On the eve of the new season a number of new F1 sites have sprung up including F1 Pitlane and GP Week. Here’s a quick look at them.
F1 Pitlane
F1 Pitlane is an ambitious new site with a number of contributors from top F1 blogs F1 Insight, Sidepodcast and La Canta Magnifico. I’m also doing the odd piece, the first of which should be up on Wednesday 12th.
GP Week
GP Week covers F1, Moto GP and others. I’m not a fan of the ‘virtual magazine’ format – it was something I dabbled with when I started F1 Fanatic and quickly dropped it. But the quality of the writing shines through beyond the design which looks disconcertingly similar to British lads mag Nuts.
GrandPrix+
It’s not brand new as it arrived during last season, but I’d be interested to hear what you think of it and whether anyone subscribes to it. GrandPrix+ is published by former Autosport scribe Joe Saward, who also writes GrandPrix.com. It’s subscription only at a cost of £25. The photography is particularly high quality and the magazine won the Guild of Motoring Writers Newspress New Media Award last year.
Nico
12th March 2008, 0:43
I kinda like the format of GP Week, but I think they’ve bitten of more than they can chew. Because they’re trying to cover so much, I think the writing suffers. Take, for instance, this awkward wording in the Super Aguri article: "the team’s equipment has already started to arrive in Melbourne, the team at least starting the 2008 season." Not the best sentence structure I’ve ever seen…
Arnet
12th March 2008, 0:56
I’m really not a fan of the PDF format either, Keith. It’s too much work. Grandprix+ is very heavy on the photo content, which looks great in an actual magazine, but that leaves little space for text, so you’re clicking trough many pages to read the whole article. Still, the lack of advertising is noticeable.
OK, they get the big interviews, but so does Autosport and they have a "regular" web-site.
milos
12th March 2008, 2:08
I read the GP+ few times last year, the pictures were nice, the contents not bad. But the PDF is not that convenient to read. I would not say the price is ONLY 25 … I find it quite a lot for a magazine that is not printed. On the other hand there are no ads and the contents they have does not come cheap …
If the photos in hi resolution came with the subscription, than I say it worth the money.
F1 Pitlane – will be interesting to see how that develops … I am quite sure it will be independent from Max and Bernie :-) let’s hope it can stay bias free in general. Not too many writers who do not come from UK :-) as is the case in most mainstream F1 sites. The other thing is, where are you guys going to find the time to keep it up and still have your own blogs without duplicating the content?
Clive
12th March 2008, 2:22
Your last sentence is a very good question, Milos, and the short answer is that we’ll just work harder. There’s more to it than that, however, and certainly worth expanding upon. Not here, though – my thoughts are still developing in that area and I think it amounts to quite a long post, far too much to clog Keith’s Comments system with anyway. I’ll put something about it on F1-Pitlane in the next few days.
As regards Max and Bernie, I’m hoping that the site will be open to all shades of opinion. John Ferry has written a piece that supports Bernie, for example, and that should be published in a day or so. We might find it a bit harder to track down that "odd blogger" who likes Max, however. ;)
John Beamer
12th March 2008, 3:54
I agree with Clive. Also writers who contribute to F1P will do so less frequently than they contribute to their blogs so I don’t think the burden is overly high.
The idea of F1P is that its identity is in the identity of its writers. We really value diverse opinion and there are no constraints on what writers want to say (other than legal constraints obviously)
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7th May 2009, 20:13
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