Have a read of D.M.N's informative blog post about the costs of subscribing, Now TV passes etc... https://f1broadcasting.co/2016/01/28...ts-f1-in-2016/

Pay TV subscribers (Premier League football fans etc. in the UK) are effectively the 'sponsors', replacing the money from big tobacco.

In my opinion, there are a number of races on the current F1 calendar that aren't worth paying to watch live on TV. There's too many characterless modern FIA grade 1 circuits.

The drop in UK TV audience from BBC 1 to SSF1 is just horrific.

You're mourning the demise of it? I'd rather mourn when it was good

I'm glad its going away slowly! Was forced to watch it as a kid by my parents. It was dull in the early 90's so if fans of it are now speaking out it must be woeful.

I stopped watching F1 when I realised watching some millionaires driving around in circles for hours wasn't particularly interesting.

While true, the clue for me was being able to see the colour scheme which, for a change this year, seems to be more obvious between TR and RBR. I picked up he was getting it wrong purely by noticing that.

Yeah just as bad as watching MULTI-millionaires kicking around a bad of wind, not unlike this post. At least those multi millionaires aren't risking there lives or in the worse case scenario dying unlike the other 'millionaires' eh.

Just out of interest DS Mods, why merge that thread with ours?

Is he still ferreting around the paddock at that point, speaking to team personnel (even if not on camera/mic) and digging up stories that are then fed back to the production team and shape the analysis that Steve/DC do? I guess that's more a role of importance when C4 are live, but just because Chandhok wasn't on camera doesn't mean that he was doing a role behind-the-scenes that would be missed if he went off to do punditry.

If Bernie was my dad and left me the keys to the F1 kingdom in his will, I'd have 22 races, 11 teams, two cars per team, and have the drivers rotate through all the cars over the course of a season. That way we'd know once and for all who was really the best driver and the best team (ie the team whose cars picked up the most points), there would be loads more overtaking, and you presumably wouldn't have the same handful of people winning races/dominating the podiums every race. Pay the drivers out of the TV money/prize money.

Problem solved.

Watching on Sky costs £6.99 a race with NowTV. If you're only interested in F1 then watching on the BBC (if it had it all live) works out as £6.92 a race.

Duplicate.

Have some thread posts from something else got added in here?
Seems a bit muddled in here this morning.

You don't actually have to watch all the build up.

If I was in charge of F1, I'd cut the championship down to 16 races, as many (or as few) teams as there is, albeit with each having an equal number of cars (whether that number is 2 or 3 I don't care).

I'd have 2 compounds of dry tyres (hard & soft), with the harder tyres lapping the circuit slower than the softs, but with less degradation. Degredation would be less extreme than it is now, so for example on average, a set of softs would last a third of a race, whereas the hards would last half the race (thus reducing pitstops to roughly 1 or 2 a race, although the individual track surfaces would throw a small bit of anomalies here, but not too much). And I would remove the 'cliff', to allow the driver to push more at 100% for far longer on the tyres.

I'd also remove the fuel flow limit, but ensure that each car is filled up to a minimum level (to prevent under-fuelling so drivers can push at 100% the majority of the time without having to resort to fuel-saving modes).

I'd tweak the aero to allow a driver to catch & pass one-another without the need for devices such as DRS, and i'd make any push-to-pass ERS systems deployable at any point around the circuit (I think this is how it is already though).

As for tracks, it would be set on a country basis, not a track basis, and then i'd allocate a set of 'core slots', that must have a grand prix on the calendar:

1. UK
2. Monaco
2. Italy
3. France
4. Germany
5. United States
6. South Africa or Brazil (Can't make up my mind)
7. Middle Eastern Country
8. 2nd European country (Designated as European Grand Prix)

The other 8 rounds would be decided 2 or 3 years in advance at an annual ceremony (The country's national motosrport authority would put in a bid for a particular track- with a restriction on no more than 2 bids from 1 particular continent). And then the bids are put into a pot & drawn at random to get the 8 rounds - they then all get together & decide the order for the season.

The reason i say the 1st 8 'core' rounds should be decided on a country rather than track basis, is because I don't think the average fan cares say whether the British Grand Prix is at Silverstone or Brands Hatch, or whether the Italian GP is at Monza or San Marino. Circuit hosting contracts would be (obviously) for the awarded year in question for the 2nd 8 rounds, and no more than 3 years in a row for the 'core' rounds. If a 'core' circuit has just lost it's contract to another track in the same country, they have first opportunity to submit a bid in for their country in one of the 2nd 8 rounds (if they're still desperate to remain on the calendar).

Team prize money etc. should be distributed equally, with a constructor's championship bonus directly in proportion to their championship result (set so that even the last-placed team gets something). Finally, the bottom 3 placed teams should get a bonus (something like 30mil for 12th, 20mil for 11th and 10mil for 10th). 'Heritage' payments to long-standing teams like Ferrari, McLaren etc. would be abolished.

Regulations (both technical & sporting) would be devised through a panel of former team principles/technical directors, whether from F1 or otherwise (they must have zero links to any existing F1 team or team owner), along with by representatives from the FIA. Regulations must be devised & approved no later than 2 years before the season in question, ideally 3.

A moderator merged a thread 'Mourning the demise of Formula 1' with this one in the last two pages. Hence the sarcastic posts and inevitable frothing replies.

Good luck with getting Scuderia Ferrari to agree with that deal.

Ferrari 637. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_637
http://8w.forix.com/ferrari-indianapolis-1986.html

Then they can **** off to IndyCar, fail to win for another 10-or so years and then complain that they aren't being respected enough or some such bollocks

Ferrari isn't Formula One, and if needs be, F1 can survive without them. F1 needs a leader who isn't afraid to say no to the teams, rather than panicking & signing adhoc exclusivity contracts that give them a foothold over the rest (which they still can't take advantage of). I don't think F1 should be afraid of letting a few stuck-in-the-mud teams go, no matter how big/historical they are.

Same with the tyre supplier too. If a supplier says "But we don't want to make tyres like you're requesting" then they can **** off as well and the sport should find a tyre manufacturer who IS more accommodating.

THAT's a dictatorial approach, and it's something that F1 needs right now with regards to its entrants & suppliers. At least in regards to a team veto anyway. It would hardly be a PR disaster, especially with the way the world is going with regards to the gap between the rich & the poor anyway.

All you need to say is "Well, such & such team requested we pay them so much more money & let them veto the regulations so that they'd benifit the most, and we don't think that's fair on the others, so they've chucked their toys out the pram & left..."

Most fans would accept that I reckon.

Have 'Nando in a old sportscar for your bravery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYmB50Lq1M

AFCorse is a de facto Ferrari works team anyway.

i thought most f1 drivers multi millionaires who live in tax havens? At least other sports they use the good old fashioned off shore bank accounts!

Bingo.

F1 is not boring at the moment. This has been the most consistently entertaining start to a season in years.

See how the ACO react when Ferrari demand preferential treatment from them In all seriousness though, I would like to see Ferrari diversify, they could do with an LMP1 project tbh.

Problem is if they go down the LMP1 route, it would distract from their F1 commitments.
That is the reason that VW Group and Toyota are only focussing on Endurance racing as they do not have the resources to race in 2 top flight world championships.

Also at least in GTE it represents their road cars and I would imagine it is a lot cheaper to develop the cars for, especially as you can have privateers running rather than a full factory team, even if AF Corsa is as close to factory as they can get.

In terms of the actual races then yes - but the whole Qualy format fiasco was an embarrassment and enough to turn anyone off.

Now the next political bullshit story is brewing with Pirelli threatening to walk away if the '17 rules and testing plans aren't nailed down.

There is far far too much politics around the sport at the moment.

I purposefully don't watch the buildup to any session any more because it's all going to be self-obsessed navel-gazing about how awful F1 is at subject X.

It was good to have the old Qualy format restored this weekend but there will be another political crisis along soon enough.

You've forgotten about the utterly dominant works WRC team.
http://www.volkswagen-motorsport.com/

I was under the impression that some of the VW board aren't keen on Bernie.

How daft and not really relevant to this a 'broadcasting' thread.

Lots of adverts over the weekend for the Paris Formula e, assume the Paris tourist board are promoting it heavy. Not seen that for Formula e before.
I know a few colleagues who work there and its getting a lot of attention in the French media, with Michelin and Renault especially.
Hope the cameras are placed well and not the shambles we got with the Battersea one.

I assume this is a thread for F1 enthusiasts, although there seem to be a load of people who are merely slagging it off because it's no longer 'doing it' for them.

In the way that a soccer supporter remains true to his team come what may, I've been watching and mostly enjoying F1 from the early Murray Walker days, when the BBC first covered it.

Some races are bound to be more processional than others and obviously the best cars, piloted by the best drivers, are going to feature in the top six more often than not, that's just plain logic.

So far this year we've only seen three races, but they've all been quite different, but there have always been points of interest along the way, whether it's daredevil overtaking manoeuvres (not enough of those, I'll grant you) or 'coming togethers' where bits go flying off the vehicles.

The problem for viewers, as I see it, seems to relate more to the tighter and tighter regulations that tend to stymie talent and genuine opportunities to RACE. Tyre rules and overuse of the safety car have frequently interrupted perfectly good racing flow. If they reintroduced refuelling I don't think it would be a bad thing .. but let the driver make the decision when to come in, not the team!

After yesterday's race I switched over to ITV4 where I was expecting to see some Touring Cars but was actually able to enjoy the second half of an MSA Formula motor race, which was really quite exciting. The formula (similar to F4) was only inaugurated last year and appears to be where the young guns graduate from karting. Take a look if you can .. as in Formula Ford the cars are all identical and cost no more than £36K. It makes for close racing and, because of youth and inexperience, there are plenty of 'incidents'! For an MSA Formula overview, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSA_Formula