Formula 1

KungPao · 13-04-2021 01:06PM

meeeeh wrote: »

I think it's more laziness. Drivers whose surnames are easier to type or say addressed by their name and those whose names are easier are addressed by their name...

I blame Martin (Martin Brundle). I seem to remember him calling Schumacher “Michael” and Button “Jenson” when he started commentating.
Before that, I never heard of simply Jos, Mika, Olivier, Jacques, Juan Pablo. They had their surnames mentioned.

El_Duderino 09 · 13-04-2021 01:09PM

KungPao wrote: »

I blame Martin (Martin Brundle). I seem to remember him calling Schumacher “Michael” and Button “Jenson” when he started commentating.
Before that, I never heard of simply Jos, Mika, Olivier, Jacques, Juan Pablo. They had their surnames mentioned.

What’s the issue with this? I don’t get why someone would get cross about them using first or second names.

KungPao · 13-04-2021 01:14PM

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

What’s the issue with this? I don’t get why someone would get cross about them using first or second names.

It’s a huge issue for me, El. You wouldn’t believe the anguish it has caused me.

Just a minor F1 annoyance for me, no big deal. Like when each driver says “for sure” in every sentence. Stop!

i57dwun4yb1pt8 · 13-04-2021 01:16PM

it went to sh1te after schumacher / hill / villeneuve era.

i still watch Bormula 1 , its looking better this year , but the satellite monoply hasnt done it any favours

indycar is far more exciting , but hard to get to see.

still- i will plow on ...f*ck all else to watch .

THE NETFLIX series on the inside is very good though .

mikhail · 13-04-2021 01:25PM

I can't understand how they build all these new tracks and they're perfectly homogenous. Make the damned things different enough that no one car is best across the whole season. They used to talk about tracks where power or aero were more important for performance, but now Hamilton wins anyway. Even in the rain, they all seem to perform exactly the same. Maybe the standard of driver has just saturated with them training from younger and younger.

For me, the loss of free to air coverage snipped most of my remaining attachment to the sport.

I used to have a sense of the personalities; less so with the younger drivers. Someone mentioned the Netflix show; that'd be interesting if I could see the races. The only one I enjoyed watching in recent years was Alonso dragging that dog of a Ferrari within a ass's roar of winning anything.

Hamilton's dominance started off the back of Maclaren's dominance, which seemed to begin with them stealing a load of IP from Ferrari at the cost of a small fine. That stuck in my craw. I've never warmed to him.

KungPao · 13-04-2021 01:42PM

I do think the Jordan and Minardi types leaving harmed it. There was something magical almost seeing a Jordan winning a race here and there. I believe it was shoestring stuff compared to the big boys then. Jordan were a bit rock and roll, anything can happen. Now it’s all so corporate.

I wonder if the tobacco companies leaving is what finished off Jordan? They needed that big investment of questionable money to compete. Little stickers for Bridgestone or some tech company no one ever heard of won’t pay the big bills.

The One Doctor · 13-04-2021 01:52PM

The Golden Miller wrote: »

I'd be interested to hear a few general opinions on this, which is why I'm posting here, because I was just pondering it earlier. Is F1 really the global juggernaut we're led to believe it is? I used to follow it in passing until Jordan sold, and after that up until about 09 when Alonso started getting the better of Schumacher. Some great races, as there was with Schumacher and Hakkinen and many before that. But it's a bore since.

I genuinely don't know one other person who follows it, not anymore anyway, despite the fact it gets moderate media attention, even here. I've heard experts say it used to be about 60% car/40% driver and then in the 90's/00's maybe 80% car/20% driver skill. I'd reckon now it's 97% car/3 % driver now. What really is the point of the sport anymore when the driver has so little influence? Maybe I'm just ignorant on the nuances, but the whole f1 season seem's rubbish now.

From what I'm led to believe, the Williams Senna put on poll in the 94 San Marino grand prix that he died in, was quite poor, but it was driver skill that got him that top spot. You just wouldn't see that now. So I don't know about anyone else, but I think the sport has become a bore and an absolute waste of time. It wasn't always been but has become so over time. No driver skill being the difference anymore. I'd be interested to hear how others view the sport?

It's like all other elite sports, the best people are picked and they are psychologically and physically prepared very, very carefully. Nothing is left to chance and all their equipment is perfect.

Personality doesn't come into it, the competitors are essentially biological robots picked for one purpose. That's why it's bland, boring and uninspiring on TV.

If you've ever raced on a gokart track, you'll know how fun (and hard) it is to actually do.

Wanderer78 · 13-04-2021 01:56PM

Khari Rancid Syntax wrote:

indycar is far more exciting , but hard to get to see.

Surely there's plenty of American broadcasters showing it?

dmakc · 13-04-2021 02:02PM

Passive interest these days. Used to be into it more late 90's / early 00's.

Main gripes are the Hamilton dominance these years (I get it happens in many eras but I also don't like him as a person), Tilke designed tracks and farcical double points for Abu Dhabi.

There's no way one track should ever be worth double of another. I get money talks, and it's purpose to prolong the chance of the final race being important, but I'm not having it in Abu Dhabi where it doesn't even rain.

blue note · 13-04-2021 02:04PM

Drive to survive is great and as a result I'll be watching my first race in years next weekend.

I used to watch the odd race when it was free to air. More so when I was in secondary school which would have been Schumachers heyday.

The op has a point though that the driver is only really so relevant. There are 20 drivers, but it's not the case that 20 guys can win the championship. At the moment, Hamilton is only competing with his teammate on an equal footing and the red bull lads who are probably at a disadvantage. But that said, there are 20 teams in the Premier league and they're not all on an equal footing. You can rule out 15 with absolute confidence before a ball is kicked. And realistically this year, there were only two champions who were at all likely.

dmakc · 13-04-2021 02:05PM

The improved reliability of the cars (in a selfish way) also detracts from it for me

ELM327 · 13-04-2021 02:25PM

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Surely there's plenty of American broadcasters showing it?

Not easy to get those channels here legit though.
Had the same battle myself when Fox News got pulled from the sky epg

Zaph · 13-04-2021 02:31PM

mikhail wrote: »

I can't understand how they build all these new tracks and they're perfectly homogenous. Make the damned things different enough that no one car is best across the whole season. They used to talk about tracks where power or aero were more important for performance, but now Hamilton wins anyway. Even in the rain, they all seem to perform exactly the same. Maybe the standard of driver has just saturated with them training from younger and younger.

That's easily explained, all the newer tracks are designed by the same guy, Hermann Tilke. He's responsible for Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Austin, Sochi and more. He even designed the street circuits in Baku, Hanoi and Jeddah. The latter two have yet to be used, but from what I've seen of them they're completely uninspiring. They really need to get rid of him and get a new track designer, or better still, a group of different designers who would all have their own ideas.

KungPao wrote: »

I do think the Jordan and Minardi types leaving harmed it. There was something magical almost seeing a Jordan winning a race here and there. I believe it was shoestring stuff compared to the big boys then. Jordan were a bit rock and roll, anything can happen. Now it’s all so corporate.

Technically both are still there, Jordan is now Aston Martin and Minardi is Alpha Tauri. But I get your point, they're both much better financed and slicker operations than Jordan or Minardi could ever have dreamed to be, and the sport has lost a bit of the romance and fun from not having privateers like them any more. There was a time in the 80s and 90s when you had a load of teams appearing for a season or two and failing, spectacularly so in some cases. There were so many cars entered some seasons that there was pre-qualifying just to see who could make it into the qualifying session proper, and even then they weren't guaranteed a place on the grid. That's never going to happen again, the powers that be have raised the bar for entry so high that pretty much only a works team could ever hope to join the circus. It's a shame really, if nothing else it gave a lot more drivers a chance to experience motor sport at the highest level and possibly get a drive at a bigger team. Now they're all being groomed through academies from their early teens, and very often being discarded almost as quickly as they arrive if they don't perform.

KungPao · 13-04-2021 02:37PM

dmakc wrote: »

Passive interest these days. Used to be into it more late 90's / early 00's.

Main gripes are the Hamilton dominance these years (I get it happens in many eras but I also don't like him as a person), Tilke designed tracks and farcical double points for Abu Dhabi.

There's no way one track should ever be worth double of another. I get money talks, and it's purpose to prolong the chance of the final race being important, but I'm not having it in Abu Dhabi where it doesn't even rain.

The day they bin Interlagos and Spa for some more Tilke bores in some more oil-rich **** holes, will be the end of F1.

I don’t how close it really was, but they could have binned the GB GP imagine that, like signing your own death warrant.
Also, bring back Hockenheim (the real one).

Tilke out.

Zaph · 13-04-2021 02:39PM

KungPao wrote: »

The day they bin Interlagos and Spa for some more Tilke bores in some more oil-rich **** holes, will be the end of F1.

I don’t how close it really was, but they could have binned the GB GP imagine that, like signing your own death warrant.
Also, bring back Hockenheim (the real one).

Tilke out.

If Interlagos, and particularly Spa went, I think that would be it for me, and I've been watching continuously for 40 years. And I agree, the old Hockenheim was a thing of beauty as the cars went out into the forest. Never been the same since they sanitised it.

KungPao · 13-04-2021 02:51PM

Zaph wrote: »

If Interlagos, and particularly Spa went, I think that would be it for me, and I've been watching continuously for 40 years. And I agree, the old Hockenheim was a thing of beauty as the cars went out into the forest. Never been the same since they sanitised it.

I remember driving around the old Hockenheim (on the PlayStation 1!), some track. So unique. Car ripping through the forest, lowest wings possible, then tip toeing around the stadium section because so little down force, then blast out into the the forest again.
Great to watch in a real GP, and a great test for the engine’s reliability!
Really miss that track. I’d even have Indianapolis back just for the novelty factor...something different.

ErnestBorgnine · 13-04-2021 02:56PM

Like many i used to be a big fan but gradually lost interest as it became a bore.

MotoGP leaves it i the ha'penny place over the last 20 years in terms of drama, characters & racing.

meeeeh · 13-04-2021 03:03PM

Irc Tilke was quite the success when he designed Malaysia which tended to be great race. I'm all for the traditional tracks but some of them don't allow for much overtaking at all. The problem with Tilke tracks is that there are too many of them and they are all on fairly flat areas.

Hamsterchops · 13-04-2021 03:17PM

Last time I really followed F1 was when the JPS sponsored Lotus team ruled F1 (just a few years ago), I the think they were the 1st manufacturer to introduce the skirt beneath the car body, which helped to suck the car closer to the track as it beat all opposition for a year or two?

Very cool, sexy black colour scheme.

quokula · 13-04-2021 03:21PM

I don't think the criticism of Tilke is necessarily fair, he's tied by the topography of a given venue and the safety standards modern tracks have to adhere to which can create samey looking tracks. But most non-Tilke tracks still on the calendar are just as boring if not worse - for example the likes of Silverstone, Barcelona or Melbourne rarely produce food races these days. Even Spa rarely produces a good race in the current era without rain being involved.

The main issue is the completely unprecedented dominance of Mercedes for the entirety of the hybrid era, who are a massive corporation who did what massive corporations do and got to the top by outspending the competition and lobbying rule makers to tip the balance their way. F1 has always been an engineering competition, but there is no Mercedes equivalent of the great engineers of old like Chapman, Murray, Byrne or Newey. There is no great Mercedes innovation that can be seen on the car, like great cars of the past. They just spent years perfecting a hybrid engine outside of the sport and lobbied the FIA hard to bring in rules that forced all manufacturers to produce engines matching that spec. This led to heavier, slower, quieter, less exciting cars, and the shell of a sport we've had for a number of years.

There is potential for improvement with new rules and more interesting cars coming in next year (they should have been here already but got delayed), but Mercedes have been ever present lobbying behind the scenes, getting every proposed rule change of the last few years watered down to ensure their dominance isn't broken so time will tell.

What we do appear to have, in Max Verstappen, is one of those once in a generation talents who's been working miracles in the Red Bull and who has begun taking the fight to the Mercedes, and many other exciting new drivers coming up. Netflix' series has shown there are so many great personalities up and down the grid, who Sky tend to completely ignore in their coverage while they deify the personality vacuum driving the Mercedes, so if that stranglehold ever does get broken the sport could have a bright future.

Zaph · 13-04-2021 03:24PM

meeeeh wrote: »

Irc Tilke was quite the success when he designed Malaysia which tended to be great race. I'm all for the traditional tracks but some of them don't allow for much overtaking at all. The problem with Tilke tracks is that there are too many of them and they are all on fairly flat areas.

Yeah, to be fair, he got it right with Sepang. Not sure why everything else has been so poor in comparison. They're not even nice to look at in many cases, Austin, for example, has enough spare tarmac off the track to land a 747.

meeeeh · 13-04-2021 03:28PM

Zaph wrote: »

Yeah, to be fair, he got it right with Sepang. Not sure why everything else has been so poor in comparison. They're not even nice to look at in many cases, Austin, for example, has enough spare tarmac off the track to land a 747.

Safety after one of the accidents. I think it was when Schumacher broke his legs. They realised tarmac is way safer than sand at high speed braking so all newer tracks have tarmac run off areas.

Real Life · 13-04-2021 03:31PM

I grew up in a motorsport mad house. F1, Rally, Bikes etc. I still love motorsports but more than ever now its really become a very rich persons sport.

Its all about who can bring in the most money and sponsorships into the teams now.

A lot of people seem to not like Lewis Hamilton but he's probably one of the only drivers on the grid that got there on pure talent and not the money his father could bring to the team.

mikhail · 13-04-2021 03:31PM

Zaph wrote: »

That's easily explained, all the newer tracks are designed by the same guy, Hermann Tilke. He's responsible for Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Austin, Sochi and more. He even designed the street circuits in Baku, Hanoi and Jeddah. The latter two have yet to be used, but from what I've seen of them they're completely uninspiring. They really need to get rid of him and get a new track designer, or better still, a group of different designers who would all have their own ideas.

A single designer isn't the problem. The philosophy behind track design has to be that a car that's optimised to win one will be noticeably less competitive in another. He's clearly not thinking like that, and he's reporting to people who don't care.

quokula wrote: »

The main issue is the completely unprecedented dominance of Mercedes for the entirety of the hybrid era, who are a massive corporation who did what massive corporations do and got to the top by outspending the competition and lobbying rule makers to tip the balance their way. F1 has always been an engineering competition, but there is no Mercedes equivalent of the great engineers of old like Chapman, Murray, Byrne or Newey. There is no great Mercedes innovation that can be seen on the car, like great cars of the past. They just spent years perfecting a hybrid engine outside of the sport and lobbied the FIA hard to bring in rules that forced all manufacturers to produce engines matching that spec. This led to heavier, slower, quieter, less exciting cars, and the shell of a sport we've had for a number of years.

Speaking of which, Newey's autobiography is worth a read. He admits towards the end of it that he finds the modern design challenges in F1 boring. There's too little scope for creativity.

Zaph · 13-04-2021 03:35PM

meeeeh wrote: »

Safety after one of the accidents. I think it was when Schumacher broke his legs. They realised tarmac is way safer than sand at high speed braking so all newer tracks have tarmac run off areas.

Yeah, the cars can be controlled if a driver runs wide on tarmac, whereas they're just a passenger on gravel. But even accepting that the extra tarmac is necessary, it still doesn't explain why Tilke designs such boring bloody tracks. He's a blight on the sport but unfortunately the nature of racing circuits is that they're around for a very long time, so we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future.

KungPao · 13-04-2021 09:00PM

I'd say when local tarmac and asphalt companies hear Hermann Tilke is coming to town, they get giddy. They could retire if they get the contract for his next track.

To be more positive, no one can stay at the top forever, some signs that Red Bull could actually challenge this year, with a driver who has something about him. When HAM retires to follow his true passions of **** music and even worse clothing lines, things should open up. Especially if that Wolff dude also heads for pastures new. Would love if Mercedes pulled out, sick of them!

Fr Tod Umptious · 14-04-2021 01:19AM

Like many here I started watching F1 when the Jordan cars arrived.

I watched it for a few years but then got bored.
I have gone to a few GP and really enjoyed them though, the sound and the speed are just breathtaking.

But what I'm reading here is exactly what I heard back in the days when Williams and Mansell were dominating.
"It's not what it used to be"
"The cars are too good"
"It's a procession"

One thing I don't get is people supporting certain F1 teams, and people do.
How can people get passionate about an engineering company ?

greenspurs · 14-04-2021 10:29AM

Real Life wrote: »

Its all about who can bring in the most money and sponsorships into the teams now.

A lot of people seem to not like Lewis Hamilton but he's probably one of the only drivers on the grid that got there on pure talent and not the money his father could bring to the team.

I dont really like him at all , but he is a racer!.
As you say the like of Mazepin and Stroll only there due to daddys money, and have probably the least skill on the grid.

#ABM Anyone But Mercedes .

comedown · 14-04-2021 12:14PM

The Golden Miller wrote: »

I'd be interested to hear a few general opinions on this, which is why I'm posting here, because I was just pondering it earlier. Is F1 really the global juggernaut we're led to believe it is? I used to follow it in passing until Jordan sold, and after that up until about 09 when Alonso started getting the better of Schumacher. Some great races, as there was with Schumacher and Hakkinen and many before that. But it's a bore since.

I genuinely don't know one other person who follows it, not anymore anyway, despite the fact it gets moderate media attention, even here. I've heard experts say it used to be about 60% car/40% driver and then in the 90's/00's maybe 80% car/20% driver skill. I'd reckon now it's 97% car/3 % driver now. What really is the point of the sport anymore when the driver has so little influence? Maybe I'm just ignorant on the nuances, but the whole f1 season seem's rubbish now.

From what I'm led to believe, the Williams Senna put on poll in the 94 San Marino grand prix that he died in, was quite poor, but it was driver skill that got him that top spot. You just wouldn't see that now. So I don't know about anyone else, but I think the sport has become a bore and an absolute waste of time. It wasn't always been but has become so over time. No driver skill being the difference anymore. I'd be interested to hear how others view the sport?

It's bigger than ever these days, though its popularity in ireland doesn't seem to have recovered. Liberty Media's takeover a few years ago has seen a massive push towards social media content/fan interaction etc. The Netflix series has drawn massive numbers of new American fans.
If you're looking to get back into it, you couldn't do better than the season that's just started. Verstappen actually has a car worthy of challenging for the title. First time in years Hamilton will be racing someone other than his (average) teammate.

Montage of Feck · 14-04-2021 01:04PM

Sadly real Motorsport is dead, well on four wheels anyway.

Formula 1

Comments