So, F1 Rocks (or ‘F1 ROCKS™’ if you want to be picky) has been launched.

The first event will take place over the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. Again, the official title is pretty special: ‘F1 ROCKS™ Singapore with LG’. Nothing rocks more than corporate sponsorship.

And who will be headlining this rocking event? Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce. So it’s more F1 Pops & Hip-Hops, really. NERD’s no better.

Simple Minds and ZZ Top (pronounced ‘Zed-Zed Top’, as everyone knows) go some way to justifying the name of the event.

Two TV shows will come out of it: one, logically, music-based; the other an “entertainment show” featuring such nauseating propositions as “TV stunts” and “aspirational and lifestyle features”. Is the BBC going to be obliged to broadcast such nonsense? I do hope not.

Putting on a big gig with a Grand Prix makes a lot of sense, and the line-up for the Singapore event is solid – though calling it F1 Rocks is clearly daft. With more events planned for next year, it could develop very nicely. But I still object to anything referred to as “lifestyle”.

It’s been a bit of a muted week, after the tragic death of Henry Surtees, following the Formula Two race at Brand Hatch last Sunday. Aside from Jaime Alguersuari being confirmed at Toro Rosso, it’s been fairly quiet on the news front.

So let’s look forward to the weekend, when we have Formula 1 and MotoGP taking over Sunday afternoon on BBC One.

Formula 1 is in Hungary, and the question to be answered is whether Red Bull Racing is now ahead of Brawn GP outright, or whether it’s going to vary from track to track.

But the early talk, at least from the BBC lot on Twitter, is of flights and online check-in, table football, and the hot weather. Fascinating stuff.

Meanwhile, there’s MotoGP-related activity at Donington Park already, with the traditional Day of Champions in aid of the fantastic Riders for Health charity.

For Sunday’s race – the last at the track for the foreseeable future – Steve Parrish is predicting victory for Jorge Lorenzo.

I think it’s far too close to call, so I’ll just be hoping there isn’t a repeat of last year’s events. I’d be happy for another British winner in the 125cc race, but I’m not so keen for James Toseland to go off at the first corner, or for the crowd to boo the MotoGP race winner.

The weekend saw action from the BTCC, WRC, and MotoGP. On recent form, I would have put money on the BTCC providing the most exciting racing, but that was far from the truth.

There was a time when MotoGP practically guaranteed close, exciting racing. That’s not been the case for a while, and detractors have enjoyed pointing out that not since 2006 have we seen a rider overtake for the win on the last lap.

That drought ended in emphatic fashion on Sunday in Catalunya, with a quite stunning climax to the race, Valentino Rossi ultimately triumphing over Jorge Lorenzo after the pair fought magnificently to the line. It has to be seen.

Almost as remarkably, the result leaves Rossi, Lorenzo and Stoner tied on 106 points at the top of the championship.

The World Rally Championship is looking close now too, with Mikko Hirvonen’s victory closing the gap to Sebastien Loeb to just 7 points. That’s because Loeb crashed out spectacularly. Again, it has to be seen.

I was slightly traumatised to see that the guest on Dave’s coverage of the rally was going to be Ben Shepherd. But, contrary to expectations, he was by a country mile the best guest they’ve had. He was a lot of fun and – being a presenter himself – utterly relaxed chatting away in front of the camera.

It was left to the BTCC to disappoint. The first two races were completely dominated by the Team RAC BMWs, and the third was plagued by safety car periods, thanks to cars skating off the track in the wet conditions.

A quick word about ITV4’s Le Mans 24 Hour coverage. The last half hour of the race in the middle of the BTCC broadcast was a bit dull, but the podium is always a thing of joy at Le Mans. The hour and a bit of live coverage before the BTCC, however, was surprisingly worthwhile – it managed to cover the progress of the most important entrants, and many of the issues surrounding the race. Well done to the commentators – John Hindhaugh and Graham Goodwin.

The Le Mans 24 Hour is the big jobby this weekend. After extensive and impressive coverage of another legendary event this week – the Isle of Man TT – ITV4 has coverage of it. Sort of.

Qualifying highlights are on Saturday morning from 11.20am to 11.55am. The race gets under way on Saturday at 2pm UK time. ITV4 has race coverage only between 10.30am and 11.45am on Sunday morning.

After that Le Mans makes way for the British Touring Car Championship from Croft.

But it means that ITV4 won’t be showing the end of the race, either live or in highlights form. Unless it’s going to interrupt the BTCC programme, or highlights are going to be broadcast later than next weekend – which is when we have TV listings until. It’s all a bit odd.

In any case, Eurosport naturally has hours and hours of coverage.

And don’t forget that MotoGP is in Catalunya – for its second of three visits to Spain in 2009 – too.

Another busy weekend, then.

Unfortunately, after behaving for the practice sessions, the weather for the Isle of Man TT has taken a turn for the torrential. So today’s races have been postponed to Monday – because it’s not expected to get any better tomorrow – with the other races shuffling back accordingly.

Watching some practice highlights this morning, it struck me quite how special an event the TT is. The Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix was just a fortnight ago, and is trumpeted as a raw, dangerous, exciting street race. But it’s very tame by comparison to the Isle of Man TT races.

There’s an official promo video on YouTube, which is well worth watching. Superbikes speeding down narrow roads with buildings on either side is just jaw dropping.

So I’ll look forward to watching the race highlights on ITV4 next week. Commentary is from Steve Parrish and James Whittam – an intriguing combination, and I’ll be interested to see how well it works. There’s a programme on every night, though obviously this weekend’s are a bit screwed now.

But it’s the spectators who made the journey over to the Isle of Man for the weekend who I really feel sorry for. It’s just not fair for them.

Twitter is taking off in motorsport circles. On the one hand it’s intriguing to hear more from those working in the sport; on the other, it’s no better than a legitimised form of stalking.

Either way, there’s a lot to learn from Twitter. And since it’s Follow Friday, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned from a few of the more enthusiastic contributors.

BBC Formula 1 reporter Lee McKenzie mainly seems to have a lot of fun jetting around filming features for television. But she also thinks that The Killers are the “best band around”. She is sorely mistaken.

Tremendous commentators Martin Haven and Toby Moody are both getting excited about the Le Mans 24 Hour. But I’ve also learned that Martin Haven clearly loves gardening, and Toby Moody has had a wisdom tooth out. And did a voice over for Boots.

There is such a thing as too much enthusiasm though. BBC MotoGP presenter Suzi Perry doesn’t seem to stop tweeting, and Force India tweets more detail about the team’s progress through each session than anyone could ever want.

The 2009 GP2 season kicks off this weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix, and the rubbish news is that Setanta has the UK TV rights – along with three other championships.

No GP2 on Freeview is a disappointment, and will put a dent in the recognition of the series. Eurosport would have been an acceptable home, and A1GP has survived on Sky Sports, but Setanta is surely borderline useless.

Plus, having lost some of its football rights, the finances and future of Setanta are now very much in question anyway. The broadcaster’s motorsport portfolio of GP2, Superleague Formula, DTM and the FIA GT Championship isn’t going to do much to reverse its fortunes.

So why does the BBC not have GP2? Well, the only official line I’ve seen came from the BBC’s Interactive TV Editor, Matt Millington:

“Unfortunately, we are unable to offer coverage of the support races.”

That suggests there isn’t room on the BBC Red Button to fit in GP2 and so on. Curious that there is, however, room on the BBC Red Button for 125cc and 250cc qualifying sessions and races during MotoGP weekends. Perhaps a British hope in GP2 might have helped.

Talking of MotoGP support races though, details of Moto2, which replaces 250cc from next year, are coming thick and fast. Well, Honda is supplying the bike for the one-make series. Given that the bike manufacturers are the top teams in 250cc at the moment, I’m not sure what the championship is going to look like.

As if GP2 and Moto2 aren’t confusing enough, we’ll have GP3 from next year too. It’ll run along side GP2 at Formula 1 races.

Meanwhile there’s Formula Two at WTCC meetings, but Robert Wickens is ducking out of most Formula Two races in favour of the Formula 3 Euro Series – which supports the DTM.

It’s all very confusing.

Red Bull Racing took their first Formula 1 race victory in China at the weekend, thanks to young upstart Sebastian Vettel. But there were two other men there in Shanghai who might have rather liked to have that honour.

David Coulthard retired from racing at the end of last year, having spent his last four seasons at Red Bull Racing, picking up just a couple of podiums in that time. And now that he’s not there, the team he was with from its inception suddenly has a race winning car – and on merit.

But I think he’s doing excellent work at the BBC, and he seems in his element. His grid walk with Martin Brundle before the race on Sunday was a good example. Jake Humphrey teased him about it slightly after the race; but Humphrey also remarked in his post-race blog how happy and at ease Coulthard seems about the situation.

Then there’s Mark Webber. He was obviously less excited than his team-mate in the press conference, but he said all the right things about it being great for the team and so on.

It must hurt to some extent that he didn’t pick up the first win for the team he’s now in his third season with. But because the victory was no fluke, and thus he has a proven race-winning car, he can at least be happy that his chance might not be far away.

I’ve come to realise that the worst thing about the BBC’s Formula 1 package is also the best thing.

It’s not hard to work out the worst thing: it’s the website. Specifically, the news. Or even more specifically, the lack of news. Compared to autosport.com or even itv-f1.com, it’s pretty balls. The main stuff is there of course, but for a lot of other stories the BBC just doesn’t bother, is slow getting to it, or hides it away.

The website is also the very best thing though. I’ve not yet managed to catch a qualifying session live this season, but popping over to the BBC’s Formula 1 site gives me a nice ten minute highlight package on the iPlayer right there, convenient as you like, right at the top of the page.

That’s the point really: it does the big stuff really, really well, because that’s what a normal bod is going to be after, and that’s who the BBC is serving. And rightly so. Commercial sites serve the enthusiast well, so the BBC should absolutely not be competing. That’s not its job.

So we know that Mike Gascoyne is taking Eddie Jordan’s place in the BBC TV team at the Chinese Formula 1 Grand Prix. It’s all over the web now. But let’s look at how it got there.

Jake Humphrey mentioned it in a blog on Tuesday, shortly after which I tweeted the news.

James Allen commented on it at length on his blog on Thursday. Later on Thursday, Crash.net carried the news.

But here’s the cheeky thing: about half of the article on Crash.net is lifted straight from James Allen’s blog. It’s attributed, admittedly, but there’s not even a courteous link to James Allen’s website. It’s just rude. Rude I tell you!