New Cars, Much Slower Says Kimi.

[Emmcee 0]

Nah iam on the Gold Coast, you?

[HandyNZL 1]

See, you may have all the themeparks there in the GC, we in lil ol Kiwiland get GP3, GP2, F1 (all sessions including practice), WRC, DTM, MotoGP, Indy, NASCAR...in fact about the only thing we don't get is 24hrs of Le Mans.

And there is also a substantial amount of coverage of national racing such as the TRS series (Toyota Racing Series) which is our version of cars that are not too unlike GP3, hence guys like Josh Hill and Piquet the youngest coming to race here in our summer over five consecutive weekends (three races a weekend). The young British lad Jann Mardenborough, whom won the PS3 Gran Tursimo sim thing two years ago is currently in second on the points table this year, having also raced here last year (finished mid-table if I recall...he was a bit like Malonaldo and seemed to be spend more time with a wing hanging off or mounted up the gearbox of the guy infront last year, but this year he has settled down and is going lickity split in the wet).

Back to the speed of the F1 cars, I imagine that they will be quicker in Bahrain; this test will have only been breaking in the cars, whereas Bahrain will see race simulation, and as such, they have to give it 10 tenths.

GP2 engines will change when the current chassis is retired, which is in about two years. The current chassis has been going for two seasons (at least). GP3 was upgraded this past season, so their engine will remain the same for another four or five seasons.

Remember that there is going to be a horsepower race this year, as the engines are not yet frozen like they were for the past five seasons. We have an interesting year ahead of us, and to be frank, times are irrelevant if the racing aspect is there...you can watch a bunch of BMW E30's hacking it out, overtaking and such, and even though they're lapping upwards of 10-seconds slower than even me in my Formula Ford, they still do put on a good race (even if it is between shopping trollies with stickers on the doors).

And F1 has been getting slower in the past decade anyway, not that you have ever voiced concern over it before...lets take Monza....Montoya did 53 laps (and won) in 2001, and completed those 53 laps, 1 minute and 40 seconds faster than Vettel did the same 53 laps last year. Likewise, JPM pole that year was 1.22.216...Vettels in 2013 was 1.23.795.

Of course Monty had a V10 3-litre engine....Vettel a V8 2.4-litre engine....

GP2 currently has a V8 4-litre engine...practically a dinosaur even in road car terms.

As for Leimer, he had some good races, but as with any young guy coming up through the ranks, there were some real dumb moments from him too. Valsechi in 2012 on the other hand, I didn't think much of him, and apparently, neither did Lotus, to which he got all sour about for some reason.....

[Emmcee 0]

Lucky I would love to watch all those, is that free to air tv? All we get is f1,v8supercars and NASCAR ohh and motogp. F1,NASCAR and motogp is shown in most countries, we get no support or feeder categories to watch which I would love to see. Got to watch them on youtube

[HandyNZL 1]

A mix of free and Sky, but it's worth paying the measly amount of money to Sky when you consider how Sh#te free to air TV is every other hour of the day

[KoolMonkey 0]

Nah iam on the Gold Coast, you?

Brisvegas.

Check what version of Channel 10 you are watching. I know when I've been down on the coast, I've seen up to 3 different versions of Channel 10. There's GC Channel Ten, a North NSW version of Channel 10 and the Brisbane version of Channel 10. All are the same, except some night some play different movies, and the news bulletins are different regions. There's also 2 different versions of channel ONE.

These all come in handy when thunder storms and others knock out channels, as you can switch to a different region on and still get it.

Channel 10 take F1 pretty seriously. As serious as Channel 9 with the State of Origin. Maybe it's just bad luck on your part, but I have never been in a situation whereby the live coverage starts on the warmup lap. I'm often late, but still catch the last 15-20mins of the pre race show and then the race starts.

Handy, Free to Air in Australia is very very good. We don't get the premium cable shows from the US like Game of Thrones etc., but we have had Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men etc. And if you're into the mainstream crap, all the big shows are on the channels, like Revenge, Arrow, NCIS x12 or whatever number they are up to, The Blacklist, and so on. Though we did get screwed with Fringe. Guess the numbers weren't good but I had to continue watching that with a mixture of torrents and late night 1:30am viewings on TV.

[Jem of the Shire 0]

I'd love to be able to even grab a glimpse of a gp2 race, here in aus, your lucky to even get to see the start of a f1 race on time, there always pressed for time because a movie that was on prior to the gp which everyone would have seen a millions times, runs longer than expected.

That's terrible, we're lucky in the UK really, the BBC do at least an hour build-up, and Sky does a 90-minute build-up, and both carry on analsying for about an hour after the race too.

I've watched F1 in both France and Portugal and they're rubbish, both started their broadcasts just as the race itself was about to start.

Unless you pay for Sky, we don't get any Nascar or V8's and you have to scroll far down the channel list to ever find some WRC highlights.

For some reason MotoGP is live on BBC despite almost no british interest. Maybe cos it's cheap to broadcast it.