To Save F1, What Needs To Be Done ?

[radical-one 0]

Yep I agree. They can't even make the single race/weekend exciting enough and Bernie is thinking of making 2 boring races? LOL

Also if a car crashes, then that team/driver will miss a whole succeeding race which means what, a DNF plus a non-participate on the next race? This is screwed plan without giving it enough thought....

[Sakae 0]

55 minutes ago, radical-one said:

Yep I agree. They can't even make the single race/weekend exciting enough and Bernie is thinking of making 2 boring races? LOL

Also if a car crashes, then that team/driver will miss a whole succeeding race which means what, a DNF plus a non-participate on the next race? This is screwed plan without giving it enough thought....

+1 

[radical-one 0]

That's why the F1 future isn't bright.

Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil and others wants to leave as F1 venue.

 

[Sakae 0]

20 minutes ago, radical-one said:

That's why the F1 future isn't bright.

Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil and others wants to leave as F1 venue.

 

Right - Italy, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, and could be also Japan. I seriously doubt that reformatting races into fragments will correct issues those tracks do have with the commercial owner. 

[radical-one 0]

2 hours ago, Sakae said:

Right - Italy, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, and could be also Japan. I seriously doubt that reformatting races into fragments will correct issues those tracks do have with the commercial owner. 

I agree. It' s a little too late in the game for BE to be making these changes specially when F1 fans lost it's interest to the sports from few years back. F1 lost it's crispiness if you may and got boring over the years because of over protectiveness in general. It's like boxing requiring the boxers to use pillows instead of gloves and limiting the punches per round to 20 instead of unlimited 150+ average but at the same time bloating their salaries and raising up the PPV prices and tickets.

F1 should go back to the basics. Cheaper tickets, TV / PPV cost, more extreme risks (refueling, different tire makers,etc) which adds the exciteness and challenges.

Low risk, low returns. I thought that was Business 101...  

[Emmcee 0]

If two races ever did occur then teams would have to run 4 cars or at least 3. I can't believe they can't have a spare car now because of an incident like spa 98 ever happened today, there would only be 3 or 4 cars restarting a race and we all saw what Indy 2005 did to the sport.

[radical-one 0]

3-4 cars a weekend also means more money on the expense of the sponsors. I don't think the non-works team can cope up with the cost. They're about to sell their blood and bladder now just to be able to do the whole season. I can't imagine how they can do half season of this format.

And what about the other side of the coin, the fans. I mean having 2 races would mean 2 days ? That in itself is added cost. A lot of the fans goes there on race day only. 2 race days means overnight in a hotel, plus this and the other. F1 is having a terrible time attracting ticket buyers to the venue as it stands and any other added cost to the fans will drive them away faster than an F1 can drive in wet conditions.

[Insider 0]

This is not about the teams or the cars - it's about bums on seats. The bands I play in started in the early 70s and at their peak were drawing 2-3,000 punters a night. We still sell out but the venues are tiny by comparison - maybe 2-300 capacity at the most. Our punters are dying and so is the core audience of F1. If you can imagine AC/DC as a smelly, oily Ferrari V12 and say, Coldplay as a politically correct Formula E smoothie, a yawning gap in taste and sales appears. The smelly Ferraris sold 26m units of Back in Black to hit No.1 worldwide, yet Coldplay registered the worldwide, best-selling album of the year in 2005 with only 8m units sold. Only Adele has sold more in the last decade and the barely half the number of Back In Black. The real, hardcore fans are either dead or don't like what the see in the shop and the gamers won't leave the bedroom. For me, despite the best efforts of Vettel, Hamilton and Verstappen the ship sailed with Schumacher, never to return. CVC are just praying they can sell it before it sinks completely.

[Sakae 0]

Just the other day we have posted a similar sentiment. Irony of it all is, that FOM in a person of BE is on the record that he is pandering to Rolex generation. Maybe situation outgrew his capacity to handle it.

[Sakae 0]

Quote

KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia will not extend its Formula One Grand Prix contract when it expires in 2018 because of poor financial returns on the 300 million ringgit ($68 million) it costs annually, a minister said on Monday.

Bernama, the state news agency, quoted Nazri Asiz, the minister of tourism and culture, saying that attendance had fallen off in recent years due to declining public interest. Press reports said that only just over half the tickets for F1 races had sold in recent years and TV audiences have slipped considerably.

Nazri also noted Malaysia's failure to produce any "quality F1 drivers" over the past two decades.

A month earlier, Khairy Jamaluddin, the minister of youth and sports, said on Twitter that Malaysia should stop hosting F1 "at least for a while" because of its exorbitant cost and weak revenue.

Malaysia began hosting F1 in 1999 at the Sepang International Circuit, south of Kuala Lumpur.

Petronas, the state oil company, has been a major sponsor of both the event and the U.K.-based Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team. Although it has posted improved profits recently, the general outlook in the energy sector remains grim with Brent crude oil falling below $50 per barrel again in October.

Asian Review

Failing in Asia

Q. Who is actually killing the sport? I am not entirely convinced that answer is as easy as pointing a finger to an individual (Wolff) or a team (Mercedes). There are 18 people voting around the table, and commission has to approve suggested changes, but who will take responsibility for this? I have two names on my tongue, but that might not be enough.

[Emmcee 0]

They resurface the circuit, spent all that money for what? Just MotoGP? Something is up and most likely sepang doesn't want to be part of bernie's stand over regime anymore. When will people realise it's this clown that has single handidly destroyed the sport we so very much love?

[radical-one 0]

Bernie is the culprit

[Emmcee 0]

So will be my back hand when I slap da bitch.

[radical-one 0]

I'll help you

[Emmcee 0]

Should hire Steven Seagal, according to every single movie of his, he is some ex special forces badass that gets the job done.

[radical-one 0]

yep. he learned Aikido in Japan

[Emmcee 0]

Yep and had his own dojo and was highly respected in Japan even though he was a foreigner. Got mad respect for the man as he has kept it real all these years and stayed true to his art form.

[radical-one 0]

Ross Brawn: if we don’t make F1 exciting, we haven’t got much of a sport

 

I hope something gets done next year to save this Sport. If 2017 fails to bring excitement, 2018 will be TOTALLY dead and The End of F1.

[Sakae 0]

2 hours ago, radical-one said:

Ross Brawn: if we don’t make F1 exciting, we haven’t got much of a sport

 

I hope something gets done next year to save this Sport. If 2017 fails to bring excitement, 2018 will be TOTALLY dead and The End of F1.

As long as you have people like Fernley (Force India) having influence upon developments with his cost down agenda, than I would not set my hopes too high. One of his well known drives is to eliminate or highly suppress all testing, which includes wind tunnel, and perform all as theoretical calculations run on computers only. This idea was rejected by his peers couple of times already, yet he is pushing the same again, and again, and the people are surprised there is not much substantive alternatives and progress from that group. If he will get his way, it will not be a driver against driver, but one Ph.D, against another Ph.D. battling a race as CFD computations. Those guys will not work for free, but it would cut cost for him, so I hope that one day will make him happy. Who will want to however watch it, that I am not sure. Count me out.

[radical-one 0]

49 minutes ago, Sakae said:

As long as you have people like Fernley (Force India) having influence upon developments with his cost down agenda, than I would not set my hopes too high. One of his well known drives is to eliminate or highly suppress all testing, which includes wind tunnel, and perform all as theoretical calculations run on computers only. This idea was rejected by his peers couple of times already, yet he is pushing the same again, and again, and the people are surprised there is not much substantive alternatives and progress from that group. If he will get his way, it will not be a driver against driver, but one Ph.D, against another Ph.D. battling a race as CFD computations. Those guys will not work for free, but it would cut cost for him, so I hope that one day will make him happy. Who will want to however watch it, that I am not sure. Count me out.

I'm not gonna be too enthusiastic with that direction either. I"m a purist, a little old school.

[Sakae 0]

1 hour ago, radical-one said:

I'm not gonna be too enthusiastic with that direction either. I"m a purist, a little old school.

Understand and if I may add, with me it's the same. If anyone is doubting me on that point can Google what others have to say about lack of testing, and if my word would not suffice, take McLaren personnel. I've brought up already a few times already quotes by Alonso, Dennis, Boullier - they all denounced lack of testing as one of their burdens and roadblocks to more rapid and robust developments. For those who do not work in engineering, CFD works on theoretical equations, and supplies with limitations basic parameters to product development. Assumptions needs then to be as next step verified in physical world. Wind tunnel for such verification is good, despite being merely another compromised solution, however until a driver can leave pits, and take the vehicle for spin, no one is really sure whether a car is dud or a potential winner. In fact, lack of early testing can destroy whole season for a team, for their fans, for the sport as whole as people leaving stands or tuning to other shows, just as team's bank account suffers, so where are those alleged savings then coming from is not really clear. False economy.

[radical-one 0]

2 hours ago, Sakae said:

Understand and if I may add, with me it's the same. If anyone is doubting me on that point can Google what others have to say about lack of testing, and if my word would not suffice, take McLaren personnel. I've brought up already a few times already quotes by Alonso, Dennis, Boullier - they all denounced lack of testing as one of their burdens and roadblocks to more rapid and robust developments. For those who do not work in engineering, CFD works on theoretical equations, and supplies with limitations basic parameters to product development. Assumptions needs then to be as next step verified in physical world. Wind tunnel for such verification is good, despite being merely another compromised solution, however until a driver can leave pits, and take the vehicle for spin, no one is really sure whether a car is dud or a potential winner. In fact, lack of early testing can destroy whole season for a team, for their fans, for the sport as whole as people leaving stands or tuning to other shows, just as team's bank account suffers, so where are those alleged savings then coming from is not really clear. False economy.

Plus a lot of testing needed for Pirelli wet tires.

[Emmcee 0]

Man they've done more testing and get more testing than I can remember Bridgestone getting  that shoulda say plenty about the  crap tyres.

[radical-one 0]

Japanese tires are generally better

[Emmcee 0]

What you mean generally? They ARE ALWAYS better. The day the announced that Pirelli was taken over a soul tyre supplier, I just cringed as I know first hand just how crap there product is. It's like the foam tyre you get on your first push bike. No grip what so ever, sorry the foam tyre on your first push bike has more durability in scale compared to the plasticine tyres they run now.