Tech Update: F1 and the iPhone (...and Badger)

- Published on Jan 22nd, 2010 by Adam Milleneuve

Jenson Button is officially part of McLaren now, doing more sponsorship promotion in the off-season than he did during the entire year at BrawnGP.  Today he launched the iPhone for title sponsor Vodafone here in London.  Anyone lucky enough to own one of these shiny devices should be aware of the following F1 related apps for the clever little device:

• Red Bull Racing Game
  • This is new, launched last week and gives your the chance to drive a reasonable number of tracks in a Red Bull F1 car.  Acceleration and braking is done using Apple's clever touch interface and you steer by tilting the phone itself left or right.  More info here on the RBR website
• BrawnGP Game
  • Launched last year and very similar to the Red Bull game, except it's free
• Offiical F1 timing
  • VERY expensive, but feedback has been good.  If you ever use the official F1 live timing, it's a bit like that.... on drugs - with GPS data fed to it from the pitwall so you can track the cars around a circuit.  It's very clever, but sadly falls down on the fact that you need a very good signal or even WiFi to get the most out of it, meaning that at times when it would be most useful, such as at race weekend it's not very good at all... or will cost a fortune on your data tarrif.  Hmm.
• F1 2009
  • The same game that you can get on the Wii and PSP - damn impressive on the iPhone and more of a complete game than the Brawn/RBR offerings, yet still less than a fiver - bargain!

Having sold many millions of these devices, some of you, our lovely readers must have one - what F1 apps have you used and would recommend to others - comments below please!

And, if you didn't know already - F1 Badger has an iPhone designed interface, making browsing the site really easy - give it a try, just tap in f1badger.com on the phone's web browser and it knows you're on an iPhone and reformats itself.  You can use all the features of the site and leave comments too.  If you prefer to view the normal site, scroll to the bottom and you turn off the fancy formatting - genius.  If  you add a bookmark to your home screen you'll even get a smart grand prix icon to look at - give it a try!