Choose your racing code

There is a post on our main station blog announcing the return of Lil Hippies 'Rock your racing' NASCAR series show for the second season and I know that's something so many of our station staff are looking forward to immensely.

Being a Briton, of course, I am more familiar with Formula One racing which, I guess, is the more established code throughout Europe, although NASCAR enjoys a tremendous following in the UK now, thanks to cable television.

There have long been debates about which is the better form of car racing but I think those kinds of comparison are a bit silly. You enjoy what you enjoy and that's that, but it might be worthwhile for American readers unfamiliar with Formula One to mention a few of the basic differences...and they are considerable.

For a start the NASCAR cars are three times as heavy as Formula One racing cars and they use pretty simple technology. The idea behind NASCAR seems to be simplicity, speed, standardisation of engine to give everyone a fair chance and excitement and, maybe for that reason, the code is sometimes looked down on by Formula One fans. Rather stupidly in my opinion.

Formula One could not be more different. It sometimes seems to be a code for the car designer to get excited about rather than the spectator with each car carrying the kind of sophisticated on board computers and state of the art technology which would do credit to a NASA space launch. The teams operate within a broad brush set of requirements but, traditionally, the very last thing they want is standardised anything. It is part of the designers art to produce in secret new aerodynamics or an engine booster which your rivals havent got, in order to steal a march on them. Consequently the accusation thrown at F1 is its not the best driver who wins the Championship but the guy with the most sophisticated car.

The area where NASCAR really scores is in spectator excitement. Whereas cars are often neck and neck and jockey to overtake, sometimes resulting in shunts, this rarely happens in Formula One. To be an F1 fan you sometimes have to have a clinical appreciation of time delays and pit lane stops etc, in order to work out who is leading. Of course , F1 'snobs' say this is sophisticated motor racing and look down on the neck and neck frenzy of NASCAR as 'stock car racing'.

But the hard cold facts of life have bitten in to Formula One organisers. They realise the sport is becoming too scientific and too lacking in moments of high excitement. So this year a few changes have been put in place. For a start, a much tighter specificiation on aerodynamics design has been put in place and a return to the use of 'slick'tyres which will guarantee better mechanical grip. There was a suggestion that all cars should use a standard engine but that created so much uproar it was thrown out. However they have limited how many engines a team can use throughout the season.

By and large the changes wont exactly emulate the neck and neck of NASCAR but they will allow more competitive overtaking than in recent years. That has been one of the main problems with the sport. It is exciting once you understand a little bit about fuel consumption and the gambles on whether to start a race with a full tank or not, depending on how many pit stops you think you can get away with, but it is certainly more statistical than NASCAR, and thus, to a lot of people, boring. But I love it and I think the changes will make Formula One more appealing for many.

Britain has the pleasure of having the World Champion Formula One driver in Lewis Hamilton who is not only the youngest ever F1 champion but also the first black guy to compete in Formula One. He is great, but only just scraped the title last year. He needed to finish 5th in the final race of the year to stop Felipe Massa of Ferrari from taking the crown. He looked as if he'd blown it until the final bend of the race, when the guy in 5th place retired with a burned out engine. It sounds lucky but for all sorts of reasons -not least because he's British - he deserved it! He was unfairly penalised for an overtaking manoeuvre in an earlier race so it was poetic justice.

Anyway the F1 season kicks off at the end of March, the first race being in Australia and I will be eagerly watching that and cheering our Lewis all the way. I suspect the seething Massa will have other ideas though.

So two codes to enjoy and between the two I reckon 2009 is going to be a great motor racing year.