Perfect F1 Experience: BBC & Tweetdeck

I've just watched the fantastic Bahrain Grand Prix and thoroughly enjoyed seeing a great win by Jenson Button, along with a solid performance by Lewis Hamilton. The BBC coverage was fantastic, particularly the Red Button interactive features.
It was also the first time I've really used TweetDeck. I installed it a few days ago and really liked the ability to have a persistant search coloumn. What I didn't like was the notification pop-up. I use twhirl on a day-to-day basis and like the way that I can set it to show each tweet in the notification so I don't have to pull up the application window. TweetDeck only shows a summary - "3 new notifications", so I have to pull up the window each time to read a tweet. For this reason I've decided to stick with twhirl.
Today though, whilst watching the Grand Prix I used TweetDeck a bit differently. I turned off updates, so as not to use up API calls and kept twhirl running as usual. I then used TweetDeck purely for searches. I wanted to follow tweets with the #f1 tag, and being a Hamilton fan wanted to follow #Hamilton too. I set up two search coloumns, one searching for each tag.
This gave me a rolling update from thousands of people, and really helped me keep up to speed with the race. People on twitter caught things that the commentators missed, and expressed some interesting (and sometimes humorous) comments.
Will definately be doing it this way again, the only problem is getting Sundays off work!

Formula 1 Is Interesting Again

There has been quite a lot of controversy over some of the rule changes rules changes prior to the 2009 F1 season. KERS, super-soft compound tyres and aerodynamic changes have all received a mixed response from the drivers, teams and fans.
After the first few races though, I think that these changes along with the changes from previous seasons like "shoot-out" qualifying have made the sport much more interesting. The teams that have decided to use KERS seem to have had varying degrees of sucess, with some teams ditching it altogether - the first being Ferrari ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix.
The one worry I have is that the sport is becoming too complex for new fans to be able to follow. With all this talk about KERS and rear diffusers it could be quite baffling for someone watching for the first time.
For veteran fans though 2009 is shaping up to be a great season, Hamilton the underdog, Red Bull with a great car and a fantastic young driver in Vettel, and the once written off Jenson Button driving for the new, but already championship leading BrawnGP. The problem I have is knowing which team I'm rooting for, McLaren, Red Bull or Brawn; either way, I can't wait for the race tomorrow.