‘No consensus’ to stop teams collapsing – Kaltenborn

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn says there is no agreement over what should be done to prevent F1’s vulnerable teams from collapsing.

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Monisha Kaltenborn Q&A (Crash)

“We have been before our BMW time in the middle, when we were still a private team but in the middle, so we’ve seen all those sides. If you compare all that, today there is not even that basic, minimum consensus there to do things together.”

Race edits – Russia 2014 (F1)

Some new radio messages (details here) in the official video highlights of the Russian Grand Prix.

F1 in Las Vegas: Flash and showy, it’s a shotgun marriage made in heaven (The Independent)

“Forget the dreadful, intestinal car-park circuit deployed for the 1981 and ’82 World Championship races in the Caesars Palace Grand Prix. The next Formula One race in Las Vegas will be on a thrilling street circuit.”

Jacques Villeneuve: Dealing with the shadow of Gilles (Autosport, subscription required)

“I got [to Sauber] and was told: “Shut up and drive; we know what’s best for the car. We don’t want your input on the setup.” That was due to Willy Rampf. The rest of the engineers were great and I always got on with Monisha Kaltenborn.”

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Comment of the day

Has coverage of Jules Bianchi’s crash focussed too much on drivers’ emotional reactions?

I’ve become heartily sick of the F1 media pack constantly calling on drivers to emote for the cameras about Jules.

To put things in perspective, three young riders have died in the past three days in horse racing events. Two were teenagers, and two were young women. Thankfully, that sport doesn’t need pit lane dolly birds with microphones asking other riders how they feel about it all.
Dan

The winner of the latest Caption Competition will be chosen for tomorrow’s round-up.

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On this day in F1

Simtek tested Taki Inoue and Vincenzo Sospiri 20 years ago today, but although Inoue was the slower of the two it was he who got the nod to make his race debut for the team in his home grand prix at Suzuka.

Sauber also announced that Karl Wendlinger would make his comeback from injury in the next round at Suzuka. However Wendlinger, who had suffered severe injuries in a crash at Monaco earlier that year, eventually postponed his return and JJ Lehto took his place instead.

Image © Sauber

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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67 comments on “‘No consensus’ to stop teams collapsing – Kaltenborn”

  1. The Russian GP was the most boring F1 race to watch on TV this year, except for Rosberg’s race from the back!
    The race looked like it was staged in Disneyland!
    As an avid F1 fan, I couldn’t help but compare it with the Bathurst 1000 which was on the same day, a fabulous circuit, incredible wheel to wheel racing and drama, magnificent sound, a truly spectacular event for the fans – why can’t we get back to these elements for F1?

    1. even rosberg’s race was boring as it was so predicatable with the advantage Mercedes have. the actuall track looked fairly nice for a new f1 track, nice colours and some scenery.
      F1 could race at Bathurst, but it has no balls to do so, they could spend one hundred thousand dollars and make it F1-spec ready, but they would rather pay millions of dollars to one person for an endless period of time (its over 15 years now isn’t it with the same boring designer?) to design very bland tracks at barren wastelands, where every tree was cleared to make may for Mr. Tilke to make his trademark boring stamp on the motorsport world. modern F1 is truly pathetic, if it wasn’t the fact that it still has the highest invested racing cars with highest hp/weight, with mostly best drivers, so many other things like this Tilke monopoly of track design bring it far below other racing series in the world.

      1. And if you build it they will come, I believe 195,000 people attended the race at Bathurst.

      2. I’m really glad F1 will never go to Bathurst. Making it F1-ready would destroy it, and I’m sure most aussie fans wouldn’t be too happy about it.

        1. @casjo, I know what is said about track standards but I fail to see the difference in hitting a tyre wall at Bathurst or hitting a wall on any other street circuit.

          1. @hohum Maybe I’m confusing it with another circuit, but doesn’t Bathurst have some significant drops either side of the track? I think the problem is more when something goes OVER the tyre walls.

      3. It didn;t even have anything to do with the advantage Mercedes have, but that he didn’t have to make an extra pitstop. Once everyone made their stop Rosberg was back in front anyway. He only had to overtake some backmarkers.

    2. The new,modern type tracks do NOT really help with great,close races. The best races come from “older” tracks like Spa,Monza ect Why not bring back the wider tyres & simple front wings…

      1. the sooner the better

        1. here,here or the newer, this.

    3. Rosberg pitted first, therefore everyone had to pit after him. He does deserve some credit for passing the back markers early and a lot of credit to him and the car for running all but one lap on one set of tires.

      1. I’d give credit to the car. When it has an issue (Canada), needs to make an early pit stop (Sochi, Spa), or starts lower on the grid (Germany, Austria) it can still finish second.

        1. There is a huge difference between starting at the back of the field and making an early pit stop. Although both result in the same track position initially.

  2. COTD is spot on.

    1. Well on the one hand I agree, if it was me I wouldn’t want to be talking about it all the time. On the other hand in a lot of cases the drivers bring it up themselves in interviews, make public shows of support like photos, dedicate wins, that thing they did on the grid in Russia, etc.

      It does get to a point at which it begins to seem insincere, whether it is or not.

  3. “Forget the dreadful, intestinal car-park circuit deployed for the 1981 and ’82 World Championship races in the Caesars Palace Grand Prix. The next Formula One race in Las Vegas will be on a thrilling street circuit.”

    A street circuit? Well, that got me excited.

    1. Linda_Williams
      19th October 2014, 1:48

      I’m excited, Love street circuits :)

      A proper test of driver skill as they thread there way between walls, Inches away from those barriers & where a small error could end your race with car damage.
      There always so spectacular to watch & thats a big part of why I adore Monaco & why i’ve been to that particular race 3 times over the past 30 years.

      The road circuits like Spa, Silerstone, COTA, Monza & the like may have more opportunities to overtake, They may be wider with run-off to give room for errors, but none of them are anywhere near as been as challenging or as spectacular as any street race!

      CART/Champcar/Indycar realized this over 20 years ago & those series always had a lot of street circuits, Now it looks like F1 is finally realizing the same & introducing more of them as well, Can’t wait :)

    2. Yeah… A street circuit done right (Adelaide, Gold Coast) certainly can be thrilling, but unfortunately F1 doesn’t have a very good recent record…

      1. Valencia… Singapore… they are just boring Tilke tracks that are not real street circuits. even Canada puts those to shame, that is more of a street circuit. Melbourne too. Monaco is a terrible street circuit,

    3. Good thing its highly unlikely to happen @kingshark. First of all, why would Vegas rob itself of business for a couple of weeks at the most profitable place it has?

      Sure enough the casino’s generate enough business (I heard its over 80% full in the best parts of town already, and only a bit lower in the slightly less glitchy parts) to not need F1 and all the disruption and loss of business from that. And on top they would pay Bernie for the luxuy?

      1. maarten.f1 (@)
        19th October 2014, 15:21

        @bascb Been reading Saward’s blog too huh? :) I’m surprised Keith hasn’t linked it in any of the roundups yet.

        1. That too, yes, it confirmed my own thoughts on Vegas and F1 formed after reading some other sources, as well as thinking a bit myself.

      2. @BasCB Just seen your comment “why would Vegas rob itself of business for a couple of weeks at the most profitable place it has? Sure enough the casino’s generate enough business (I heard its over 80% full in the best parts of town already, and only a bit lower in the slightly less glitchy parts)”

        This is not accurate and, as in our previous correspondence, I am happy to provide the proof. It is contained in my latest news story on the Vegas Grand Prix which is in Autoweek and reveals that the city has asked Ecclestone to visit them before the US Grand Prix:
        http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/las-vegas-asks-f1-boss-bernie-ecclestone-visit-grand-prix-discussion

        As you will see, the piece states that “Hosting a Grand Prix in Vegas fits into the city’s strategy of diversifying from a tourist industry that depends on declining gambling revenue. In 2013, gambling revenue on The Strip came to $6.5 billion, which was short of its $6.8 billion peak in 2007. In the first quarter of this year, casino sales in Vegas were down 12 percent, according to Bloomberg” It adds that one of the latest resorts to open “only anticipates to get 30 percent of its revenue from gambling. That compares with an average of 45 percent across Nevada casinos today and 62 percent in 1984.”

        For the record, here is the link to the Bloomberg piece containing the data mentioned above:
        http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-03/casinos-close-as-revenue-falls-in-gambling-saturated-u-dot-s

        I thought you might also be interested to read the following pieces below which give more details about the Vegas race. The top one was written by me and the one below it was written by a journalist in the US who is in contact with the organisers:

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/10/18/ecclestone-unveils-las-vegas-grand-prix-and-cirque-du-soleil-may-hold-the-keys/
        http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/formula-one-close-to-a-deal-for-a-race-in-las-vegas

    4. Of course, they could always add to the excitement and make it a double points round.

      1. Or, to fit the theme, a bit of a gamble who gets double, who gets half points @mattb :-o

  4. If a team wants to spend hundreds of millions to build a competitive car, it doesn’t bother me. But at the same time, I do not want to lose any teams. I personally just want heart pounding, yellow at your tv, kind of racing. To me, it is a lot more fun to watch races when you know that any driver can win on any given Sunday. To me, I want to see at least five or six drivers going into the final race with a chance to win the Driver’s title.
    Of course, I expect a bunch of you to tell me to keep dreaming…

    1. You’ve just described IndyCar, you should watch if it’s available where you are

      1. I do watch it once in a while, but I am not a fan of the oval tracks. But I have seen some pretty exciting Indy Races. It just seems to be missing something, I guess.

        1. I think Indycar is fantastic. Have you tried watching the short track ovals? Milwaukee, Iowa and the like. I still find the superspeedways tough to watch but this year I discovered short track ovals are actually a lot more exciting.

          V8 Supercars also frequently produces close, exiting races, so you should try and watch that if you can.

    2. You are describing IndyCar my friend, highly recommended! And it’s getting better each year, I give it no more than 5 years for the series to recover its past glory (before splitting)…I personally, as a racing enthusiast, totally love it!!

  5. I could not disagree more with that journalist’s view of Las Vegas and F1 being made for each other. A night race would be spectacular, but that won’t happen because Vegas is 8 hours behind the UK and 9 hours behind most of Western and Central Europe, and if a race were to happen at 8:00 p.m., well, that just wouldn’t work for F1’s majority audience- of people who live in Europe.

    So the only other alternative to hold a round of a European motor racing series in a city that looks like at night a computer circuit board from far away is during the day. I’ve been to Vegas several times- and believe me, the city during the daytime is lifeless, ugly, seedy, beige and utterly devoid of any color that the nightlife there has to offer- and even that begins to wear thin once one has made a number of trips through nicotine-smelling hotel lobbies. Vegas was very unpopular among teams in 1981 and 1982 (Gordon Murray once said he locked himself in his hotel room for the entire weekend except when he had to be at the track, which was held on a track formed in a now-non existent parking lot just outside of Caesar’s Palace, which has lots and lots of nicotine scent in its main hotel lobby, I can assure you of that). For the love of God, I really hope F1 does not go to Las Vegas again. They should go and race somewhere in Los Angeles, San Francisco or maybe even Portland or Seattle.

    1. A night race would be spectacular, but that won’t happen because Vegas is 8 hours behind the UK and 9 hours behind most of Western and Central Europe, and if a race were to happen at 8:00 p.m., well, that just wouldn’t work for F1’s majority audience- of people who live in Europe.

      Unless the race is held Saturday nigth/early Sunday morning, which would be perfect for the majority of the European audience, but I can’t see that happening though.

      1. Me neither. I just hope it doesn’t happen- and this comes from an American who would like to see 3 American F1 races- just not one in Vegas.

        1. I don’t think any country should be allowed to host more than one race in a single season. I like how Germany rotates each year. So if ze americanz vant to do that then it’s fine.

          1. With so many countries wanting into F1, it’s almost outrageous that one would get more than on grand prix.

          2. On the other hand Europe gets 9 races this year while the entire North America get only 2. And i’m speaking this from Poland.

          3. I agree, except in the United States’s case. The USA is a big country that is way more culturally expansive than any other in the world. This is a country with 312 million people, a country with radically different areas on both sides. The economy here is the biggest in the world and nearly twice as big as the next biggest national economy- China’s. The United States’s economy is about the size, if not slightly smaller than that of the entire European Union.

            Personally, I would like to see 2, at the very most 3 GP’s in the United States. First the GP in Texas early in the year, then one in New York City, then maybe another in the Los Angeles area (my hometown and a very car-culture heavy place) in either Long Beach or on the redesigned Fontana Speedway Roval (Oval and road circuit combined, ex. Daytona 24H) circuit.

          4. Also, there should be between 4 and 6 races in North America (2-3 in the USA, 1 in Mexico and 1 in Canada), 2 in South America (Brazil and Argentina) and 2 in Africa (Morocco and South Africa). Having any more than 9 GP’s in Europe is too many races- the more races there are in Europe or in any other continent that makes the ratio less and less even, the less of a world championship it becomes. Sure, Europe as a continent should have the most amount of GP’s compared to all the others- it’s the sport’s homeland- but any more than 9 makes it harder to call F1 a World Championship. Europe is not THE world, you know.

          5. @mfreire, “Europe is not THE world, you know”

            wow. this coming from an american. what about the “World Series”. Just one of many examples where America thinks it is the center of the world.

            And regarding the economy, i think you will find that China just overtook the US as the number one economy if yo adjust for prices (IMF). GDP is not a good measure of an economy because it doesn’t tell you anything about how well off an average citizen is. The data is skewed by multinational corporations (many of them based in the US) who have most of their operations abroad and the profits go to 20-30 individuals on the board.

            Using your logic then, China should also have at least 3 Grand Prix since they are a bigger economy and has 4 times as many people as the US. But even the one single GP they have is not attended well because the fanbase is not there – even after a decade of racing.

            I think after the US fans hear the new engines they will start whining and complaining and even Austin might end in a few years. Reading the commentary on US websites after the new engines were introduced i cant say they are as sophisticated as this website when it comes to appreciating F1. I can already hear the comments in two weeks time from American audiences. I think NASCAR is better suited for that region.

          6. @vjanik, OK- excuse my ignorance based on China’s economy only overtaking the US’s only less than 2 weeks ago based on what the IMF says -and I forgot to include that China shouldn’t have any Grand Prixs, because of what you already stated about it not being popular there.

            And speaking of ignorance (and I’m only responding to you because the bulk of what you wrote has a lot of legitimacy- except for what I am about to write here)- NASCAR is popular in specific parts of the US (mostly non-liberal parts) but it is also a form of entertainment that is often derided by mainstream American culture because of it’s visually non-athletic face value and the fact that most people watch it because they like to see the drivers have a fistfight after an apparent on-track disagreement.

            The sound of F1 doesn’t have much to do as to why F1 appeals to specific parts of the United States. It’s really the exotic, ultra-high technology and the European-ness of F1 that appeals it to liberal Americans. The fact that it is different from anything else here is what makes it so interesting. Americans are hardly interested in the world outside of this country- and any international news reported here is almost always portrays other countries in a bad light. So in a way, it’s refreshing for Americans to see something new- if the opportunity presents itself locally, that is. That’s something almost everyone who lives outside of the US will never understand- it’s a country that is not in the cultural sense a part of the rest of the world.

      2. have anyone thought about how many people watch F1 in whole europe and how many people watch it on latin america, or japan, china or india? what’s the matter with that? i guess a chinese will be mor than happy to see F1 in some other time..

  6. Maurice Hamilton’s JV interview on Autosport is brilliant! Maurice is such a good interviewer, he always gets good answers.

    We need more straight shooters like JV around, he doesnt mince his words. Haters will hate.

  7. I don’t see what’s wrong with the microphones constantly following the drivers to hear their reactions if the drivers themselves showed a lot of support for Jules, and thought about him a lot, writing tweets all week.

    Tweets is a lame way to show your emotions, but they were giving their views about it, and trying to share their support for Jules, so actually seeing them talking about it cannot be anything other than good.

    And on that topic, we complain about lack of personalities and emotions… but then we get annoyed by it?

    1. This @fer-no65.
      Also, I would take a sport where a serious casualty is rare enough for everyone to talk about for a month over a sport where you have people getting killed or end up seriously injured almost casually any time of the week/day/year

      1. However, when teams and drivers seem to be competing to see who/which can be seen to be most affected and sympathetic it all starts to look a little P.C. and possibly insincere (even though I’m sure it is not).

        1. Yes, that is true @hohum.

  8. The Maurice Hamilton interview with Jaques Villeneuve was most illuminating. It has made me re-evaluate (somewhat) my judgements of his character and behaviours. That is a mark of great journalism in my opinion.

    Regarding the COTD; i thought the support and care shown by the F1 community was very touching. I also valued greatly reading the opinions of the average F1 fan in the comments section of this site. Sharing feelings and reactions is important at such times: Yes I know none of us even remotely know Jules but it was still very traumatic and hard to know how to deal with.

  9. It’s like Bernie knows how to rile up F1 fans, hence publicity and interest (and money for him I suppose) and keep us talking about the sport. Here we are, in a bit of a late season lull due to a three week gap between Sochi and Austin, still talking about F1 when a few years ago Jenson was already world champ by now.

    1. That’s not due to anything Bernie has done (unless he sabotaged Hams car), it is down to the battle between Ros and Ham being so close due to the faster driver suffering more mechanical/electrical failures. Even without Abu Double the WDC is unlikely to be decided before the penultimate race, and taking MotoGP as an example having the championship decided does not stop people watching so long as the racing is good, which it was at the MotoAustralianGP yesterday, congrats to Valentino, the old man still has it.

  10. Steph (@stephanief1990)
    19th October 2014, 12:39

    I understand the COTD and from an emotional side I can’t disagree but from a practical point of view I cannot help but disagree. The drivers opinions on the accident are vital to know because what happened wasn’t a freak accident – it could have happened to any one of them. In the immediate aftermath PR fell away and the drivers had a forum to voice their concerns. Sutil expressed anger that the drivers weren’t even consulted about the race start times, Perez a few days later came out and said what happened was “unacceptable” and Massa has been critical of quite a few things since it happened. This is vital to know because drivers have very few rights. They’re rarely consulted, have little support or rights on their side, the GPDA lacks any real and meaningful authority or protection and so drivers are just expected to go out and race no matter what or they are fired. Quite a few wanted drivers not to compete in Bahrain for instance but that was never going to happen – their careers would have been finished. Take Singapore 2008- we’ll never know the ins and outs but it is plausible that Nelson was exploited because he had very few rights and felt he had to crash deliberately to keep his seat. The aftermath of what happened was one of the very few times drivers were allowed to say what they felt, I just wish they had more opportunities to do so. I didn’t want to see their grief and concern played out on TV but I wanted to hear their perspectives and what they felt about safety.

    1. some very good points there @stephanief1990

      1. I agree, we want the drivers real thoughts but not the PR depts. approved response.

  11. I’ve been thinking a lot about Kaltenborns comments and I disagree with just about everything she says in regards to the headline. If F1’s smaller teams are really in such dire straights as they have been claiming for years, over a decade now, then maybe they should put their money where their mouth is?

    If all the smaller teams just up and left and the investors behind them put their money elsewhere, it would be interesting to see what happens. I would expect a closer competition to be honest, with more cars per team, and I don’t see that being a bad thing at all. It would be easier to judge new talent as the chances of them being in poor machinery would be lower and there would be much fewer pay-drivers who don’t have the talent to be competitive in the first place.

    She also sounds utterly confused with comments like “We shouldn’t make the mistake of going in directions even where people are in other sports or motorsports where they’re not happy with it because they know they have to do it but ideally they wouldn’t do it.” What does that even mean?

    She also says “At that time it was really more about the private teams, private people coming in and wanting to race, so you can’t bring those comparisons now.” but then goes on to directly contradict herself with “we need to maintain the teams, we need to have this diversity, because that makes Formula One.”

    Cost-cutting seems like the ultimate go-to cop-out for under-performing teams. Honestly quite frankly sick of it.

    1. @skipgamer Let me put it this way – even using a Premier League prize money distribution (i.e. more equal), the field would get more even, and small teams could hire more staff – their only objective is break even. Manufacturers can still spend to win, as they get positive PR for doing so.

      Or as you describe – three teams fold, 1,000 staff redundant, less for Bernie to pay out, hence he gets a bit richer. No wonder we are stuck in stagflation! We could have 1,000+ more staff easily in F1, if not 2 or more.

      1. Also, that weds you to the manufacturers – who historically quit within a decade of constant losing (e.g. Toyota) – so what happens then? Seek out others to replace them? Renault I can’t see coming back any time soon, or Honda… it makes more sense for them to just be engine manufacturers.

      2. In a number of ways, having a much more restricted technical talent pool by reducing the number of teams would be detrimental to the long term health of the sport – designers like Newey or Byrne do not magically appear at a leading team, but worked their way through the ranks of smaller teams by demonstrating their technical ability at smaller outfits.

        Furthermore, would we necessarily have a more competitive field? If you look at the past few years, it is debatable whether it really would have been that much more competitive if a leading team had three cars instead of two.
        After all, you will only get more competition if each driver within the team is able to compete on a level playing field – given that several teams tend to impose strict driver hierarchies, you are not going to have increased competition if you simply pack the field with more subordinate and subservient drivers.

    2. It’s a pretty big ask for a load of teams, whose sole or at least main business is being in F1, to up and leave. What then? The companies fail to adapt to something totally different and so collapse, losing investors’ money and creating a lot of joblessness?

  12. “Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn says there is no agreement over what should be done to prevent F1’s vulnerable teams from collapsing.”
    I don’t think you will ever get a complete agreement as to how to fix the lack of finance, because those who get the most money will be reluctant to part with what they get claiming they need every cent they can get.
    Since every car is there to attract an audience, why not pay each team equally for each car that starts the race. Cars that aren’t up to race standard just don’t get to the start line. You can’t make a “dog car” and get to the start line because such a car wouldn’t qualify for the race. In fact, why not make it so that the more teams signed up the more each team gets, so if there are 22 teams at the start of the year then each team gets more than if there were 20 teams. The reason being is there is an optimum number of teams, and you want all the teams to be united in maintaining that number, you don’t want them quietly working away to get teams kicked out of the series so they can grab more money.
    Cars by winning teams attract extra revenue from higher priced advertising, provided, of course, they don’t exceed the spending cap. Mind you, I don’t think the shareholders would mind a bit extra cash.
    Oh, and also get rid of that stupid idea of selling exclusive TV rights to Pay TV channels, all that does is say “We don’t want you to watch our sport unless you are rich”. Why does it surprise anyone that there are less people going to the races now than when the races were broadcast on Free to Air TV? I just bought a new cell phone and as far as I know it was not one of the brands advertised on F1, and one reason is because most people can’t watch F1 races in New Zealand, and I’m one of them, so advertising on F1 cars had no influence over my decision. As far as I can tell advertising on F1 has almost no influence on which products are bought here.
    Recently there was the Super V8 car race at Bathurst, and it seemed to me the amount of cars on the road was less than normal for that day, meaning a lot of people were watching it. That race was broadcast on Free to Air TV.

  13. @drycrust, Interesting observation, would you hazard a guess at which event was more likely to have attracted new fans, the Bathurst 1000 or the RussianGP ?

    1. @HoHum … In the course of looking for information I found I had made a mistake regarding the Bathurst 1000 race being broadcast in New Zealand on Free to Air TV, it was broadcast on Sky Sport, which is one of the premier pay TV channels. I was sure I had seen adverts on TV for it being broadcast on Prime TV, which is one of the Free to Air TV channels. My apologies for being wrong on this matter.
      According to Throng, who estimate the viewing audience for the TV channels here, the Super V8 cars race was the most viewed item on Sky Sport 3 with an estimated audience of 126,210. Some of the equivalent programs with a similar viewing audience are Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D on TV2 with 127220 and Doctor Who on Prime TV with 117,660.
      I couldn’t find any mention of the Russian GP. Looking at that estimate of 126,210 I just think it is really sad that so few people actually watched it.
      So, to answer your question, for New Zealand I’d have to pick the Bathurst 1000 as having attracted more new fans than F1 simply because F1 rated in the “insignificant” region.
      p.s. I just found this report (http://www.throng.co.nz/2013/10/sky-successfully-kills-bathurst-ratings/ )
      which, although a year old, says exactly what I think, in that Pay TV channels don’t encourage a large viewing audience. According to that report, the peak audience for the Bathust 1000 was 446,000 in 2012 … and now it is 126,000. Please remind me never to grumble about advertising on Free to Air TV car races.

      1. If only they would delay the race transmission during the commercials we could see the whole race, but 2/3ds of a race is better than no race @drycrust.

        1. I agree, they could easily do that. There are a whole lot of different strategies they could employ, but it seems like the one they chose is the one that doesn’t suit anyone. Yes, they get more up front money, but that isn’t fairly distributed and it discourages people from watching the races, and the knock on effect is people don’t want to go to the races and they don’t support teams by buying gear. That in turn discourages corporates from wanting to sponsor cars. This in turn places more demand for a bigger slice in TV rights, which inevitably means more countries go the Pay TV way, which further discourages corporations with large advertising budgets from spending their money on F1.
          I think it was the Brawn racing team, they didn’t get a cent from F1 even though they won the championship in the first year of their existence. How stupid is that?
          As I said, I think every team should get paid the same amount every time they have a car get to the start grid of the race because every car on the track contributes to the spectator event.

  14. It’s not good.

  15. Teams like them need to start going out and seek for fund instead of sitting on their arses and complaining about high cost! If you dont have the money why dont you go back down to GP2?

    I am sure that if you go and approach other China Car manufactures they are happy to fund your team…. have they tried and approach VW group? Porsche? There are so many companies out there…. they just need to find it! The cost won’t come down… it will never come down to the point where they can sustain… this is formula one!

    1. Why not simply work with say a 150 million budget so many teams can compete for the points/wins? That’s still am order of magnitude bigger than teams spend on any other race series.

  16. “The next Formula One race in Las Vegas will be on a thrilling street circuit.”

    Yeah…. And I’m Santa.

Comments are closed.