This Weekend's Coverage Schedule (May 4th)

I do want to stress something I didn’t mention in last week’s coverage schedule that served as a bit of a website update.

If you read it, it seems like I made a relatively heartless decision almost entirely out of greed. Here’s the section:

“Something I’ve noticed is that there’s just no real attention being given to our IndyCar and NASCAR coverage. I can live without much interaction, but it’s hard to justify spending hours writing up about those races without any likes or, more importantly, Bluesky followers being added. F1 races usually fetch a lot of both, but not those two series.

“Because of this, I’ve decided to slow down both.”

I do need to stress here that while those numbers give me a reason not to cover those series, another big part of it is that I have not been having fun doing them.

For IndyCar, it’s clear that the hybrid system has really negatively effected the series on road courses. The cars weigh too much and aren’t producing enough horsepower to circumvent that extra weight. Thus we’ve had three “mid” races so far this season.

NASCAR is, well, NASCAR. It has become really frustrating to watch this season. Maybe things will be better after the Fox coverage ends in a couple of weeks, but that won’t fix the stages still being a thing.

I would argue COTA was a pretty good race a couple of months ago, but it was also essentially a 45 lap sprint with two needless heat races beforehand. And Darlington a few weeks ago would have been great if the stages didn’t take away green flag pit cycles and the acttion we saw at the end with different drivers on different strategies.

So, from my perspective, these are two series that have not been fun to cover, and I’m not getting literally any impressions or follows to help build up this blog or the main BlueSky account up. Why am I even bothering with these series then? Especially when the whole point of all of this is to be doing stuff I like to do.

Again, I decided to cut the coverage of those two series dramatically. I want to do all three of Monaco-Indianapolis-Charlotte in one day one more time, Indy road course serves as a good prologue to the 500, and the Chicago street course is still a very interesting concept for me. It helps that Chicago has been a good race both times.

I just wanted to stress it was not just a straight business decision. Anyway, on to the schedule:

All times are in EST.

Friday, May 2nd

10:05 AM to 10:45 AM: Formula 1 Academy Free Practice 1 (YouTube, F1TV)

12:30 PM to 1:30 PM: Formula 1 Free Practice at Miami (ESPNU, F1TV)

3:20 PM to 4:00 PM: Formula 1 Acedemy Free Practice 2 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:30 PM to 5:30 PM: Formula 1 Sprint Qualifying (ESPNU, F1TV)

Saturday, May 3rd

1:30 AM to 2:15 AM: Formula E Free Practice 1 at Monaco (Roku)

3:10 AM to 3:45 AM: Formula E Free Practice 2 (Roku)

4:40 AM to 6:03 AM: Formula E Qualifying (Roku)

9:05 AM to 10:00 AM:: Formula E Race 1 (Roku)

10:25 AM to 10:55 AM: Formula 1 Academy Qualifying (YouTube, F1TV)

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM: Formula 1 Sprint (ESPN, F1TV)

2:55 PM to 3:25 PM: Formula 1 Academy Race 1 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:00 PM to 5:00 PM: Formula 1 Qualifying (ESPN, F1TV)

Sunday, May 4th

2:30 AM to 3:25 AM: Formula E Free Practice 3 (Roku)

4:40 AM to 6:03 AM: Formula E Qualifying (Roku)

9:05 AM to 10:00 AM:: Formula E Race 2 (Roku)

1:05 PM to 1:35 PM: Formula 1 Academy Race 2 (YouTube, F1TV)

4:00 PM: The Fourth Miami Grand Prix (ABC, F1TV)

Note: testing, practice, qualifying and warmup sessions are not covered on the Grand Prix Focus Bluesky account.

This Week’s Top 10 Ranking

Best Current F1 Prospects

10. Fredrik Vesti
9. Theo Pourchaire
8. Rafael Camara
7. Jak Crawford
6. Alex Dunne
5. Josep Maria “Pepe” Marti
4. Leonardo Fornaroli
3. Colton Herta
2. Arvid Lindblad
1. Pato O’Ward