I'm not surprised. The amount of money is costs is astounding. Beyond the core of rabid fans... who's left. Even as one of those fans... I'm not really all that thrilled anymore. I still miss the sound and chance for an unexpected outcome. I don't want a change in the podium decided either by wreck or mechanical failure. I'd like racing to be decided by racing. My friend was at COTA the first year and he went last year (dismal) and this year... the first year people were glued to the track... mesmerized by the cars and the spectacle. He said this year... people are just standing around talking as the cars wiz by. Not even the same feeling he said. I'm sure it's like that at a lot of tracks now.
I think they are right, F1 is no longer the spectacle that it once was, and a fair argument can be made that MotoGP has over taken it as the pinnacle of international motor sports. I was in Austin this past weekend for the grand prix, and I hate to say it but I was bored.
exactly...I no longer have a problem turning the race broadcast off before it even ends. Watching paint dry is more exciting. I get my race fix from MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3. Too bad it has to be two wheels.
Good idea. More tracks should tell FIA and CVC to go jump in a lake. I wonder what the viewership numbers overall are for the year. They must be quite ghastly.
it could be that F1 has jumped the shark and i'm a long-time F1 fan - pre-schumi and remember the ayrton/prost days, mansell, alesi, berger... everyone misses NA engines, especially the V12s and V10s. that 'shriek' was F1. i miss fuel strategies and pit stops that weren't basically the same as a drive through penalty. amazing work by the pit crews, but 2 second pit stops?? what's there to make up? nothing but simple tire strategies. the more changes that are made, the more it becomes a procession. all the electronics, the hybrid systems, the ecus - they all lead to electrical failures, not mechanical failures. remember when an engine would grenade during the race because they were built within an inch of their lives? remember hydraulic failures and hydraulic reservoirs?? these cars are practically video game modules now - i would love to see the sport head back to more mechanical cars, but the auto industry doesn't benefit from that, so we're left with practically electric race cars. soon Formula E and F1 will be one series. maybe next year's rule changes will shake things up. things change, things move forward, but the past is always more romantic!!
roughly 260,000 for the 3-day weekend in Austin. not bad really, but many races have much poorer turnouts.
Considering the cost for hosting, declining figures, and now back to back races with Singapore (a few hours drive or short flight)...I'm not surprised.
Remove Taylor Swift out of the mix and let's see the numbers. Taking his daughter there to see Taylor was the only reason he went for the weekend. In the USA, people love NASCAR because they understand it and they have drivers who are 100% integrated with their fanbase. Nico may win the WDC this year, but he could walk down pretty much any major street and no one would know who he is, nor care once they found out. That's the one thing Lewis is great at. Say what you want but he's one of the few connectors to the sport. I care about all the minute details of technology but I don't think even the average race fan really has any in-depth desire to know why things are run the way they are. "Oh these engines are so incredibly fuel efficient... WHY? They're race cars! They still use 100 times the fuel of a normal car! Who cares? Bottom line is.. if someone goes to a race... they want to see a race... not a procession of cars with the outcome pretty much set in stone. Bragging about efficiency and technology means nothing if the cars look, sound, and race like crap.
Will the new owners of F1 be the last? There are European races with very tenuous existence as well. This might not be the first or last to end the association
Providing close racing that the viewer does not know what team will win weeks before the race. It is more about the racing and the talent of the rider versus F1 which is now about saving fuel and tires and less about actually racing. F1 does have some great and likable drivers like Riccardo, Verstappen and Vettel, but the cars and predictablilty really have let it down over the past several years. Alonso's comments today regarding if the cars do not get to be more fun to drive next year he is quitting even if he were to get an offer from Mercedes are pretty telling, the emporer does not have any clothes and Malaysia is not the only venue to realize this.
Maybe the MotoGP Series holder (Dorna?) is asking the track owners less money than Ecclestone/FOM to host a GP? I don't know if MotoGP is working on the same model as F1, where some of the TV rights are redistributed to the teams. Also, it's probably cheaper to run a MotoGP team than an F1 team; hence less demands from the teams. Only Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and now Suzuki are manufacturers teams; the rest of the field are private teams leasing customers bikes from the manufacturers. Something F1 has constantly resisted. There is a more level playing field in MotoGP than in F1. This year alone, private riders have won 3 GPs; it's unlikely to see one of the minnows in F1 do that!! Also, MotoGP carries with it MotoGP2 and MotoGP3; that means a full day of practice and qualifs for 3 categories on Saturday, + 3 races with plenty of actions on the Sunday. That attracts spectators. Spain had 3 MotoGPs at different locations during the same year; proof that there is public support and tracks interested in holding races. MotoGP goes where there is a public, and not in places where there is no interest (Korea anyone?)
i'm standing and cheering until the end of a motogp. can't recall last time i did that in F1. therein lies the problem with F1.....
As William has noted in the post above yours, in MotoGP you've basically got 4 manufacturer teams running 2 bikes each, and then you have additional customer teams who are pretty much running the exact same bikes as the manufacturer's run. In F1 terms, that would be like having Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren all running two cars and then every other team having to run two Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull or McLaren customer cars, rather than making their own cars. It's not what F1 is really about, but it would lead to closer, better races. The other thing to remember about MotoGP is that their bikes are a damn site narrower than an F1 car but they run on circuits designed for cars. That means that they can run different lines through the corners, and have more room to dive up the inside of a rival for an overtake, whereas for an F1 car, there is usually only one line available. Run a MotoGP race on a track that is barely two bikes wide and tell us how exciting the racing is! (Especially when Rossi has his leg stuck out covering half the track, or Marquez has his bike completely sideways going into all of the turns, blocking the road off!). Or how about running F1 cars on tracks that are a minimum of 5 cars wide all the way around, then you'd have a lot more overtaking and excitement in F1! If you want MotoGP style exciting racing in F1, then you need the cars to be a lot closer to being identical to each other by relying on 3~4 manufacturers to make all of the cars, and you need tracks that are much, much wider than they are today!
this is the hypocrisy of F1 - we want to be the greatest stage on earth for racing, but we also have to tell the drivers to back off and conserve fuel due to fuel strategies. i want to see an F1 car race as fast and as hard as it can - not slow down and 'conserve fuel'.
I agree. I watched the Monza race from 2000 last week and their were few similarities to what I saw Sunday. IMHO
Agree with everything said previously. Maybe its the curse of Tilke circuits? I don't recall anyone saying the Belgian GP was boring. The contrived nature of F1 today is what is strangling it. Forced pit stops, tires that are designed to fail, fuel limits, development tokens, DRS. It just goes on and on. Hell if someone wants to carry another 50lbs of fuel, its their problem so let them do it. This whole idea of serving the auto industry through F1 is crap. We will have internal combustion engines for the remainder of our lives so why does F1 have to be the world stage for eco-efficiency? Anyone know who was on the podium at the last Formula E race (without Googling it)?
looking at the regulations, MotoGP has its own problems with the rules certain teams have to run by different rules.... and the series is still dominated by two teams (factory Honda, and factory Yamaha), Ducati has improved but is hardly a podium contender (when all the aliens are healthy), and the other factory teams (Aprilia and Suzuki) have concessions. The satellite teams do not get the support that it looks like they are suppose to get... and in the end you are still looking at a series dominated by 1 or 2 riders, not unlike F1.
I agree. There is a divorce between what the public and the drivers like, and what the constructors and the organisers want. But the car makers have the power to influence the rule makers, and it's only if the public deserts F1 that things may change. We could perfectly have F1 without any interference of the auto industry, but at the moment their pour money in it. It's no more oil companies or tobacco companies that finance F1, but car companies. Sponsors invariably influence the sport: Mercedes, Renault, Honda do. We may have to wait for their departure to get back to some sanity. In between, we have to suffer silly regulations and a poor show.
I've attended COTA every single year. I've sat on the start finish line. I've sat GA in many areas. I was there for the first race and last years miserable race and all in between. This years race had more people than I can remember seeing before, rivaling or beating the first year attendance. No they were not all there for TS concert. There was a little overlap but not that much. MANY people left after the racing because they did NOT care about TS and also MANY people arrived specifically for the TS concert and did not attend the race. This year was a solid turn out. The Austin race was a healthy event.
How are the events downtown? I remember the first year the city fully embraced F1 with a great street party. Still the case? In Indy it was less and less each year
