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Bernard E “promotes” his product
Hamilton contract negotiations going nowhere fast
Jenson’s plan B – Olympia instead of WEC
Hippo’s completely gratuitous F1 Meme
Anderson says McLaren withholding information from Alonso crash
The Judge’s new clothing
As you will have noticed, the site has been given a new design and we need your feedback on what you think of it. Please keep in mind that “It’s all sh*t” is not a feedback that will help us in any way. Please tell us what you like or dislike about it, so we can work these suggestions into something that will be palatable to all our readers.
Thank you in advance.
Bernard E “promotes” his product
“I would bet all I have on Mercedes.”
This is Bernard E’s latest attempt to make new viewers enthusiastic about his racing series. Since such attempts have not been universally successful in the past, the ageing emperor has asked Alexander Wurz and Pedro de la Rosa for help.
“I would make the same bet,” the Spaniard dutifully delivers. “The dominance of Mercedes is scary. You can expect that they will be far ahead of the rest in Australia. I’m not even sure they can be beaten at all.”
Alex Wurz’s twitter messages sound a bit more optimistic. “Mercedes are now under pressure. They have to decide how far they have to turn down their engine to avoid lapping the whole field by lap 30.”
Normally such domination should not be to Bernard’s liking as it could induce a mild boredom for some of the fifteen viewers that are left, but he acknowledges the good job that Mercedes has done on the unloved new power units. “They have been the first to believe in the new engine regulations. That was their big advantage. Apart from that they did a great job. If you look at their unit – it’s a great example of engineering excellence.”
Bernard goes on to declare his undying love for the new engines. “I don’t think we need such an engine in Formula One. The concept cannot be transferred to the road cars. I can see nothing in the thing that’s good for Formula One. F1 is not the place to develop such a type of engine. We are in the racing business and the entertainment industry. Such an engine doesn’t help with that.”
In case you’re wondering – yes – that’s all from the same interview.
Hamilton contract negotiations going nowhere fast
Here at TJ13, we’ve been tracking the rhetoric from both sides of the contract negotiation between Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.
Both parties are clearly doing some of their negotations via the media. Toto Wolff chose to reveal it would be no big deal should they fail to find agreement with Hamilton when he stated that Bottas and Alonso were waiting in the wings.
Hamilton has dropped management company XIX and is dealing with contractual matters for the first time himself. “I’m not too sure I’ve enjoyed it,” said Lewis. “It’s a very, very nerve-racking experience. But I’m glad I’ve done it. If I’d not done something like this I would have always wondered if I could or could not.”
The British F1 double world champion has let it be known through ‘select sources’ that he expects to be the highest paid driver in Formula One, presumably because he is the current world champion.
Lewis’ latest comments on the matter, don’t appear to reign in this ambition. “It’s not about status and being the best paid because you’re world champion, it’s just a natural thing.”
“It’s gradual progressions along with the team. As the team progress, I want to as well. My target, like every driver is to work towards being the best.”
What this form or words means in actuality is impossible to determine, though Hamilton’s current contract for £20m is believed to be well short of the £40m Vettel is receiving from Ferrari as reported by The Times last week. Further, the Guardian reveals that Stuttgart was reticent to agree to £20m a year, and is not inclined to double this number
“Hopefully we’re in the final stages [of talks],” the Brit now reveals. “I don’t really know what the timeline is but we’re very much in the last stages of it. I’m committed to this team for the foreseeable future.”
The timeline has been that Mercedes opened contract negotiations with Hamilton back in June 2014. The team were forced to concede that whilst Lewis was competing for a championship, matters should be put on hold.
This led Toto Wolff to reveal recently, that he and the team would prefer to finalise negotiations with Hamilton prior to the season opener in Australia – when of course Lewis will again be competing for titles.
The sticking point is the amount of money. Lewis set out his stall at the beginning of the Jerez test when he claimed, “I am 30 now. I am my own man. I know my worth.”
Yet Hamilton may need to understand that Mercedes view of ‘his worth’ is be very different from his own. With a car/engine package that is so dominant, Stuttgart are not desperate to employ a driver who is the most expensive on the grid and see this as unnecessary for them to deliver both the driver and team F1 championships.
When questioned in Jerez about the contract negotiations, Lewis told reporter, “We want to stay together. We love each other, basically.”
Hamilton will now have realised that in life at times, love is just not enough. Both he and Nicole have repeatedly and publicly declared their love for each other, however, the end of the road has finally arrived for that relationship.
If reports are to be believed, Hamilton refused an ultimatum from Shertzinger, which required him to marry her and begin producing children. Refusing to comply, Lewis withdrew from the negotiations.
The irony is that Mercedes will do the same with Hamilton if he persists on demanding to be the highest paid Formula One driver in 2016.
Sources close to Hamilton have revealed Ferrari have offered to make Lewis the highest paid driver in the sport, as they seek to replace Raikkonen in 2016.
Jenson’s plan B – Olympia instead of WEC
Late last season McLaren took their sweet time to decide whether Dane Kevin Magnussen or old hand Jenson Button would partner Fernando Alonso this year. There is little doubt that had Ron Dennis’ trip to Denmark resulted in the arrival of new backers, the 2009 world champion from Blighty would have been out.
Obviously Jenson had come to the same conclusion and had started to look for alternative ways to work up a sweat. Surprisingly, however, he did not look at Le Mans as was rumoured last year. His idea was competing in the marathon at the 2016 Olympic Games.
However, the same realities hit home that jeopardized his place in F1. “I’m too old,” Jenson realized. “I’m a good amateur, but everyone else on top of his professional career is competing in a different league.”
The olympic triathlon is composed of 1.5km of swimming, 40 kilometers of cycling and 10km of running. To console himself, Jenson has signed up to do the London marathon. Way to go ol’ chap.
Hippo’s completely gratuitous F1 Meme
Van der Garde’s day in court
Today Sauber had to face the music from a former driver in the Supreme Court in Victoria. Giedo van der Garde has won an action in Switzerland which sees him retain his F1 drive for Sauber as per the contract the team signed with him. He asked the Australian judicial system today to enforce this order.
Rodney Garrett, the lawyer representing the Swiss F1 team argued it would be ‘unsafe’ for the Dutchman to be allowed to drive the C34 this weekend, because he hasn’t been through the two weeks seat fitting process.
“Sauber could not allow him to race… it would be reckless and dangerous to do otherwise. It would result in an unacceptable risk of physical harm or even death,” reports Radio Australia.
The fact that the tea’s insurance didn’t covere van der Garde was also raised by Garrett along with a rather desperate query over the safety of spectators.
Tom Clarke, speaking on behalf of the Dutchman, revealed to the court that recently an F1 driver had a seat fitting and was driving the car just three days later. “Teams are very flexible to make adjustments for every specific driver,” he said.
Both Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr were in court, and Clarke addressed the matter of their contracts too. “Sauber does have the ability to substitute Mr Van der Garde this weekend for one or another driver without falling into breach of those existing contracts,” Clarke stated.
Justice Clyde Croft reserved his decision until 10am on Wednesday.
Sauber start to modify their pit equipment in case Giedo wins his case against them. pic.twitter.com/PlZT5RJSHa
— Grand Prix Diary 🏁 (@GrandPrixDiary) March 9, 2015
German GP survives
The deadline for the promoters of the German GP to agree a deal with Bernie Ecclestone has come and gone.
German news agency DPA reported Ecclestone’s position: “I am happy to hold a Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. The promoters know it and we have met to discuss it. The problem is that they are not willing to pay the fee.”
As TJ13 has continued to report, this is déjà vu for Ecclestone – who found himself in the same position 2 years ago. His choice is also the same as then. Give the race away – or drop down to nineteen races for the year.
Neither are a preferred choice for F1’s supremo – yet Bernie is for now silent on the matter, so the race for now is still on.
McLaren in trouble
Damon Hill has given his views on the modest ambitions set by McLaren for the next few races. “It is not good enough, because only winning is good enough,” asserts Hill to the Express. “They can’t be saying they need to be in the top 10, that is not good enough for a team like McLaren”.
Hill goes on to speculate that all will end well, stating “The McLaren-Honda thing has to work at some point.”
Martin Brundle sees the Woking team’s current plight as desperate. “They are in terrible trouble, aren’t they?”
The Sky pundit then lends credence to one of the theories regarding Alonso’s non-appearance in Austrralia. “There are even a few people saying Alonso doesn’t want to get in it yet.”
Bruindle ends with a grain of hope for Big Ron and his troops. “The McLaren-Honda looked as bad as the RedBull-Renault last winter, but they finished second in the championship”.
5 days from now, we will know whether the roaring tiger has made it through FP1 and FP2.
Anderson says McLaren withholding information from Alonso crash
Ex-Formula One car designer Gary Anderson believes McLaren are withholding information following Fernando Alonso’s crash during the second winter test. He explains, “the suspension components are designed to fail and leave the survival cell and the suspension pick-ups intact.
“If the suspension components don’t fail, they could damage the survival cell, rendering a very expensive and time-consuming component to become scrap”.
Anderson concludes that because there was not a complete failure of the front suspension wish bones that, the force of impact suffered by the car would be no more than 16g – meaning Alonso would have experienced just 6-8g on impact.
Gary believes this level of force is not abnormal for the drivers. “With all the mandatory headrest padding etc, the driver will experience that level of force many times during a race weekend without any problems”.
There is of course another explanation. The suspension components didn’t fail as they were designed to – then Alonso would have experienced a far higher G-Force impact than Anderson calculates.
Whilst McLaren may have badly bungled the information dissemination about Alonso’s crash into the public domain, Ron Dennis stated quite clearly it was he who requested the FIA investigate the matter. For this reason it is unlikely McLaren are deliberately withholding vital information – unless of course Big Ron is banking on another Bianchi style enquiry – and concluding report that can be read in around 60 seconds.
Edd Straw of Autosport is clearly irritated by the constant questions this incident in Barcelona has thrown up. “What is most distasteful about this whole situation is that at the root of many of the conspiracies is a fundamental inability – perhaps a refusal – to attempt to understand the situation Alonso is in”.
The ‘situation Alonso is in’ – is simple. He has been advised not to race in Australia.
What causes questions and allegations that McLaren are hiding something are inconsistencies in statements issued by them and others.
We can be certain, there are inconsistencies between Alonso and Dennis over the current state of the Spaniard’s health. Dennis claimed he was “physically perfect” whilst Alonso has chosen to accept the advice of his doctors that he is not fit to race in Australia.
This discontinuity has clearly bypassed Ed’s attention, but simply cannot be ignored.
Re: New site
I may be the only person with this view. But i wanna say it. The white text in a black background was much better to read. Reading was comfortable atleast for me. May be a good compromise of the old and new can be thought about.
I just checked the site in my iPhone 6 and to my surprise it looks great. May be for the mobile version its good and for PC version white text on black background was better i guess.
on my mobile over the weekend I struggled to find the day news – the new colour scheme works on mobile but I first thought I’d landed on another ‘fanatical’ website. At the PC on a Monday, I so want the old colour scheme back, the fuzzy grey font on a ‘maybe it’s a grey’ background is hard work on the eyes! but at least I ‘lucked’ into Mondays news from the story carousel at the top.. please please please have a latest ‘todays news’ link easily accessible (TJ13 is the first stop every day).. and for now I’m switching page style off (the F1 content is still the best on the web!)
J
I agree, the new look is good.
It works well in my Firefox browser (on a linux desktop, and an iMac, and a mac laptop), and my android cellular device.
While I like light font on dark backgrounds (for example I read ars technica on their dark background frequently), the gray on black made TJ13 the least legible / least comfortable site of all sites I visit.
Thanks for the change!
I’m staying positive about the new look. Bit of a shock at first but learning my way around. Funny that always found the white on black hard to handle, now you’ve reversed and it’s still…..strange? Could be the font? Anyway, I’ll get used to it, aware you’ve been working on it a while 🙂
The first new version on iPhone was bad. However, it seems to be almost back to where it was, so I like that very much.
Because of the white on black, I never visited the site on pc. The other reason is that I should be working when behind the pc. So, if you want to go back that ok with me.
But keep the iPhone version the same!
Agreed. I only visit on my mobile. And the first version was chaos. But it’s gone back to its roots with little changes, wich is good. For the mobile I’ve got no complaints!
I’m with Peter; the new font does seem a bit fuzzy. Crisp that up a bit and it will be pretty good.
I prefer white text on black. that was a sort of signature. kind of like going back home. also, I was a bit confused with the timeline. some things at the top were old?
re Bernie. I do agree that this is a sport and entertainment. the technological paths of consumer automobiles and formula 1 race cars are completely isolated to each other nowadays. maybe it had some relevance up to the early to mid 80s. maybe someone can enlighten me on the existence of a sub $30k car that uses F1 power unit technology?
I think the link between F1 and road car technology only has to be plausible from a marketing perspective in order to keep the engine manufacturers happy.
In the cringeworthy world of selling automotive shopping trolleys to mainstream numpties it’s way easier to link small-capacity turbos with the cars on the forecourt than it is to pretend a screaming V8 is anything to do with daily motoring.
Smaller capacity turbo-charged engines are more relatable to the car-buying public sure, but isn’t F1 supposed to be a pinacle of something? I feel these massively efficient engines with their ERS and battery systems and whatnot belong more in endurance racing than in F1, and that the brilliance of them is lost amongst the glamour and drama of F1. It seems more like the compromised result of Bernie desperately wanting Renault to stick around and not leave him with just two engines for the F1 teams than a bold new direction for the pinacle of racing.
I’m not against change at all, I daresay a shed load of hard work has gone into developing this new look, but for me it is much too bland, there is a definite air of a letter inviting the vicar to tea about it… where is the ‘punch’.
Agreed..Too bland. At least the old presentation had a unique style unlike any other blog
On my mobile if I go to http://thejudge13.com the Monday news does not appear. The “experience” and Saturday article are the first 2 items. Yet I can find the Monday news via the menu.
Then if I go to http://thejudge13.com/home no items appear, just the firm to post a comment.
Sorry to say that I don’t like the new website. Firstly, the black background is very nice and the white background is too much, way too bright, for my eyes. Secondly, I am lost without a simple list of posts in historical order (latest posts at the top of the list). I am not sure if I have missed a post.
Thank you for all the hard work that you do and for the great website. Hopefully, you could go back to a dark background or even dim it down about so that it is not so glaring and also make a clear list of posts in historical order for people like me.
Thanks!
Eww, no please don’t bring the black background back. Some colour other than white is fine but the new scheme is much more readable than the old one.
I got directly the Monday article on my mobile, don’t know if there was tweaking done.
I quite like the new look but do miss the simple list of articles in reverse date order. But note, on my old old browser at work none of the graphical elements work – but then that is progress.
Re:Bernie – is he too busy counting his money to realise how unloved or out of touch with the fans?
Re: Hamilton contract. I believe the contract numbers are suffering from the currency unit confusion that was discussed here last year. The Formula Money numbers for last year were in Euros and had Lewis 20 mil, and Fred, Kimi and Seb at 22 mil for 2014. The Italian sources that proved correct on last summer’s Ferrari shenanigans had Vettel signed for 3 years with a base salary of Eur 25-28 mil per year. Does anyone have any idea of what Alonso signed for with McLaren? I remember Lewis stating last year that a world champion should be humble. Hope he remembers that for his sake, and pride doesn’t screw him out of a rocket ship for 2016.
New website is good for me. I’ve done websites and it can be more work than people think. Thanks.
For mobile I have an S3 with Android updated a couple of days ago. No problems, menu works, can increase size of type. Good job.
The new website is nice, and I especially like the white background instead of black – makes it much easier to read.
That said, two peices of feedback a for you:
1) the font size is very small on an iPhone 5, which makes it difficult to read the articles on the mobile version.
2) Somehow the old site was easier to navigate and felt that it had much more content. Unfortunately the content is harder to immediately discover on the new site. Is it just that fewer peicea of content is shown to the reader? Not sure, but for some reason the new site feels less rich on content. That’s a shame when you have so much good content!
To solve problem 1….
All you have to do is to click the safari search window and then press the icon that appears on the left. That enlarges the article and fit to screen.
The color scheme itself doesn’t bother me. White on black is a fine solution for many websites out there, so why shouldn’t it work for the Judge as well?
No, what bugs me is that EVERYTHING is white here. Any good design has separators and other design elements which groups the relevant stuff together. Some light grey or other pastel colors would work well in that.
I personally wouldnt mind some accents to the left and right of the screen. It’s an awful lot of white and unused space. You might be able to keep it simple like the Williams-Martini livery.
Thats been fixed fast. Awesome work TJ13 crew.
Ferrari being Ferrari folks
http://www.grandprix247.com/2015/03/09/ferrari-takes-conservative-engine-to-aus-report/
Judge,
As always the news content is top notch, but i’m not keen on the new format of the webtsite. I really couldn’t find my way round it on my mobile, and not much better on my desktop. I hit home and it just seems to leave random articles, took effort find just today news and it took me a while to even find where the comments section was. I loved the simplicity of the old site that let me browse easily on my iphone and discreetly at work(Which where i guess most people read it 😉 ).The best way i can describe it is, its like going from windows xp, to windows 8. I appreciate that someone put a hell of a lot effort into this, and its not fun when some moany git like me putting comments like this, so appoligies.
I would say about the site change, the when you’re in an article the layout is similar to the old one, just new colours and everything can be found easily.
BUT: When you’re greeted with the front page, it is hard to see quickly which are the latest posts (in case there are any you haven’t seen yet). In fact today instead of clicking on the Monday news article, the scrolling thingy at the top had moved to showing an older article, so I had to click on the first small box (to get the scrolling thingy showing monday’s news) then click on that big box to load the news.
The previous design was good because when loading the site, it took you straight to the latest article (and click straight on it if you wanted to see comments too), and you could see a list of historical articles in the right side bar to see if you’ve missed anything.
I’ve got no opinion on the white/black impact on readability, but the old dark background looked more classy.
Absolutely agree – the latest article has to be the thing that screams ‘look at me’ at the top of the home page, i.e. where that rotating image thing is now.
As to the font, IMHO it’s not strong enough to stand out against the white background – it would be a struggle at that point size on a printed page, but the added luminescence of the screen simply swamps it. All very artistic, but what’s wrong with good old Arial 10pt ?
I’d agree with this too – I just viewed the site of my laptop for the first time since The Change and the homepage is a nightmare to navigate. I’d rather have bigger, clearer headlines that make it really easy to see what you’re looking for rather than attention-grabbing completely irrelevant header pictures.
I was referring to the ‘Recent Articles’ bit rather than the carousel, by the way – when I used the site I couldn’t be bothered trying to navigate through the carousel as it seemed to be scrolling through older items that I wasn’t interested in, so I went down to ‘Recent Articles’ where I assumed that the latest DNAC would be. As it turns out of course it wasn’t, but that’s where the images/header issue I referenced above was taking place.
Not having the actual latest articles there isn’t really ideal. It doesn’t make sense for them to not be there.
The use of the two columns on each side of the main section of the site doesn’t seem to work that well either, especially with the lack of distinction between them. It just makes it really hard to work out what you’re looking at/for, and compared to how simple and effective the old site was it seems a big step backwards.
I know it takes a lot of effort to redesign websites and so on, but that’s why there’s always a lot of testing on different platforms/from different users before they’re launched. It seems that might have helped out in this instance as there are many people reporting many similar problems.
Whilst I like the new look, the font simply doesn’t sit well with the stark new white background. I’ve no issues with the background but if it were to stay, the font really needs to change.
I don’t think the main banner across the top does anything to attract new visitors as the title is difficult to read and has no resemblance to F1.
On the plus side, the layout is well thought out and easy to use.
On an even better note: it’s only a couple of days until the new season starts!! 🙂
Agree with the fint issue. After trying it both on the standard website as well as the mobile website, the font is a bit too small on both of them, and in combination with being a fine font, it is actually quite hard to read – you need to focus the eyes more than usual which is tiring. So please enlarge and embolden the font a little bit!, or in the alternative look for a replacement font.
Regarding the new site I believe that the font is rather difficult to read on screens. I think the font used on the Twitter widget on the bottom left corner of the page is much more comfortable for long texts.
I don’t like the landing screen either – I think it makes new posts difficult to find. The main feature in the start page is a carousel, which, well, speaks for itself (http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/). Until I realized that the latest posts were in a small block in the left, which is not prominent at all, I simply couldn’t find my way to this post.
I think the front page needs a rethink in order to present the newest stories more appropriately. A layout like these of Autosport or, well, any news site would work much better, I presume.
Hey Judge … what happened here? All white background? (MY EYES MY EEEYYYEEES)
I personally do not like the bright white background. It hurts my eyes. Loved the old color scheme, and hope you’ll bring it back? Why? This white burns a lot of light, costs more energy and trees. Love nature, take a dark background!
Hey vieze,
Check: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-black-is/
Quote:
In fact in newer liquid-crystal display, or LCD, monitors white is actually slightly more energy efficient than black.
Think the new website is more aesthetically pleasing than the old grey on black. On a computer it felt like I was a goth’s bedroom!! It meant I mostly visited the site on my phone. The new background could do with being toned down brightness wise though. Definite improvement though in my humble opinion. Needed to be done.
*in*
New site looks good, light background us much better, looks fine on PC, iphone4, ipad, and s3 to me. Little extra colour wouldn’t hurt, though its not essential, and I think a more prominent last 5 or so articles that just the side scrolling header. We discovered recently building a site that a lot of folks view those side image scrollers as ‘decorative’ and don’t often use the side arrows to scroll and find the article they want… sky sporrs does it, and still needs to chronolifically eepear the articles lower down. I use a rss feed reader, so for me I already have a chronological list of articles. Top effort folks, stick with it, there is often a lot of ‘argh you moved my stuff’ with this sort of thing, I bet Hippos heard more of it that most of us have had hot dinners!
Ignore any of my feedback that isn’t just praise. As of just now I have looked again at the site in a browser, and its all there; most recent articles and the images are provided a nice space now. The feedback I had is already addressed.
I suggest using bold font in the text body on the white background. The screen on a PC is simply hard to read without more contrast. Navigation is not intuitive at least at first. Consider some type of index or pointer to today’s articles and then to an historical listing. Still best f1 site going.
Black background was terrible for reading in the sun – not all your readers live in UK 😉 But you’ve a pure white background now, so you’ll get negative feedback about it being blinding on iOS. Suggest a slight off-white.
Still takes ages to load. And font is a tad small for all devices – although it seems to be at least consistent in size on this theme.
Suggest some way to access the latest article without further clicking from the Home page, like the old site.
Otherwise – GREAT keep it coming!
Oh, not new to new website, but can you please add a Close X button to your Follow panel in lower right corner please? It eats up a LOT of real estate on a mobile device and there is no way to get rid of it, but wait forever for it to shrink.
Re Mclaren….
“The McLaren-Honda looked as bad as the RedBull-Renault last winter, but they finished second in the championship”……
If I remember correctly, the biggest problem they Redbull and Renault had related to the tight packaging and cooling and nothing to do with the PU itself. So I really don’t see these 2 situations being similar in anyway whatsoever.
Have you seen this message by Rosberg?
“Just went to see Bernie to collect my pole trophy and the big boss already told me the result of the 2015 championship. I’m very happy with it ;).”
Does this mean he’ll be the new champ?
Daily Mirror also says that Ferrari have tried to lure Hamilton for 2016, twice!
You put in the equation all the contract negotiations between Lewis and Merc as well, and you can understand why Merc may end up favouring Rosberg this year.
Yea, Bernie told him that he’ll be back same time next year to collect another trophy, it just won’t be the WDC one.
If he turned down Ferrari twice, what does that say to you about which team he sees his future with?
His ‘foreseeable’ future, which you can read as 2+1, will be with Merc. Where he closes his career off, who knows? If McLaren are good by then, he may go back, otherwise he’ll go to Ferrari. Everyone wants to drive for the red team at some point in their career!
The claim that they wanted to make him the highest paid driver was interesting. If the claim of £30m were to be true, then rumors that Seb (don’t attack me hippo, I’m just making a comment) is the highest paid is way off the mark then.
Btw….
Bernie said Nico was going to win it last year….
https://mobile.twitter.com/nico_rosberg/media/grid?idx=0&tid=574516273494814721
RE: German GP survives
I must say that the tactic used by the Nurburgring, letting Bernie run the race and keep the ticket prices in exchange, is a very smart tactic. It shows Bernie the hard way how little profit a track can make from running a race, I doubt that it will make Bernie change his tactic but it might be a good idea for all the European tracks to do it this way because I think it will be a lot easier for them to keep running while also making enough profit to develop a track.
Spa do it currently too
Do any of the tracks actually make a profit then? For instance the ones that don’t pay the fee and Bernie gets the ticket money, where does their revenue come from? The ones that can afford the fee, I can’t imagine the tickets cover that, especially Silverstone. Doesn’t really sound like a viable business venture for any of them!!
The tracks that make a ‘profit’ do so because their track get subsidized, usually by their (local) government. Usually the thinking is that if they invest in the GP than it attracts enough tourists to make up for the investment. The GP’s that don’t get subsidized are the ones that are usually in the news because there isn’t enough money to organize the next GP. Silverstone is about the only track that consistently hits even or makes a small profit without subsidies, why? Easy Silverstone is about the only track that is close to being sold out every year.
And the tickets at Silverstone are one of the most expensive on the calender.
And even with government help spa loses money every year.
That is smart of them, now if the Italian, British and Spanish GP do the same than it might actually force Bernie to change something in how he milks the tracks…
I like this site in any font or style. Getting a proof reader might be a bigger improvement. FP2 & FP2
The front page is now really just a page with links to other stuff, with a lot of duplication. You’ve got the carousel, the ‘latest articles’ on the left and the ‘recent articles’ below the carousel. They all show more or less the same things (but not entirely). This makes it hard to figure out where to look for the right link. The choice for a carousel seems primarily intended to put more pictures on the front page, to make the site look less like a blog. However, since most articles consist of all daily news combined, it is a hodgepodge by definition. This makes the choice for a carousel very poor, since there is no picture that will match all daily content. So you have to read the text in the carousal anyway and the pictures just make this hard.
I also wonder if you looked at how most people use your site, I’d assume that the vast majority want to see the latest article or the second- or third-latest. So you should really prioritize that.
My suggestions:
– Get rid of the carousel
– Get rid of ‘recent articles’
– Put the latest article on the front page
– Keep the ‘Read latest article’s’ list of recent articles, but add a link below it: “older articles”. That should go to a page with a long list of recent articles.
– Put a Formula 1 car or something in your masthead image.
It’s difficult to find latest reading using Chrome. Unnatural navigation. Less contrasts between letters and background than before. I vote for the previous design.
The new site looks great on my iphone 5 so thanks very much.
On the desktop though the layout looks busier, clunky and more difficult to navigate.
By the way, the background isn’t really behaving the way it’s supposed to be. It is cut on high-res screens. Please check http://i.imgur.com/2aEEQNO.png
Thanks David, it’s a temporary measure to eliminate some of the white. A new background is undergoing construction as it were
Lewis just post this on his Instagram page, make sure you’ve got your sound on…
http://websta.me/n/lewishamilton?lang=en
Oh dear. That’s juvenile to the max. That’s 14 year old boy stuff and downright frightening that a supposedly grown man would find it so hilarious, let alone actually engage in doing it. Creepy. Not a fan of Hamilton anyway, but he just dropped another 6-8 notches. He’s a creepy child.
Nice re-dux! Overall I welcome the changes. However, I agree with several of the postees that it was initially a bit difficult to find the DN&C.
Having said that, the sidebar of recent articles solves that one. Also, I just went back onto my mobile/cell and you seem to have reverted to a simpler format, similar to the old one, which is much easier to navigate on a smaller screen for those of us who don’t have delicate lady fingers!
Seems like you’re having an better time with pre-season testing than McHonda!
Fernando Alonso and Mclaren, have you ever seen a more perfect relationship?
Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito!
ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP 2015
33rd Match, Pool A: Bangladesh v England at Adelaide – Mar 9, 2015
Bangladesh 275/7; England 260 (48.3 overs)
Bangladesh won by 15 runs
🙂
Next up? Afghanistan.
Surely not…
Just notices that the match is on this Friday – the 13th. Curious.
Building a nice little ground in Baku I hear 😉
Would you bet against it happening?
I found the black background with white print does not work well for my old eyes. There was an article on Lewis in F1 Magazine that way–I just gave up on it. I might have been able to read it with a magnifying glass, but I decided I didn’t care that much.
I don’t much care for the revolving links to the stories at the top of the page. Took me a while to find the link for today’s page. I suggest a sidebar with the list. I’d like a comments link to open it up and work on it while reading.
“Sources close to Hamilton have revealed Ferrari have offered to make Lewis the highest paid driver in the sport, as they seek to replace Raikkonen in 2016.” More of the “contract negotiation by press release”!
Hi Sam, you’ll find quick links in chronological order in the left hand column for future reference 🙂
How about a ‘Top’ button at the bottom of the comments section?
And an indication of comments received (against the article on the sidebar?) so easy to tell if updates received.
Sounds like Hamilton is weighing out, money vs. championships. From what is posted in the article it’s looking like money is more important. Personally I wish he would go for the championships, but I’m a nobody. I wonder what Senna would do?
senna was famously tough in contract negotiations. i remember reading a story about him and ron dennis being both so hardheaded, that they had to flip a coint to get out of a negotiation deadlock.
Re: “… Gary Anderson believes McLaren are withholding information following Fernando Alonso’s crash …”
I think Gary Anderson should leave medical issues to Doctors.
“…. Gary believes this level of force is not abnormal for the drivers. “With all the mandatory headrest padding etc, the driver will experience that level of force many times during a race weekend without any problems”. … ”
Eh? Anyone experiencing a sharp millisecond on/off knock of a few Gs would be liable to brain damage.
” … We can be certain, there are inconsistencies between Alonso and Dennis over the current state of the Spaniard’s health. Dennis claimed he was “physically perfect” whilst Alonso has chosen to accept the advice of his doctors that he is not fit to race in Australia. .. ”
Dennis is technically correct. Alonso’s doctors have not said Alonso is not fit to race in Australia. They have advised (as any professional would who is subject to being sued) Alonso to take a “safety first” approach just in case there is another accident. It is the opinion of most neuro-scientists and doctor that a second brain incident within 28 days of the first one could have very serious outcomes. All this is based on statistical evidence, and so it is wise to take precautions and avoid unnecessary exposure to risk in those 28 days. Note that the risk to the brain does NOT disappear after 28 days, it merely becomes less significant.
One thing regarding head injuries, they are very non-linear. A light knock can sometimes induce significant damage whereas a heavy one won’t. Same is true for recovery times. A mild concussion might take longer to heal than a more significant TBI. Each one is it’s own unique thing.
Up to 9G is fairly survivable for humans
My opinion about the new look of the site:
In general I’m fine with it, but I think a few changes could improve it: 1) I would prefer to see the news for the day charged by default as the main text body, not having to look for it in the menu. 2) I would prefer the text more compact, as previously. 3) Side columns are a little bit distracting with this font and text arrangement of the main text, maybe changing the size, using a different color for those columns of something else. But in general it looks ok, congrats.
Hey guys appreciate the hard work that you guys have done….But I absolutely hate it sorry.I find it overwhelming and confusing. I usually visit the site 3 times day and know what Im looking for and was confused…I had to work out how to get the most recent article and it didnt seem quit obvious at first thats a no no…..Please simplify….it also felt cluttered ..this on the right side that on the left side and all I want to do is read news of the day….and even when you get there you still have all that other info on both sides…… there is great potential but the site at the moment is any thing but user freindly
Agree with the “too much white space” comments. Maybe pale gray side bars.
On my desktop I do have gradient grey bordering this blog, which is nice. On my Android mobile device, it’s too white, but not as unwieldy as the Apple folks are complaining about.
Hated the black blackground. Hated it. So this is an improvement. I have read somewhere that fonts with serifs are easier to read, easier on the eye. These clean sans serif are nice for headlines and such, but you might want to experiment with text fonts and see how your reader react to them.
Slide show: I do not like it at all, not one bit, hate the slide show at the top where I have click on the topic of the day – quickly.
Your posts are dated – meaning the most recent are the most noteworthy– so you need to make it easy to see and click the most recent without feeling your at a carny show shooting tin ducks.
Keep the slide show if you wish but please at least have the most current blog posting at the top — stationary.
Put the slide show below if if you wish, I don’t care.
AND I’d really like to have a quick link to the comments, right next to the relevant post….like you used to have. Still not certain how I get to them now. I’ve managed but right next to the link was super.
Congrats on the new site.
Certain you’ll get the kinks worked out.
And I don’t think Hamilton is going to be his own best negotiator. Some people can do that. I don’t know him but he doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of guy who can separate himself from the negotiations and view it from the 30k or 50k foot level.
I have your site bookmarked and there is that little tiny image of TheJudge in a wig that tells me it’s TJ13. That thingie is called a Gravatar. Noticed you’ve dumped the wigged man. You might want to change your Gravatar too.
In my opinion, putting black text on white background is a big improvement. White on black is hard to read. I always had to zoom in to see anything. Interesting, the choice of colors I think was the only big problem with the last site layout.
The new site is not perfect. The main issue is with the front page. It looks too busy. The worst issue is that it’s not clear where is the new article heading. After staring a bit, I realized that the heading is to the left of the story’s summary. In my opinion some space should be left between the successive entries so that we can clearly see where each news entry starts.
Honda have given both power units twitter accounts, possible a recipe for snark if they don’t even get going in free practise –
https://twitter.com/hondapu14
https://twitter.com/hondapu22
Site design wise ? Looks ok on my 27″ monitor, not checked it on my phone or tablets yet. Never really liked the old site design.
Roberto Merhi is the second Manor race driver, going by what’s just appeared on twitter.
The font change has made the news much more readable – kudos on that!