Austrian Grand Prix 2015, Spielberg - Race 8/19

JRS said:
But the thing is....

The DRS overtakes are fake, or at the very least assisted by fakery. I'd rather have it than not, though, since the current aero rules simply don't allow for truly close racing.

The penalties are unfair on occasion. They keep punishing simple mistakes rather than bad driving.

The engines are too quiet on TV, and that'll never be fixed because the guy who controls the TV end of things is on record as hating these engines.

But the circus merrily continues on, because people will always still watch it and countries will always still want it to come to them. Right up to the point when they don't any longer. We aren't quite there yet, but we're a damned sight closer than we were ten years ago and in most other sports that would start to worry the people in charge.
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Agreed. My point is that there is no desire to even attempt to write, post or say anything positive about F1, instead everyone immediately defaults to finding something to repeatedly moan about.

I keep referring to WEC as a comparison. It has even more 'hybrid-ey' engines, totally crap noise (theirs a god dam diesel in it for Christs sake!), only 3 real teams, races that only exist because of the money, massive fuel saving, massive tyre saving, and has been utterly dominated by a single team for the last 15 years, yet its hailed as being the saviour of Motorsport.

WEC has all the same so called 'problems' of F1, most far more so, yet none of the image problem. And its because, through and through, the entire sport is behind its direction and everyone goes to great lengths to praise it and support it. The entire Le Mans 24 Hour coverage was one massive love in with everyone constantly going on about how brilliant WEC is. The result is, everyone thinks its brilliant.

I can't even remember the last time I heard someone within F1 say anything positive about F1? The problem with F1 is not the rules, its the people. Having a regulatory body embarrassed by the technical rules its taken, a promoter hell bent on destroying its own series, and teams who spend their entire time ****ging each other and their suppliers off is the issue. And it then filters down into the fans as we all sit under our grey cloud of media negativity, picking up only the negative aspects of a race, to then post only negative things.

There was some pretty good racing going on yesterday, with some great battles and good action. But you will have to try bloody hard to find anywhere or anyone thats written anything about them in the sea of "F1 is dead" and "Its all so boring" :(.
 
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Skeeter said:
How is Honda's situation any different to the others?

Honda have just screwed up, simple as that.
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Yep and Honda know that now, they started developing the engine too late, they didn't throw enough people and money at it. Then they only used the test bench to develop the engine, instead of doing what Ferrari did, allegedly.I guess they thought it would be easy with all the success they've had in other motorsports but now I think they are far greater behind than a year and it will take make a huge effort to catch up. Can they do this, most pundits think they can with their's and maclaren's rescources pooled together. However will the drivers be prepared just to keep chugging along at the back of the pack this season knowing at some point they'll breakdown? That's a huge ask for team loyalty...

As for f1 being boring, well then lets go back to when teams had no spending restrictions, to tyres that didn't wear our after four laps following another car, refueling and see if its less boring because it damm well was. Problem with f1, as bernie has said on occassion, it is geared towards the poorest teams, thus they've artificially slowed down the teams with the bigger budgets..
 
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We all know that the global viewership has slipped steadily from 600 million viewers in 2008 to 425 million in 2014.

I predict F1 we lose more viewers this year. So F1 must have got it right pre and up to 2008.
And the battery tech F1 use is so out of date it's silly. I use better tech in my power chair then F1.
In my opinion it's time for F1 to die a quick death and from the ashes something great will\may come.
 
deuse said:
We all know that the global viewership has slipped steadily from 600 million viewers in 2008 to 425 million in 2014.

I predict F1 we lose more viewers this year. So F1 must have got it right pre and up to 2008.
And the battery tech F1 use is so out of date it's silly. I use better tech in my power chair then F1.
In my opinion it's time for F1 to die a quick death and from the ashes something great will\may come.
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Where did you get those figures from? I am just curious if, in giving those totals, any breakdown was given to how the numbers are made up.

I think the two important questions to ask, firstly is the fall in viewers something to worry about? By that, I mean is only having 425 million viewers that bad? Obviously if the numbers continue the downward trend then it is going to be a problem but I suspect that viewing figures are still high enough.

The second question is why have the numbers have dropped over that period? I suspect 3 (of probably more) reasons are RBR and now Merc dominance, the switch to Sky and the continual move to races people don't care about.
 
Greboth said:
Where did you get those figures from? I am just curious if, in giving those totals, any breakdown was given to how the numbers are made up.

I think the two important questions to ask, firstly is the fall in viewers something to worry about? By that, I mean is only having 425 million viewers that bad? Obviously if the numbers continue the downward trend then it is going to be a problem but I suspect that viewing figures are still high enough.

The second question is why have the numbers have dropped over that period? I suspect 3 (of probably more) reasons are RBR and now Merc dominance, the switch to Sky and the continual move to races people don't care about.
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=f1+lose+viewing+figures

"something to worry about" well if you're a promoter of a race or your advertising at the race then 100% yes.

To your 2nd question. F1 has to look at what they had then and now. What changed and when.
Me being a petrol head F1 is all about the sound\power\speed and danger.
 
deuse said:
We all know that the global viewership has slipped steadily from 600 million viewers in 2008 to 425 million in 2014.

I predict F1 we lose more viewers this year. So F1 must have got it right pre and up to 2008.
And the battery tech F1 use is so out of date it's silly. I use better tech in my power chair then F1.
In my opinion it's time for F1 to die a quick death and from the ashes something great will\may come.
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This is the most boring season since 2009 thats for sure, so far anyway.
 
Those are global figures (I think) so its not just Sky, its all pay TV.

The thing is, the viewers are down, but TV rights money is up. Less people are watching F1, but they are paying more for it. So is it actually bad news? The teams get a share of the TV money so more money is surely a good thing, regardless of if it means less people?

Multiple places have speculated about why the viewer numbers have dropped, and all come to the same primary reason, Pay TV. Its not just the UK/Sky, Bernie has sold F1 to pay TV broadcasters all over the globe, and in turn massively reduced the potential audience on Free to Air TV. This acccounts for most of the drop in figures.

You also need to look at how the figures are made up. The UK accounts for something like 5% of the global F1 audience, so in reality we are insignificant. There was a 'blip' in China's viewing figures a while back, and the number of viewers in that blip was greater than the entire UK audience. You need to consider this when talking about sponsors too. The viewers may be dropping over all, but they could be level, or even growing, in the markets sponsors are interested in.

So your right to ask if its actually something to worry about. The viewer numbers have dropped, but that doesn't mean F1 is dead. And you certainly can't simply pin it on one thing and declare it all that fault. Deuse even tried to pin the decline on the V6 engines, yet failed to explain how that accounted for the drop from 2008 to 2013 :p.
 
I'd like to add that the cost of F1 to a fan is way over the odds.
i.e If I want to sit at becketts corner at Silverstone, I would looking at £250-350.

If I want to watch MotoGp at becketts corner it's only £90. Bernie says he needs the money to pay the teams.
The teams say they need the money to pay for this new\old tech. I believe F1 is at it's tipping point.
 
deuse said:
I'd like to add that the cost of F1 to a fan is way over the odds.
i.e If I want to sit at becketts corner at Silverstone, I would looking at £250-350.

If I want to watch MotoGp at becketts corner it's only £90. Bernie says he needs the money to pay the teams.
The teams say they need the money to pay for this new\old tech. I believe F1 is at it's tipping point.
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The ticket money goes to the race promoter, not Bernie. Silverstones prices are high because they need to cover the cost of the recent overhaul of the track.

And Malaysia tickets start at £7. Its all relative.
 
I paid £387 for Farm Curve this year, 2 adults and 1 child... it's now £613. Good job I booked early! But I agree with deuse, the prices are too high, then again most of the grandstands are now sold out, with limited seats left at Becketts and a couple of other grandstands. In that sense you can't really blame Silverstone, if they're going to sell out then you can't really blame them, people have a choice as to whether they're willing to pay and they obviously choose to.
 
Exactly. The prices are only too high if they don't sell them all. As they are sold out, they are clearly OK.

Same goes for race fees. Why would anyone charge less than people are prepared to pay?
 
Skeeter said:
The ticket money goes to the race promoter, not Bernie. Silverstones prices are high because they need to cover the cost of the recent overhaul of the track.

And Malaysia tickets start at £7. Its all relative.
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Lets look at this.

"15 of the 19 races last season were funded by respective governments of the countries where the race was hosted,"

"around $600.5m was invested by the governments in hosting F1 races in their countries."

"The race fees paid by promoters is single biggest source of revenue for F1’s parent company Delta Topco"

"But Delta Topca (parent F1 company) gets all the tv broadcast, track side advertising and hospitality revenue"

"Circuit promoter fees account for 33.6% of F1′s annual revenue and on average it costs around $40 million a year for a promoter to host a Grand Prix weekend"

"duration of 10 years a promotors has to spend £272 million just on race fess while another £360 million on maintenance and other cost to host F1 race that takes the total of 10 years to £600million."

http://www.totalsportek.com/f1/race-fees-cost-to-host-formula-1-grand-prix/

As I've said. Bernie gets the cash then the tracks have to charge the fans. Unless the government pays for a lot of the cost.

I think I'd rather pay £90 and watch Valentino Rossi go around Silverstone. Then watch a known boring race at £400
 
Race Fees and Ticket Revenue are not the same thing.

They are linked, sure, but saying "Bernie gets the ticket money" and then highlighting a line that says "Delta Topco get the race fees" as your source is only part of the picture.

The issue is Government funding. European races have to charge more to make up for the fact they don't get any, while also covering all the other costs of keeping the venues up to standard. Meanwhile, literally nobody could turn up to watch the Bahrain or China races, and they would still happen, and Bernie would still get paid.
 
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UTmaniac said:
I'm sad to report that so far this season, the only race I watched in its entirety, was Canada. I was bored after Lewis crossed the pit lane exit and then just had the race in the background, was a bit surprised to see Lewis only ~3 secs behind Nico at the end (but no idea if Nico was coasting home).
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Think it was pretty much just a case of what Lewis did to Nico in Canada, upperhand all weekend and had a 3/4 second pace advantage all race.
 
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