Both those opening races we great, I don't understand the lack of popularity tbh
I don't really understand it either, though I suppose no motorsport gets any real traction compared to F1 in the UK, no matter how good the racing is. NASCAR didn't do anything here, Indycar probably gets ~150,000 viewers for the Indy 500 and maybe a tenth of that for other rounds and I bet even the BTCC struggles to get many more.
It's a shame as Indycar is brilliant, as is Formula E for the most part (I still say Fan Boost can do one) and both usually offer better racing that F1, but the casual motorsport fan just isn't interested.
I have to say, he's decent on the radio doing F1 (as was Croft), but Jack Nicholls is brilliant doing Formula E on TV. Even fairly boring races he makes sound exciting like so few can do, and it's genuine excitement too, not forced like Croft or Allen. A bit like a young Ben Edwards was, drawing you in and infecting you with that excitement too (older Edwards is still better than everyone else around, and I hope he's just taking a break).
As a side note, it was interesting seeing just how far off the pace (even in flat out qualifying) Giovinazzi (and Ticktum, oh no) was last weekend. Just goes to show how strong the field is in FE.
I though it didn't really work. 9 events to choose pole just feels like too many. A few of the duels were exciting but most of them felt like a bit of a damp squib, and it was all rather strung out. I would prefer the odd/even sessions followed by a single superpole with the top 8.
I think they're trying to get more people into qualifying, as the previous format wasn't the most exciting. That said it did make for an exciting race as the faster drivers were more likely to be further down the field, though if one did do a great job to get into super pole they had a massive advantage for the race, so I suppose this formats eliminates that.
I still feel when a standard pattern emerges that we'll end up with more boring races, but time will tell.
