have more coverage of its feeder series so we get better knowledge of up and coming drivers/teams.

I definitely agree with that but I still think the F1 calendar should be bigger.

I am not a football fan. You can only compare the television coverage of football to F1 if you look at the whole situation.Most of the football coverage is not of the World Cup or other International events, it is coverage of, in effect, the “feeder series” to those events.

So, leave F1 alone and have more coverage of its feeder series so we get better knowledge of up and coming drivers/teams. The idea of promoting the winners of the feeder series and dropping the loseing team in Fi back to the feeder series sounds like fun.

The off-season has its upside too, as it builds up the anticipation for F1 fans

The off-season is a wasteland of inactivity. Best part of five months with basically nothing happening apart from car launches and fruitless attempts to guess who’s doing well. I say cut it back to three months maximum, instead of five.

notice that most F1 websites have their highest traffic just before the start of a season

Yes, but that comes after four months with traffic in the toilet because nothing’s happening!

I say this as someone who’ll watch the World Cup but not the Premier League.

although you admitted only a couple of days ago that you’re not into football at all

True, but I follow some of it because it’s often relevant to what’s going on in F1.

Its easy for fans who maybe go to 3 races a season to say they want more and more but those who fly to every race would find 30 races unacceptable. this isn’t like football where you turn up for a couple of hours then go home. This is 4 days away from home and families.

That’s a fair point. But there’s no reason (apart from cost) why the teams couldn’t rotate many of the staff members they send out to races – apart from people like the drivers, of course.

One could argue that as long as the calendar size keeps creeping up slowly, teams will continue to keep covering it with the same number of staff. But if Ecclestone announced today, “OK, in 2011 we’ll have 30 races”, teams would have time to take the decision to hire extra staff.

But I think this is a symptom of what is happening in journalism. It is hard for these journalists to make money when we fans get our news from free websites and refuse to pay subscriptions to racing publications.

I agree totally – but it’s not a good reason to keep the calendar small.

with the permission of Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

One of the more high-brow references we’ve had on F1 Fanatic for a while! Am off to read about modernist architecture now…