Motor Sport Musings Ramblings of a racing enthusiast…

These Are Testing Times

Testing - even poor ol' Alguersuari is bored by it all. © GEPA Pictures

Formula 1 came out of its winter hibernation this week, as the majority of the field participated in the first pre-season test of 2010 at Valencia in Spain. The three-day session was always going to be of significant interest to journalists and fans alike - what with the raft of driver and team changes having recently taken place – yet, it also marked a new chapter in the book of how F1 is reported.

I presume by the sheer fact you’re reading this, that you are moderately tech-savvy and as such, have probably have heard of ‘Twitter.’ Initially the problem with explaining Twitter to anyone is that they don’t ‘get it.’ Much like it would be difficult to see the point of a phone if the only person you could call was Stephen Fry, and he didn’t listen to you, only barked missives about how much battery life was left in his laptop.

Those of you who are on the side of the fence that enjoys going, “I see the point of it!” probably gained a sense of satisfaction this week as numerous F1 journalists in Valencia ‘tweeted’ almost every single minute of proceedings from Spain. Nice as all that was, it just seemed to be a tad over the top for what was something almost completely irrelevant to likes of you or I.

Testing has never and will never appeal to me. Absolutely nobody really knows just who is quick until it comes to the first qualifying session of the season, and for anyone to form any conclusions this early on in the year is just foolhardy. Countless Internet forums across the globe will speculate wildly and over-analyse everything to the nth degree. Who was on a low-fuel run, who was actually doing some reliability work... It’s all just a pointless exercise as there are very few of us who can properly decode what the heck is actually going on.

So let’s be honest: do we really need mostly irrelevant pieces of information to come filtering through the 140 character wonderment of Twitter, or through live updates on various websites? No, no I don't think we do.

Nearly everything that bombarded me this week from Valencia was just sheer guesswork or random observations with little or no informational value at all, and as such, I more-or-less turned off my Twitter-feed as I couldn’t be bothered to keep up.

Granted I would pop along to Autosport.com at the end of the day and catch the occasional headline, but no way was I going to constantly hammer F5 on my keyboard every 30 seconds so I can read what Button was doing in the McLaren garage, what front wing Renault were sporting, or read quotes from some random bod hinting that someone from an unspecified team is perhaps showboating in an effort to gain much needed sponsorship for the upcoming season.

My biggest gripe of the lot though has to be the recording of lap times. Do any of us truly give a damn about how Massa just managed to knock a massive .1 second off what someone else did three years ago, in a different car, yet that’s supposedly sensational because he was (maybe, who knows?) carrying 52kg of fuel whilst he did that? I don't think any of us do, and perhaps if you do, could I suggest doing something more interesting, like practising on a harpsichord instead?

I concede all this information is wasted on me, and I believe we’ve now reached a tipping point where there is perhaps too much information filtering out. There’s absolutely nothing left to the imagination, no real surprises as everything is covered in an incredible, inane even, amount of detail.

I fear where all this is leading I really do. I believe that those hacks that are now furiously tweeting every little morsel, as punters lap up the immediacy of mostly irrelevant titbits of information, will one day regret succumbing to the instantaneous report.

In the ‘good old days,’ reporters could spend time after a test session or whatever and speak to the relevant people, piecing together exactly what happened and why. Now it appears that journalists have to write up almost instant reports and objectivity firmly takes a back seat.

In my world, I would go in the exact opposite direction of what the majority of fans are requesting. I would make all tests closed events to all but a few journalists. A select few photographers would be chosen and pictures would be released in a similar fashion to television broadcasts. Testing isn’t a spectacle; it is about the teams getting down to business and trying to extract as much performance out of their new challengers as they can.

So all eyes on Jerez next week then? All except mine that is. Can someone please wake me up when we get to Bahrain?