An Evaluation of Formula 1 Racing Websites
There are 2 websites that I want to talk about. The first one is www.formula1.com. It is the official website for racing sport called Formula 1. The second one is www.f1-live.com. This website is made for big F1 fans. You can see it from the lay-out which has complete information for the fans while the first one only has just enough information and easier for new F1 fans to browse and know more about F1.
www.formula1.com (formula1) has some special features such as the history about each Grand Prix (race), how and where to buy the tickets, and interactive circuit map. For the tickets section, they give you the address and phone number of the circuit. The website for each grand prix is also given in case you want to see the details about the city and hotel reservation. For the circuit map, they give you details about the name of the corners, turns and straight lanes. The lay-out for this website is quite simple with white background and not packed with a lot of icons. You can choose the headlines of news in the center of the page. On the left side, you can see the drivers and constructors table. On the right side, you can see the sessions schedule and some icons such as rules and regulations, team and driver profiles, and interactive circuit map.
The gallery section for this website does not have many pictures. It is only divided in 2-3 sections. The first section is practice, the second one is qualifying, and the last one is race. It is not too attractive for a gallery designed for F1. Probably because it is official website which focus on the pictures of the race in general not specifically on each team. Formula1 is not too attractive in color. It has the important news first than the other websites, such as press conference. It has no advertisement which makes it look more comfortable for users. Advertisements just make people annoyed so this is another good point from the website.
www.f1-live.com (f1-live) has more features and more specific news for each team. F1-live shows the headlines of each news in their first page and so does formula1. They just write the headlines in a short sentence so people can find them easily. The difference with formula1 is f1-live puts the headlines in group of the team. So if you want to find some specific news about Ferrari, they will also give the latest news that related with Ferrari. They also put all the headlines in the first page so when you visit the website you do not need to go “deeper” to find all the news. For the layout, F1-live is designed truly for F1 fans. The layout reflects the complexity of the F1 car with a lot of icons on the left side and advertisements on the right side. It is just like an F1 car where there are many hi-tech stuff inside the car and advertisement from sponsors on the body. The gallery section has a lot of pictures which they divide it in grands prix, F1 tests, teams, and pit babes pictures. Pit babes basically mean the girls in the F1 pit lane holding umbrellas just before the start of the race to cover the drivers from heat and sunlight. The pit babes gallery is one of the advantages that this website has. It is unique. It captures the moment of the beautiful and sexy girls.
They are usually the type of every man wants. Sometimes it captures some pictures of a fashion model. Just for you who do not know anything about F1, the lifestyle of this sport have made the people inside this sport become celebrities. For example, Flavio Briatore (the boss of Renault team) dated with Heidi Klum (a top European model). This could happen because F1 is not just an automobile sport. The money that involved in the sport probably is more than enough to support the US troops in Iraq war. That is why F1 has attracted many top European model and other beautiful girls.
F1-live has a special forum for the fans to give their opinions on many subjects. The forum usually becomes crowded with discussions after the race. And just any other forums, you should sign up to post your opinions. It has also some links to other race sports such as moto gp and rally. It has more advertisement in every page than the formula1 has. It provides screensavers for the fans. This feature makes fans do not have to search for their favorite driver screensavers in Google or other search machines.
Both websites have schedules of every race session in F1 such as free practice, qualifying and race. F1-live makes people keep coming to their website because of the information that it gives and the organization of the page. The information could be rumors or official from the press conference.
Formula 1 is a single seater auto racing sport. It is a sport which combines the speed of a machine and the skill of human. It needs the speed of a machine because the car needs good machine to compete with others. It is not easy to make a machine for an F1 car. It is not like you build a machine for a Honda or ford car. For example, an F1 machine requires 12 cylinders to be classified for F1 car. It is triple the number of cylinders of Honda Accord and twice of that of Mitsubishi Galant. The gearbox is also more complicated than the gearbox for “normal” car. They adopt the gear changes principle like those of motorbike which make the gear changes far faster than the traditional “H” gate selector. So if you want to gear up or gear down, just press the paddles behind the steering wheel. Probably you are wondering how much cost each team to make this hi-tech machine. I do not know the exact answer but it could be million of dollars. That is why FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) has introduced new regulations for 2004 which limit one engine per race for each car. About the circuit, F1 does not need special type of material for the track but it needs a huge area to build the circuit. An F1 circuit has length between 3.3 and 5.8 km with race distance around 300 km. The information about each circuit can be found in both website with different style. In formula1 they give you the turn number and the images of some spots in the circuit with the general information like number of laps, sectors, circuit length, lap record and race distance. But it seems like f1-live has more complete information. Not only it gives you the same information as formula1 (except for images and turn number), but also it has the overtaking zone and technical data such as the start line offset, type of downforce, and top speed. It also shows you the best lap, previous year pole position and previous year podium. So it makes you knowledgeable about F1 pretty fast.
For the regulation part, formula1 is more organized by the way they put the rules in alphabetical order. It makes people easily browse the rules letter by letter so they can find easily a word that they do not understand. It is kind of a dictionary page but with longer explanation. F1-live is a little bit complicated in this case. They only have one file to provide the regulation and it is in PDF form which is not easy if you want to find a specific word. They divide the rules in articles and sub-articles in 17 pages which make it look like a book. You have to scroll down a little further if the word you are looking for is in the last page. This time the explanation comes very similar with the type of dictionary explanation. They put it in a short and simple sentence so people can easily understand the meaning. Some specific words still need one or a few paragraph to explain the meaning. For this reason, I would choose formula1 is better from the way they organize the information about regulation.
As a conclusion, these two websites can be trusted from the information that they give. Although formula1 looks too simple, it basically has the information you would like to know if you are a new F1 fan. The layout will not confuse for people who are first time come to the website. F1-live is more complicated in sense of the layout. It seems like it has everything in the front page. Despite the complexity, I would say this website is more complete than the first one. It has more information and therefore more preferable for big F1 fans.