Not a lot has been heard of two of the riders I mentioned in my pre-Dakar blog: David Fretigne and David Casteu. So where are the French Davids?

David Fretigne

Well in the case of David Fretigne, the answer is recovering from a fairly horrendous injury on the Rally of Morocco back in October, breaking his collarbone (according to reports) and fracturing vertebrae (according to his website). It sounds like he’s recovering well, but not enough to take on the Dakar.

Fretigne was on the initial entry list – hence my mistake – but his place in the BMW Motorrad by Speedbrain team was taken by Belgian Frans Verhoeven. His best result so far is 3rd on stage 5, and at the rest day he was top BMW, in 8th overall. So he’s doing a decent job at least.

David Casteu

Meanwhile, David Casteu just hasn’t had the pace he did in 2010, when he took a stage victory before retiring on stage 5. A 7th place on stage 4 is his best result so far; that put him in 10th overall but in touch, just 30 minutes behind the leader.

Stage 5 struck again though: he dropped nearly five hours with a gearbox problem. Despite a reasonable 14th place finish on stage 6, at the rest day he was languishing well back in 42nd. Nevertheless, just finishing the rally on his Sherco would be a significant improvement over the bike’s debut last year.

The Dakar is a great event to follow: it’s a race for the professional drivers and riders who are contesting the victory, but it’s also an adventure for the many who follow behind those few.

On the professional front, there’s TV coverage. The world feed is once again helpfully being streamed online, worldwide, and free of charge, by Australian broadcaster SBS. Catch up on everything so far here.

Toby Moody voiced the world feed for years, but this year it’s all change, with Ben Constanduros – best known to me for ITV4′s WTCC highlights – taking the mic for the first time. His brutally honest blog makes for fascinating reading – suffice it to say he’s not a fan of the way the feed is put together. For what it’s worth, after a shaky start, I reckon he’s found his feet, commentary-wise. His Twitter feed – @BenConsty – is worth watching, too.

My favourite Dakar Twitter feed, however, is that of Autosport’s Glenn Freeman – @glenn_autosport – who is driving a non-competing Volkswagen support truck. It’s a joyously enthusiastic insight into the rally, with some excellent photos. It’s so good that I even forked out for an Autosport.com subscription to read his blog.

MCN also carries a blog, from bike competitor Simon Pavey. The McRae Buggy lot are pretty good at updates too.

Not to forget that there’s live timing available on the Dakar website – which has been redesigned to be far less bad than last year. It’s still not great though.

There’s loads more out there, but that’s some of what I’m particularly enjoying.

UPDATE: Okay, so Glenn Freeman was only doing the first half of the Dakar. Typical. Hopefully his replacement, Peter Mills, also of Autosport, will be equally excellent.

I’ve never been a fan of Dani Sordo. It’s not really the man himself I have a problem with, but his former position in the works Citroen team. It was pretty much the best drive in the WRC, and he never proved himself worthy of it; his only success was in adequately supporting the dominance of Sebastien Loeb.

But now Citroen are preparing for a life after Loeb, and Sordo is out on his ear, to make room for the less experienced but already far more successful Sebastien Ogier.

And so it is that new WRC entrants Mini have signed up Sordo. Despite myself, I reckon it’s quite a wise move on Mini’s part – and Sordo should just count himself lucky to have found gainful employment.

Mini have quite a task ahead of them, developing the new Countryman WRC. They already have British driver Kris Meeke – who, incidentally, Sordo beat to the Junior WRC title in 2005.

What Sordo chiefly brings, though, is Citroen experience – of the team, the C4, and of the new DS3. That’s got to be invaluable for Mini, and I can’t imagine that Sordo commands an outrageous fee. Good value for money, then.

As for Sordo’s dubious WRC record – the whole never having won a rally in five seasons driving the championship winning car – that’s probably not Mini’s greatest concern.

If the Countryman develops into a car capable of winning rallies, the fresh start out of Loeb’s shadow might be just what Sordo needs to start winning rallies. On the other hand, if the Countryman develops into a car capable of winning rallies, and Sordo doesn’t develop into a driver capable of winning rallies, then Mini can dump him in favour of someone who can, well, win rallies.

And if the Countryman doesn’t develop into a car capable of winning rallies, then it’s all academic. In the short term though, Sordo looks like a highly logical choice.

As 2010 fades out, and 2011 comes into view, thoughts inevitably turn to the Dakar: virtually the only reason to pay attention in January. So, what’s new for the 2011 edition?

The most intriguing newness comes courtesy of BMW: the Mini All4 Racing. Like the Mini WRC car, it’s a beefed up Mini Countryman – just even more beefed up, obviously. Have a look at the crazy little thing in action:

The Mini will make up only one of BMW’s seven entries, but they’re handing it to a serious competitor – last year’s 5th placed man Guerlain Chicherit. Presumably it’s intended to eventually replace the more familiar BMW X3 CC, which makes up the other six entries. BMW’s main hopes for victory will presumably rest with Stephane Peterhansel – three times a winner for Mitsubishi, and before that a five-time bike winner.

BMW has backing from Monster Energy this year, which means the black and green is gone from Robby Gordon’s Hummer. Fear not though: the replacement sponsor is Speed Energy, and their influence has seen the massive Hummer go bright orange. Excellent.

Keeping with energy drinks, Red Bull are probably rather used to winning now, and by backing Volkswagen, they have a bloody good chance of continuing to do so. The Volkswagen Race Touareg 3 is new this year, but the drivers are unchanged: WRC legend and 2010 Dakar winner Carlos Sainz, 2009 winner Giniel de Villiers, the ever-impressive 2010 runner-up Nasser Al-Attiyah, and the always reliable 2009 runner-up Mark Miller. An unbeatable line-up in terms of achievements, but anything can happen on the Dakar.

One more to mention in the cars. Nani Roma contested the 2010 edition for BMW, winning the first stage before going out on the third. After losing his place in the team, the 2004 bike winner found a new home in a Nissan Navara with Team Overdrive, when Freddy Loix couldn’t take his place in the team due to a scheduling conflict. Perhaps two days between the end of the Dakar and the start of the IRC season was judged to be a bit tight.

Bikes

On the bikes, yet again it’s all about Cyril Despres and Marc Coma (both KTM), who have taken it in turns to win since 2005. Despres won last year, so maybe it’s Coma’s turn? He certainly had more than his share of bad luck last year: mechanical problems, tyre damage, penalties – the whole shebang. He ended up 15th.

Chilean Francisco Lopez Contardo (Aprilia) is another one to look out for, after winning three stages in 2010 and finishing 3rd over all. With more stages in Chile, he could be a threat. So too could David Casteu (Sherco), if he can finish – he won stage 1 in 2010, but went out on stage 5. David Fretigne (who has moved from Yamaha to BMW) was another early stage winner, taking stage 2 before losing a lot of time on stage 3, eventually recovering to 5th overall.

2010′s 2nd and 4th place finishers – Pal Anders Ullevalseter and Helder Rodrigues – were more remarkable for their consistency than anything else, though Ullevalseter did grab a late stage victory.

Online

Another quick new thing: the official Dakar website. It’s much less terrible.

I’ll probably write more about coverage of the Dakar another time, but it looks like Australian broadcaster SBS will have their coverage available free online again. And it looks like there will be one more new thing: the commentator. No Toby Moody, but Ben Constanduros is out there, and SBS is amongst those taking his commentary.

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!

It’s a right bugger that, after three seasons, we’ve seen the last of the World Rally Championship on Dave. The show’s presenter, Neil Cole, confirmed as much on Facebook after Rally GB. And a tip of the hat to Motorsport Musings for noticing it.

From further comments on Twitter, it seems that a three-year deal has come to an end, and isn’t being renewed. So fingers crossed the coverage ends up on another channel broadly unchanged – because it’s become something of a gem.

It has proved me delightfully wrong this year. I didn’t expect the coverage on Dave this season to be up to much: extra coverage had been announced for Motors TV, and 2009′s coverage on Dave had been disappointingly celebrity-heavy. But Neil Cole was good enough to comment on that post, and he was right: this season it was no celebrities, more action, and more atmosphere.

Rally Japan was the obvious highlight, with extremely stylish use of manga-inspired graphics and Japanese characters; it put the BBC’s attempts to do something similar for the Japanese Grand Prix to shame.

The introduction of pundits was a welcome move, and by Rally GB, the coverage was absolutely bang on: proper rally coverage, but properly entertaining too.

So where on British TV might the WRC end up in 2011? ITV4 had the rights before Dave, but that was a very bland highlights and voiceover affair. With its live BTCC rights extended for another three years, and an assortment of other motorsport highlights packages, ITV4 does still seem keen on motorsport. But maybe it’s got its plate full.

Channel 4 does the odd bit of motorsport coverage, and indeed had the WRC rights prior to ITV4. Channel 4′s coverage was actually rather excellent at one point: daily highlights fronted by the generous – and entertaining – presenter line-up of Jon Desborough, Robbie Head and Penny Mallory. I doubt we’ll see a return to that though.

The BBC, maybe? After all, Auntie Beeb has covered both the Scottish Rally Championship and Wales Rally GB this year. The Rally GB programme is available to watch here until Sunday. It’s a bit dry, but there’s a lot of stage footage, and some nice interviews.

But crucially, those were on BBC Two Scotland and BBC Two Wales. I can’t see BBC Sport picking up the WRC rights: with Formula 1 and MotoGP already, they’d struggle to justify spending any more of their budget on motorsport.

So it’s all a big unknown for next year. Maybe ITV4 is the best hope. In any case, it’s worth letting WRC commercial rights holders North One Sport know what we want – on Twitter or Facebook. I have.

Citroen, Ford and Mini all unveiled their new-for-2011 WRC cars yesterday. Funnily enough, they look a bit like the Citroen DS3, Ford Fiesta and Mini Countryman. So that’s not what I’m interested in.

No, what I enjoyed is something Mini’s Ian Robertson had to say (via autosport.com):

“We want to annoy the opposition as soon as possible.”

Speaking as a rally fan, there is nothing I want more than for someone to annoy the established figures in the World Rally Championship – by which I mean Sebastien Loeb and Citroen.

Loeb is looking to tie up the 2010 title this weekend in France, and having won five of the first six stages, he’s certainly got off on the right foot. So we do need to look to 2011.

There are plenty to reasons to be cheerful. Confirmed alongside Loeb in the factory Citroen team is Sebastien Ogier who – unlike Loeb’s current team mate, Dani Sordo – has actually won a rally. So there should be more rivalry inside Citroen. Sordo’s future is yet to be confirmed.

What about Ford? With all-new regulations for 2011, hopefully the advantage Citroen seem to have over Ford will be reset.

We may have to wait until 2012 for a real challenge from Mini though, with only a six-rally campaign planned for 2011. But by that point Kris Meeke – and whoever else ends up in a Mini – should be up to speed.

But back to 2011. Who wouldn’t love to see Petter Solberg involved in a fight for the championship? It’s not outside the realm of possibility.

The big unknowns are this season’s new boys. We don’t yet know if Kimi Raikkonen will stay in the WRC, but it looks broadly likely, and would be hugely welcome. He’s improved a lot this year, and it would be fascinating to see him challenging at the front.

So too Ken Block, who has mainly crashed this year – but had a lot of fun doing so, it would seem. The man can clearly drive a car, as his videos prove. But maybe he’s used to have a few takes to get it right.

The final reason to be cheerful is Dave, assuming the channel keeps the TV rights. The Rally Japan programme marked a high for WRC coverage in living memory: distinctive, stylish, informed, relevant and entertaining. More of it, please!

So the 2010 championship might come to an unwelcome early end this weekend, but 2011 promises oh so very much more. With a bit of luck.

Two officially licensed motorsport games due within weeks of each other? And both look good? This is a rare treat!

First up will be F1 2010 from Codemasters. After last year’s F1 2009 on Wii and PSP – which was pretty bloody lovely – it’s the turn of the big boys – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC – this year.

To be specific, 24th September – just a fortnight away. As such, reviews have started to roll in, with 9/10 from Official PlayStation Magazine and 90% from GamesMaster getting the game’s critical reception off to a storming start. It sounds like it won’t be quite as accessible as the Wii game, but the depth and detail sounds impressive.

There’s a huge mass of videos around to get your juices flowing. Like a nice HD effort with plenty of action courtesy of Eurogamer; or developer diaries featuring Anthony Davidson – who has also been raving about the game on Twitter – amongst others, on the Codemasters YouTube channel. If that’s not enough for you, then how about Adrian Sutil not really knowing what to say to Eurogamer at the recent gamescom expo in Germany? Perfect!

That will be followed, on 8th October, by the first WRC game in some years, in the form of the snappily titled WRC FIA World Rally Championship, again for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

The companies behind it – Black Bean Games and Milestone – are racing specialists: they’ve looked after the World Superbike game for a few years now, and an FIM Motocross World Championship game is in the works too. Suffice it to say, Eurogamer liked what they saw earlier this year.

It doesn’t look as nice as F1 2010, but that’s to be expected from the no doubt lesser budget. There’s a recent trailer on YouTube, but it’s more awkward drivers you’re after, isn’t it? Please step forward, Petter Solberg.

Moving briefly into next year, if I may, there’s also DiRT 3 on the way from Codemasters. It looks like the Colin McRae name has now been dropped, and probably rightly so. There’s a slick teaser trailer kicking around, featuring the game’s new pin up, Ken Block. Or his Ford Fiesta, anyway. But if you can spot his face through the window and helmet, then do let me know, and I shall stand corrected.

I’ll probably let the lot of them pass me by for the time being, though: I’ve got too many under-played (and unplayed) games to start stacking more up. So I’ll stick to F1 2009 for now, and I quite fancy going back to 2002, and Colin McRae Rally 3 on Xbox. I think I’ve got a promo copy of 2004′s WRC 3 for PlayStation 2 somewhere too. I have digging around to do!

So, team orders are back in the news. And with the FIA World Motor Sport Council due to look at Ferrari’s actions at the German Grand Prix, they’re set to stay in the news. Oh joy.

How does Formula 1 keep getting into this mess? The standard argument is that it’s a team sport, so team orders are unavoidable. I agree. The problem comes, I believe, when team orders are issued in the heat of competition.

Felipe Massa being told, while leading the race, that he had to give the place to Fernando Alonso, was never going to go down well. Had Massa known, before the race, that he’d never be allowed to lead his team mate – assuming he didn’t, of course – then perhaps the place could have been swapped a little more seamlessly.

But that would have meant telling Massa, in only the middle of the season, that his role is now to support Alonso, not go for the championship himself. Which is a tough conversation to justify. It’s easier to get Massa’s engineer to tell him to move over in the middle of a race, as and when required. Quite cowardly on the part of Ferrari management though, isn’t it?

Take MotoGP: with no radio communications during the race, any team move has to be orchestrated between the riders alone, knowing what the team expects of them, and they can generally do it in a more acceptable manner. And only later in the season, when that conversation is more justifiable. Unless it’s Yamaha, who wouldn’t even try to have that conversation with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.

It’s a similar story in the World Rally Championship: there was uproar when Sebastien Ogier was used in the heat of the moment to benefit Sebastien Loeb at Rally Jordan. But Ford and Citroen both have established number two drivers, and that’s not really a problem.

The rule of thumb should be: if you can’t rationally discuss team orders in advance, and come to an agreement with all concerned, then they’re probably not justifiable. If you go ahead anyway, half-arsed in the heat of the moment, then you’re going to piss off the fans.

Not sure exactly how the FIA can phrase that in the rule book, though.

I sometimes wonder what sponsors get out of motorsport. In the BTCC, for example, there are a lot of ‘trade’ sponsors – like Pirtek, a “fluid transfer solutions” company. But it’s by no means always about selling to Johnny Armchair watching at home: there are considerations for business-to-business opportunities, hospitality and that sort of jazz. Apparently.

As a broker on the foreign exchange markets, you wouldn’t assume that FxPro would directly market to the regular motorsport fan. But they seem to be – and that intrigues me.

Their branding is all over the World Rally Championship, and admittedly the concept of Miss FxPro 2010 isn’t exactly crediting the public with a great deal of intelligence.

But their Formula 1 activities are a little more interesting. Most obviously, they sponsor Virgin Racing. To complement that, they launched the FxPro Currency Race, with F1-related prizes up for grabs. It’s quite clever: you choose the pair of currencies to trade, and your little F1 car’s performance is based on how that trade performs in real time.

It’s a touch bizarre as a game. It’s effective though: not only does it promote the brand, but it teaches the punter what foreign exchange trading is all about – presumably in the hope that they’ll indulge in a little of it with FxPro. And that is crediting the public with a bit of intelligence – which is to be encouraged.