Mike4 wrote:The debate reminds me of the claim that Formula One motor racing is dull because all the cars just go around and around the track and who cares if the red one or the blue one wins?
For F1 to have meaning one needs to know who the drivers are, their records, their rivalries, their histories with the various constructor teams, the constructor teams, their histories, who runs them and who works for them, and on it all goes. Then seeing a race begins to make sense, as does all the pre-race qualifying.
Really? In the good old days, I watched Graham Hill turn up in Thruxton paddock, his Formula 1 car on a trailer towed by his Rover. Among the drivers at the meeting was a young driver with prospects, Michael Shumacher. He crashed, which was a regular occurrence.There were lots of cars on the grid, the track limit was 30 I think. The BBC were there filming for Grandstand and F1 was just one of the classes they recorded.
Then came Bernie Ecclestone and F1 became a circus, and it now looks as if it is simply a reality TV programme with the results choreographed so that the last race of the season will always be a 'cliffhanger'. Part of the change has been the ever increasing length of 'Talkshow' where talking heads analyse and re-analyse events, with the result that some fans have been persuaded that they really need all the analysis to increase their viewing pleasure. But as David Coulthard so often says, this isn't real, it's what the fans are being fed to increase the marketing opportunities.
F1 watchers today are like the old Big Brother watchers of yesteryear, or the fans of any TV reality shows, what appears on the screen follows the script, even if the fans deny it. They were even talking of introducing the IndyCar 'mandatory safety car'. If there hasn't been a safety car by the time 75% of the race is done, the MSC is called. Lapped cars are allowed to unlap themselves (they are waved past the grid and do enough laps so that they rejoin the grid on the same lap as the leaders). Then there's a sprint for the finish usually over about 10 laps. On at least one occasion someone who has been a lap or more behind when the MSC is called has won the Sprint and thus the whole race. But then analysis as shown that the American audience isn't interested in 'the race', they just want to see cars overtaking and crashing.
Now, I'm not saying that the plethora of 'factoids' doesn't make your day more interesting, any more than knowing that various eyesight deficiencies are probably responsible for certain painters' signature styles. But I often think that the detailed analysis by 'not the painter, are often a cover-up for someone paid to make the business of art appreciation profitable....a bit like the waffle put out by the commentators filling in the gaps between the adverts at F1.
SimonS
