A quick roundup of posts from The Speed Blog twitter feed over the past week.

February 1st

[WRC] Sebastian Loeb (Citroen) wins Rally Ireland 1 min 27.9 secs ahead of team mate Dani Sordo. Mikko Hirvonen (Ford) is third.

February 2nd

[IRL] Haymarket Publishing announces that IndyCar magazine is to cease publication “with immediate effect.”

February 4th

[IRL] Robin Miller is reporting that Robert Doornbos will be joining N/H/L alongside Graham Rahal and other new signing … Milka Duno (!!!)

[NASCAR] Jeremy Mayfield forms Mayfield Motorsports and will run #41 Toyota in Sprint Cup.

[F1] An American team in F1? Looks like plans are underway for that to happen in 2010. Project is called USF1 and will be based in NC.

February 6th

[F1] Scuderia Toro Rosso have confirmed that Sebastien Bourdais will return to the team for a second season in 2009.

February 8th

[NASCAR] Kevin Harvick (#29) last lap dash grabs victory at Bud Shootout.

Teddy Mayer, long time manager of the McLaren F1 tea, and later the Penske CART team, passed away at his home yesterday (January 30) aged 73.

American born Mayer  moved to Europe in 1962 and became part of the team that helped Bruce McLaren form his eponymous Formula One team, taking over as team principal after McLaren’s tragic death in 1970.

My first recollection of Mayer is during mid 1970s as he mentored James Hunt from a mecurical talent into a deserving World Champion.  Mayer also oversaw Emerson Fittipaldi’s chamionship year (1974) at McLaren as well as the company’s victories in CART and Can-Am racing. Mayer stayed with McLaren until 1982, when he moved on to run his own team in CART for four seasons.

James Hunt & Teddy Mayer talk tactics before the USGP West – Long Beach 1977

He returned to F1 in 1986 as part of the promising Haas-Lola team. After sponsor issued forced that team to go out of business, Mayer once more returned  to CART with the Penske organization, with whom he stayed until his retirement in 2007.

Mayer was a highly influential contributor at the highest levels of single seater racing for decades, and from what I’ve read on of the true gentlemen of racing.

One of the first things I did while setting up the Speed Blog Twitter account was to do a serach of Twitter accounts so I could set up feeds from the various sanctioning bodies that control the series we cover.

I searched for F1, FIA, NASCAR, NHRA, IRL, IndyCar, WRC, ALMS, A1GP and GP2.

And only one series had an official Twitter feed.

Congratulations to the World Rally Championship for being up to date with the latest trends in social media and online communications.

So where are the rest of you?

There are literally millions of users on Twitter and the number is growing exponentially every day. It’s also rapidly becoming one of the  most effective marketing, and messaging channels in this digital age.

Shouldn’t a sport that prides itself as being at the forefront of technology be on the leading edge of communications as well as materials development, aerodynamics et al?

Well we’re back after the off-season and gearing up for the start of the 2009 Racing Season.

Here at The Speed Blog we like to try something new each season, and this year will be no exception. The Speed Blog now has a feed on the popular TWITTER micro-bloging service.

 We will be using the Twiiter feed to post short headlines with event results and news items, while continuing to do more in depth articles and driver profiles here on the main site.

The speed and easy update capabilities of Twitter should allow us to cover more series than we have in the past,  plus provide almost daily updates of whats happening around the motor sports world.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, don’t worry, as we will be setting up an automatic feed to repost the Twitter posts (or “tweets” as they are called) here on the main site.

The Speed Blog Twitter feed can be found at http://twitter.com/thespeedblog

During this week’s F1 test in Barcelona we got the first look at how the cars will look with the new 2009 aerodynamic package.

Changes include a low mounted wide front wing (with moveable flaps that the drivers can adjust a maximum of twice per lap), and narrow taller rear wings. All add-on devices such as flick-ups etc are now banned. The cars are also back running  on slick tires. The result….