Why do people still like and follow F1 so much?

[Northstar]

And where did I say fastest?

When you said...

Auto GP is exactly what F1 should be in my eyes,

People watch F1 because it's the fastest, not because it's just fast.

I think they seriously need to evaluate a spec tub of sorts

Doing that would kill one of the most interesting things F1 has left.

as well as drop all gimmicks,

I do agree with this.

 

[Bo]

People watch F1 because it's the only form of motorsport in the eyes of mainstream media.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

That's not true for the whole world though. V8 Supercars get all the mainstream coverage here, NASCAR for the US. F1 still manages to get a decent following in both Australia and the US despite these series dominating the TV screens. F1 still even manages to get a decent following in Australia even though we often have to stay up until 1-2am (5-6 for Canadian, US and Brazilian GPs) to watch a race, the US still gets a decent following despite the early mornings required to watch the races. If a lot of people are going out of their way to watch F1, I think it must be worth it.

 

[Bo]

That's 2 motorsport series for each country. If things like BTCC, WEC, BES/FIA GT became heavily publicised, I doubt people would feel the need to keep getting up at midnight for a political snoozefest. It makes a mockery of motorsport.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I think you're missing the point. If people are going out of their way to watch F1, then maybe it must be worth watching to them. Just because you can't see anything enjoyable in it, that doesn't mean everyone else has to feel that way. Maybe people would like those categories more than F1 if they got the same coverage, but there's still every chance that they won't. To me it seems like you're just a bit bitter about the fact that they don't.

Do you know why I still like and follow F1 so much? Because I just do (and the media didn't force me to either). I also like and follow sportscar and GT racing but I still like F1 more just because it happens to appeal to me more. Maybe that's the same for many other people.

 

[CarreraGT]

That's 2 motorsport series for each country. If things like BTCC, WEC, BES/FIA GT became heavily publicised, I doubt people would feel the need to keep getting up at midnight for a political snoozefest. It makes a mockery of motorsport.

I don't know about you but I watch what I enjoy. BTCC and WTCC bore me to tears but I will stay up til midnight every Sunday night to watch the F1.

The "mockery" that is formula 1 happens to showcase the best drivers in the fastest cars on the world's greatest circuits. What's not to like?

Admittedly I hate the Pirellis and think they are destroying the sport (that and possibly the new 100kg fuel limit for 2014) but otherwise I enjoy seeing how the engineers interpret and overcome the technical restrictions each year

 

[Bo]

It's the politics and gimmicks that kill the image of motorsport. If people actually watched a good race without any of that crap, then it would boost motorsport's image no end.

 

[Pagey279]

Personally I watch it and follow it pretty closely because I have done since I understood what was going on. My Grandad has watched it since he was young, my Dad has watched it since he was a small boy. So every Sunday the grand prix was on, I started paying attention when I was around 6. Which was when Schumacher was just getting into his stride at Ferrari, and a couple of years before he starting winning everything. It was the highlight of my week watching these insanely fast cars fly around a track on the tele.

I've followed it ever since. I've sat in F1 cars, watched Jenson Button drive through his and my home town in his Mclaren:



It was awesome to be so close to an F1 car, driven by a former world champion, who went to the same schools as you (I've seen his name in a number of textbooks at my old school) going down the very street I drive down every day. Past Costa coffee, past Subway and the post office, with the noise bouncing off the buildings either side. It was incredible, and I felt like I was 6 years old again, giddy with excitement! It's partly because of Button that I'm still so interested.

 

[niky]

Not counting the huge region-specific series like NASCAR, Indycar, V8 Supercars and WTCC (European) and BTCC, there are several big-name high-money events/series in motorsports. There's WRC, LeMans, "Paris-Dakar", MotoGP and SBK. All of them get decent coverage on TV and in print. F1 still gets the lion's share of coverage because of its international scope, big name drivers and teams and specifically because of the politics and intrigue.

There have been issues with the racing in the past few years, but these last four or five seasons, except for the fact that McLaren has kept dropping the ball, letting Red Bull run away with it (and dropped the ball completely last year), have been better than some of the previous seasons.

During Alonso's championship years, most of the races ended up being "chase Alonso's 'slow-on-sunday' Renault for fifty laps hoping for him to make a mistake." In other seasons, it was "queue up behind Trulli for most of the race waiting patiently for him to pit." For several seasons, it was: "watch the McLarens blow up and Schumacher cruise to victory."

DRS may be gimmicky, but it works. Fragile tires may be a pain in the arse, but they give an extra element of strategy to the racing (and they reward teams who understand how to design for tire longevity).

This is not to say the Formula is perfect. I wish they'd stop outlawing everything. Let teams have their extra aero grip... just dial back tire longevity even more and more and allow much, much, MUCH more power from the KERS unit.

Yes... pull back tire longevity. MotoGP is at its most interesting when tires come into play. Good setup and conservation allow for some pretty spectacular late race battles. The same is true of F1, however artificially this is induced.

 

[NixxxoN]

I have to disagree for this year. It will be VERY interesting in this upcoming 2014 season because of the huge regulation changes. There will be lots of surprises, and hopefully one of them is the drivers making more difference than before, and the cars being hard to dominate and drive. We will have Turbo engines with a lot more torque, and the cars will have less downforce and they will be less grippy.

Sure the high pitch sound of the V8 is gone, but F1 hasn't always been about high-pitched sounds.

 

[BlacqueJacques]

F1 was my first exposure to international motorsports. I think it was the most accessible auto racing discipline for me to watch and follow, back in my home country, where they'd air each Grand Prix live. I believe I develop a hardheaded attachment to the series because of that.

I do watch other races from other racing series when I get the chance to do so, or when there's nothing good on TV and I encounter a rerun, but I don't constantly follow what's going on in them. I'd try to find streams for major endurance races like 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours Nürburgring, and watch them for a few hours.

Last year, other than F1 races, one other race aired live that I watched in full length was the Indy 500. It's my first full-length exposure to open-wheel racing on an oval. The high frequency of overtakes was a stunning sight, but after a while, some of them felt just like being passed on the freeway. (just like passing with DRS in F1, after all, but with more effort, without using the incentive of reduced drag with the hit of a button) I haven't fully watched the IndyCar races in road courses, but I've heard they're pretty eventful for the most part. But it still doesn't make me wanna ditch F1, somehow.

I still find F1 somewhat intriguing. I appreciate the high technicality, how each team makes their own cars, and the huge challenge they take when there are so many restrictions. I kinda lament it a bit when I look back into history and see how cars from different teams could have so much difference in terms of looks. But again, I'm only 19, so maybe I don't fully share the same sentiment with the older fans. The first time I watched an F1 race, it was already the V10 era. Even Ayrton Senna was already gone when I was born. To some people, the middle of the V10 era was already getting boring, despite the uniquely high-pitched V10 noise, and aggregate lap times eventually being faster compared to now or other eras. Seeing the name M SCHUMACHER beside the number 1 on TV was such a common thing, and being a very naive Ferrari fan that I was, it wasn't hard for me to relish that. Seeing him at the front of the grid nearly all the time with his red car created the impression that Ferrari and him were the heroic icon of Formula One, or something along the lines of that.

Maybe inherently, I didn't start out as a proper fan of the sport. Maybe I appreciated it more like a spectacle, than a competition of utter fairness. I do always think of motor racing as another full-fledged expression of cars as a form of exhilaration; knowing the attempt to build cars to be as fast as they can under a set of regulations, and seeing them being pushed near or to the limit by those dedicated to follow such lives, simply pleases the partly hedonistic inside of me. But now, as a grown up, do I just enjoy the sights and sounds of such extraordinary, purpose-built machines going at ridiculous speeds around a racetrack, or do I expect to see more to be satisfied, to see greater quantity of on-track battles between drivers, which will actually add to the spectacle as well? I do, and do I still get it in the first racing series that introduced me to the world of motor racing? Well, sort of, it's just not that frequent! The same person winning over and over again? Witnessed that a decade ago already. Some cars managed to be superior? Witnessed that a decade ago already. Strange new rules? Well...they're not very much appreciated. But once in a while there are tight battles on the track that keep me glued to the screen, even though they're not in front. And the idea of the spectacle is still not gone when there are no battles at a point in time. I still really like it. There's the potential of me following it less in the future, gravitating towards another racing series. But again, I'll watch F1 when it comes around and I have the chance, and I won't ditch it.




Are you talking about the first scene in "Rush"? Because I don't think the real Niki Lauda said that for real. You made it sound like he was racing simply because he had a death wish.

If I recall correctly, the sentence before, "And each year, two of us die", was him telling that there were twenty-five drivers in a season, or something along the lines of that.

Lauda mentioned driver deaths in an interview about making the movie Rush

 

[NoobMan DS]

Lauda mentioned driver deaths in an interview about making the movie Rush

...as if other drivers of that era and before never accentuated the fact of frequent deaths. Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss, and many others mentioned it many times in their interviews, as you probably know.

And I did not state that Lauda never mentioned the fact that there were a lot of driver deaths. I implied the fact that he never exactly, specifically said, "Why do we do this? Each year, 2 of us die.", in real life. (which was not even part of your post, and I wasn't even pointing out to any of your posts) If you take only those two sentences together, with the former being followed by the latter, said in a particular point of time, disregarding external conditions, under the notion of "top-down" logic, it sounded like he was racing simply because of the deaths. And that was the first thing that came to my mind after reading the statement, hence my comments. But after thinking longer, in terms of it being a contemplated contradiction, it might also sound as questioning one's own self on doing something that has a negative outcome, which wasn't part of what initially popped up in my brain.


Anyway, so...what are you implying to me?

Did you simply think that I had no idea of Niki Lauda mentioning driver deaths, and you had the kindness to inform me that he actually did, during an interview about making the movie "Rush"?

If yes, then thank you, but actually I already knew that. But it was also strange for you to merely imply that, because I did not state that I had no idea of him mentioning driver deaths in real life. I said that I didn't think that he specifically said the words, "Why do we do this? Each year, 2 of us die.", in real life.

So, are you implying that he exactly said those words in real life, with the latter sentence right after the former one? If yes, then sorry for my ignorance.

 

[perrlu1]

Just want to say as probably one of the biggest F1 fans out there, I'm going to keep watching for the rest of my life. It has gottem me into many other forms of motorsports over the years with Indycar and WEC being my favourites along with F1.

What's kept me interested in the sport for 21 years now is the technical changes and the innovative minds coming up with the solutions to what most would consider an impossible challenge. Many technical aspects of a road car have been derived from F1 too. KERS being an example of the engineering in F1 changing the way cars recycle energy to use as power in road cars.

The sport has had to evolve to keep current with the way the world is going to reduce Co2. Alot of people may moan about the 1.6L V6 turbo engines with ERS not being as fast. But, it won't be long before they're catching up to the out-going 2.4L V8 engines. Also, if it means that in 5 years time you can have a reliable, everyday family car producing a decent abount of power from a small engine that will give 80mpg+ meaning less spent of fuel, are you really going to begrudge these (now fast) engines?

I am in agreement with people who have said about the tracks. I would happily see an F1 car blast through the forest at Hockenheim once again. And bring back Imola! I love that track and i'm sure I'm not the only one.

 

[A2K78]

I have to disagree for this year. It will be VERY interesting in this upcoming 2014 season because of the huge regulation changes. There will be lots of surprises, and hopefully one of them is the drivers making more difference than before, and the cars being hard to dominate and drive. We will have Turbo engines with a lot more torque, and the cars will have less downforce and they will be less grippy.

Sure the high pitch sound of the V8 is gone, but F1 hasn't always been about high-pitched sounds.

The sad thing about these regulation changes they are more about stopping Red Bull/Vettel and putting Ferrari back on the front rather than addressing the fundamental problems of the championship when it come dealing with cost and competitive races.

If anything, the powers that be at the FIA/FOM should take notes from Dorna and actually be serious about making real cost/competitive changes, not artificial ones.

 

[NixxxoN]

The sad thing about these regulation changes they are more about stopping Red Bull/Vettel and putting Ferrari back on the front rather than addressing the fundamental problems of the championship when it come dealing with cost and competitive races.

If anything, the powers that be at the FIA/FOM should take notes from Dorna and actually be serious about making real cost/competitive changes, not artificial ones.

Hmmm not very fair to compare F1 and MotoGP. An F1 car cost much much more than a MotoGP bike to start with.

The regulation changes are not made to stop Red Bull/Vettel - they may help - but its essentially to make F1 evolve into todays necessities for the road cars. Turbo is the way to go for car manufacturers at the moment it seems? N/A engines are becoming a thing of the past...

 

[niky]

The sad thing about these regulation changes they are more about stopping Red Bull/Vettel and putting Ferrari back on the front

Like the mid-season tire spec changes that allowed Red Bull to catch up and beat Ferrari?

As stated, also, MotoGP is a radically different formula. Anything gained from MotoGP can and does get put into road-going superbikes. Formula1 technology simply can't. The envelope and car package are too radically different from road-going cars. A road-going sports bike doesn't need to carry luggage or a second passenger. You don't have to worry about developing left-hand drive or right-hand drive variants, or meeting increasingly stringent crash safety regulations.

 

[Northstar]

The sad thing about these regulation changes they are more about stopping Red Bull/Vettel

Not really, new regulations were proposed back in 2010 for the start of the 2013 season. Granted, Red Bull and Vettel did win the title, but they hardly did it in dominant fashion.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

The sad thing about these regulation changes they are more about stopping Red Bull/Vettel and putting Ferrari back on the front rather than addressing the fundamental problems of the championship when it come dealing with cost and competitive races.

If anything, the powers that be at the FIA/FOM should take notes from Dorna and actually be serious about making real cost/competitive changes, not artificial ones.

No they were made with the idea of promoting a more technological and efficient racing in F1 from engine size, amount used in the year per team being less, fuel usage, tire changes yet again, and aero changes and so forth. These ideas aren't about stopping RBR but trying to bring other teams to join F1 (more manufactures really) and this is apparent when the original engines were going to be 4cyl and Ferrari screamed no. It probably also has to do with trying to compete with WEC and their technology as well as efficient cars, which is nothing like the decadence F1 was known for as far as engines go, now its in other areas.

RBR is like any other dominant team of the time, they're big now, but they wont be for long even if the regs hadn't changed so massively.

 

[joetruckv8]

The cars are no longer interesting. When I started watching in the late 90s there was V10s vs V12s, and they all looked different, not this specish racing you have now.

Interesting courses like Hockenheim have gotten neutered into another generic, soulless track

Vettel is winning everything and no rival has emerged. Jimmie Johnson may have won a lot of recent NASCAR championships but almost every one of them featured a rival that pushed him until the very last race.

So many gimmicks like bad tires and DRS to create artificial passing. Boring racing wasn't that big of a problem when the cars were at least interesting.

As far as Im concerned there's way better racing out there. Indycar had an amazing year, but I'm guessing nobody noticed because...they don't have red cars?

I don't see a reason to watch F1 anymore really. The cars aren't exciting, one team/driver is dominating, the tracks aren't exciting, the racing is contrived, what really is left to make it worth watching? Its past pedigree?

Is it that F1 is the racing league for casuals so it will always have a massive following? Sort of like the McDonalds of racing? With the WEC Audi vs Toyota vs Porsche battle looming, along with the USCC, and another season of Indycar on the horizon, what does F1 have that makes it better then any of these? The cars are faster?

Easy 1, because its the top tier of motorsports, and its the most money you can watch being spent during a race weekend. That and they are the only ones to race these few great tracks Singapore, Monaco, Abu Dhabi, Valencia Street Circuit + more to come like Sochi!. It will be epic!!1

 

[Earth]

I respect the sport for its tremendous history, but what I saw in practice at Australia comes up just short of a debacle. Whisper quiet cars, so quiet at times the wind noise is more audible then the engine? OK, maybe the old engines were obnoxiously loud, and there isnt anything that wrong about having a quieter engine, but the engine sounds had no real character to them. One of the onboards sounded like the child of a weed eater and lawn mower, prompting me to skip forward on the DVR.

Not sure why F1 is chasing some sort of efficiency formula. Are any of the leading makes selling hybrids, or is their bread and butter in the economy car class? Not really. F1 should always be about performance, not small engines and fuel efficiency in a superficial attempt to appear relevant to roadcar tech. At that point you're trying to take on Le Mans and its prototypes and sportscars, and you will always lose.

It is neat they're giving the drivers their own numbers now, but I fear this new engine and chassis formula will turn out to be pretty silly and will hurt F1 over the next few years.

 

[Furinkazen]

Easy 1, because its the top tier of motorsports, and its the most money you can watch being spent during a race weekend. That and they are the only ones to race these few great tracks Singapore, Monaco, Abu Dhabi, Valencia Street Circuit + more to come like Sochi!. It will be epic!!1

Did I really just read Valencia called a great track?

 

[Azure Flare]

Why do I like F1?



That sums it up quite well.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Not sure why F1 is chasing some sort of efficiency formula. Are any of the leading makes selling hybrids, or is their bread and butter in the economy car class? Not really. F1 should always be about performance, not small engines and fuel efficiency in a superficial attempt to appear relevant to roadcar tech.

Energy recovery is not hybrid power.

The entire point of the new engines is to develop cutting-edge technology. Kinetic and waste heat energy recovery systems are more effective and more efficient that hybrid systems. Toto Wolff reckons the cars will be hitting 370km/h at Monza, all while using a third less fuel.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Did I really just read Valencia called a great track?

...Wow and Abu Dahbi as well. I need to be alone right now and contemplate the world.

 

[Azure Flare]

Singapore () was in there as well.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Did I really just read Valencia called a great track?

I'm reminded of the first Harry Potter book, when the guy who makes the wands describes Voldemort as doing "terrible things, but great things all the same".

To me, Valencia is a great example of a circuit design that shot itself in the foot. I am firmly convinced that if you were to remove half a dozen corners, it would actually be a fantastic circuit:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/m/?r=6235645&rf=1

But in the end, it was needlessly complex.

 

[Furinkazen]

I'm reminded of the first Harry Potter book, when the guy who makes the wands describes Voldemort as doing "terrible things, but great things all the same".

To me, Valencia is a great example of a circuit design that shot itself in the foot. I am firmly convinced that if you were to remove half a dozen corners, it would actually be a fantastic circuit. But it was needlessly complex.

Sounds similar to how I actually consider Hungaroring to be a great track layout but it's simply too dusty and narrow for good racing. Give it me on an F1 game I could turn laps around there whole time. F1 seems to go to good tracks for driving on, but not for actual racing.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

The problem is that there is no formula that guarantees good racing every time. That's exactly what Hermann Tilke tries to do.

The answer is to change the cars. It's cheaper and easier to slash downforce than it is to modify circuits.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I respect the sport for its tremendous history, but what I saw in practice at Australia comes up just short of a debacle. Whisper quiet cars, so quiet at times the wind noise is more audible then the engine? OK, maybe the old engines were obnoxiously loud, and there isnt anything that wrong about having a quieter engine, but the engine sounds had no real character to them. One of the onboards sounded like the child of a weed eater and lawn mower, prompting me to skip forward on the DVR.

You're assessment is almost on a trolling level that's how asinine you've come across om the matter. They weren't that quiet and I watched both practices and winter testing footage as well, so I'm well aware of the sound over the video feed. There is more character to the current engines than those before that couldn't be told apart. Even teams with the same engine sound different (e.g Mclaren and Mercedes). The engines sound slightly less noisy than their turbo era predecessors, and if you go and listen to the 1.5t vs 1.6t you'll see the sound isn't any different other than volume of it.

Not sure why F1 is chasing some sort of efficiency formula. Are any of the leading makes selling hybrids, or is their bread and butter in the economy car class? Not really. F1 should always be about performance, not small engines and fuel efficiency in a superficial attempt to appear relevant to roadcar tech. At that point you're trying to take on Le Mans and its prototypes and sportscars, and you will always lose.

Because people don't know or less so forget that F1 actually has an application purpose just like WEC or Moto GP does for bikes, and that is experimentation and R&D for the car manufacturing industry but other industries as well that sponsor these cars. Also as PM said these aren't hybrid cars, do you know what a hybrid is compared to these and WEC? F1 has always been about small engines and has always had innovation that becomes road technology...also how will they lose to WEC? They're different animals that are only compared due to being both highly experimental and top tier.

It is neat they're giving the drivers their own numbers now, but I fear this new engine and chassis formula will turn out to be pretty silly and will hurt F1 over the next few years.

No it wont, it didn't before so why would it now?

 

[Akmuq]

F1 seems to go to good tracks for driving on, but not for actual racing.

Yeah, like Montreal, Shanghai, Kuala Lumper and Spa. They're dreadful for actual racing.