You may know that I run a Formula 1 blog called vee8. It’s just one of a number of websites I am now running. It’s a lot to have on my plate and recently I have been looking at ways to save time.

Last week I asked my readers if they thought I should continue with the daily roundup of F1 links. I was bowled over by the overwhelmingly positive response. But I was still unsure about constantly using the same few sources all the time.

Websites dedicated to Formula 1 tend to be very good for day-to-day gossip and news. They have a very good feel for what is going on generally in the F1 world. But occasionally a major media company, which doesn’t necessarily churn out a great deal of F1 content, will get a big scoop. In fact, I can’t think of a quality or mid-market newspaper which doesn’t, from time to time, have interesting stories that the dedicated F1 sites have missed.

In an attempt to try and catch these stories before reading them elsewhere, but without getting overwhelmed with boring, samey or irrelevant stories, I decided to try and construct a Yahoo! Pipe. My idea was to pull in the F1 feeds from a wide variety of media websites, but filtering out stories containing words like ‘Hamilton’ or ‘Button’ so that I didn’t get overloaded with nationalistic puff-pieces.

Unfortunately, this is proving difficult. Most media websites are simply unwilling to supply me with the content I want. Honourable exceptions are guardian.co.uk (which even has a feed dedicated to Lewis Hamilton, for all your stalker needs), the Telegraph and (amazingly) the Daily Express. Other websites’ approaches towards RSS are disappointing.

Times Online doesn’t appear to have a dedicated Formula 1 or motorsport feed. It has a Sport feed. Confusingly, rugby and tennis get their own feeds. But no other sport does — not even football. The rationale behind this isn’t very clear, and having seen that two sports do have their own feeds, I feel like going on the hunt for the others. But they aren’t there. Strangely, the rugby and tennis feeds are displayed completely separately, not as a sub-category of sport.

FT.com doesn’t have any sport feeds at all. I suppose that is understandable in a sense, as the FT is due to cut back its already rather scant sports coverage. But it does mean that I will miss out on the F1 stories it does have from time to time.

The Daily Mail website lumps Formula 1 content in the ‘other sports’ section. This has its own RSS feed, but unfortunately it is shared with tennis, horse racing and, er, yet more ‘other sports’. I somehow doubt that fans of any of these sports will find this RSS feed particularly useful, unless by some fluke they are a fan of all of them.

The paper is, however, happy to cater for the niche needs of football fans. 28 separate football clubs have their own RSS feed. More creepily, the Daily Mail offers dedicated RSS feeds containing the latest news on a number of different celebrities, for the stalker in you. Quite good for stained raincoats, but not so good for anoraks like me.

These websites are surely missing a trick. It shouldn’t be a problem to provide RSS feeds for any topic, no matter how niche. WordPress certainly offers this functionality, and every category and tag has its own RSS feed. But some websites’ approaches to RSS feeds seem arbitrary at best. It seems particularly inexcusable in this increasingly long tail-aware age.

Presumably newspapers want people to read their content. But some of their websites are sticking to the old model of content delivery — chucking it all in one place and making its readers browse through everything until they come across an article they’re interested in. That was all very well when the most efficient way of disseminating news was to print it on a dead tree. But that was last the case at least ten years ago.

Now we have more efficient and cost-effective ways to get to the information we want, but newspapers seem dead set on not offering them to us. Bandwidth isn’t an excuse. guardian.co.uk not only offers RSS feeds for a huge variety of topics, it offers full RSS feeds for them. Plus, with a nifty bit of URL hacking, you can access highly specialist RSS feeds that aren’t even advertised at all.

So why are some websites still asking me to subscribe to an “other sports” feed filled with a baffling mish-mash of unrelated stories? What makes the editors of these websites think that I am going to hunt down their F1 content by spending my time trawling through their badly designed website all the time, or read through a thousand RSS items that don’t interest me?

The thing is, someone looking for niche content is probably more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed. This is specifically because they don’t want to go through the entire site’s content. Yet these websites only supply RSS feeds containing a large range of the content. For the content consumer, this doesn’t save much more time than visiting the website.

If these websites offered an RSS feed for F1, they would be guaranteed at least one reader — and then more when I link to interesting articles from vee8. As it stands, I am tearing my hair out and finding it easier not to think about these websites at all.

Ed Gorman — The Times journalist and a blogger normally known for his enthusiastic support for Lewis Hamilton (which got him into hot water from many Spanish fans in the past) — has been unusually erring towards taking the view of the stewards following the Belgian Grand Prix. He has written a couple of posts saying that he has found out a few things about the stewards’ decision. It makes for interesting reading and there are a few points I want to pick up on.

Here is the first post.

I have winkled out a few tiny extra details about the hearing. One thing I can tell you is this. The way the stewards approached it – quite correctly in my view – was to put out of their minds who the cars were being driven by and what stage, of which race, they were looking at. In other words they closed their minds to the sporting politics of the situation and focussed intently on the evidence presented to them. As one source put it: “They looked at it as if it was a GP2 incident, not Kimi vs Lewis at the climax of the Belgian Grand Prix.” By this means, as he pointed out, they came, in their view, “to a fair sporting conclusion even if that was also a PR disaster for Formula One.”

It should go without saying that this is what the stewards ought to be doing anyway. The fact that it is news that “they closed their minds to the sporting politics of the situation” implies that in previous decisions the stewards have not. Is it normal for the stewards to take into account politics when making a decision? That is pretty shocking stuff if this is the case.

Incidentally, given the run of odd penalties that GP2 has also seen in the past couple of meetings, I suppose that the stewards would come up with a controversial result by approaching it “as if it was a GP2 incident”.

Another point here is that many of you seem outraged that a race result had been changed, that the sanctity of the sport had been contaminated by the cold legalise of bureaucrats in a courtroom afterwards. But again what is the alternative? If a sport has rules, they must be upheld. People cannot be adjudged to have won just because a race has finished – that would be a recipe for anarchy.

Here I do sympathise with the stewards. A lot of people were outrage by the fact that the race result was changed. But I learnt very early on in my F1-viewing days that you can never be fully sure of a race result until later on in the evening (and sometimes even after that). Sometimes, that is just the way F1 is.

However, there is no doubt that it leaves a sour taste in the mouth to see a driver cross the finish line then spray the champagne from the top step of the podium, only for that victory to be taken away from a smoke-filled room behind the scenes. I certainly took it pretty badly, and judging by the Belgian GP video on Formula1.com, so did Bernie’s people! Sometimes, however, this is what has to happen.

Is there a way the process can be tightened up though? In my mind, there are plenty of ways in which the process could be improved. For one thing, if the stewards think that something dodgy happened on the track, they should let it be known immediately that they plan to investigate it.

I don’t mind about the stewards taking a long time to make a decision. I would rather have the correct decision made slowly than the wrong decision made quickly. What is a problem, though, is the perception that the stewards have made the wrong decision slowly. Nevertheless, the stewards have access to a lot more data than we do and I don’t blame them for wanting to plough through it.

However, I would like viewers to be told more clearly and quickly when a driver is under investigation. If the stewards thought the Hamilton–Räikkönen incident was marginal, they should have notified the relevant people as soon as they came to that conclusion, which you would think was not long after the incident actually happened.

If the stewards are umming and aahing about whether or not they should investigate, I think that is still an investigation! That it can take so long for the viewers to be informed of an investigation is not on. A lot of the problem I had with the situation was that it wasn’t even announced that there was an investigation until after the podium ceremony. I can understand that for a technical infringement — but for a sporting infringement?

As for why the stewards only decided to investigate after the race had finished, that is a whole other story. And this, for me, is the most damning part of it all. Here is what Ed Gorman said in his second post:

The McLaren press release of yesterday which many of you have clearly read, makes much of the fact that, according to Martin Whitmarsh, the pitwall team contacted the race director – Charlie Whiting – and were told twice, before the race ended, that Lewis’s conduct in respect of Kimi was “okay”.

This appears to lend great weight to McLaren’s case. However, I understand there is no reference to the race director in the regulations on this point and it seems likely that, whether Whiting told McLaren everything was “okay” once or twice or 10 times, this may have no bearing on the outcome of this case.

What is more, I have established that, despite having appeared to convey to McLaren that Lewis had done nothing wrong, Whiting himself then played a key role in instigating the formal investigation of the incident by the stewards.

After every race it is normal procedure, apparently, for the stewards to enquire of the race director if there is anything that should be looked at. Whiting is thought to have said to them that, although he had been in touch with McLaren about the exchange between Lewis and Kimi on lap 42, the stewards may still want to have a look at it themselves.

If this is true, then the accusations of conspiracy begin to look a whole lot more convincing. Ed Gorman plays down the fact that Charlie Whiting said that Lewis Hamilton’s actions were “okay”. But I don’t think it is unreasonable for McLaren to expect that Whiting, having given it the “okay”, would not include the incident in his report to the stewards. If Whiting thought it was okay, and the stewards themselves didn’t choose to investigate it while the race was still going on, why on earth would Whiting then bring it up to the stewards after the race was finished?

Well, I can think of one good reason why he might do that — to screw McLaren over. I’m not saying that’s what his plan was. But if the FIA really want to put a halt to the “Ferrari International Assistance” perception, they are not exactly helping themselves by behaving in this sort of way.

I don’t like to dwell on Iain Dale’s poll. As Longrider pointed out in the comments, it is of no real importance anyway. However, the first of Iain Dale’s category lists — media blogs — got me thinking. Why are there so few Scottish media blogs?

As far as I can make out, the list contains two blogs based on Scottish politics run by mainstream media organisations. One is the rather good Blether with Brian from the BBC’s Brian Taylor. The other is The Herald’s politics blog (though going by Iain Dale’s list it is only Douglas Fraser’s entries that meet with approval). I have to say that while I was very aware of Brian Taylor’s blog, I was only vaguely aware that The Herald had a political blog.

You might think that two entries in the top 30 of Iain Dale’s poll is not too bad. But when you look more closely at some of the other entries, things don’t look so good for the Scottish media. Wales has no fewer than four blogs in the list: David Cornock, Betsan Powys, Vaughan Roderick and 07:25 to Paddington.

Three of those come from the BBC Wales politics department. In Scotland, Brian Taylor is the only BBC political journalist that I know of that has a blog. Even then, I suspect that Brian Taylor was asked by BBC News Online to start his blog. Blogs by the political editors of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all started within a very short period of time of each other, as I recall.

What interests me more though is the poor showing of commercial media outlets. Wales is represented by a blog from WalesOnline. Also on Iain Dale’s list is a local blog run by David Ottewell of the Manchester Evening News.

So where are the Scottish media blogs? I don’t think I would be alone in saying that I think The Herald’s blogs are rather limp and half-hearted. Of late, Douglas Fraser has only updated once every fortnight or so (although, yes, I know it’s the summer — but there have been a lot of Scottish political stories too). Robbie Dinwoodie is much the same.

Scotsman.com is even worse. It has no proper blogs. It does, from time to time, call articles blogs, but they have no permalinks and no comments — just a normal page with some date headings. Worse still, many opinion pieces are behind a paywall, which means that bloggers — even if they can be bothered to fork out to read it in the first place — will seldom link to them and engage in the debate.

I doubt things will improve in this area. Ever since Johnston Press took it over, they have seemed determined to treat Scotsman.com like it is the website for a tiny local newspaper. The perfectly good website was replaced with Johnston Press’s own template which is used for all of their local papers, just with content from The Scotsman shoehorned in. This kind of approach to the web, which will be an increasingly important part of The Scotsman’s business in the future, does not bode well.

I am sure the Sunday Herald used to have a separate site for blogging and comments. I don’t think I imagined it, but I can’t find any sign of it now. Mind you, I’m not surprised — it wasn’t very good.

It needn’t be like this. Despite claims from some that bloggers and the MSM are competing, this is simply not true. Blogs and the MSM are complementing. There are plenty of excellent, high-profile blogs run by media outlets based in London. The Spectator’s Coffee House, The Times’s Comment Central, The Telegraph’s suite of politics blogs, The Guardian’s politics blog and Comment is free, Nick Robinson and many other blogs from the BBC.

And Iain Dale’s list shows that they don’t have to be based in London, with respected blogs coming from other parts of the country. Why is there not more coming from Scotland?

It has to be said that the honourable exception is Brian Taylor. He seems to enjoy blogging and it is certainly a great place to catch up with recent political shenanigans. But what about everyone else?

A fun diversion during the season is to enter a Fantasy Formula 1 competition. When I was at school I actually used to run one for a couple of years. It was a bit too ambitious though. By the end I was getting people to design their liveries and even choose sponsors for points. I definitely overdid it there.

Anyway, it is years since I entered a Fantasy F1 competition. I was looking around for competitions to enter when a Sidepodcast league was announced. The league now contains an astonishing 84 entrants, with a few familiar names to the F1 blogosphere in the mix.

I have also decided to join in Linksheaven’s Fantasy F1 competition. The rules are a bit weird because you get a point for each lap a driver completes. I’m not sure if I have taken the right approach with this one. Apparently a lot of people have chosen Sutil on the basis that he is cheap and he will rack up the points by completing loads of laps. I’ve just gone for a general mid-grid selection, in the hope they’ll pick up some actual points now and again.

The other competition I am indulging in this season is Formula 1 Picks, a Facebook Application. Last year F1 Picks entailed predicting the top three finishers, but this year has seen a tweak to the rules. Drivers are now separated into three groups — Ferrari / McLaren drivers and Alonso; the midfield; the no-hopers. You score the Championship points of your three picks.

This is a simple approach, and the three tier selection system has mixed it up a bit. However, I am perplexed at some of the choices made by the application’s developers. Mark Webber is in the second group while David Coulthard is in the third group. It’s not clear to my why DC should be regarded as so much worse, especially since with the new gearbox rules Webber is sure to retire from several races!

I would choose Coulthard from the third group because it seems like an opportunity to pick up an ‘undervalued’ driver. But Kazuki Nakajima is also in this third group! I realise that Nakajima is a rookie, but the Williams is going to knock everyone’s block off this year, and Nakajima was handy in the Brazilian Grand Prix (pitstop mishap aside).

What other decent Fantasy F1 competitions are there? I have noticed competitions run by Virgin Media (goodness knows why), Times Online / The Sun and everyone’s favourite, ITV-F1.

But entering these competitions involves giving away quite a lot of personal information, and who knows, maybe even selling your soul. I suppose that is the price you pay for entering a competition that actually has a prize. But that’s not what it’s about surely?

Also, what do you think is a good strategy? When I ran my competition at school I sadly undervalued Michael Schumacher just in time for him to have one of his most dominant seasons (I think that must have been 2002), so everyone who bought Michael Schumacher and had even the crappest chassis and engine just ran away with the competition.

Is the “great driver / poor chassis” combination the best? I tend to go for an all-round middling team in the hope of grabbing a few points here and there, rather than going to the expense of buying, say, Räikkönen. I am out of practice in this Fantasy F1 malarkey though. Time will tell.

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.?