Searching for water and more: BBC Radio Devon Motor Rally

Fitz (L) and The Range CEO Chris Dawson (R), in front of Chris' Rolls Royce

“Hi”, I said to a hotel receptionist in the lobby of a busy Plymouth hotel. “I’m from the BBC and, well, do you have any water I can use, please?” I asked, holding up an empty water container to prove my point and continued, “We’re putting up some flags up on The Hoe and we need some water for them, please”.

Looking back, I can quite see why I got an odd look as if to say “What the hell are you on about? Flags don’t need watering”. Sensing the confusion, I carried on, “the flags have bases and we need to weigh them down”.

Sky F1 Paint - sorry, Media - Day 2014

"Ahhhhh, that's gone down my neck” squeals Simon Lazenby as David Croft and Johnny Herbert appears from nowhere and ambush him with a copious amount of red paint as the Sky Sports F1 anchor is knelt down composing a masterpiece for the camera.

 Croft is covered from head to toe in black and green paint like a member of an army on a secret mission with bad camouflage, and Herbert has bright red paint and a purposeful look on his face.

“Annnnnnnd that went right down my back and into my pants!" Lazenby shrieks as everyone struggles to contain themselves from pointing at the poor bloke.

Mirela

On Monday night I attended an advance screening of Natalie Pinkham’s documentary The Lost Orphan: A Home For Mirela at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square. It was quite a change to the average cinema (says the person who last went to the movies to watch Senna and CARS before that), what with it having escalators and several screens.

Anyway, The Lost Orphan: A Home For Mirela follows on from a Channel Five programme aired  in 2011 titled The Lost Orphan: Mirela’s Story where the Sky Sports F1 pit-lane reporter went to Romania to track down a girl she had met a decade earlier while volunteering at a children’s institution during her university’s summer break. Mirela – then a three year old toddler – captured her heart, and Pinkham vowed to help her out in any way she could.

Reviewed: DTM Experience 2013

Hard on the brakes for Druids, turn in…and get a thump from an AI car that shoves you into the wall time and time again. “Where the hobbling Jesus did that car come from?” I think to myself as I wait an age for reverse gear to engage, only to then get hit again. You’d have more chance of making it as a male escort in Russia during the Winter Olympics than not end up in a wall / facing the wrong way / getting a ridiculous penalty in a qualifying session thanks to the AI seemingly wanting to repeatedly dick you over.

Welcome to DTM Experience 2013, perhaps the most frustrating game I’ve ever played. It isn’t that it is a really bad game per se – I’ve played far worse, but these were ten years ago on a Playstation One – it’s just that there are several really silly things that make it an annoying game. I refused to play it for two weeks as I couldn’t bear to think about playing it again.

Interviewed: Pollyanna Woodward

Pollyanna during her AUTOSPORT stage appearance.

“That’s the problem with the iPhone!” giggles Pollyanna as I frantically stab at my (ageing) iPhone trying to get it to start recording our voices. I reply back “this is really awkward” nervously – the last thing I wanted to do was have to faff around with my phone in front of a tech expert. I’d already made a fool out of myself and I hadn’t even started the interview yet.

After what felt like a minute but was actually about ten seconds, my iPhone finally decides that yes it will record my conversation with Pollyanna Woodward who sits across the table from me in the NEC’s media centre. I know, I know, I treat my interviewees to the most glamorous locations.

Daniel Goes to Birmingham - Part One

“I think John Surtees should get a knighthood” I mused to the people who happened to be looking around the show with me.  I had just got to the NEC, found the media centre, picked up my pass and decided to explore with Katie Grimmett and Jack Leslie.

“Dan! He’s right there!” says Katie in a tone that suggests that I should probably look before opening my big mouth, as we scuttle away and blend into the background to an otherwise quiet hall full of priceless cars. “Great start, Puddicombe” I think to myself as I sheepishly walk as far away from the Surtees collection as I can.

Let’s rewind a bit. The reason why I’m suggesting that John Surtees should get a knighthood in an empty – yes, devoid of people - NEC is because I was asked to be a blogger for this year’s Autosport International Show. In return for writing a few words about the greatest driver of my generation they’d give me a media pass (see, all grown up now) and accredit me for the trade days. Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?

Safely out of earshot of John, Jack turns to me and just laughs. I realise that I’m not going to be made to forget this in a while, and as we look around the halls I struggle to walk and type at the same time prompting more mockery from Katie and Jack. 

Still, could be worse; thanks to the inclement weather that week there was a concern that none of us would make it to Birmingham, let alone say things about someone without realising they’re stood in front of you. I make a mental note to look before speaking in the future and probably forget it in an instant.

The idea of having a quick walk  around on the Thursday evening to get our bearings was a good one, but a flawed one at the same time: it didn’t really help us as the NEC is huge and without any maps is very easy to get lost in.

The three of us found our way back to the media centre and relayed our findings to the rest of the guys we knew in there – mainly Richland F1 people, who had taken over a corner of the media centre, which we then left in search of some food and drink like great explorers.

Like great explorers who can’t be bothered to look very hard for places to eat and drink we turned into the Weatherspoons that must’ve been, ooh, 300 paces from the media centre.

Feeling quite peckish after a while, I went up to the bar and asked for some food, as you generally do in these places only to be told in a thick Brummie accent that the kitchen was closed. “But it’s only 7.30 and I’m hungry!” I protested in my best Brummie accent, pointing at my media pass in an attempt to show that I wasn’t just a pleb, but a pleb with a media pass that needed feeding. After a short pause, I got a look that suggested I was going to get a wallop around the face unless I stopped mocking the bartender’s stupid accent. I walked back to the table, irritated and hungry.

“The kitchen’s closed guys. Now what?” I said as I sat down and continued drinking my drink. Everyone looked at each other and then time, and carried on drinking. Half an hour later, the bell dings and we’re effectively kicked out of the NEC. 

“Birmingham Airport isn’t very far away” someone piped up, “and I’m sure you can get food there”. Yes, that’s right; my life was reduced to trekking to Birmingham Airport in the vague hope that we could get some dinner. Since I couldn’t think of any better ideas I followed the crowd, which was smaller than the Whetherspoons crew – Alex, Phillip and Leigh had to disappear for various reasons – leaving just the six of us to discover what Birmingham Airport has to offer. When I woke up on the Thursday morning I did not imagine I’d be getting on a monorail to an airport, but it’s funny how these things work out, isn’t it?

It turned out that Birmingham Airport offered us some food and drink, and very nice it was too. We were the only people in the restaurant and it stayed like that until we got kicked out at about 10.30pm or so, probably because the staff were bored of six bores arguing over a front wing while pondering how to get ‘the boss’, Luke, on a plane to Abu Dhabi for giggles.

Katie, Jack and I had booked rooms in the Hilton, so as we (smugly) left the others to go to their hotel – an Etap – we boarded the monorail back to the train station and set about finding the hotel. After a lot of walking around, we each checked in and promised each other that Friday would be more fruitful.

Part two of Daniel Goes to Birmingham will be online tomorrow, and I promise I’ll talk about some cars and not rabbit on about not eating. 

All images © LAT, aside from the last one which is my own. 

F1 2013 review

I’m in a Ferrari F399 from 1999, at Spa, in the wet heading towards Les Combes for the first time. On my right is a chap in Nigel Mansell’s championship-winning Williams from ’92, and to my left someone’s in Damon Hill’s championship-winning Williams from ’96. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up with a) a large bill from Sir Frank and b) broken bones, so I brake a bit earlier, turn in, apply the power, control the four-wheel drift and avoid a slidey Williams by less than a fag paper (a Rothmans one, at that), and somehow or another make it out the other end of the corner in front of the Williams boys, while putting a hand up to show my disapproval of “Hill’s” driving standards.

You would be forgiven for thinking that I’ve been dreaming and you would be wrong – I’m in an online race with total strangers on the new F1 2013 computer game and boy is it good.

The falling rain looks stunning, and as I slide and wrestle the car again, I think to myself that I could be a proper racing driver. The game has that effect on you: gone is the frankly terrible handling system from ’12 that made me sell the game within a week of launch last year, and in comes a fresh new handling model that allows you to actually turn and brake at the same time, and lets you get on the loud pedal / trigger (depending on your configuration) without the fear of finding the nearest wall, backwards. It’s fantastic.

The best bit about the new ‘classic’ content – which offers five cars from the 1980s, five from the 90s and four tracks (Brands Hatch, Estorial, Imola and Jerez)? The on-screen graphics which replicates the television coverage from the era – the ‘80s is full of yellow, and races with the ‘90s cars look just like the ITV Sport days of Formula One on the box. In the weekend that I’ve spent playing the game, I’ve spent the majority racing in a timewarp both online and against the AI.

Seeing names such as Fittipaldi  and Mansell going wheel-to-wheel with you around the GP loop at Brands  – albeit virtually – won’t get old in a hurry, and when it does, the new scenario mode, voiced by Murray Walker, will keep you driving cars that are better off without DRS or KERS, for hours on end.

Of course, you have the 2013 content too. As you would expect, it comes with a career mode where you start out at a slow team and gradually progress to the bigger teams if you’re good enough. This is the same as previous iterations apart from a handy new addition; the ability to save mid-way through a session, and that includes races too. No longer are you forced to do a race in one sitting - instead you can simply save part-way through a race and then come back where you left off later on. This doesn’t sound ground-breaking, but it is really handy for those who can only go on a console for, say, half an hour at a time.

Along with the career mode, the Grand Prix mode (where you can race as any driver on any track at any time with any weather) makes a welcome return, and the Young Driver Test has been expanded. I hated the YDT last year because it was mind-numbingly patronising, but thankfully, this year it is a little better, mainly because it allows you to skip the bit where the game tells you the controls and forces you to demonstrate that you’ve listened by making you re-input them, if you’ve played 2012 before. That said though, it is a good idea to try your best in the tests, as a) it allows you to get used to the handling model and b) the quicker you are, the quicker the team that you can start off your career with.

There are a few problems with the game, though. For starters, the safety car comes out far too often, and often for no reason whatsoever. Take a race at Bahrain: I had to dodge someone with a blown engine, thought nothing of it, and then two laps later the Safety Car appeared.

Also, the spectators at Brands Hatch appear to have been ported straight from another Codemasters game, and the modern-day medical centre is in view as you round Surtees. The lack of any classic McLarens is a minor bugbear too, but that’s down to the lack of a licence rather than anything else.

If I take a step back and ignore the minor faults with the game then I find an incredibly rounded game that improves on the previous year’s effort in every single area without a doubt. It has more depth than last year’s game which can only be a good thing, however, my only concern is that people will overlook the 2013 content and instead play the classic content, although that isn’t a bad thing at all.

If anything, that’s a testament to Codemasters for giving fans of the sport the ability to race iconic cars on their favourite circuits in such detail.  With RUSH, and now this, fans of classic Formula One are in for a treat, and I can’t see the enthusiasm dying down at all: expect it to continue to sell well during the run up to Christmas. All in all, F1 2013 is a great game for small kids who want to drive big cars and big kids who want to drive small cars.

The greatest driver of my generation - an Autosport International blog

 As a blogger for the for the Autosport International Show, I was asked to write about the greatest driver of my generation, and after a lot of thought, I came up with one of my heroes, Colin McRae. 

When I was asked to write a blog post about the driver of my generation I had a long think. “Ah”, I thought, “I’ll write about Lewis Hamilton or Vettel” but then I realised that a lot of other people will probably do the same, so I went back to the drawing board and had another think, this time deciding to go a bit leftfield, and that’s how I ended up at my choice, Colin McRae. 

Sadly Colin isn’t with us any more but that doesn’t stop him from being the driver of my generation. Sure he didn’t win a silly amount of titles on the trot like Sebastian Loeb, but Colin had a charm like few other racing drivers; the mantra “if in doubt, flat out” is a) a clichéd phrase and also b) oh so true. McRae (with a bit of help from Playstation and Subaru) got me into rallying and its goodness as a small child and made me love motorsport that little bit more. I’ve spent hours on Youtube watching back videos of his driving purely because I don’t know what’s going to happen next: one moment he’s thumping the field and the next he’s upside down in a field. As I say, if in doubt, flat out. Put it this way: there’s now an award during the Sweedish round of the World Rally Championship for the person who has the longest jump over a crest.

If I’m making him out to be a crash-happy daredevil, I’m not – Taki Inoue he ain’t – as he was only of the most talented drivers ever, and I don’t just mean in terms of rallying. He finished third in class at Le Mans at the first (and sadly only) attempt, in a Ferrari 550 that led Alan McNish to praise him, and you can’t get much higher than that in terms of sportscars drivers, and his ability to take every corner like it was his last is second-to-none. There are plenty of photographs out there of sideways Imprezzas, and I imagine antics must have inspired Ken Block and the like to do silly things in cars. 

Put all of that together and you’ll see why he was – and still is – a hero of mine. I grew up adoring what he did and then trying to replicate it on my Playstation on games that bared his name. I can’t be the only one to have done this; he inspired a generation to like rallying again, to go through water as quickly as possible, and to jump as far as you can in the middle of the Sweedish forest in a way that Ken Block can’t – and won’t – achieve. I somehow can’t see people pointing out Ford Fiestas in 15 years’ time, but whenever I see a blue Imprezza I smile, and give the driver a nod. 

 Like so many legends of motorsport, the record books don’t say that he’s the greatest driver of a generation, but my heart says that he’s the greatest driver of my generation. Thank you Colin, and just for you, next time I play a game that has your name on it I’ll pretend that everything is easy flat.

Tuning companies and premium

A few days ago I posed a question on Twitter that asked people whether a tuning company can make a premium car more premium or not. This question seemed to bring out quite a few opinions; from those who stood firmly on their feet saying that modifying a car is wrong, full stop, to those who said that Alpina cars are OK and finally to those weren’t sure. 

You can find what people answered below, but with 9FF going bust and others of that ilk losing sales you have to question why. Steve Sutcliffe got it spot on in this blog piece, but I think that part of the problem – especially in 9ff’s and Gumpert’s cases – is that their cars are about as pretty as watching me play football. While some won’t mind an ugly car on their driveway, those who will want to drive their cars every now and again on a public won’t really want to drive the equivalent of Sarah Millican on a bad night out.

I’m now about to contradict what I said above about ugly cars, because Mansory and Khan Design to name just two companies are booming at the moment with people wanting to modify their premium cars. However, these two companies concentrate on the visual aspects of the cars, creating a unique car for the customer instead of meddling with the oily bits. After all, who really wants a 911 with a thousand horsepower when a boggo Carrera is more than quick enough?

Because of this, Khan and the like are able to create exclusive cars that don’t cost three times the price of the standard car, and in this age of everyone wanting to stand out, they’re booming. Sure, some of the cars that they’ve meddled with can look a bit garish, but I’m fairly sure that 8/10 cars that Khan touch aren’t finished in a bright shade of pink. 

Anyway, here’s what a few of you thought. This post also signals the end of the two week editorial campaign. What have I learnt? Well, no two people can agree on what makes a premium car premium in 2013! I must say a huge thank you to those who have participated in my questions and debates, entered my competitions and visited this little blog over the last two weeks. I’ll probably post a piece pontificating about the award later in the week, so stay tuned. 

Andrew Brady: "Yes, it can make it more premium (nicer seats, more tech), but it's not always tasteful".

Martin Plewes: "[They] ruin it, aimed at tasteless "new money" footballers etc. Alpina a far better example of making a premium car even more so".

Owen Davies: "Manufacturer options are fine. Tuner company mods are for the max power brigade, fine if that floats your boat, but not premium".

Tristan Cliffe: "In my limited experience & not-so-humble opinion, a tasteful addon is like a hen’s tooth. Exceedingly rare. Mostly naff bling".

Bentley and motorsport

Earlier this week Bentley confirmed that a GT3 version of the Continental GT would indeed go racing after numerous demo runs and appearances at motor shows around the world.

It isn’t going to be a one-race wonder though; it will make its debut in the Abu Dubai 12 hour race in December and then contend the 2014 Blancpain series as a factory-backed effort. This is serious business then, but why would Bentley decide to go racing, exactly? 

To the uninitiated a Bentley entering a motorsport event would be about as rare as a crocodile being seen off the west coast of Cornwall, but you would be wrong. In the 1920s cars bearing the ‘Big B’ entered – and indeed won a few times – Le Mans, and again in 2003 with the Speed Eight (granted, it was little more than a rebadged Audi effort, but even so). 

Like every manufactor who has ever spent money on anything, there would have been a meeting at the HQ to decide what series to race in and whether the project would be viable or not. This is an interesting one; Bentley is clearly a premium brand with a luxury bias. While a Continental GT Speed is very quick in a straight-line, it wouldn’t be the first choice if you were looking for a car to destroy Welsh B-roads. And when has anyone seen a Mulsane pounding around a Brands Hatch track day event?

Having a couple of cars contesting the Blancplain series isn’t exactly going to do wonders for brand recognition too, more so in China and India where sales of this type of car are currently skyrocketing, as motorsport is still an alien concept to a large number of Chinese, too, and the Blancplain series isn’t exactly well-known as I alluded to above. 

However – and is it quite a big one at that too – by going racing, it shows that the company is more than just a footballer’s favourite car maker and the company’s directors are willing to take a risk and have fun. Mind you, this isn’t their first foray into motorsport since the Speed Eight: in 2011 race ace Juha Kankkunen drove a ‘nearly standard’ Conti to a new ice world speed record and in the process generated a load of headlines, and probably a couple more sales off the back of it, although I struggle to see a huge market for a car that will do 200mph on ice and seat four in comfort at the same time. 

Never mind that the car was privately owned – this was unsurprisingly buried deep in the press releases at the time – and could have prompted the execs to give a green-light to the programme after seeing the reaction. 

Whatever the reason for building a racing version of the Continental GT3 is, I salute Bentley for doing it, and am thoroughly looking forward to seeing pictures of the car – which weighs half that of the road-going version! – in action. 

The best form of advertising a premium brand is to go racing – after all, that old adage of “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” will never go away, will it? 

Let me know what you think in the comment section below or on Twitter: is racing a good way of making a premium brand more premium?

Honda's advertising

We'd like to know, why it is so / That certain diesels must be slow / and thwack and thrum and pong / and hum and clatter-clact.

In 2004, diesel engines were, well, slow and made a lot of noise. That was the general consensus of the public who still saw them as a means for powering tractors and busses.

OK, maybe not that far, but my point still stands. The general public thought that diesel engines broke down, were noisy and slow. Fast-forward nine years and all that has changed of course, but as a nine year old I was captivated by the above lyrics and advert from Honda. 

Their advert was all about promoting the then-new i-CTDi engines in the UK; but it more much more than that; it started the trend for Honda adverts that stick in your mind. Put it this way, when I was planning this feature, I knew which adverts to choose straight away, without any kind of research.

‘Grr’, as it is named – it even has its own Wikipedia page for heavens’ sake – clearly had an impact. Honda report that their brand awareness doubled in the period after the advert was shown, and sales of the Accord - which has this new-fangled engine – increased by over 30,000 units in the year after the advert was shown, and Honda sales as a whole increased by 35%, which frankly, is incredible.

 It also had a game based around it on the internet – again, a new thing at that time – and an interactive website. This wasn’t made in 2013 remember, it was made in 2004, a full three years before I ventured online for the first time. Unsurprisingly for an advert that allows you to whistle and sing along to it, it won awards for the advert of the decade in 2009, and if you haven’t seen it before, it is here in full 140p goodness.

 However, that isn’t the only Honda advert that’s worth talking about. Next, there’s the ‘Impossible Dream’ ad from 2005, and the extended version from 2010, which again, won awards. It features, among other things, a Monkey bike, an old Formula One car, a superbike, a plane and a whole lot more besides, set to the song that bears the same name of the ad. All of this is fine, but the best bit about it is the bloke’s overalls – I want them. 

‘The Cog’, from 2003, is my personal favourite, however. It looks like it uses CGI but it doesn’t – it took over 600 takes to get right – and is amazing to behold. The way everything just works is a pleasure to watch, and I can’t commend it enough. While we have a lot of adverts that try not to tell us what they’re on about, this one’s beautifully simple in that respect: it shows how the Accord is put together. 

Finally, Honda’s latest advert - ‘Hands’ - is currently doing the rounds in the UK. While it applies a similar idea to the “Impossible Dream” advert, it is actually aimed at celebrating the company’s 65^th birthday.  I could ramble on about how clever it is, but it’ll be easier for you to watch it instead; however I do have one complaint: the lack of the S2000 or any of the company’s Formula One cars. 

Those are four adverts, but there are a few more that I could talk about too, such as ‘The Choir’  and the one when skydivers jumped out of planes to form the word “Honda”in the sky, live on air.  Silly? Yes. Awfully expensive? Of course, but boy did it work: years on from these adverts I remember them, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

An Accord is never going to be considered to be a premium car, but even so, by being different with their adverts, Honda raised awareness of their brand, and therefore flogged a load of cars because people thought “you know what? I’ll buy an Accord diesel because of that funky song”.  Clever, eh? 

As ever, let me know what you think, either in the comments below or on Twitter. Which premium car makers have got advertising right, and which ones are useless at promoting their products?