I guess we can go back 35 years before the races were on TV at all. Seems we are heading that way, with so many folks dropping Cable, and they wonder why... Personally, I think F1 today is totally unwatchable - almost as bad as indycar. At least with nascar different guys actually PASS people more than thrice a race.
You know what they say ... "Don't throw away the baby with the bath water". Well, the BBC has managed to do that! They badly shot themselves in the foot by "terminating" Clarkson, and Amazon just picked him up like a ripe fruit. Also, like one of my old friend in the legal profession used to say "Don't confuse the law with justice; they are 2 different things".
+1 bbc accountants determined it all. They compared the two, clarkson and evans, and came to the conclusion: Both are male Both talk about cars Both are opinionated Came to the conclusion that no one would notice. Reason Top Gear is hugely succesful is that people enjoy watching the 3 together, the cars where not really important to the whole thing. This is also why Top Gear USA and others are ****, because there is little chemistry and everything feels forced.
The whole problem with the BBC is the egos of those at the top. The Beeb has long been run by the top brass as their own fiefdom, and clarkson represented someone who wasn't prepared to cow tow to their line. As was expected, rather than have a common sense approach to the problem, paying off Osin and having a public censure of jezza, the Beeb completely overreacted. They didnt spot the link between top gear and its money, and their ability to supplement the licence revenue which is a pretty massive hole to fill. Panicking, they decided to try to hire another 'shock' celeb in Evans and think we would all love him cos he owns a few Ferraris. What they have done is to destroy what top gear was about - it was about three average joes having a non-pc party with cars involved. Evans will make it another TFI Friday or Big Breakfast type programme with childish mayhem which will offend the top gear viewer of old, rather than convert and retain them. The Beeb has one way forward, and their refusing to do it is limiting their ability to carry out their brief of quality programming people want - take on advertising to supplement or even replace the licence fee. None of us like adverts during shows, but they are a necessary evil in order to buy in or produce quality programmes to attract viewers.
"Childish mayhem" was pretty much what Top Gear was all about, so if Evans goes down that route it should suit the programme's previous viewers to a T.
And NASCAR.... [makes more sense if you also see the previous post..... ] Image Unavailable, Please Login
Not Evans brand of humour, it really is childish and stupid. Clarkson and co were into having a laugh, Evans is about 'keystone cops' humour and dumb stunts, not the same thing. Come back to me when you've seen the muppet in action
+1 Clarkson uses clever (and often controversial) humour to make his point and entertain the audience. He has a very clever way of using humour to help you understand exactly what he means - You can see that there is a high level of intellect in operation! Chris Evans relies on being "wacky" and "off the wall" for his humour - It's all about noticing him rather than helping the viewer grasp a point that he's making, and there's not much intellect involved at all!
I've only seen a couple of short clips of Evans. He is totally unknown in the US. I predict he is a huge failure with the US market. As others have said, the chemistry between the previous trio was sensational. Not easily replicated.
Brundle and Coulthard were superb together on the BBC (and made far fewer mistakes than Murray used too! - Funny as they were!) - I guess you must have missed their time together. I'm not a big fan of Ben Edwards but Coulthard still did a good job, and frankly I'd rather watch Suzi Perry than Simon Lazenby any day of the week! I do miss Brundle's commentary, but having seen some of the SKY F1 coverage I can happily live without the rest of the SKY team! (The only other decent presenter they have as far as I'm concerned is Ted Kravitz, and you can watch his "Notebook" on the SKY F1 website so he's not really missed). TBH, in reality it boils down to a personal choice - There's not that much difference between the coverage on SKY and on the BBC (Although pre and post race, the number of ad breaks on SKY F1 verges on being ridiculous! At least with the BBC there were no advert breaks! -Ever!). Trying to make out that the BBC F1 coverage has been no good since the days of Murray Walker is grossly unfair and inaccurate IMHO! (BTW, the last F1 race I saw on SKY TV, they were talking about some action on track and got the one driver involved completely wrong! It was @ 15 laps before they realised [or more likely were told by the producers] that they accusing the wrong driver for being involved! [I was going mental at the TV shouting out the name of the correct driver for all of those laps!]. When I checked the BBC's recording of their live coverage on the BBC i-player later on, Ben Edwards and David Coulthard got the right drivers from the start!)
Only crossing the finish line is relevant in every form of motor racing, not sure how F1 is different from NASCAR in that respect?
Technically you're right - All motor racing is about who crosses the finish line first. The thing is, everyone mentions NASCAR because of all of the overtaking that goes on in that series, as you see drivers getting overtaken and then two laps later the overtaken driver re-overtakes the guy who passes him and so on, and so on, and so on! The fact of the matter is though, it's all a lot of fannying around by the drivers, jockeying for position to be in the best place to race on the very last lap of the race! - An awful lot of the overtaking in NASCAR is pretty much pointless! The other thing to remember about NASCAR is that there is so much overtaking because the series is so heavily regulated to make the cars as close to identical as possible! And what's the one thing most F1 fans moan about modern day F1? - Too many regulations!
NASCAR is probably the most boring fake racing there is. Drafting each other for laps is not real passing. If you removed the yellow flags that bunch the field up, everyone would just fall asleep from boredom. Show me these amazing NASCAR races? where you are on the edge of your seat seeing 2 drivers battle it out? It's just a long boring race where you wait for an accident to happen. Nascar works because it's spectator friendly.
You can spectate, but you don't need to watch the race. It's a long procession, until 5 laps from the end where it suddenly goes all frantic. Why they need 500 miles races when only the last 20 miles are interesting, I don't know.
