Not sure that will ever happen.
Perhaps your thinking about the many Le Mans series.
What happened to Australia?

I don't imagine that FTA coverage will be improved. It just means that actual fans will be recycled as those who turn off/drift away due to lack of proper FTA coverage will be expected to be replaced by new fans in areas where there are new races, which basically means a big push to build up F1 in the US where Liberty is based. It's a huge potential market but previous attempts at pushing F1 in the US have been poor and unresponsive at best and farcical at worst. They're clearly going to try, though.


Companies can be renamed easily enough but it probably doesn't matter as Liberty Media is a US company and the renamed company will be quoted on the NY(?) stock exchange over there as it is currently. Any existing company of the same (or similar) name will probably be registered in France, the UK or elsewhere in Europe, so it's not really going to matter but as I say, it could be renamed easily if there's thought likely to be any confusion.

I don't know the current structure but from reading the presentation, is the existing "Formula One Group" actually a company of that name or just a trading name of Delta Topco?

An interesting interview from Woking with Jenson Button on the new owners and his future with Craig Slater on SSN just now.
Not too sure about Jenson talking about 'Apps on a telephone'., especially as he had just mentioned Bernie and his lack of digital age knowledge just before that.

The Wikipedia article may shed some light, but it's very confusing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One_Group

I'd include an Australian race in the Asian group of Grands Prix. And the various Le Mans Series never had an overall championship though, they were seperate entities running at the same time. Mine wouldn't be separate.

World Championship - 21 rounds
Rounds 1 - 7 - European Rounds
At the end of Round 7, the drivers & teams with the most points win this sub-championship, get its trophy & points are reset to zero.
Rounds 8 - 14 - Americas Rounds
At the end of Round 14, the drivers & teams with the most points win this sub-championship, get its trophy & points are reset to zero.
Rounds 15 - 21 - Asian & Oceania Rounds
At the end of Round 21, the drivers & teams with the most points win this sub-championship its trophy.

The world championship is then decided either based on the points from all 21 rounds as normal, or they use some other criteria (like total wins throughout the season or something like that).

Apparently F1 is not a sport, but an 'Entertainment Franchise'.

I mean, that is literally how Liberty refers to all sports.

Thanks. As you say, still rather confusing but it does make it sound as though 'Formula One Group' is just an umbrella name for the various companies involved rather than a specific company in its own right. I don't think it matters TBH.

What would be the significance of grouping them regionally? Why not just package up three lots of seven races as they come? You're making the calendar very inflexible and making the times of a lot of the races very specific to certain times of year (twilight races apart) but I'm not sure that the latter is necessary a problem in itself!

Much of the point of the WDC and WCC is that it's determined by consistency across nine or ten months, not affected by mini-leagues at the start, middle and end of the season. It's bad enough now that so much emphasis and development moves to the following year each summer and I'm not sure that your plan would address that (assuming it needs addressing).

I think all these changes support my previous announcement - that I'm likely to retire as an F1 Viewer when the free to air coverage ends.

If Drivers can retire then so can Viewers. I don't expect a sabbatical or comeback.

1. Because it will help to build a consolodated local audience for each of the 3 mini-championship
2. It'll be cheaper for teams in terms of transport etc - No weird Monaco-Canada-Baku zig-zags.
3. and already most of the season is grouped up regionally, just in a less-logical form right now.



I don't see how splitting the championship into those 3 blocks is inconsistent, in fact it's MORE consistent than the current calendar.

I do kind of agree with FOM Fan's idea. It'd be an interesting little subplot, however I'd only reset the points to 0 for each of the 3 'sub-championships' but still have a full season tally going to determine the overall world champion (so maybe Rosberg wins 2 'sub-championships' by 2 points each and Hamilton wins 1 'sub-championship' by 5 points so becomes WDC).

Oh jesus... that's one step away from a "Chase" style format...No thank you

get it ?
Chase ?

I'm such a card.
Jp

Not at all. The chase format basically discards the entire first 3 quarters of the season, this one won't. the points/wins for the world championship as a whole are acrued through all of the races. I'm essentially just awarding an additional trophy based on the points leader at each 3rd of the season. And by resetting the points back to zero at the beginning of each third, it stops the leader running away with the championship for good.

You know what I mean...Don't be so pedantic.
Jp

I bet you'd get situations too like Rosberg wins the Euro and Asian/Oceania sub-championships, Hamilton wins the Americas sub-Championship in the middle, and then over the course of the full season Hamilton actually has more points and takes the WDC.

I suppose Bernie would start talking about medals again then.

The points/championship system is one of the few things in F1 that isn't complicated - no need to **** that up as well...

Got to agree about the general apathy regarding the DRS/Pirelli era - but I think we have to be honest and say the racing was truly dreadful for much of the noughties, let's not go back to that. The problem is they didn't need both of the gimmicks at the same time, they should've introduced one, and seen how it went first. The two together are overkill. Although you have to say the racing was quite reasonable in 2010 once refuelling was done away with.

And all this because of Bahrain 2010, why on earth did they decide to run that stupid format of track anyway for that year only!

What channel is SpikeTV on Sky?
Jp

Something to think about when talking about scheduling the races into regional blocks is that races tend to be scheduled around things like climate & local events (Melbourne has been moved around a few times due to local events in the past).

We all saw what happened when Silverstone was moved to April back in 2000 for instance.

One of the reasons Austin isn't put earlier in the year next to Montreal as Indy used to be is that the weather in Texas is significantly hotter around June/July while Montreal suffers from more severe winters which would make it tricky to hold it earlier/later in the year during times it would be more suitable in Texas.

160 on Sky.

One of that new mob please make Sky get rid of Croft, Herbert and Brookes.













Last edited by Ruley Ramundo : 08-09-2016 at 21:15

And Lazenby

Given that the new chairman is a director of Sky & Executive Vice-President of 21st Century Fox, I somehow doubt that's gonna happen Kinda funny how people are like "Oooh don't they own Virgin Media? maybe it'll be coming off Sky soon?!"

Yes, Liberty Media's SISTER COMPANY (Liberty Global) owns Virgin Media, but the chairman they've put in charge of F1 (Mr. Carey) is still in with Sky etc.

I would live in the hope that pressure from the drivers and advertisers because of less exposure will see F1 return to free to air TV sometime, If not I have the Formula E on Channel 5.

Brookes is great and there isn't much wrong with Lazenby either these days.

So there.