We’re firmly into in Formula 1 launch season, which as always provides a stream of photos of largely familiar looking cars and empty soundbites. Far more interesting is what’s going on over in TV land.

GP2 & GP3

On the good news front, a TV deal for GP2 and GP3 has been announced: as widely hoped, they will be broadcast live on Sky Sports F1 HD. It’s only sensible; after all, they have a whole channel to fill. As Ted Kravitz reported Jenson Button as saying at the McLaren launch yesterday:

“I’m giving long answers because Sky Sports have a lot of time to fill on their new channel!”

He’s not wrong. GP2 and GP3 is a very good way to fill a bit more of the schedule on race weekends: dedicated fans want it, the casual viewer might just find something they like, and it’s great for the series to have live coverage on a serious channel. It’ll probably also tip the balance for a few undecided viewers to sign up for Sky.

WRC

While common sense has triumphed for the Formula 1 support classes, it’s still trying its best to do so in the WRC. iRally is the place for an up-to-date, blow-by-blow account, but let’s summarise.

WRC commercial rights holder North One Sport was bought by Convers Sports Initiatives in 2011. Later that year, the company went into receivership, following the activities of Vladimir Antonov. That sort of screwed everything up, just before the 2012 season was due to begin.

Eurosport stepped in and provided coverage of the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally, doing a good job at short notice, by all accounts. Eurosport, having experience from running and broadcasting the IRC, were – and are – the obvious choice to take over as promoter and broadcaster of the WRC. There’s been little word from the FIA, but the latest from iRally suggests that both sides want to make it work, but European employment law may be the latest sticking point.

It is a quite staggering mess. I complained last year that there was no free-to-air coverage in the UK, but this is another level of badness for the sport. Common sense says that a deal will be made between the FIA and Eurosport; let’s hope it triumphs in the end.

Photo Credit
Kevin Simpson / videocrab – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Last year, I wrote a typically meandering blog post about the joy of an orange livery. To my surprise, this solicited comment both here and on Twitter, pointing out examples that I’d missed. Turns out I’m not the only one to enjoy a nice bit of orange.

So, since 2012 is apparently the year of orange, it’s fitting that I get around to a follow up. Peel back your eyelids, here comes the orange.

I can’t resist starting with the Dakar, since it always makes for stunning photos, and it’s on now. I covered Robby Gordon’s exceedingly orange Hummer last time, but luckily we have some new orange: Leonid Novitskiy’s Mini. Novitskiy doesn’t get all the fun though; the other Monster Energy X-raid Minis are equally delightfully bright colours: green for Peterhansel, yellow for Roma, red for Dos Santos.

One I realised that I missed just after publishing the original post, and was pointed out to me shortly after by @badhedgehog in the comments – is Henning Solberg.

Before he started messing around with his livery, it was spanking-bright orange, thanks to his sponsor of the time, Expert. This is, I’ll grant you, not the clearest view of his 2011 Ford Fiesta RS WRC, but it is a stormingly good photo.

Another suggested to me, by @a_lost_irishman on Twitter, was the many incarnations of the Jagermeister Porsche.

As Wikipedia points out, it’s not just Porsches that Jagermeister sponsored – though that was perhaps their greatest success, winning the 1986 World Sportscar Championship with Brun Motorsport. They even cropped up in that fancy Formula 1 lark, with March Engineering in 1974 and EuroBrun in 1989.

How did I miss KTM last time? There are few companies quite so orange.

The only problem is, they’re not bad at attracting sponsorship for their factory efforts so, for example, their Dakar livery this year is pure Red Bull – barely a hint of orange. At least their Motocross World Championship livery, though also Red Bull flavoured, has room for a little more orange – as you can see.

That’s enough orange for now. Suggestions of what I’ve still missed are very welcome.

Photo Credits
Monster Energy MINI ALL4 Racing: X-raid
Ford Fiesta RS WRC: kyn_chung – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Jagermeister Porsche: Nathan Bittinger – Flickr – Some rights reserved
MX2 KTM: Lutz & Patrick Fischer / schneller_blitz – Flickr – Some rights reserved

So, we’ve established that the racing at Brands Hatch on Sunday wasn’t exactly scintillating. But! All the more time to try to get half-decent photos of the more interesting liveries on display.

Livery of the day

We go straight to International GT Open, and the number 11 Ferrari 458 GT Italia run by Kessel Racing, driven by Philipp Peter and Michael Broniszewski. It only finished 10th and 17th in the races, but by jingo it had the best livery around. A delightful shade of yellow and a spider’s web, you say? Sold!

Formula Two

The top liveries were better rewarded in Formula Two.

Lotus Cup UK / Europe

It’s not particularly associated with Lotus, but there were a couple of Gulf Oil liveried entries in the Lotus Cup UK / Europe. Pete Storey’s Lotus 2-Eleven, above, was a particularly pleasing example of that most distinctive of colour combinations.

The Formula Two meeting at Brands Hatch at the weekend was not terribly well attended. Sunday tickets were £17 in advance, which struck me as reasonable. But when World Series by Renault at Silverstone next month is free, suddenly it doesn’t seem as cheap.

It didn’t affect my enjoyment of the day – it made it easy to get in and out of the car parks, and there was no jostling for position at the inside of Druids. But it does make me question whether Formula Two is working.

Headline or support

After two seasons spent largely as a support category for the WTCC, F2 moved away from that for 2011. The stated reason was to visit more Formula 1 tracks, but presumably it was also an attempt to take more of the limelight. It’s not really worked though.

F2 now shares a bill with the International GT Open at most meetings. Even at Brands Hatch – a circuit owned by MotorSport Vision, the company which also runs Formula Two – it was a joint headline event. The Monza and Barcelona meetings are advertised purely as International GT Open – not even a cursory mention of F2.

The pecking order

So Formula Two has failed to build itself much of a profile.

It’s one of only five FIA world championships, yet in reality it’s certainly below GP2 in the motorsport pecking order, and possibly GP3 too. It probably sits alongside something like Formula Renault 3.5 – on the aforementioned World Series by Renault bill – in terms of notoriety.

F1 feeder series

So what is F2 for? Well, when it was relaunched, then FIA President Max Mosley said:

“The objective is to make top-level international single-seater racing available to drivers who at present have difficulty in raising enough money to demonstrate their talent. Formula One and other major championships will benefit by being able to draw on a far larger pool of drivers, while competitors from countries which do not yet have an established motor racing structure will find it easier to make progress.”

Clearly the intention was that F2 would be a Formula 1 feeder series – the prize of a Williams F1 test backs that up.

But it isn’t. Andy Soucek has been stuck in Superleague Formula since winning the 2009 title. Not what anyone hoped for.

Cheap route to GP2

With GP2 tests for the drivers who come second and third in the overall standings, there’s an implicit admission that F2 is more of a GP2 feeder series.

Which is possibly not such a bad thing when the other objective does seem to have been achieved: F2 is significantly cheaper than GP2, GP3, FR3.5 or F3 – at least according to its own website.

As a result, it has a healthy grid. But it’s still not that cheap – Will Bratt, for example, had to miss the Brands Hatch meeting due to lack of budget.

Perhaps if we give it a few years, Formula Two drivers will start to properly filter up to GP2 and eventually Formula 1. Which, I think, would constitute F2 working.

Palmer promotion

And in the meantime, at least Formula Two can be used as a promotional tool for MotorSport Vision boss Jonathan Palmer’s son.

Jolyon Palmer finished second overall in 2010 (and 21st in 2009), and this year races in GP2. But that doesn’t stop him getting plenty of mentions from @FIA_Formula_Two.

And, of course, a nice big double page spread in the programme for the Brands Hatch round, putting an unerringly positive spin on his as yet pointless – in the literal sense – rookie season of GP2.

I’m very partial to a bit of Brands Hatch, so what better place to spend my 30th birthday? It’s just a lovely place to wander around – and even better with engines roaring all around you. So, yesterday, off to the Formula Two meeting I went.

Not the most exciting race

It turned into a glorious day by the time the F2 race kicked off. Just as well, because it wasn’t the most exciting of races.

Ramon Pineiro made a storming start to take the lead around the outside at the first corner, and disappeared into the distance. Jack Clarke looked like he might challenge Mirko Bortolotti in the early laps, but they soon settled into comfortable third and second places respectively.

The racing might not have been remarkable, but Pineiro looked incredibly happy with his first Formula Two victory, and on a sunny day who could begrudge him that? Especially in what F2 commentator Jack Nicholls neatly described as a highlighter pen of a car.

Champagne burns

Incidentally, it’s worth watching the highlights of the race on YouTube. The start is decent, but really it’s all about Jack Clarke spraying champagne in an unfortunate grid girl’s face – skip to about 7:41 for that. Her reaction suggests something along the lines of: “IT BURNS!” – I do hope she was okay.

Pastor Maldonado has been announced as racing for Williams next season. This was widely expected, so the news needs another angle. There have been two favourites: that he’s Venezuelan, and the last time there was a Venezuelan in Formula 1, Maldonado wasn’t born; and that he brings a lot of sponsorship money with him. But that’s not what I’m interested in.

Maldonado is the 2010 GP2 Series champion, and that will have gone some way to securing him the Williams seat for 2011. There is a strong history of GP2 champions moving to Formula 1 the following year:

• 2005 – Nico Rosberg – Williams in 2006
• 2006 – Lewis Hamilton – McLaren in 2007
• 2007 – Timo Glock – Toyota in 2008
• 2009 – Nico Hulkenberg – Williams in 2010

But there’s a year missing from that list: 2008. And that’s why I want you to spare a thought for Giorgio Pantano. With Maldonado’s move confirmed, Pantano remains the only GP2 champion, in its six season history, not to get a drive in Formula 1 the following year. Poor bloke.

Why didn’t Pantano get his chance? It’s tempting to suggest that it’s because he’d already had a crack at the F1 whip, at Jordan in 2004. But the same can be said of Glock. Literally the same: he too drove for Jordan in 2004, before his time in GP2. In fact, Glock replaced Pantano in the team. Small world.

It’s not a fact lost on Pantano, and I’m pleased to have found the very honest, quite angry comments he made about in 2008, which I think were originally to autosport.com:

“I challenge anyone to have a CV as good as mine. I won two karting world titles, three European, three Italian, German F3, GP2 and was always at the front in F3000. But now I don’t have a seat in F1, is this a joke? That’s what it’s like now, if you don’t get in touch with people, no one looks for you. I feel abandoned. The only person behaving fairly has been Ecclestone. I called him a few days ago and after ten minutes he called me back. The only real drives still available are at Honda and Toro Rosso. Bernie told me that if anything moves, I’ll be the first to know. But I feel total indifference towards me. I read of Senna and Buemi but, really, what have they done? At this point, a guy in my situation must think that being a racing driver is not advantageous, doing another job would be better. Money is becoming the priority in order to race, talent doesn’t exist any more. I think I could still do six or seven years in F1 at high levels.”

Pantano can perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that there is a Facebook group also being angry on his behalf. Though it’s a bit quiet now.

Since taking the GP2 title, Pantano has been keeping himself busy with alternative – for want of a better word – international single-seater series: Superleague Formula in 2009, where he finished 7th for AC Milan; and AutoGP in 2010, finishing 11th.

We await details of Pantano’s plans for 2011. Formula 1 is looking unlikely…

How do you decide the best driver of the year? Plenty of people have opinions on individual championships. But what about across disciplines?

The Race of Champions might do the trick. There were world champions, current champions, multiple champions; names like Loeb, Schumacher, Doohan, Prost, Vettel, Priaulx, Kristensen, Plato.

But the surprise Champion of Champions was Filipe Albuquerque. Surprising particularly because the last time he was champion of anything was 2006, with a couple of Formula Renault 2.0 titles. I last saw him driving for Portugal in A1GP – where he did a fine job – and since then he’s been racing sportscars in Italy. It’s not unlike when Heikki Kovalainen won the title in 2004.

So is Albuquerque the best driver of 2010? Could be. But perhaps a series of knock-out head-to-head races isn’t the most reliable methodology. Maybe we need to turn to science.

The Castrol Rankings could be the answer. Drivers in major domestic and international championships are ranked based on their performance, weighted by how important that championship is deemed to be. That might not sound scientific – you could almost accuse it of being entirely arbitrary. But no, it’s called the ‘Castrol Index Score’, and it uses a formula, so it must be very, very clever.

The FAQ assures us that the Formula 1 champion won’t automatically top the rankings:

“While this is likely if a driver dominates for a long period, an F1 season in which the top drivers are closely matched could always open up the possibility of a driver from World Rally Championship, NASCAR Sprint Cup or the IndyCar Series topping the Castrol Rankings.”

This F1 season was indeed very close at the top, and by contrast Sebastien Loeb was very comfortable in taking the WRC title. Nevertheless, it’s Sebastian Vettel atop the Castrol Rankings; Loeb is third, behind Mark Webber.

So clearly it’s a load of old nonsense, utterly failing to compare performances across championships in any meaningful way. Rendering it useless.

But it’s put together by autosport.com, and it’s amusing to see them trying in vain to create news out of it. Yesterday, for example, we had the revelation that the top placed DTM driver in the Castrol Rankings is the man who won the DTM title – Paul di Resta. Well, yes. Obviously.

So I think we can discount the Castrol Rankings as a way to decide the year’s best driver. Which leaves us with only one contender: the little-known Portuguese man. As many people have said already: hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque!

Race of Champions is a lot of fun: construct a race track inside a stadium, add vehicles from buggies to rally cars and everything in between, scatter with top international racing drivers, and shake vigorously. What’s not to like?

It’s in Düsseldorf this weekend, which I’ll take as an excuse to wheel out a video I shot at the 2007 edition – the first of two at Wembley Stadium. Back then it all took place in one day, which made for a mighty good day out. It’s split over two days now, which seems a bit of a shame.

Anyway, this is a lap of Sebastien Buemi and Henning Solberg going head to head in Solution F Prototypes, with stadium commentary from Martin Haven.

There are, of course, far better videos knocking around. For example Race Of Champions For Dummies: Neil Cole going through all the cars at last year’s event in Beijing. With a bit of luck there will be more from him this year on his YouTube channel. Also probably worth keeping an eye out for are official ROC podcasts from BBC Radio Five Live F1′s very own David Croft.

Live coverage of the event is, inevitably, less easy to come by. For free, anyway. Motors TV will be broadcasting it, and it will also be streamed online. Despite that stream being via freecaster.tv, it’s not free – €4.99 is the asking price. It would have been nice to dip in and out of the live stream over the weekend if it was free. Ho hum.

A1 Grand Prix began at Brands Hatch, 23-25 September 2005. To celebrate the series not turning 5, over these three days, I’m looking back at what seemed like such a good idea.

Five years ago today, it was the first A1 Grand Prix race day. It was glorious weather at Brands Hatch, and the place was buzzing. I remember bumping into people I knew, who I would never have expected to see at a race meeting. But the concept – a Grand Prix of Nations, a World Cup of Motorsport – was new, interesting. People came down to see what it was all about. It could have been the start of something big. It didn’t quite turn out that way in the long term, but it was a fantastic day.

Clearly some people went to greater lengths to be there than people I knew who lived in London. Mainly the Dutch, taking up a good part of one of the grandstands, all dressed in orange, letting off orange smoke, supporting Jos Verstappen in an orange car. It really did feel like it should have been the start of something big.

The way that it actually got started – the launch ceremony – was entirely bizarre. On my way into the circuit I’d seen banks of black cabs, and I couldn’t imagine what they were for. It was so obvious: they would drive around the circuit, intermingled with circus performers with flags of all the nations taking part. Those ceremonies never make sense though.

To be honest, my memory of the racing that day is sketchy at best. What I mainly remember is disappointment in A1 Team Great Britain retiring while running strongly in the feature race. According to Wikipedia, the car suffered a battery failure whilst leading under the safety car. Oh dear.

It was Nelson Piquet who took pole, sprint and feature race victories, for A1 Team Brazil. This week in motorsport history pretty much belongs to him, but more for the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, when he intentionally crashed to help Fernando Alonso win for Renault.

But back to happier days. I’ll finish with some really rubbish footage of the A1GP cars streaming past.

Thanks for travelling back in time with me!

On Thursday I looked at the vision for the series, and on Friday I had a look at the drivers that came through A1GP.

A1 Grand Prix began at Brands Hatch, 23-25 September 2005. To celebrate the series not turning 5, over these three days, I’m looking back at what seemed like such a good idea.

All manner of drivers got behind the wheel of an A1GP car in the four seasons it ran for.

Perhaps the place to start is current Williams Formula 1 rookie Nico Hulkenberg. He was in the A1 Team Germany car for all but one meeting of the 2006-07 season, and took a ludicrous nine race wins, including both sprint and feature races at three meetings in a row. Needless to say, Germany won the championship that season.

It’s not the only title Hulkenberg has taken on his first attempt: he did the same in GP2 in 2009. Between those two achievements, he took two seasons to triumph in European Formula 3, in 2008. It’s not hard to see why he’s quite fancied as quite a star of the future in Formula 1.

The man you can’t get away from in A1GP is Neel Jani, having represented A1 Team Switzerland in each of the four seasons. He was solely responsible for the team’s title winning campaign in 2007-08, and also 2008-09, when Switzerland were runners up. The team were also runners up in 2005-06, when Jani scored all of the team’s points, despite not being in the car for two meetings.

Progress outside A1GP hasn’t been easy for Jani though. He picked up a couple of race wins in GP2 in 2005, and a podium in Champ Car in 2007. This year he contested the Le Man Series for Rebellion Racing, his number 12 entry finishing third in LMP1.

Why didn’t Formula 1 beckon? It nearly did, Jani having spent 2006 as Scuderia Toro Rosso test driver. Which neatly brings me to Sebsatien Buemi, currently racing in Formula 1 for that very team. He represented A1 Team Switzerland for six of the eleven meetings in 2006-07 – by far the team’s least successful year – with three 4th places his best results. Jani drove at four meetings, and took the team’s only win of the year. The team ended up 8th overall.

It’s only fair to point out that Buemi is five years Jani’s junior, so the comparison isn’t very fair. But fun nonetheless.

A1 Team France utterly dominated in 2005-06, driving duties shared between Nicolas Lapierre – who was part of the number 4 Team Oreca Matmut which topped LMP1 in this year’s Le Mans Series – and Alexandre Premat – currently plying his trade in DTM. Both men are also GP2 race winners.

The final driver to win the championship for his nation was Adam Carroll, for A1 Team Ireland in 2008-09. There was chatter about possible Formula 1 drives for this season, but that sadly amounted to nothing. Instead, in April he signed for Andretti Autosport, to contest a number of IndyCar Series events this year – presumably with an eye on the future.

Former Minardi Formula 1 driver Alex Yoong was possibly the most devoted A1GP driver – he was the seat holder of A1 Team Malaysia, and started 45 consecutive races – more than anyone else. He also won four races.

Jos Verstappen, Ralph Firman, Robert Doornbos and Narain Karthikeyan are among the other drivers who dabbled with A1GP after Formula 1.

Others came to Formula 1 after A1GP: Nelson Piquet Jr, Adrian Sutil, Scott Speed and Karun Chandhok all took part in the 2005-06 season.

Then there’s the unique case of Vitantonio Liuzzi, who was in Formula 1 both before and after A1GP. He did a couple of meetings for A1 Team Italy late in the 2008-09 season, after his stint with Scuderia Toro Rosso, but before he started racing for Force India.

It’s not just Formula 1. Twice DTM champion Timo Schneider represented A1 Team Germany in 2005-06. Will Power is now leading the IndyCar Series, but he was in the A1 Team Australia car for that very first race at Brands Hatch. He finished 4th and 2nd.

And there are many, many more names besides. But I’ve got to stop sometime, and that time is now.

On Thursday I looked at the vision for the series, and on Saturday I’ll remember that sunny first meeting at Brands Hatch.