Hunt the Shunt
If you can’t manage to get to the track or a telly to watch the race, the F1.com live commentary is also fed to the app. Annoyingly, despite the app first appearing in Android, the iOS version now supports push alerts for session start times, absent here. It’s a feature promised “soon” for the rest of us.
Monitor qualification (left) and see what's next (right)
Other information vital for petrolhead paradise includes track and air temperature, wind speed and direction, sector, speed trap and average lap times. There’s also a full race calender, archived results from each round of the F1 championship and the current driver and manufacturer rankings.
Though the app is free, you have to sign up at Formula1.com to use it, but that’s a painless operation. At 3MB it’s not quite as tightly packaged as one of Adrian Newey’s cars and there’s no App2SD support. ®
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Formula 1
COMMENTS
So you're...
...one of the dicks that seems to arbitrarily downvote perfectly reasonable posts. Shouldn't you be hanging round an Apple story with the rest of them?
Live timing on www.formula1.com preferable...
Having both an Android phone with the official F1 app installed and a Linux netbook with the Java-based live timing app loaded from www.formula1.com using Firefox, the latter is the clear winner.
This is mainly because the "large" window on the Java timing app contains everything I need to see neatly in one screen, whereas the Android app, by necessity, is cramped and involves you constantly switching screens to find the info you need.
Even with my 8.9" netbook screen, a quick F11 for full screen allows the large Java window to fit perfectly and I just glance occasionally at it whilst watching the race without having to press any key/screen at all. The *only* reason I'd ever use the Android app is if I couldn't see the race on TV and I didn't have my netbook with me, which would be highly frustrating (and unlikely) on both counts anyway!
Trivia point: Has anyone noticed that the BBC F1 coverage on Freeview (SD or HD) is often 5-6 seconds behind the formula1.com live timing? Very noticeable in free practice and qualifying where you can compare the TV's session countdown clock with the one on the live timing. It does mean I can shout out fastest laps and pit stops before they get mentioned on TV though :-)
If only...
...this had some way of giving David Coulthard an electric shock when I pressed a button on the screen. That way, every time he pronounced Nick Heidfeld's name incorrectly, I could reach for the lightening bolt and send a few volts up his jacksy... that would wipe the smug smile off his face (to be fair, I'd be even more smug if I was him and had achieved as much as he had and was as rich as he is).
There could also be buttons that do unpleasant things to Eddie Jordan and that bloke with the iPad whenever they talk bollocks.
In all seriousness, though, after reading this review I think I'm gonna download this one. Thanks for the recommendation, El Reg.
asdf
not interesting? have you even seen any F1 this century?
