refused a similar request, and he did a perfectly adequate job. Quite why a supposedly great 7 times World Champion needs to practice so much is not clear to me.

Ferrari’s enormously arrogant statement in retaliation against the blocked request sums up why I can’t stand the team so much. Apparently they think the red rule should still exist. What happened to that spirit of cooperation they were supposedly so keen on? I guess now that the Concorde Agreement is signed, cordial relations are not so important any more.

It is clear that the testing rules need amending. I have been saying so for a long time now. But until a new set of rules are agreed upon, everyone needs to adhere to them, otherwise you may as well just rip the rulebook up (some would argue Ferrari have ripped up the rulebook and written their own anyway).

This is all a sign that Michael Schumacher does not intend to simply go through the motions. I had wondered quite what was in this comeback for Schumacher. I saw easily why Ferrari were interested. But what could possibly have motivated Schumacher?

After all, he potentially has so much to lose. With his wife and kids — and we know his wife is concerned because he says he has made an “arrangement” with her that health is the top priority — he surely doesn’t want to be doing something so dangerous. He cannot possibly need the money, and he certainly doesn’t have anything else to prove (unless he wants somehow to prove that he can be a good sportsperson, but that opportunity has already been shot).

He also risks being embarrassed because of his waning ability. At 40, he is the oldest driver to compete in F1 since Nigel Mansell in 1995, and let us not forget that Mansell’s last period as an F1 driver was not exactly a roaring success. And after two and a half years out of competitive grand prix racing, there is every chance that he will be rusty during his forthcoming races.

But now we know what motivates him — it is his sheer, ruthless competitiveness. He may have initially agreed out of “loyalty” to Ferrari, but once he’s a driver again he is up to the same old tricks, looking for the slightest advantage wherever it may come from.

Of course, many would say that this is what sets him apart from everyone else.

2007 F1 season review

A series of posts

1. F1 season review: the backmarkers
2. F1 season review: the frontrunners
3. F1 season review: the constructors (11th–6th)
4. F1 season review: the constructors (top 5)
5. F1 season review: broadcasts
6. F1 season review: podcasts
7. F1 season review: websites

I am making this the last in my series of posts looking back on the 2007 Formula 1 season. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit sick of writing them every Sunday. I skipped last week. Anyway, next Sunday is in a different year, and it’s a bit off to be looking back when everyone else is looking forward.

Anyway, I promised I would review Formula 1 websites, so here goes. Again, this is all in alphabetical order.

Autosport.com

A reliable source of Formula 1 — and other motorsport — news. It is also the most frequently updated of the F1 RSS feeds I subscribe to. So chances are that if something has happened, Autosport will have the story.

There is also a neat ‘Autosport TV’ feature, containing highlights of certain motorsport events. Bernie take note — this is how things will be done in the future, so don’t leave F1 lagging behind every other series!

Unfortunately, not all of the content on Autosport.com is free. But you can’t have it all. The website also performed badly on the day of McLaren’s WMSC hearing, when the website was down for huge parts of the afternoon, and then when it came back up it got the story wrong. Oh dear.

BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula One

The BBC’s F1 news website is as you would expect — solid, but not really in-depth enough for obsessives like me. Only the very biggest F1 stories appear on BBC Sport Online, and they seldom contain anything revelatory.

Having said that, there are some neat features from time to time. Heikki Kovalainen wrote a regular column. I also particularly enjoyed reading an article about Kimi Räikkönen’s playboy image! There is also some good video and audio content collected from the BBC’s output.

However, the stories and features also concentrate too much on Lewis Hamilton. I guess this is to be expected from the BBC, but it’s all a bit fawning and not very balanced.

As for the other features, again they are pretty good, although they haven’t changed much for several years. I would imagine that features such as the pitstop guide are excellent resources if you are just getting into the sport.

BlogF1

Ollie White’s BlogF1 was the first Formula 1 blog I started reading regularly. The posts strike a neat balance between news and opinion, although I personally prefer more opinion-heavy pieces.

I have to confess that nowadays my favourite feature of BlogF1 is the weekly caption contest. However, there are some other neat features hidden away from the main blog area.

There is a particularly comprehensive section on racetracks from around the world, complete with images from Google Maps. There is also a stunning complete list of championship statistics going all the way back to 1950, the inception of the Drivers World Championship.

F1 Insight

This excellent blog is, as its title suggests, very insightful. What I love about it is the fact that Clive doesn’t just churn out banal posts about the issues of the day. Instead, he finds an interesting angle and then writes about it, bringing to the reader’s attention an aspect that he may not previously have thought about.

To take some recent examples, there is a post questioning Sebastian Vettel’s reputation as a promising driver. And here is an interesting take on Fernando Alonso — is he going to be the greatest reputation-maker of all time?

In sum, F1 Insight is guaranteed to challenge the conventional wisdom, making it an essential read.

F1Fanatic

Without a doubt, the best Formula 1 blog around! What astonishes me is that you can visit the website every single day and there will be something new — even in the depths of the off-season. There was even a new post on Christmas Day, but you are just as likely to find three or four new posts per day even at this time of year.

The breadth of features is also breathtaking. Book and DVD reviews often appear. The Lapped Legends series takes a look at some of the less talented drivers and teams in F1′s history. And the ‘F1 in the Blogs’ feature is a must-read roundup of the best F1 blogging. The blog has also been known to hold competitions which I have been lucky enough to win!

Main writer Keith Collantine is clearly very dedicated to the website and infinitely knowledgeable about the sport. It could so easily fall into the trap of being a haven for stattos, but it actually strikes a perfect balance between geek heaven and accessibility.

Ah, and I have also had a guest post published on F1Fanatic. So obviously it’s a must-read!

Formula 1 Blog

This is the Formula 1 Blog as in Negative Camber and Grace, whose podcast I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The blog is rather different to their podcast. You would never guess that it was the same thing. The long, in-depth podcasts are accompanied by very concise, brief, pithy blog posts.

Despite the difference in style, the blog is great for all the same reasons as the podcast. Priding itself on being a “journal of opinion”, forceful opinion is certainly what you get.

One problem is that you have to be registered to comment. This is okay, and understandable in an age where upwards of 95% of blog comments are spam. But I tried to register and never got my confirmation email, so I am locked out (well, not really, but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of registering again). Okay, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit off-putting.

As well as the blog, there is a forum which I hear is buzzing. But forums are not quite my thing.

Formula1.com

This is the big daddy — Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 website. It has come on leaps and bounds in the past year.

The best bit is still the Live Timing facility. If you have access to a computer during a grand prix, having Live Timing open will keep you up to date, with access to pretty much all of the information you would want, updated in real time.

The news section is so-so, but this is more than made up for by the site’s other features. A particular joy is the technical section, which looks in detail at the developments each team makes throughout the season. There is also great information on each circuit, a fine image gallery, profiles on all the teams and drivers and — for the bravest among us — a good section on F1′s Byzantine rules.

Perhaps the strongest part of the website, though, is the database of past races results, stretching right back to 1950. An excellent, in-depth resource if you want to look up old race and Championship results.

However, this section suffers from a frustrating navigational quirk. Say I want to look up the past results of a driver. I can select the driver, say Kimi Räikkönen. Now I want to look at his results from 2002, so naturally I select 2002 from the drop-down menu. But this takes me straight to the Championship Table of 2002, not the results of Kimi Räikkönen. What a pain!

Little annoyances aside though, Formula1.com is better than you might expect. It is finally catching up with other motorsport series. Now FOM needs to move into offering video on the website urgently. An insipid, 30 second long ‘highlights’ clip (which inevitably focuses on the crashes rather than the racing) will not do. Bernie needs to offer more video content online in future. If he is going to take all the interesting videos off YouTube, he had better offer them on Formula1.com.

Fun F1

A fair attempt at an F1 humour website, although not the best.

GrandPrix.com

One of the best F1 news sites going. This website might not have the budget or the big-name status of, say, Autosport, but it undoubtedly has the contacts.

Often the stories are as much about rumours as they are about hard facts. But this is often to its advantage. I seem to remember that GrandPrix.com was the first website to announce that Kimi Räikkönen had signed for Ferrari. Some other websites laughed at the suggestion at the time, but GrandPrix.com was proved right.

It was also consistently ahead of the curve in the reporting of the Stepneygate scandal. You simply had to read GrandPrix.com to keep on top of the facts surrounding the issue. Remarkable reporting.

ING Renault F1 Team – Weblog

A fine companion to the Renault podcast. Once again it demonstrates that Renault are serious about reaching fans in ways that other teams don’t consider. The blog is properly done as well, not half-hearted and with a buzzing comments section.

The design is rather busy for my liking, but to be fair I am not the biggest fan of the content either (unlike the podcast, which is excellent). Nevertheless, this is a lesson to the other teams: this is how it should be done.

ITV Sport – F1

This season saw the ITV-F1 website turn from a reasonable, accessible guide to Formula 1 into a central cog of the Lewis Hamilton hype machine. No doubt it is good for raking in the advertising money, but it is awful for genuine F1 fans.

Nevertheless, there are some top features on the ITV-F1 website. For instance, there are regular columns from Peter Windsor and David Coulthard. And Ted Kravitz’s notebook is often worth a read.

Next year I expect nothing less than a Lewis stalking feature which will plot on a Google Map where Lewis Hamilton is at this precise moment in time.

Linksheaven

A reasonably good Formula 1 group blog.

Pitpass

A fine independent Formula 1 website. Like GrandPrix.com — a reliable news resource, although Pitpass has a much slicker design! I have to say though, it is rather annoying that you can’t copy any of the text if you want to quote it. I can’t think of any other websites that persist on using this user-unfriendly technique that treats normal users — even people like me who want to approvingly link back — as criminals.

I would also rather that the news feed did not contain stories about that awful tripe known as A1 Grand Prix. Yeah, that toytown motor racing series where drivers don’t win, nor do teams — but countries do. What a load of nationalistic gash!

Apart from that, the news reports are good. The opinion pieces are fine, but often come across as a bit curmudgeonly. And the endless predictions of the imminent death of Formula 1 do get tiresome after a while.

Sidepodcast

A great blog to accompany a great podcast! They have recently had a new lick of paint. That’s all I can say. A cracking read, just as much as the podcast is a cracking listen.

Sniff Petrol

The best attempt at a Formula 1 humour site. This site provides some much-needed light relief amid the turmoil and politics of an F1 season.

Highlights include Crazy Dave Coulthard (complete with entertaining descriptions of what Red Bull tastes like), D.I. Blundell’s latest report and the latest advice Michael Schumacher has given to his brother.

Times Online Formula One blog

Ed Gorman’s Formula 1 blog is easily the best of the MSM F1 blogs. I do hope it returns for the 2008 season. I imagine it will because apparently it has been very popular indeed.

I can vouch for that. I think I can thank the comments section of Ed Gorman’s blog for a few of this blog’s readers nowadays. It is still to this day one of my top referrers. Infact, it is the top referrer to this blog all year apart from Google Images UK. And this is all from the comments sections of two posts from October. Blimey.

One problem was that it came to be defined in terms of its (oddly) mostly Spanish readership clashing with Ed Gorman’s British perspective on events. Thankfully in the end the relationship appears to have become the more respectful, ‘agree to disagree’ type, rather than the antagonistic relationship it could have been.

I think that’s about it, mostly because I am losing the will to live. As are you, most likely. Er, any other suggestions, blah blah, etc.?

Copyshite

A series of posts

1. Copyshite
2. The entertainment industry’s wrong turns
3. The future of music: gigs and t-shirts
4. The future of music: pretty boxes

There is a really interesting post about intellectual property and the woes facing the entertainment industry by James Graham. Given that I have been meaning to write about this issue for a long time, I may as well use this as the opportunity to finally get round to it.

But first, a couple of notes on copyrights and patents. James Graham says:

Both global patent and copyright laws have been extended in recent decades. The original idea behind such laws appears to have been forgotten and pure greed has taken its place. Globalisation means that the earnings potential from a new idea has massively increased; yet at the same time we’ve artificially increased it further still, and long lives will extend this still further. To take one example, J.K. Rowling, a rich woman who can afford the very best in healthcare, is likely to have a very long life. Let’s assume she lives to 100, in 2065. The copyright on her books will stay with her estate until 2135. That means that her great-great-great grandchildren will still be profiting from their ancestor’s books. Is there really any justification for that?

I quite agree. The traditional justification for strong copyright laws is to encourage innovation. You come up with a great idea, and we’ll make sure nobody else can profit from it.

Sound enough at first. But how long should this monopoly last? Is “life plus 70 years” or even “life plus 50 years” justified? Is 50 years even justified? Hardly.

Copyright was big(ish) news in the UK last year when there was a push by artists such as Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney and Bono (where’s his “altruism” now?) to get copyright extended from 50 years. Coincidentally (or not), Cliff Richard’s and Paul McCartney’s most successful recordings are soon to enter the public domain.

And let us bear in mind that this was for copyright on the recordings. So the copyright extension would have meant artists earning even more money from something that they did once, over 50 years ago, regardless of whether or not they even wrote the song. If only the rest of us could earn so much money for so long from doing a job just once!

So do strong copyright laws encourage innovation? It is difficult to imagine that Cliff Richard entered the recording booth in 1958 thinking about the money he’d be making from it in 2007. He will have been most concerned about the money he’d make from it in 1958 and a few years after that. Nobody but the most egotistical and talented musicians would imagine raking it in for any longer than 50 years.

Having copyright lasting “only” 50 years didn’t stifle innovation in the 1950s and 1960s — the rock n roll and beat music booms happened regardless. And looking at the subsequent careers of these early innovators of pop music, it is difficult to argue that these strong copyright laws have done anything but stifle innovation. After all, why would you bother to make more great music if you are still making money from 50-year-old music?

That makes sense when you think about it. Copyright laws essentially ensure that an artist has a monopoly. And monopolies are detested because of their effects on social welfare.

Cliff Richard isn’t concerned about innovation. His only incentive is to get his grubby hands on even more money. What a relief that the government rejected the proposal in the end.

So what is the optimal length of copyright? A paper by Rufus Pollock suggests that it is approximately 15 years. A far cry from the life plus 70 years for some works, or the 95 years that Cliff Richard called for.

It is a similar story with patents. The justification for patents is more or less the same as that for copyright laws. But research (PDF) by James Bessen and Eric Maskin (who I wrote about a couple of weeks ago) suggests that protection of intellectual property should be more “balanced”.

The ideal patent policy limits “knock-off” imitation, but allows developers who make similar, but potentially valuable complementary contributions.

Empirical evidence backs this up, as an extension of patent protection into the realm of software in the USA in the 1980s did not lead to an increase in innovation.

An interesting point about Rufus Pollock’s research is that he suggests that copyright laws should be weakened as the costs of production and reproduction decrease. And the past decade has seen a massive reduction in the costs of production due to advances in technology — particularly the internet.

And it is the entertainment industry’s complete inability to adapt to this reality that has left it in the mess it is currently in. That will be the subject of my next post in the series.

Anyway, seemingly on his blog he is publishing some of the lists that are appearing in the book and today the top twenty Scottish blogs, as decided by Grant Thoms of Tartan Hero fame, have been posted. I am guessing — since the book is about political blogging and Iain Dale’s is a political blog — that it is a list of Scottish political blogs. This blog appears at number 2 in the list.

This raises the thorny old issue — is this a political blog? I grappled with this on the back of the election earlier this year.

Like I said in that post, back when I was a seventeen year old (when I was still in blog nappies and regularly vomiting in the sidebar), I used to aspire to be a political blogger. Over the years I became more and more apathetic about party politics (although usually not the issues in general) and I gradually toned down the political posts until this blog ended up being the eclectic rag-bag it is today. Nowadays I only really blog about politics if I get really wound up.

Anyway, it’s not every day you get linked to from one of the country’s most popular political blogs. Perhaps not the best selection of posts to have on the front page. So many people will have arrived to see the post about Blur (which I only did because I couldn’t be bothered writing a proper post!), some F1 posts and “ooh, look at me on the radio”. Politics is nowhere to be seen really.

Still, I am of course grateful that Grant Thoms saw fit to put me in second place, even if I’m not sure if it’s deserved or if I’m even eligible. But the thing about lists is that nobody ever agrees with another person’s list. It is bad enough choosing just number one, but to choose one to twenty and rank them… well, nobody is going to be very happy with the result. You can see that in the comments at Iain Dale’s.

Many — including The Devil’s Kitchen — are quite rightly asking where Mr Eugenides is. Personally, I am not sure why Rolled-Up Trousers is number one. I think it’s a good blog, but number one? Not so sure.

I would have placed J. Arthur MacNumpty and Holyrood Chronicles (not Hollywood Chronicles as Iain Dale wrote, no matter what the politicians might like to think!) higher, although I probably should not say what I would put lower as that is not very polite. But like I say. Lists? Fun to make, but infuriating to read.

Kerron Cross suggested in Iain Dale’s comments that Ridiculous Politics should have made the top twenty. Ridiculous Politics is the most aptly named blog out there. Once, when I was considering posts to go into the roundup, I got so angry at it that I wrote a long rant about why Ridiculous Politics is ridiculous. Needless to say, it wouldn’t have made my top twenty.

Update: Just realised also — where is SNP Tactical Voting?

The score on the other question is currently 6–2 in favour of keeping F1 posts here. I came up with a good name if I were to set up a separate F1 blog, although now that I’ve said it’s good I’ve only built up your expectations which would make it a disappoinment. I would call it vee8. Maybe a bit too obscure if you’re not a big F1 fan, and you just know that they would let teams use V10 engines again as soon as I started the blog.

Turnout is high, currently running at a massive eight votes. You’ve excelled yourselves. I’ll keep the polls up for a bit longer, but to be honest it looks as though the result is settled. So here’s one of those boring posts about my life that I promised.

I can’t believe that this is the last week of my summer. University holidays are meant to be long. They are really really long if you look at it on a calendar for instance. And last year’s felt really long, but that’s mostly because I spent all of my time either sitting on my bum or making a general nuisance of myself.

This year, though, I set myself a few goals. I know this is very target setterish, but it had to be done — partly to get myself in shape for life, and partly to keep me busy (staying busy makes me happier). I started taking driving lessons, which was quite good at first because it gave me a reason to get up in the morning. Then I got a job and I lost all interest in the driving lessons!

In a lot of ways I think this summer has been very successful — in terms of reaching some of my goals and so on. In other ways it wasn’t so successful. I mean, I never did all those summery things such as going out to the local scum-club. I think we are getting too sensible as we grow up.

I couldn’t reach all of my goals, mostly because I haven’t had the time! I know, it’s incredible — I’ve hardly been able to keep on top of time this summer. It was all so very different last year.

While we’re on time management, I was sad to see that the Political Teenager has gone on hiatus for the following reason:

Now I am starting University, I will not have time for long winded posts and rants.

This is a bit surprising to me. I’ve always wondered why you don’t find more students writing blogs (I’m not counting those of the LiveJournal type here). It’s not as if students don’t have shedloads of spare time. And in my experience students seem to divide their spare time approximately as follows:

• 40% boozing it up
• 30% “ironically” watching Neighbours
• 20% on MyFaceBeboJournal
• 10% forcing everybody within a 20 mile radius to use Fairtrade goods whenever possible
• 9% pretending to be in poverty
• ¾% being unable to add up to 100 and making ridiculous, mostly fictitious lists with little bearing on anything
• ¼% studying

Surely more of them can squeeze in a bit of blogging? After all, they are always banging on about how politically aware they are.

Sitting here, I think that going back to Uni might give me more time to blog. I really do dread going back to Uni, especially what with it being 3^rd year and all. It is going to be hard work. But at least I’ll be in some form of a routine. I’ll always have a few hours of spare time at the end of every day; ample time to get some blogging in.

I’ll also finally be able to listen to all those podcasts that I’ve been stashing away, never to be listened to. There’ll be plenty of time on the train for that. And reading all those economics books that I somehow never found the time to read.

The thing about this summer is that I’ve just been arranging lots of things without thinking about whether I really have the time to do it, simply because I’ve been so eager to keep myself busy. I’ve actually had to strike things off my list because I’ve got so much to do this week. For instance, my driving theory test is on Thursday. Thursday morning indeed. Why oh why did I book it for that time?!

I said I couldn’t believe that this was my last week of summer, but technically that was last week. This week is freshers week, and all the cool kids are out having fun. Here I am getting pale in front of a computer. Oh well.

Anyway, I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to matriculate this week. Regular readers will know that commuting to Edinburgh involves roughly a three hour round trip for me. This week I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to write a time when I can meet my Director of Studies on a piece of paper. Then I’ve got to go back and meet him at that time. Six hours of my life wasted on bureaucracy! Aargh!

And then once I’ve got work on Saturday out of the way I’ll just have a teeny weeny bit of time left to get rested and make sure I’m all set to start University. Do I have enough pens? I don’t know. Did I clear out my folder from last year? Can’t remember. Have I done any preparatory reading? Of course not. I need to get my hair cut, my shoes have chosen this week to wear out, and I really ought to buy myself a jacket that doesn’t make me far too hot whenever Edinburgh doesn’t happen to be an ice cube.

If any lecturer makes some smart-arse remark about how we should all be fully refreshed after the summer, it truly will be the end.

Two books that I have been interested in recently both have really skanky paperback covers, but quite nice hardback customers.

Freakonomics hardback cover

Freakonomics paperback cover

Working the Wheel hardback cover

Working the Wheel paperback cover

Given that paperbacks are supposedly used because they cost publishers less to produce, surely it is counter-productive to go to the cost of designing a new cover — particularly when you already have a perfectly good design.

Perhaps designing these ugly covers could be a method of shaming people into buying the more expensive hardback editions, even after they’ve waited for the paperback to come out? Or am I thinking too much along the lines of Freakonomics?

Diving straight into a ‘quick race’ and the game feels quite similar to last year’s edition — on the surface at least. It can be difficult to find your feet when you play a racing game for the first time. Different racing games all feel quite different, so you will often find yourself running wide or spinning off on your first lap. But within another two or three laps you will find your feet and you’ll be right up to speed.

Not so in Formula One 06. A brilliant new feature in the game is that each kerb is individually modelled — they are all different. So you can’t just attack every kerb like you would in most racing games.

Martin Brundle’s excellent book, Working the Wheel, which I read earlier this year, really illustrates the fact that tackling a corner and finding the racing line is not merely a matter minimising the angle of the corner. You must also watch out for bumps, crowns, dodgy drain covers, slippery paint and whatever else might increase or decrease your grip.

Formula One 06 gives a sense of that. You actually have to learn which kerbs you can ride, and which way you can ride them. You won’t always get away with it. Some evil kerbs — such as Variante Alta at Imola and the final chicane at Magny Cours — can throw you up into the air, into a spin or straight into a wall. A lot of trial and error is involved. This is a great feeling though. It feels like you really have to learn the tracks as opposed to just pointing your car towards the apex and flooring the throttle.

One of the other things I quickly noticed was how easy it was to spin the car. It can get quite frustrating. But it would just be boring if it was too easy, right? And that brings me on to another great thing about this game. My biggest problem with last year’s edition was that it was simply too easy. Even on the hardest difficulty level with all driver aids turned off, the AI cars would just tour around at a snail’s pace. The game simply was not enjoyable, and as such I didn’t play much of what was otherwise a pretty solid game.

The good news is that the difficulty has been ramped right up for Formula One 06. At first it is actually quite intimidating. All of your opponents seem almost impossibly quick. When you combine this with the fact that it can be quite easy to spin and that you now have to tiptoe your way around the kerbs, you end up with the opposite problem to what we had in last year’s game.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that F1 06 is too difficult. Besides, it would be better for it to be too difficult than too easy. But let’s just say than in Career mode I’ve been sacked from Scuderia Toro Rosso, and now I’ve found myself doing donkey work for Super Aguri, unable to get a race drive. I guess that’s realistic.

While we’re on Career mode, I must mention how much of a step up this has taken yet again. In particular, the role of test driver has been well thought-out. The qualities needed of a test driver are quite different to those of a race driver. A racer needs to drive fast, spend all day looking cool and spray champagne like nobody else can. Meanwhile, a test driver has to trundle around doing hundreds of laps at a time — not quickly, but consistently, so that the team can collect data.

So in F1 06, a test driver’s role is not merely to go quickly, although that’s obviously part of it. But as a test driver you must go consistently quickly. It’s all very well to beat your target time by two seconds — but can you do that for three laps in a row? Because this is what you have to do in F1 06. And I can’t do it! I am a complete failure at driving consistent laps. The amount of times I have set two stunning lap times only to lose my concentration on the third lap — I am going insane with this game. And I love it!

On a similar note, the developers have also devised a clever way to make Friday practice mean something. It is called Race Car Evolution. Your team will send you out with a variety of different set ups, and from there you can judge how each change affects the handling of your car and ultimately your lap time. At first the process looks laborious. But if you can get clean laps in consistently it can be over quite quickly. Whatever, Race Car Evolution is optional anyway, so you can skip the whole thing and set up your car normally if you wish.

Once you’re happy with the set up, it’s time to qualify. And this is another area where this game excells. You can tell that quite a bit of thought has gone into the presentation of the qualifying sessions, which can be great fun. The on-screen graphics mimick those used by FOM for television, but not just for the sake of it. Pole time is shown, as well as the time you have to beat in order to avoid knocking out. Towards the end of the session, a list of people in the ‘drop zone’ slids out. Watching the times fall while you’re stuck in the drop zone really piles the pressure on. Perfect for a video game.

Come race day and yet another nifty new feature is unveiled — the formation lap. This is one of those things that spoddy F1 gamers have asked to be included in a game for a long time, along with the safety car, pit lane speed limiters and all the rest of it. Now that the formation lap has made it to the game, I realise why perhaps it has never been included in a game before. It is horrendously dull.

Or it would be, if you could ever manage to complete the formation lap. This feature is extremely buggy. Sometimes it will all go wrong. A car might go away slowly or something, and then all of a sudden the game skips straight to the start. Not good. The formation lap is just badly executed in general. It was billed as an opportunity to get your tyres warmed up, but it is actually impossible to do that. Your speed is limited and besides, the AI controls your car to a large extent.

The formation lap is a nice idea, but it needs some real work if it’s going to be included in next year’s game. As it stands, it is far too rough around the edges to be included in the game.

So we find ourselves at the start of the race. A smile was brought to my face when I noticed an added element of realism — James Allen’s commentary is complete with Allenisms in this game! “When the lights go out we are…… RAAACIIIIIIIIIIING! It’s almost as if Allen has scripted the commentary himself.

In all seriousness, the commentary has improved greatly from previous years, especially as you can now hear commentary in Career mode, unlike last year where a bug crept in at the last minute. It could still do with a lot of improvement. There is no interaction between James Allen and Martin Brundle. Indeed, Brundle appears to be confined to the pre-race spiel. Formula 1 97 still has the best commentary in my view, because both Murray and Martin would keep you entertained, and they spoke to each other, even if it was just the occasional “That’s right Murray” from Martin.

Another criticism I would have about the commentary is that they never mention the player during Career mode. Granted, this would be difficult due to the fact that you play yourself in Career mode. (Unfortunately you can’t create your avatar with the Eye Toy this year, but I guess that was a bit gimmicky anyway. You can still enter in your own name though.) But it can’t be too difficult to have generic commentary along the lines of, “the Super Aguri driver has spun!” or, “the Brit is in the lead”. Developers used this method to good effect when Jacques Villeneuve couldn’t appear in the video games.

Now for some more bad news I’m afraid. There is a bad bug in this game which causes the field to start very slowly, almost as though they were on the formation lap. The form a nice, orderly queue — sometimes single file, sometimes in two distinct queues — and they are all very polite, they are slow and they don’t overtake each other. Unfortunately this makes it very easy for you, the player, to charge your way through the field. Even if you started from last place, and even if you are in hard mode, you will find yourself leading by the second corner. Doh!

My first suspicion was that this was a problem with formation laps, so I turned the option for formation laps off. It seemed to be the end of the matter, but a few starts later and the problem cropped up again. I read at F1Gamers.com that the bug could perhaps be something to do with Race Car Evolution — skipping RCE avoids the slow starts. I’ve not had a chance to test this out yet, but it doesn’t matter. This simply should not be happening.

Bugs have haunted Sony’s / Studio Liverpool’s Formula 1 series, particularly on the PS2. In a way it is understandable, as they are made on a very tight schedule. But that fact doesn’t make the pill any less bitter for the gamer to swallow. I find it difficult to comprehend how this game was released with such a massive flaw in it.

Luckily the AI cars aren’t slow for very long — maybe half a lap or something — and after that we are back to the difficult challenge we faced during testing and qualifying. Opposing cars really hound you in this game. They will overtake you, and it is such a thrill to be racing like this after years of fairly duff Scalextric-style AI. The AI is also quite clever during qualifying and practice. If they are shown the blue flags they will slow down and get out of your way if you’re on a hot lap. Oh, and they have been known to make mistakes aswell.

A few laps in and you’ll find yourself having to make a pitstop. No surprise there, but this year’s Formula 1 rules which saw the reintroduction of tyre-changing mean that the interactive pitstops — essentially QTE mini-games — are much more of a challenge. If you need to change your front wing you are bound to get in a muddle! Don’t expect to gain so much time on your opponents during pitstops this year!

A final word on damage. It is much better this year. You can’t really get away with slamming into the wall this time around, which is a relief. There is also a cool phase where your tyre will wobble around like Kimi Räikkönen’s at last year’s European Grand Prix. It doesn’t seem to affect the handling too much, but I wonder if when the wheel flies off James Allen says, “See, I told you!”

So there we have it. All-in-all, not a bad game at all this year round. Yet again the whole thing is let down by some bad bugs, but I can see myself playing this game a lot more than I played F1 05 for the sheer reason that it’s much more of a challenge. I can’t wait to unlock those classic cars and the Jerez circuit.

• PlayStation-F1 website
• F1Gamers.com — Formula 1 video game fansite

My problem with him is this: noise. By noise I don’t mean the completely insane dense noise music à la Merzbow. I actually quite like that sort of stuff; it can be quite fun. If I’m angry or upset or something, noise music is actually the very best thing I can put on because it kind of neutralises me, and once it’s all over I feel okay. I dunno why that works, but I shouldn’t question these things.

But in this case I mean noise as in found sounds. For the uninitiated, Matthew Herbert’s big gimmick is to stick a microphone up a chicken’s bum, record it taking a dump, then turn the sound into a quaint, skittering (pun intended) jolly piece of music that’s meant to get you wiggling a bit.

Once again, I should stress that I do not have a problem with found sounds at all. In fact, I have read that Autechre make heavy use of found sounds, which is believeable. But they do it really cleverly because they do it with the intention of making good music. Matthew Herbert, on the other hand, does it to make some kind of grandiose statement. At first I thought it was really cool. Ripping up copies of The Daily Mail in time to the music? How can you resist?

But after a while I began to wonder if the big concepts were getting in the way of making good music. If you read all of the liner notes for ‘Goodbye Swingtime’, which was released at the very height of the Iraq war debate, there is a lot of shit in there. Whether you agree with the broad thrust of his argument or not (and I happened to be against the invasion), it is easy to see that there is a lot of extremely pretentious bollocks going on in the album. Here is an example of the notes for one of the tracks, ‘The Three W’s':

Sounds: Vocals by Mara Carlyle, Typing of the URL for www.soaw.org, the School of Americas Watch website dictating American involvement in Latin American dictatorships. Printing of pages from the same website / Flugel horn by Pete Wraight.

Sure enough, listen to the track and there is the sound of an inkjet printer churning away, presumably printing pages from said website. I mean, fair enough if Matthew Herbert feels like this message should get out, but it sounds shit on the record.

In the notes for another track, ‘Misprints’, surrounded by the usual notes crediting musicians, there is this:

…Newspaper clippings about Iraq from around the world shaped in to instruments and filled with popcorn, rice and foreign coins…

‘Simple Mind’:

…Band also played the instruments without blowing them…

Also peppered around the album is the sound of books by Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Greg Palast and others either being flicked through or silently read. Presumably all of this is meant to enlighten the listener via the mystical voodoo telepathic power of the CD in a stereo. I think the idea is that if you hear (I say ‘hear’, but all you actually hear is pages being turned) on the album a saxophonist silently reading Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men then you too can become a ranting, fat, hypocritical millionaire who likes to dress up as a tramp.

Herbert getting political As I said, it is all very well if Matthew Herbert wants his political viewpoints to be known, but it doesn’t make for good music. It just makes for embarassing liner notes. There is hardly anything worse than a musician pretending he is an expert in international affairs. You need look no further than those posers Bob “ten out of ten” Geldof and Bono to see the absolute tossery that this leads to. This stuff is no better than Tony Blair stiltedly posing with his Stratocaster. I buy a CD to listen to music. If I want lectures on international politics I’ll buy a book.

‘Goodbye Swingtime’ was all right though. I still think it’s a pretty good album, so I was interested when his following album, ‘Plait du Jour’, was released. It was an album all about food politics. As I recall, the general thrust of the argument was, “Buy all your food from local farmers, but don’t let African farmers starve.” I’m not sure how buying British produce is meant to help poor African farmers. Still, that is his viewpoint which he is entitled to, so I was still going to buy the album because the music was still going to be good, right?

Well it turned out that ‘Plait du Jour’ was where musique concrète turned musique wet. Matthew Herbert exactly recreated a meal that Nigella Lawson once cooked for George W. Bush. Then he whipped his microphone out and recorded the meal being run over by a tank (the tank was chosen even though we should “start no wars”). Okay, it raises a smile, but does it result in good music? I have no idea because as soon as I read about it I decided I was not going to touch that album with a bargepole.

I once asked a Róisín Murphy fan to convince me to buy her solo album which was produced by Matthew Herbert. I explained, “I’ve gone off Matthew Herbert.” The reply? “Herbert is back to his best!” Thank goodness, I thought. I read on: “He recorded her making cups of tea, whacking a notepad about, jumping up and down on bed, hissing…” My hopes were dashed. I still haven’t bought the Róisín Murphy album.

Here is the blurb from a recent edition of the tip-top Radio 3 programme, Mixing It:

For his latest album release, Matthew Herbert has concentrated on writing songs, although his experimental side is still very much at work, with sound sources as diverse as coffins, petrol pumps and an RAF Tornado bomber, and drum tracks recorded in a variety of locations: a hot air balloon, under the sea and in a car travelling at 100mph.

Since this is supposed to be an album of songs, I wonder if he has also recorded sounds from inside his own arse — otherwise how would he record the vocals with his head stuck so far up it? As I said at the start of this post, found sounds are absolutely fine. But with Matthew Herbert nobody ever talks about the music, they only talk about his mad recording exploits. Herbert allows all of these silly ideas to get in the way of a good tune which, at the end of the day, is surely what it is all about?

I shouldn’t really single out Matthew Herbert like this because he is not the only artist who puts the concept and the found sounds ahead of the music. You know me — I like music with an experimental edge, and in that arena being pretentious isn’t exactly an unusual thing. But there is a line to be drawn.

When I first heard that Venetian Snares was making an album with his girlfriend Hecate which was made entirely out of the sounds they made while having sex I thought it was a genius idea. The problem was, when the album was released it sounded like all they ever do in bed is fart.

Olive branch: To prove that I still quite like Matthew Herbert, despite all the bile I directed towards him in this post, I am putting his ‘Hoedown Bump’ instrumental remix of Jamie Lidell’s ‘Multiply’ here, because I think it’s really cool. As always, you’ll have to press play every 30 seconds.