21st-Jun-22, 07:50 PM
Part of the attraction of F1 is the combination of bizarre decisions, political manoeuvering, power games both in and out of the car, the ridiculous sums of money involved, the incomprehensible levels of technology, the bickering, the difficulty in overtaking, the outrageous brain power of the best designers, and of course the sheer speed of those machines, and the skills of the the drivers on a proper track.
For the sake of those of us who enjoy F1, please don't spoil it for us with your ridiculous expectations of it suddenly becoming sensible, or even worse, some sort of spec series. Shudder.
F1 has a far more important issue right now, which is that it has American owners.
No hold on there's more, it's not the fact that they're American that I object to. What troubles me is that they are accelerating the move away from the historic circuits towards boring tracks with little history, but plenty of celebrities, and plenty of money. I know Bernie started the process, and I wasn't keen on it then either. But I think the pandemic has masked the intentions of F1's current owners by forcing them into using interesting and historic tracks like Imola, Portimao, and Nurburgring.
They were a breath of fresh air and a fantastic addition to the F1 calendar, but they will inevitably be dumped, and even Monaco and, God forbid, Spa Francorchamps, are rumoured to be under threat. If they wanted to break into the American market, then why not use Watkins Glen, or Laguna Seca, rather than the celebrity fest that was Miami? That was a rhetorical question, by the way, as we all know the answer.
Anyway, getting back to the original question, can F1 learn anything from NASCAR?
In a word, NO!
Did Lionel Messi learn anything from Sunday League football? Could Usain Bolt learn anything from a cheese rolling competition?
No, Formula One has to retain it's own unique form of madness, not try to follow anybody else's particular form of being bonkers.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe NASCAR is based in just North America, and has struggled in recent years with dwindling audiences.
F1 on the other hand is an international series, and the audience dwarfs that of NASCAR.
The world is chock-a-block with very entertaining motorsports series, most of which have loads of overtaking, because they are designed that way, and good luck to all of them. I love going up to my local track to watch the Autograss racing, it's great.
But F1 is very different and I sincerely hope it stays that way. Overtaking is supposed to be a titanic struggle in F1, otherwise why would we still remember and celebrate the best of them like Mansell double bluffing Piquet in 1987? If that was easy to do, and happened every lap, none of us would really remember it.
I think F1 is the big, swanky drama queen of the motorsports world, with more money, more technical prowess, and an endless ability to create mountains out of molehills. Personally I'd rather it stayed that way, and retained it's own unique identity, rather than trying to copy anything else. It is not only top of the pile, but it's also unique in many respects. It's something to celebrate, for all its faults, unless you want to homogonise everything by insisting that every motorsport mandate equal cars, equal engine, equal performance, minimum number of overtakes, and minimum weight of driver's underpants.
Nah, let's have just one series where it's not all equalised out, where the big boys all bring the full weight of their organisations to the game and all bring something different, and where, if you haven't got it right you'll suffer, not just for a few races, but possibly over years.
Let's hold onto and value that series that allowed Fangio, Clark, Hill, Stewart, Schumacher, Vettel, and Hamilton to show their dominance, and the teams that they drove for to express their power. It's not supposed to be a game, it's not supposed to be equalised, or homogenised, or fair. The aim of motorsport has always been total domination, and that's particularly true in F1.
Embrace the madness of F1, or forget it.
For the sake of those of us who enjoy F1, please don't spoil it for us with your ridiculous expectations of it suddenly becoming sensible, or even worse, some sort of spec series. Shudder.
F1 has a far more important issue right now, which is that it has American owners.
No hold on there's more, it's not the fact that they're American that I object to. What troubles me is that they are accelerating the move away from the historic circuits towards boring tracks with little history, but plenty of celebrities, and plenty of money. I know Bernie started the process, and I wasn't keen on it then either. But I think the pandemic has masked the intentions of F1's current owners by forcing them into using interesting and historic tracks like Imola, Portimao, and Nurburgring.
They were a breath of fresh air and a fantastic addition to the F1 calendar, but they will inevitably be dumped, and even Monaco and, God forbid, Spa Francorchamps, are rumoured to be under threat. If they wanted to break into the American market, then why not use Watkins Glen, or Laguna Seca, rather than the celebrity fest that was Miami? That was a rhetorical question, by the way, as we all know the answer.
Anyway, getting back to the original question, can F1 learn anything from NASCAR?
In a word, NO!
Did Lionel Messi learn anything from Sunday League football? Could Usain Bolt learn anything from a cheese rolling competition?
No, Formula One has to retain it's own unique form of madness, not try to follow anybody else's particular form of being bonkers.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe NASCAR is based in just North America, and has struggled in recent years with dwindling audiences.
F1 on the other hand is an international series, and the audience dwarfs that of NASCAR.
The world is chock-a-block with very entertaining motorsports series, most of which have loads of overtaking, because they are designed that way, and good luck to all of them. I love going up to my local track to watch the Autograss racing, it's great.
But F1 is very different and I sincerely hope it stays that way. Overtaking is supposed to be a titanic struggle in F1, otherwise why would we still remember and celebrate the best of them like Mansell double bluffing Piquet in 1987? If that was easy to do, and happened every lap, none of us would really remember it.
I think F1 is the big, swanky drama queen of the motorsports world, with more money, more technical prowess, and an endless ability to create mountains out of molehills. Personally I'd rather it stayed that way, and retained it's own unique identity, rather than trying to copy anything else. It is not only top of the pile, but it's also unique in many respects. It's something to celebrate, for all its faults, unless you want to homogonise everything by insisting that every motorsport mandate equal cars, equal engine, equal performance, minimum number of overtakes, and minimum weight of driver's underpants.
Nah, let's have just one series where it's not all equalised out, where the big boys all bring the full weight of their organisations to the game and all bring something different, and where, if you haven't got it right you'll suffer, not just for a few races, but possibly over years.
Let's hold onto and value that series that allowed Fangio, Clark, Hill, Stewart, Schumacher, Vettel, and Hamilton to show their dominance, and the teams that they drove for to express their power. It's not supposed to be a game, it's not supposed to be equalised, or homogenised, or fair. The aim of motorsport has always been total domination, and that's particularly true in F1.
Embrace the madness of F1, or forget it.
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