The end

So this is goodbye. A final goodbye to me writing about Formula 1, something I have been doing for a long time now, but it´s over now.

I have been following F1 for over 30 years, and have been able to blog, comment, debate, post and write about the sport for some time now. I started on Blogspot, then moved to WordPress as I was looking for a more professional approach to my work. I have always been careful never to copy a text, and I never stole any work from others. There are so many great websites out there, really good ones who unfortunately just copy paste others work and it is a shame that they don´t own the same journalistic standard as other great blogs and websites. For me, original content has always been the priority, and yes you could read the story somewhere else, but I never assumed that every single reader interested in F1 should visit my blog. That would make me ignorant and it´s simply not realistic. Instead I worked hard to implement original work in every article, I have written more than 25,000 articles over the years, and every single one of them is by my own hands.

Instead I created something from nothing, managed to get thousands of followers on Facebook and have continued to enjoy several thousands unique hits every month here on the blog. I am proud of what I have achieved, considering the fact that I never had access to the paddock, but I still broke some pretty significant stories, regardless of the fact that breaking stories was never my priority. It was to deliver a quality product and never shy away from putting that extra bit of work into it. I think I accomplished that mission very well.

For years I have had a full-time job blogging, and for many years this was done next to a proper full-time occupation, for which I got paid. Yay! But recently my energy levels have completely emptied and I just can´t be bothered any more. One of the biggest reasons for stopping this, is due to the fact that I have never been able to break it onto the F1 scene along with the prized and utterly professional journalists around. There are so many of them I owe a huge thanks. They have inspired me, I have been able to speak to some of them and have been encouraged to keep doing what I do, but in the end, when you are faced with a brick wall no matter where you go, eventually you start believing that you really cannot jump that wall. So that is the reason. I can´t be arsed to do this anymore.

The regular follower will now that I never shy away from a fight, I never run and hide if I wrote something about other websites who are wrong or who claims this or that. We all know that some readers have their favorite websites to visit for the news, some don´t care too much and pretty much read anything from anyone, but I have always been proud of the fact that whenever a website tried to tell their readers that I am wrong, for simply doing nothing but my job, I always do what I can to enlighten my readers as to why these websites are behaving the way they do. Should you be interested, then read the article named Scurrilous? Moi? about how Pitpass thought that one of their breaking stories was exclusive. I too had the information, but sat on it for some days, allowing my source to – correctly – do a confirmation of the story before I published it. Pitpass will tell you that pretty much all their stories are exclusive and breaking, but in reality it´s really not that difficult to have a guy eat lunch with another guy to get the information they need.

I guess what I am saying here, is not so much an attack on Pitpass, though I could not care less if they see it this way, it´s my way of saying: Read the articles with a grain of salt. I never claimed that I alone know the truth about the subjects that matter, they do. And they do a lot of work to tell you, the reader, that they are right and veryone else is wrong. Read their articles carefully, and also look at what they actually are saying. I am not out to attack Pitpass, but be wary of the information you get. In most cases, you can get the story somewhere else.

Look at the articles here and decide for yourself. I am not saying I am better than anyone else, far from it, I am saying don´t believe everything you read, just because it has a nice label on it. I respect the work of Joe Saward and James Allen, you should visit them regularly, and there are a few very good technical websites too, such as ScarbsF1.

So in conclusion: Thank you for the support over the years, thank you reading and commenting, and thank you for letting me be one of the places you went to get information about F1. I am truly grateful of everyone´s support, I couldn´t have imagined the blog would take off the way it did. And you made it happen.

Thank you for reading

Jakob Schmidt

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