Best F1 site on the net (f1-live.comen/)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	f1-live.comen/
Date:	07/02/01 (95 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: New stories added all the time, Stories that no one else has, No plagiarism.

Disadvantages: Don't really like the layout with the scroll bar inside the documents.

F1 Live (www.f1-live.com) is definitely my favourite Formula One site.

It stands out from the rest for a number of reasons. Firstly, it carries it's service in a number of different European languages... of course I always read in English, but I am sure that there must be many readers out there who benefit from being able to read in their native language, as it does seem that a lot of the major F1 sites are written in English only.

The site also carries very up-to-date, in-depth, and well-written news stories, that are updated pretty much as they are received by the people over at F1-live. If you're on the net late at night, as I am frequently, then you will often see new stories added even in the early hours of the morning.

The news section is the default view when you log into the site, after choosing your language (If you just type in www.f1-live.com/en then you will be taken directly to the latest news in English) and this displays a long list of the latest Formula One headlines. The top story is displayed as a large headline at the top of the page, with a picture and the first few lines of that story.

As I say, the list does display a long list of stories, but as this site is updated on-the-fly, rather than just daily, there can be a lot of stories coming in some days, and so if you only visit once per day, and think you may have missed something, the site is customisable to show you more or less headlines, and you can also search back through stories from previous days quickly and easily using the in-built search engine.

This site also has an excellent range of very well written features, including some very good, often exclusive interviews and insider info.

There is now a chat facility too, which recently hosted a chat with Mark Webber (Benetton test driver and Super Nova F3000 driver) and there are plans for chats with more F1 personalities.

What I really like about this site though is th
at it goes out and sniffs out the news, rather than waiting for it to become common knowledge. There are a lot of other sites which blatantly just copy down other peoples stories and then post them on their site, but this just does not seem to happen at F1-live... if you do see a story you have already read, then it will be presented in a different way rather than being just a carbon copy.

F1-live frequently carries stories that no one else does, and that is the reason that it is my favourite F1 site.

There is also an excellent range of wallpapers (which actually do fill the screen, unlike the ones you get from some sites!) and screen savers etc, as well as a picture gallery, and they always seem to the first with new pictures. This was the site where I first saw pictures of the new AP04. (Prost)

There are now WAP and Palm versions of the site too, but I haven't really tried these out as you have to register with Aladino (a WAP portal somewhere in Spain) and I didn't really want to mess up my existing gateway at Genie. I could create another profile on my mobile and bung it under that, but the fact that it cannot be accessed under short code 951000 rather puts me off taking a look. (A lot more expensive than normal if you don't dial up via this short code)

F1-live's major selling point though, and the reason for it's name, is that it carries live timing from every practice session, qualifying session, and race. I have to say that the practice updates are very good; they seem to update very regularly and be very accurate. I could not comment on the quality of timing during qualifying and the race, because I am of course glued to the TV watching it at the time!

As far as I am concerned, this is far and away the best dedicated F1 site out there.

Give it a look if you haven't already. It's well worth visiting AT LEAST once a day...

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