Motorsport Musings Ramblings of a racing enthusiast…

Autosport Goes Digital

Coming to a computer telly near you soon...

So there you have it. After several million years, stars have formed, life has evolved and finally Autosport has revealed that a digital version of the magazine will be gracing the Internet in the next few weeks.

Subscribers to the magazine have already had a taste of what an electronic version would entail, thanks to the Royal Mail throwing one of their strops last year when they went on strike. Their untimely walkout coincided with Jenson Button’s championship winning drive in Brazil, and in an attempt to douse any backlash from readers not receiving the momentous issue on time; it was made available on the Autosport.com website for their perusal.

The digital counterpart worked rather well. So well in fact that even the usual miseryguts that frequent the Autosport forums had to admit that they actually liked something for a change; it even got Karun Chandhok’s seal of approval. But as the postmen and women of the land went back to work, the digital version of Autosport was put back in the cupboard, never to be seen again.

A bit like my subscription of the magazine really. In the past three months it has had a faultless success rate in actually failing to turn up on the day of publication. For a weekly publication this is unacceptable, especially as Autosport by its nature contains time-sensitive information, which becomes increasingly redundant with each passing day that it fails to show up.

Some may mock, I mean, getting het up about a magazine not arriving on time? What’s that all about?!! But to me, Autosport is the motor racing bible; albeit one that’s updated every seven days with new content. It is an integral part of the racing season, so its non-arrival on my doormat each Thursday has been nothing short of irritating. Therefore, the announcement that us subscribers won’t be at the mercy of the shambles that is the UK postal service is nothing short of brilliant.

A formal announcement is still yet to be made, but it appears that the online version of the magazine will be free to existing ‘paper copy’ subscribers and will also be offered at a discounted price to Autosport.com Plus subscribers.

Whether Ceros have been chosen to handle the online format of the magazine again is currently unknown, but hopefully a couple of the niggles have been sorted (text slightly blurry when zoomed in) so that us likeminded motor racing fans can really enjoy Autosport’s foray into digital print.

Cheerio Royal Mail.