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One of the key proposals of last week’s FOTA presentation in Geneva was a “commitment to enhance consumer experience via TV coverage.”  One area where Formula One lags behind other sports is in high definition broadcasts.

According to DPME.com, production services company LIVE are in negotiations with Bernie Ecclestone to produce the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this November in high definition.

Each Grand Prix is produced by German broadcaster RTL in conjunction with the local host broadcaster but LIVE managing director and CEO Abdul Hadi Al Shiekh told DPME.com that he hopes LIVE can strike a deal to produce HD broadcasts of the event as a test case for the sport’s future:

We have been in negotiations now for two months and we would love to present an international flagship event such as this in HD.

The BBC, which takes over broadcasting F1 from ITV this year, is keen to show races in high definition if the content is available.  According to the BBC’s Head of HDTV, Danielle Nagler:

A decision about F1 and HD sits primarily with the rights holder (F1/Bernie Ecclestone), rather than with the BBC. We are keen to do it as soon as possible.

Formula One is particularly suited to high definition broadcast and it is strange that one of the most technologically advanced sports seems to struggle with new technology when it comes to television and the internet.  FIA president Max Mosely is keen to embrace the potential of the internet and the teams clearly want to exploit the the sport’s media potential but even if LIVE convince Ecclestone to broadcast in HD it won’t happen until the last race of the season.

Image: BMW AG

I like a press release with swear words in it. In the “rather impressive press kit” accompanying Toro Rosso’s launch of their new car they reveal that Red Bull’s motives for taking over the Minardi team in 2005 were that they “just liked pissing people off by buying a second team.”  Nice.  STR have their own unique style.

What is not so unique is their 2009 F1 car, the STR4, which was rolled out at the Circuit de Catalunya just outside Barcelona on Monday morning.  At first glance it looks like a carbon copy of the RB5 and, indeed, it uses the same Adrian Newey designed chassis as the  Red Bull car.  But acording to Toro Rosso’s Technical Director, Giorgio Ascanelli, the STR4 is not just a rebadged RB5:

It’s a common misconception that before the start of the season a big truck turns up in Faenza from Milton Keynes, its back door folds down and, hey presto, a fully-built Toro Rosso car rolls out. In fact, Scuderia Toro Rosso has far more control over its technical destiny, right from the design stage through to construction.

I guess most of the differences are under the skin though because it’s going to be hard to tell these two cars apart on the track.  Replacing the Red Bull’s Renault engine with Ferrari power caused a lot of redesign of the internal plumbing as Ascanelli explains:

Different engines have different heat rejection and different operating temperatures, with materials specified to different levels. Also, the tolerances, which you have to respect when building an engine, are tuned in such a way that an engine works at its best within a defined temperature range. This in itself conditions the radiators and also all of the internal aerodynamics. That then impacts on the aero side and this work is also done in Faenza.

All of this in-house design work will be good preparation for the team.  Next year, the Toro Rosso customer car exemption will run out and the team will have to design and build their own car from scratch.

Pictures of the new car below:

In a few weeks time Formula One will return to the screen on BBC after twelve years at ITV and in preparation for this the BBC have been developing their new Formula One website.  Its importance to the BBC is reflected in the fact that the Formula One link comes right after football in the main navigation.

There’s some good content on the site already and this video in particular of ‘F1’s greatest hits’ has some of the greatest moments in Formula One of the last twenty years.  There are crashes (Mansell’s tyre exploding at Adelaide in 1986, Schumacher taking out Damon Hill in 1994), amazing passes (Hakkinen’s pass of Schumacher in Belgium in 2000, Alonso passing Schumacher on the outside of 130R at Suzuka in 2005) and things we just don’t see any more (wingtip vortices and drivers leaping out of their cars for a punchup.)

The BBC have announced that they will use The Chain by Fleetwood Mac as the music for the intro to their Formula One footage when they take over the broadcast rights this year.  This should please a lot of fans, particularly these guys at the TopGear website.  It seems nostalgia and a twelve-year gap has elevated the old BBC intro music into some kind of hymn to F1.  Murray Walker is clearly delighted as, according to the Telegraph‘s Andrew Baker, when he found out the BBC was going to use the old tune the 85-year-old presenter raised his hands and started to clap in time with Fleetwood Mac’s beat, exclaiming “Yes, yes, yes!”

I admit, it is a good tune. Here’s a video of the original BBC intro from the 1988 Australian Grand Prix:

I was in Australia when the BBC was broadcasting F1 so I never developed the same attachment to The Chain. I do however have memories of Channel 9’s Wide World of Sports (or was it Sports Sunday) playing short video segments featuring super slow motion shots of Formula One cars set to classical music. I used to love watching these so I turned to Google to see if I could find something on YouTube. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything which means either no-one has a copy of these little videos or I imagined the whole thing.

Either way I thought I would have a go at making my own version. So here is what you get when you take a nice YouTube ‘Tribute to active suspension era video‘ and mash it with Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue. I think it works but I’d love to hear what you think in the comments:

Jenson Button put the new Brawn GP BGP 001 through its paces in a shakedown test at Silverstone on Friday.  The team will head to the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona next week and then Jerez for a further three days testing before packing up and heading to Australia for the opening Grand Prix on 27-29 March.

As the pictures below show, Jenson Button is clearly happy to be back in a Formula One car and Rubens Barrichello looks happy just to be there.

Two main nose shapes seemed to have emerged in the 2009 car designs.  The BGP 001 has the low nose favoured by the likes of McLaren and Williams rather than the high style of the Toyota and Force India.  The sidepods are high and wide like the McLaren and the front wing seems to be quite a complex arrangement.

Overall I think it’s quite a nice looking car.  Enjoy the pictures.

Autosport.com have posted the first image of the new Brawn GP BGP 001.  Jenson Button took the team’s 2009 challenger out for a few shakedown laps of Silverstone today ahead of the car’s first full test in Barcelona.  According to Autosport, “the car features a wide low nose, and highly sculpted sidepods”.

There is also a distinct lack of sponsorship although that’s nothing new for this team…

But the big question on everyone’s lips is, will the car be be any good?  I think there are reasons to be hopeful.

Honda have produced some fairly rubbish racing cars lately but they knew pretty early on in 2008 that their car sucked and even sticking “dumbo ears” on it wouldn’t make it more driveable.  So presumably Honda switched their development to the 2009 car a long time ago; sooner, even, than BMW and news coming out of Honda over the last few months always seemed to point out the team were still working on the 2009 car.

Secondly, the Mercedes-Benz engine the team have acquired is looking pretty handy in the new Force India car and it powered Lewis Hamilton to the Championship last year.  I’m actually quite impressed the team have managed to fit the new engine so quickly.  We don’t know how long Brawn GP have had the Mercedes-Benz powerplant to work with but refitting the VJM02 to the new engine caused a lot of work for Force India as a change of engine and gearbox causes knock-on effects to other areas of the car.  Of course the Brackley engineers outnumber the Force India team but to get the engine integrated in a relatively short time is good work.  Whether this engine transplant causes reliability issues we will have to wait and see.

And lastly, they have Ross Brawn in charge.  The man knows his racing cars.  While Brawn couldn’t rescue Honda from the RA108 last year, this is now his team and he has been involved in the complete development of the new car.

So we won’t have an idea how fast the new car is until the Barcelona test and we won’t really know if can be competitive until we get to Melbourne.  Can’t wait.

Image: LAT