Gene Has said "whats the point if you can't ever win." during an interview with NBC, I would agree. Not sure how you fix it, I just know its boring, no matter who is winning.
Gene Haas only got into F1 just to market his tools from a global perspective. It was never about actually winning. Sure, he can get points but he knew this going into F1 and what he was up against.
What we are witnessing is the end of the mechanical internal combustion engine, and sooner than later, the race car itself. I think there will continue to be F1 racing...it will change over to all electric engines, and most of the parts will be outsourced. But F1...even as a series of electric cars...is a dinosaur. It will be buried by the future. It will be replaced by the marriage of reality and virtual reality. The traditional audience is dying of old age and the new younger audience is no longer as interested in the automobile in the same way many of us were in our youth. If you haven't watched drone racing, you need to. It puts the race vehicle into the hands of the audience, the video gamer. No more expensive drivers to hire. No more expensive cars to build and service. It is the speed sport of internet streaming. I enjoy the superiority of the PDK transmission in my GTI. However it will never have the sensuality of the gated slots of my 1980 308. The 308 has joined the long list of my past cars...and all of them, and myself are rapidly becoming ancient history.
There has been more boring seasons than this and the cars are faster and look better... but no matter how excitig we think the current championship is, the cold fact is that the viewing figures have been going down the latest seasons, even before the turbo engines were implemented. I suppose that people gets tired of winning streaks: Ferrari, Red Bull, now Mercedes... despite that we had some good fights in some of these years. But they´ve already switched off their TVs..
I am afraid you got that right in a nutshell. F1 doesn't stay still and changes with the time. I hate it, but what can we do?
Gene Hass is an advertiser who owns a team, just like Mateschitz with Red Bull and Toro Rosso. Others are car manufacturers - Renault, Ferrari, McLaren. They get exposure, even if they don't win, and participation in F1 is just a marketing exercise. Those you have to feel sorry for are the last few independent teams like Williams, Sauber or Force India; they have nothing to fall back on if F1 doesn't work for them anymore. .
The short growth spurt was because of Bernie opening new tracks in new markets. China, Russia, Dubai etc. TV cameras also brought the show to the people. Honestly I'd rather watch a race at home than go to the track. The problem is/was is that the show is not entertaining. Its a procession. DRS was supposed to help cure that but it didn't. Sorry to say it but what is needed is a handicap system to slow the winning cars.
Pure crap. Ferrari is on the UP - car is much faster than last year, Vettel signed up 3 more years. Very exciting prospect in LeClerc waiting in the wings once Ferrari wakes up and lets Kimi go. McLaren and Williams...lol get real What do you base that on? Pure crap. Hamilton drives the best car every year and now with no Rosberg to contend with his life is even easier. Bottas is by all accounts a mediocre driver (one of the most overrated on the grid)who had a very hard time with post crash/almost retired Felipe Massa To say Hamilton is any more motivated than Vettel, Ricciardo, Max and you can throw Alonso in there if the car gets better is just silly
I said that all along yet many on here thought he was as good if not faster than Hamilton after Sochi. Bottas is the master of Sochi but that's about it.
Pretty good post, agree with most of it other than reliability...tell that to Ferrari lol I never understood the Bottas hype. Some wanted him in a Ferrari. I think anyone who was saying that is blinded by a dislike of LH. He's clearly on a different level than Bottas. Any wins BOT had this year are due to the superiority of their car. That said he's probably better than Kimi right now, which is sad
At first Bottas looked good at Williams but when he couldn't outdrive a way-over-the-hill Massa it became clear that he is average. And that's what he is showing this year. Not bad, but solid and average. A good #2. I'm not unhappy with him but he won't challenge Hamilton, which is nice for Lewis' fragile psyche. But Valteri will also not steal any points away from a Vettel or get in the way of the Cans. He is simply not that fast, not even in the superior Merc. PS: Bottas also nicely shows what happens if you put an average guy (or worse yet a monkey, as someone here once suggested) into a Merc: It will not win. You still need the talent of a Hamilton (or Vettel or Alonso or Verstappen) to make that happen. q.e.d.
Yep. Merc's version of Kimi. Unlike Kimi, however, when Lewis had an off weekend Bottas was there to win races (Sochi and Austria) and prevent Vettel from capitalizing too much. Kimi will never do that. Granted it's hard when your engine craps out before the start of the race (Malaysia). I think he would have won that. The driver matchup I want to see is Max and Lewis in the Merc. We will see how tough Hamilton really is because I don't think he wants any part of Max. Verstappen has shown he is unquestionably faster than Ricciardo this year (even though Danny R has had a very nice season, dont want to take anything away from him) and Ricciardo took Vettel to the cleaners. Verstappen, provided the right equipment, is going to be very, very hard to beat
Mark those words He is the guy who could break ALL the F1 records. Enough talent and young enough. Just watch.
Will be interesting to see what happens beyond next year. Bottas is the perfect #2 but Toto seems itching to get one of the RB drivers. If Lewis says he's not retiring anytime soon, what will Merc do. LH + Ricciardo might be ok, but LH + Verstappen will be another nuclear lineup. And where will Bottas end up then, maybe Renault when Sainz gets called home.
I come to that conclusion too. If F1 is to stay an entertainment, rather than a sport, it has to be more exiting, or the audience will fade away. It may shock the purists, but some traditions have to go. The present format leads to boring races, with predictable result. Let's introduce random grid, for example, instead of qualifs. Split the race in 2 heats, with reverse grid for the second one. Some of these solutions exist in GT or touring car racing and provide a good show. One of the thing I found most exiting with the grid penalties, was to watch the progression of some fast cars starting at the back of the grid, and scything their way through the field during the race. What's the point of watching the best car taking pole, getting a good start and then leading all the race unchallenged? Wouldn't it be better to see it starting lower down, and make its way to the front during the race? All that may go against the grain and sound unpalatable to the die-hard F1 fans, but to survive F1 has to provide more thrill, IMO.
My idea is similar to the NFL draft where the worst teams get the best draft picks. In F1, give the worst teams the most money. Legacy teams? No such thing. This would allow the little guys to have a better footing against the factory teams. No idea how it could be implemented, or perhaps allow bottom teams more testing...
I don't think it's a question about budgets only. Some team do well with less money than others; Force India comes to mind. But the idea of introducing less predictability at each race would make watching more entertaining, IMO.
Pimping up F1 won't bring back the good old days. And trying to manufacture or legislate competition is just another bad idea to add to the pile of previous ones. If you want to see great racing then you need to go to vintage races. Some of the drivers are just tooling around for the party that evening, but others...and lots of them...are driving the wheels of their cars and taking every risk needed to win. And the best part is that the cars are much more honest...they are actually...cars. Before the cars and the F1 series went politically correct...you won your races on the track and not on the simulator. You had qualifying engines that would last for only a few laps...you had as many tires as you wanted or could afford and nobody told you how many you had to use or when to change them...you could go home and test between the races...and sure it was expensive but it cost a hell of a lot less than it does today. The FIA tried to legislate how to save money instead of letting the free market find its own way. Of course we could always make some new changes with only a few general rules such as...put the engine back in front of the driver...all four wheels have to be the same size but you'd be free to chose whatever type and size you want...the body has to be one continuous set of three pieces; nose, center section, tail; no additional wings, aerodynamics have to be designed into the three body parts...no hybrid engines, no energy recovery systems, no automated transmissions, no limit on engine revs...a limit on engine displacement but not on design configuration...V6 V8 V10 V12, or Boxer or whatever. Etc. Lock it in for 7 years and then let everyone know it will start from scratch again.
If Mercedes hire verstappen, watch elton retire in a panic immediately, citing 'I wanna do my music' or 'the world is against me, the team hates me', or 'I never wanted to win more than three championships anyway, just like ayrton' or 'Justin says I'm the best so I must me'. To e fair, I'd expect him to block ricciardo too, so mark my words, if either can driver, or Seb, or Alonso, were to be signed for Mercedes for 2019, elton will retire (yay, thank god for that, an end to the whining), and either one of those would go on to win for as long as Mercedes have their in built advantage maintained by the rules
I'm sure (if it has not been mentioned) a way to make it better is that the previous race winner starts from the back. Reverse the grid in effect. Does leave a question as to what we would do with Saturday qualifying though!
Qualifs could still exist and points could be attributed to the 5 best time. A random grid, with places decided by a computer like a lottery just before the start would keep the excitement up to the last minute. We have to stop F1 being so predictable.
