Using whatever artistic tools at your disposal (from a full oil painted canvas, to MS Paint or just smearing shit your own shit on a window and sending us a photo) please draw your favourite Formula One memory.

Either tweet us at @a_f1podcast, leave it in the comments here or email us at info@anotherf1podcast.com and we’ll put the best (well, all of them) up on the website for the next podcast.

And, in true Tony Hart style, don’t forget to leave your age,.

I have always been confused about theif a train is moving at a speed (say, 125mph, go on. Say it) and if on the train I jump up in the air, why do I move with the train and not stay in the air and the train carries on swishing underneath me?

Well, we had some answers and here they are…

Alex stated:

You don’t fly backwards because there is no force pushing you backwards in a train, the air inside the train is also moving with the train. On top air resistance pushes you backwards.

As that annoying fucking meerkat cunt would say, simples.

M4ttfox told us:

The train thing is because there is no air resistance inside the train slowing you down when you jump. But when your on the roof there is the wind and air slowing you down so when you jump you feel like your going backwards.

Frankly, these explanations with their scientific jargon still confused us, what our simple(s) brains need is diagrams. So Brett Foster came to the rescue with this:

If you jump into the air on a moving object, you are jumping at a relative speed to the object. For example, A train is moving at 50metres per second in the horizontal direction, therefore everything inside the train is also moving at 50m/s. If you jump, you will appear to be jumping on the spot, but you are effectively moving at 50m/s. However if you was outside, you will be subject to a drag force acting against the direction you are moving in. You will be jumping at 50m/s but the drag force acting against you will slow you down, so will move backwards as the train is still moving at 50m/s but you will be moving at a lower velocity. Inside the train, there is no drag force as the air is also moving at the same velocity as the train and yourself as long as it is airtight.
and…

We salute you all, there will be further questions in further podcasts.

Don’t forget to send in your pictures for next weeks gallery…

You can comment throughout the podcast in the above soundcloud embed… give it a go!

After a messy 2011 the grove outfit look to be on the up after only two races and things should be feeling quite chipper, but he is leaving, effective next week.

No one seems to know why he’s left or if he was pushed, but I’m more concerned that he only has to work a weeks notice. What kind of slapdash outfit has Williams become? I had to serve a month at Dixons in 1996 (a championship winning year for williams, don’t forget) and I was only a sales assistant not the head and heir apparent of an F1 team.

Also, personally, I’ve never liked his hair, it’s very un-F1 boss like. It’s yet to be seen what the new man in charge, Nick Rose, ex-CFO of Diageo has on top of his head. It could be telling.

We’ll see if he shows up somewhere else in F1 but let’s hope that he was the last bit of rot in the team that’s been well off the boil for years.

AMEND: it’s fairly clear I’ve not got much clue or anything to really say about this story, but the punny headline was so good I just had to write something.

It was almost impossible to guess that Ferrari would win the second race of the season if you were going to learn anything from the pre-season moaning about this bold new car.

But never underestimate Fernando Alonso, he can wring extra time out of a tetchy car (just as Felipe Massa can misplace the time that is clearly there; grappling like errant soap in a bath).

The general consensus from the F1 world is the Ferrari isn’t bad as opposed to incredibly tricky to set up and so a wet/dry/damp race screwing with everyone’s setups totally levelled the playing field to a point where Alonso lucked into the lead and stayed there.

Hamilton raced quietly to third amongst bungled pitstops and Button held up his W hand, this time denoting a word ending with anker to Narain Karthikeyan as they bumped uglies, destroying the englishman;s race. Vettel’s luck cheque has bounced this year and Mark Webber just seemed to take the afternoon off.

But all of these fell back into the damp mist of obscurity as a certain Mexican was at the sharp end of the grid, not unusual in a wet race for the order to be shaken up, but Perez playing his I’m-not-even-using-these-tyres trick got to second and stayed there.

He started to reel in Alonso, lap by lap the Sauber caught up to the Ferrari (the two ugliest noses in F1 this year, even Eddie Jordan looks good next to them). Ferrari tried their first dirty trick of getting Massa to come out of his pitstop in between them and undoubtedly hold Perez up, but the Ferrari crew screwed it just enough to let Perez through who caught Fernando, a second here, half a second there and all on tyres that looked brand-spanking new. With a long straight and DRS there was no way that Perez couldn’t not win this race.

Until a polite but firm message from his pit, “Be careful, we need this position, we need this position.” put the brakes on the run. Of course Sauber’s best ever position in its non BMW guise is not something they wanted to lose but would the team actually tell Perez to not breeze past Alonso on the straight?

Or did the Ferrari engines in the back of their cars and Perez’s position on the Ferrari young driver scheme warrant a sharp suited visit to the Sauber garage with an amputated finger of one of their mechanics “He’ll lose a finger for each tenth of a second Perez slices from Alonso’s lead.”

Alonso, just drove on and will surely not know anything about such dirty tactics, like he knew nothing of Piquet Jr’s crash-on-purpose in Singapore ’08.

We might never know, Perez fucked it and went wide soon after, was it the pressure getting to him, a glancing bullet as a warning shot, or just an unlucky slip on the wet track?

Whichever way, Alonso got a memorable win and an almost unbelievable championship lead as everyone else fell over, it still doesn’t put Ferrari in real contention of the championship, but you still can’t rule them out.

The Australian Grand Prix, pre season testing, Kimi getting confused, Terry getting hurt, Massa whining, Hamilton psyching himself up and Button being so damned cool about it all. It’s anotherf1podcast. Back in your ears.

The Mercedes, with its drinking straw through the car connecting front wing to the DRS system is looking quick, maybe not as dominantingly quick as the Brawn a few years ago, but enough to make Michael Schumacher look incredibly cocky as he got out of the car, heard to say “Fuck you, you bunch of losers and non-beliebers [sic], I’m still number one and I’m going to rub each one of your pathetic faces in it.”

The McLaren looks like a tidy car and Button (still slightly unbelivably) looks to have the edge over Hamilton. The Ferrari looks like a handful that Alonso can tame but Massa will be dragged through the park like a child trying to control a rottweiler.

The rest of the teams are shuffling up behind with not much of a scare in the order.

But all of this is totally overshadowed by Red Bull coming halfway down the order, this isn’t doom and gloom for the MK team as surely even a shit Red Bull would be near the top, it merely means that they’re holding back, and despite Schumacher’s taunts they will wipe the floor with everyone in Qualifying and Vettel will drive off into the sunset as many Sky subscriptions feel like a bit of wasted stretch.

…So actually, nothing has changed, nothing!

Red Bull RB8

Adrian Newey calls this the Great Grandson of the RB5, realising perhaps that things were better in the old days during the war. The problem with evolving a car so tightly packaged is that there’s not much more sculpting that can happen, unless they go radical and chuck away the gearbox altogether.

Newey himself has been a bit downbeat:

“It’s a difficult task, we have lost the exhaust technology with the restriction exhaust outlet position that we were able to develop and perhaps be ahead of the pack on in the last couple of years, that led to a big re think over the winter. Whether that will affect us more than other people is difficult to know of course. We designed the RB7, last year’s car, around that exhaust position and were probably the only people to do so, so it may be that we’ve lost more than other people through that. Only time will tell, it will be good to get out to do some testing and to see where we get to”

…which probably means they’ll only win 80% of all the races this year.

Nose: They have gone for a stepped nose so drastically broken that it’s got a massive hole in it:

Is this an aerodynamic nostril, or a letterbox to post away 2012′s chances?

Either way, its hard to imagine them not being dominant, but not hard to hope.

McLaren MP4/27

McLaren haven’t won the constructers since Sebastian Vettel has been born, probably. Either way it’s been a while and with Lewis Hamilton heading into his sixth season (six, oo doesn’t time fly) with only one world championship to his name (makes all that sycophantic ITV1 coverage seem a bit much in hindsight doesn’t it.) and Button entering his 300th year it feels high time to overcome Red Bull.

After a disastrous start to the last couple of years they always end up being as quick-ish as Red Bull, so if they can start well this year they have a chance.

Nose: The new car is pretty, in that way that cars can be pretty, but mainly because its nose hasn’t been trodden on. At the time of writing the McLaren lot are the only team to not have the stepped nose.Is this brave and clever and wonderful, or are thy going to look mighty skanky sniffing the arse of a HRT? Only time will tell

Ferrari F151? Oh, F2012 – Where is the numbering consistency?!

With Massa being only marginally more useful that ballast last year the Italian Red team and everyone there trying to not make eye contact with Alonso and reinforcing all the doors this is a team who, like McLaren, need a great season to silence the naysayers. Heavily penalised by not being as clever with their engine maps and all that last year the one win and Silverstone showed that last years car could have been up there, will this year be great on a leveller playing field? They’ve said they’re being more aggressive this year, but then they have kept Massa…

Nose: Even Ferrari themselves have admitted the nose is “not pretty”. It’s one of the flattest squarest things yet seen that looks as though it got caught in a vice on the way to the photoshoot, a quick car is a pretty car. They had better hope this is so quick that no one can focus on it.

Renault, er Lotus, E20

The 20th car to come from Enstone, a team that has been Toleman, Benetton, Renault, Cheaters, Renault-Lotus, and now just Lotus. Why am I finding this year them being Lotus more confusing when there were two Lotus’s (Loti?).

After a promising start last year that soon disappeared with Kubica whacking his rally car and then with ever diminishing results they have hired Kimi Raikkonen to return to F1 this year. Now the Lotus/Lotus debacle is over and the factory throughly bleached to get rid of any remnants of Flavio Briatore they can only hope that it’ll be another new beginning, like Ferrari and McLaren. It’s getting crowded behind Red Bull.

Nose: Not the worst, in fact probably the nicest stepped nose thing launched. But then black is very slimming.

Force India

Whilst Sutil was glassing everyone Paul Di Resta became the Rookie of last year, impressing car aficionados with his driving skills and team management for sounding like a talking press release whenever he opens his mouth. They’ve got the ever impressive Nico Hulkenberg alongside him this year and the car looks tidy. The only downside is Vijay Mallya’s crumbling empire and the obvious scrimping of the new Sahara sponsor who seems unable to design a logo in anything other than wordart. And yes, Orange and Green might be the colours of the Indian flag, but it still looks like a massive tictac box.

Nose: Not terrible, quite rounded, doesn’t look as stamped on as some others. 

Sauber

There’s something depressingly bleak about Sauber launching their new car on a bit of track that looks like a motorway layby. But the still quite bereft of sponsors 2012 car is not a nice looking affair, with Koboyashi getting more subdued and the other one, what’s his name, being just as forgettable, can they do anything to go up in the rankings?

Nose: Urgh, looks like they’ve painted it black so it can’t be seen. Good plan.

Torro Rosso

Not affiliated anymore with Red Bull, aside from being Italian for Red Bull and having Red Bull written across the side. But Newey has not even licked any part of this car (whereas the RB8…) and, dare I say, it looks nice. It won’t be anywhere but the middle, but after scrapping two promising new drivers they’ve hired two promising new identikit drivers for 2012, watch to see them in danger of their seats from race three.

Nose: Maybe it’s the colours, but this nose doesn’t look half bad,  maybe even better that the Red Bull? 

Williams

Oh what’s the fucking point? Every year we crow on about how this’ll be the year and that the Williams looks good and etc etc. Not falling for that this year. Here’s a picture of a good Williams.

But they have launched a car, renault are back on board and they’re trying with another Senna. The hearts of a nation hope they can do well…

Nose:  Very flat, like really flat, how do they get their feet in there?

Caterham

The first team to launch this year in a full page spread with various household implements used to cleverly obscure the nose.

Nose: This whole car just looks weird. Like weirder than the others, the whole car looks square, not as in not cool, but as in Mike Gascoyne lost his protractor.

Still to launch:

Mercedes: Running the first test with last years car, surely another year without results will have Mercedes asking some questions.
Maurrissa: No longer virgins, tee hee, the brave new CFD only design failed abysmally. This year will have some chisels and beard stroking on top of the geekery.
HRT: Will they even launch? For the third year running they look unlikely to have a car ready for the season, and they’ve hired Pedro De La Rosa, so clearly having a laugh.

But, W.W.N.D, the acronym tattoed on every F1 designers wrist, What Will Newey Do?

Stepped nose, or graceful sweep? It’ll launch on 6th Feb, but what do you think he’ll do?

Caterham, Ferrari and Force India have a stepped nose as a result of a boring rule change this year that means that one bit of the car’s maximum height is higher than another bit. Geeky chaps have been wetting themselves over how to deal with it. The obvious way seems to be to draw a diagonal line between the highest and lowest allowed point and make a graceful change between the two. (as explained properly by the wonderful scarbs on his site)

But F1 designers, having no sense of humour have so far wanted it as high as possible and as low as possible all at once and so have used the literal allowable line, regardless of aesthetics.

Who gave the designers this ugly idea though? Well, we can reveal that whilst the F1 world has been wanking off about Ayrton Senna, a lot of the designers had the same eureka moment when looking at his rival.

Yes, the face of F1 2012, the nose that will feature on most the cars belongs to…