Auto Racing

I was watching the quality session for F1 Academg today and was quite impressed with Lisa Billard, who is their wildcard driver this race weekend.

Coming into a series, a team and a track that are new to her, it was really impressive to see her take provisional pole multiple times. In the end she qualified P5 for the main race.

For comparison, Megan Bruce who also has her debut weekend here, and is even driving for the same team as Billard, qualified P15.

For context on Billard: She turned 16 a month ago, and finished P19 this French F4 season with one point finishing race. Doesn't sound like much on paper, but was successful in French Karting and is still very young - she debuted in F4 when barely 15 years old, which is F4's minimum age. Plus she's managed by Ocon's ex-manager and in Renault's driver academy (the latter might be a negative lol).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36443873

Time table (local time, CEST):

• 08:30 – 10:00 Qualifying
• 11:00 – 11:40 Grid formation
• 11:40 – 12:00 Formation lap (yes, 20 minutes!)
• 12:00 – 16:00 Race (4 hours)

English language stream starts 11:15, so after qualifying. German stream has the whole day.

Hi again everyone,

I updated the sidebar for this community to list the tags being used by @BlueFlagBot@walledgarden.xyz and the series they represent. If you're curious about what it might post that's a great way to see most of it at a glance.

As some of you may know the current version of Lemmy doesn't support proper post tagging. This is supposed to be coming with Lemmy v1.0, but in the meantime the plan is to use bracketed tags to label different types of content.

Another feature missing from the current version of Lemmy is community specific searching that works regardless of your home instance. At the moment it is not possible (to my knowledge) to post a link that searches a community on another instance without an instance hard coded in the link. My temporary solution to this is to use the tags as search terms, since I believe we are the only community doing something like this.

The tags in the sidebar are clickable links. Clicking them should take you to the Lemmy search page, showing you the most recent posts with that tag first. Please note it's still early days with the bot and not all of the series have content posted yet.

One major downside to this approach is that the links aren't likely to work outside of the default Lemmy web-ui. I'll be the first to admit this approach isn't perfect, but it's the best I've come up with so far. Searching for the tags (brackets included) manually on whatever interface you use for Lemmy should still show them reliably, just not as easily.

Hopefully some of you find this useful. As always I'm open to feedback and suggestions.

We're launching @BlueFlagBot@walledgarden.xyz, a new community bot that attempts to serve racing videos from series around the world. The bot tries to curate a YouTube feed of auto racing focused channels before posting the "best" content available to the community, focusing on racing and on-track content while filtering out filler and fluff pieces using our "Track Limits" system - we're still figuring out those limits before we start throwing the black and white flag.

Please note: BlueFlagBot is fresh off the sim and just bolted on the aero rakes. The bot may have some handling issues as we continue fine-tuning the setup and working out mechanical bugs.

What BlueFlagBot Is (And Isn't)

What it is: An attempt to curate racing content for the community

What it isn't:

• Not a replacement for user posted content - the bot will be reconfigured as needed to better support users posting similar content
• Not yet interactive - no good bot/bad bot style recognition yet, maybe in the future if needed
• Not a finished product

Launch Features

• Monitors 40+ auto racing classifications from around the world
• Covers diverse events to interest long-time and casual fans alike
• Prefers posting live events and on-track content over other video types
• Tags all videos by series or classification for easy identification
• Uses a content scoring system that scales with video availability to keep content interesting and on-topic
• Configurable posting habits and series weighting to fit community needs
• Attempts to avoid double posting content already shared by itself or community members

The bot uses a content filtering system designed to be flexible and adapt as the community grows and changes. We're learning the racing line as we go - it can limit videos to only live racing and full race replays, favor certain series over others, allow more casual content through, and adjust based on community needs as we dial in the setup.

What You Should Know About Today's Release

• Early beta will likely contain bugs and require adjustments to fit the community
• Bot availability may change without warning - disappearing and reappearing should be expected
• Series being posted are always up for discussion and open for suggestion
• Adding new series may take time but shouldn't be a problem
• Feedback on any aspect of the bot is welcome

Help us improve: The bot scores each video out of 100 points to help tune content during the racing season and off-season periods on YouTube. The scores help us learn when track conditions are poor versus when a wheel nut hasn't been tightened properly. We're still working out the kinks in our pit strategy - leave feedback about series you'd like added, tagging system modifications, series you don't want to see, or other suggestions in the comments below.

Thanks for your patience during testing!

Currently Monitored Channels

Asian Le Mans Series, British F4, BTCC, Dakar Rally, DirtFish Rally, DTM, European Le Mans Series, F4 Brasil, F4 Indian Championship, F4 Spanish Championship, F4 U.S. Championship, FIA World Endurance Championship, FIA World Rally Championship, FIA World Rallycross Championship, FIA-F4 Japanese, Formula 1, Formula E, Formula Regional European Championship, Goodwood Road & Racing, GT World, IMSA, INDY NXT by Firestone, INDYCAR, Italian F4 Championship, Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, F4 CEZ Championship, Super Formula, Super Formula Lights, Super GT, Super Taikyu, Supercars Championship, TCR South America, TCR World Tour, USF Pro Championships, Winter Series, World Rally-Raid Championship

Hi everyone,

I'm excited to share that I've been working on a bot to help keep our community active with regular content, and I'd love to get your thoughts on what racing series you're currently following or would like to see more coverage of. Since Lemmy is still growing and most motorsport content is pretty sparse across the platform, I'm particularly interested in hearing about series that you think would resonate well with our community or that you're personally passionate about.

I'll be sharing more details about how the bot works when I officially announce it, which should be within the next few days – if I can wait that long hahaha! It's already set up to pull content from many popular racing series worldwide, but I'm happy to add any specific series that our community members are interested in.

Thanks for taking the time to share your input – it really helps make this a better space for all of us.

Cheers!