Motorsport Off Topic Thread

sunama said:
Didn't you state that you believed Vettel was the best?
A while back, I remember asking you about this and you stated that Vettel was the best, in your opinion.

And with regards to nobody believing Vettel is better than Alonso/Hamilton - some do believe this. And with good reason...

Lets argue Vettel's case:
1. Vettel holds all sorts of records - age related, eg: youngest race winner in F1, youngest WDC in F1, youngest 2-time WDC, youngest 3 time WDC, and some other records.
2. He is ahead of MSc (in terms of age) and is essentially beating MSc's records, in the most competitive era of F1 we have witnessed in a few decades.
3. When the team give him the best car - 90% of the time, he wins. To put this in contrast, last year McLaren had the best car in a few races and their drivers couldn't boast that sort of statistic (for varying reasons).
4. At age 25, he has won 3 WDCs and is already considered a "great", ranked 8 of all time. Should he win a 4th, this year, he will be ranked alongside Prost, with only Fangio and MSc ahead of him, competing in an era where the quality of driver is extremely high.
5. As we saw 2 years ago, he is able to adapt to whatever car he is given. When they brought in off-throttle blowing in 2011, he had to change his driving style...something which Webber (not a bad driver) was unable to do.
6. Assuming that he continues to improve, as one would expect, there is no reason to believe that in 2 years time, he wont be acknowledged as the best driver currently in F1 and possibly of all-time.

IMO, he is a more complete driver than Hamilton.
Vettel knows how to win.
Hamilton knows how to drive fast.

I'll leave someone else to break down my argument. :p
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Damn you had to drop item 7 from your script, fastest on top gear :(
 
tummelv said:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105949

Honda sources confirm that it plans to return as an engine supplier in 2015. Oooh
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As always with F1, rumours come from a seed of truth somewhere.

2015 is far more realistic than the 2014 rumours that originally floated around. There simply isn't the time for Honda to develop an engine for next year.

I do agree with what some people have said on here, they can't sustain F1 involvement with a single customer team. They will need to sign up other customers too.
 
I think its to blinkered (and lazy) to blame this all on TV rights. The trend has more in common with whats happening on the track rather than whos broadcasting it.

Schumacher dominates, viewing figures fall.
Schumacher gets beaten, viewing figures rise.
Hamilton joins F1 in a whirlwing of press and nearly wins the title, figures rise.
Hamilton wins, figures rise.
Button wins, figures rise.
Button and Hamilton are in the same (British) team, figures rise.
Vettel dominates, figures fall.

Obviously the move to Sky has effected the viewers, but to say that is the only, or even the main cause is misguided.
 
The figures show that the viewing figures have dropped, it doesn't explain why, they have just attributed that to it moving to Sky.

The fluctuations in viewer numbers are always caused by the casual viewer who can take it or leave it. Theres a hardcore base who will always watch it that is fairly stable. Moving to Sky will have lost a bunch of these casual viewers, but so will 2011 being a season dominated by Vettel. Considering the casual fan won't be so keen on watching the race live I would imagine someone who has a passing interest in F1 would be less likely to watch if they thought "its boring, Vettel just wins everything" than if they had to watch the race at 6pm in the evening rather than 1pm.

And the change from 2011 to 2012 is tiny compared to the fluctuations across the last decade, when TV coverage was constant. There were similar drops in numbers in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006, and significant drops in the other years in that period. What do they attribute those to? They can't blame TV coverage changes for that. From what I can tell they don't even acknowledge the massive elephant in the room that is their first graph, presumably because it would pull down their "its all Sky's fault" argument.
 
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Skeeter said:
Obviously the move to Sky has effected the viewers, but to say that is the only, or even the main cause is misguided.
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I dont disagree with anything you said regarding the success / failure of those drivers mentioned and the relative interest on tv , but a subscription platform in these tight economic times must have a significant effect too.

There are people in my office who have the PS3 /pc F1 games from the last few years who wont pay sky any more on top of their current package to get live races because of the additional cost involved, let alone all those who dont even have Sky to start with

I cant justify the monthly subscription (let alone the installation charge to be connected to the communal sky system in my block of flats) , and Im positive there are 100's /1000's like me

"Real" fans watch any sport through thick and thin, no matter what happens on court / track. Off court /track changes are much more likely to affect viewer numbers of real fans watching
 
FrankJH said:
I dont disagree with anything you said regarding the success / failure of those drivers mentioned and the relative interest on tv , but a subscription platform in these tight economic times must have a significant effect too.
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Oh of course it has, I agree entirely. Its had a negative effect.

But it seems that everywhere that has done an analysis is sighting this as the only factor affecting it. I'm just saying its not that simple.

Figures dropped in the early 2000's, when 1 driver/team dominated.
Figures rose in the late 2000's when British success increased.
Figures dropped again last year when 1 driver/team started dominating and they moved to a subscription TV services.

I just think its bad analysis to open with a graph that shows massive fluctuation in viewer figures over a period where there was consistent TV coverage, and then focus solely on a small part of it with a relatively small change and blame it entirely on TV coverage. Why put that graph in if your not going to acknowledge the full range of data in it?

I expect that had the BBC kept all races live, there would have still been a drop in viewers, but it would have been less.
 
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Skeeter said:
I expect that had the BBC kept all races live, there would have still been a drop in viewers, but it would have been less.
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That's my feeling as well. I don't like the direction that F1 is persisting in taking, both with the rulebook and where they are holding races. So I choose not to bother watching most of the races live, whether they're on the BBC or not. I don't remember exactly how many I watched live and all the way through last year, but it wasn't any more than five. And this is from someone who doesn't mind when one driver or team dominates particularly, as long as it's on merit (which it pretty much has been).

Do TPTB care about losing one English motorsport fan? I very much doubt it. Would they care about losing a million of them? Probably not any more, not when there's the Asian continent to crack. Eventually the jenga tower will fall down though, and they'll either have to scrap the world championship or run it to a very different formula to the one we have now.
 
Yeah the move to Sky is one of many reasons why less people are watching. Articles that look at the figures and then attribute it solely to the TV coverage change are obvioulsy just out to take a stab at Sky.

Theres a lot more going on, but I don't think F1 needs to worry to much yet. British viewers dropped by over 2m people (almost half) in the early 2000's and nobody seemed to care. This latest surge of interest in viewing figures is just because the TV coverage is a topical thing at the moment. Interest in F1 globally is healthy, although not flourishing. I can't imagine small fluctuations in UK viewing figures features as even a foot note on the agenda of the bigger picture.
 
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