Purist vs Spectacle?

[raymondu999]

I personally don't mind the cars not going faster (ie stagnating in terms of speed). But I do mind the speed declining - which is what the teams are doing, as you can see from Cam's stats of fastest lap year on year.

[beelsebob]

I personally don't mind the cars not going faster (ie stagnating in terms of speed). But I do mind the speed declining - which is what the teams are doing, as you can see from Cam's stats of fastest lap year on year.

I don't see the speeds declining particularly – you're right that they're not quite what they were in '06 or '07, but then, they're at least as fast as they were in '03... We're simply at the maximum of a wibbly curve as the FIA try to maintain the speed in roughly the same region.

[myurr]

Makes you wonder what would've happened with the 2009 FOTA breakaway series threat, doesn't it?

In other news, Briatore is apparently working on a fallback for the FIA called GP1. Judging by the nomenclature seems like an F1-level (in terms of speed) spec series? Kinda like GP2's big brother? Why not have the "spectacle" peeps over on GP1 and have the "technical advancement" peeps in F1? Keeps both ends happy, I guess. Those unhappy with F1 can just move to GP1 viewership. Mind you knowing myself I'd probably watch both

Agreed 100% I hope GP1 takes off. There's a natural progression there so you may as well use it. When the GP1 champ wants to know if they're good enough, they'll come to F1 eventually. Doesn't mean you'll win, but you want to drive the best car with the best team and F1 is (was) that place.

Depends. If you go too far into turning it into a tech fest then why would a driver want to race in a series where they can't make a difference.

F1 currently has the prestige so it'd take a pretty big catalyst for this to happen, but let's say that one of the top F1 guys gets fed up with being unable to win simply because they don't have the very best car and decides to have more fun in GP1. I could imagine someone like Raikkonen doing that.

That could be enough that all the top drivers that really want to be able to race for the joy of racing decide to leave F1 and head to GP1 to prove themselves. If that happened then I'd imagine that a lot of the fans would move with them and that over time, unless F1 sorted out the racing itself, F1 would slowly wither and die.

Like it or not but a pure tech fest with no real racing doesn't turn on the average viewer. Maybe I'm being biased because I prefer to see the driver making a difference and being able to race wheel to wheel, but my belief is that more people watch for that than simply because F1 has the best technology regardless of how good or bad the racing is. And without fans the teams will be without money and the technology will suffer regardless.

[raymondu999]

Yes, but people still watched the Schumacher years. They still watched 2010. They still watched all the years where there were minimal overtaking - so very clearly, there is still a market for that.

[Cam]

Yep, I watched all through that era and never once thought "wow I'm bored". It was epic to see a man and machine at the pinnacle. It was intriguing watching developments to try and catch up. I personally knew it would change at some time and a new guard would take over and that we'd never see that kind of performance again - I'm humbled to have witnessed it. Where else could I have seen that?

[raymondu999]

Yeap. It's a matter of opinion. Some people go "WOW! They're SO CLOSE! The field is SO EVEN!" and some go "Holy crap! That man - is absolutely on fire. He is absolutely rising to a new class of his own!" Of course some go both too.

[Cam]

Here's some attendance stats from the Australian F1 GP for race day:

04 - 121,500
05 - 118,200
06 - 103,000
07 - 105,000
08 - 108,000
09 - 105,000
10 - 108,500
11 - 111,000
12 - 114,900

04 and 05 put on a better show.

The 04 season overview? "The championship was dominated by Michael Schumacher and Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro with the German driver winning the Drivers Championship for the fifth consecutive year and the Italian constructor winning the Constructors Championship for the sixth straight season."

No-one seemed bored to watch that year.

[Cam]

Depends. If you go too far into turning it into a tech fest then why would a driver want to race in a series where they can't make a difference.

I agree with you, to a point. Take now for instance. Do you think the driver makes a difference? Button who was lauded for his tyre loving style has no idea - "For me it felt massive, but for other people... For Lewis [Hamilton], he seemed quicker on the prime than he was on the option, and I was the other way around, so it's a strange one," he said. "It's normally the other way around for me, so the prime would normally be a good tyre for me. Hopefully we can figure it out." I don't think the driver makes much of a difference now with these regs and tyres, yet ask any driver if they still want to race F1. The question is why? The answer is what we need to preserve.

[myurr]

Yes, but people still watched the Schumacher years. They still watched 2010. They still watched all the years where there were minimal overtaking - so very clearly, there is still a market for that.

Do we have viewing figures for that period. It'd be interesting to see if the fan base stayed the same, or if gains in Germany counter balanced losses elsewhere. Certainly there was a lot of noise around that era of how boring it was. How many fans watched out of loyalty to F1 gained during the 'glory years', rather than because it was so interesting during the Schumacher domination years?

2010 was a close year, did you mean 2011? Again do we have viewing figures for last year?

I've tried doing a quick google and came up with a whole big heap of garbage figures that were in isolation, for individual countries, or were inconsistent (e.g. a Reuters article declaring viewing figures were up in 2011 in the headline, but was written in Jan 2011 and was talking about the 2010 season). There's also this BBC article suggesting that viewing figures dipped in the early 2000's at the start of Schumacher's domination http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 842217.stm.

The picture is also muddied by various pay per view deals around the world.

[tomislavp4]

...the 'lottery' factor does, for me, detract from the essence of elite precision engineering and fast racing that F1 has advertised for many decades and that originally attracted me to watch it in the first place.

I´m 100% with you on this one. However, everything is a compromise. As many have stated already, if it gets too purist, the drivers won´t make any difference whatsoever, the best car would win all the time leading to less viewers. For instance the Shumacher-era bored me and I missed two whole seasons. If the cars get to similar (one can argue that we already are at this stage) and regulations make innovation impossible, tech won´t matter and it will be the driver or some other random aspect deciding who wins, also not good.

I think the sweet-spot is somewhere in the middle but leaning to the purist side since, this is after all, a technical sport

[raymondu999]

I think the drivers today have been split into two similar camps to what the thread is discussing - the "Pirelli are raw eggs" camp, and "no, they're not."

Crucially - for those who have been around since 2009 - I haven't heard them saying "it's better this way." To me most of them have the attitude, "We need to do the best with whatever is given. If we don't like it, then that's just another challenge to overcome." Which then to me indicates that they'd be ok with how it was before. Generally speaking the drivers never complained back in 2009 and previous years - yes car made a hell of a difference (and still does) but it was sort of accepted. You never heard drivers saying that.

So I don't really think that they'd have a problem with returning to how it was pre-Pirelli.

Honestly speaking - I'm not even calling for a return to 2009/2010 type rules/tyres. I don't think that's on the cards any time soon, and I'm resigned to that fact. But a return to 2011 would still be welcome. Yes, the driver I support was dominating, and that doesn't hurt my impressions of it - but that aside - the tyres had clear requirements. They weren't a mystery, like this year's tyres seem to be. You never really heard "I don't understand what the hell's happening with my tyres" last year, just drivers saying they couldn't make tyre X work, or whatever.

Ferrari for instance last year had issues on the medium and hard compounds, but they knew why. It wasn't a mystery to them why they couldn't switch them on. Last year Red Bull couldn't make the supersoft or soft work for long stints in high G-loading circuits such as Barcelona or Suzuka, but they understood why.

In a return to my desire for watching engineering excellence, last year, engineers were working to a known target. How they got to said target is a different matter. This year it seems everyone's in a dark room trying to shoot blanks at a cat that isn't there.

Do we have viewing figures for that period. It'd be interesting to see if the fan base stayed the same, or if gains in Germany counter balanced losses elsewhere. Certainly there was a lot of noise around that era of how boring it was. How many fans watched out of loyalty to F1 gained during the 'glory years', rather than because it was so interesting during the Schumacher domination years?

Or it could just be that the quieter fans - those who just sat at home watching the races but didn't post on forums/tweet/whatever were the ones who liked it.

2010 was a close year, did you mean 2011?

I mean 2010 - there were very few overtakes in 2010 on the whole. Hence in a way it was more like the "laptime cold war" that I described above.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Agree totally with Myurr.

The Purist vs Spectacle debate will always be there. But they actually overlap too.
I feel I'm a purist, but I want to see more racing whereby a driver has real influence in the results. Some people going for the spectacle, alot of them go for the sights and sounds of the car.
Many of my mates never watch an F1 race on TV. But when they saw it live as in Silverstone a couple of years ago, they were blown away by the speed and sound of the cars. Not one mentioned the racing...of which there was very little.

Even people who have little or no passing interest in F1 realise that 99% of the time the title will go to the guy with the best car. The counter argument is that the best drivers generally gravitate to the best cars. But does that make it right?

I think you need a happy medium, whereby teams have the freedom to develop, and drivers have the means to make a difference. Valhalla, sure.

[Websta]

Going back to 2010, the races were often processional, but I wouldn't say boring. Back then, quick lap times actually meant something and if somebody managed an overtake it was a whole lot more impressive. There was a fair share of drama that year even with 1 pit-stop races and bullet proof tyres. The race weekend as a whole was a lot more exciting for me as well as qualifying mattered massively which it really doesn't any more.

I just can't deny that I am thoroughly enthralled by this seasons races though. They are just too exciting to move away from. What bothered me about 2010 races was that after the first round of pit stops, there was really not much else that could happen in the race unless it rained. The fact that strategy now can play a big role is a huge plus in my books and keeps the race exciting all the way to the finish. I don't really like the fact that it is contrived though, what with the emphasis on tyre conservation and the whole "lottery". DRS doesn't bother me particularly anymore, everyone has the chance to use it so in the end the fastest cars/drivers will end out on top.

[f1316]

I think the problem for anyone even coming close to a purist is that you're manufacturing an important component on the car - i.e. the tyres - with the intention of making them bad. Pirelli have been asked to provide something like that, so you cannot blame them, but the idea that something is made to be suboptimal is against what most of us understand to be the spirit of the sport. Any amount of rule tweaking is relatively fine by me - I have my favourites (qualifying format) and my non-favourites (lack of refuelling) - but once the rules are established every team will try to make every part of the car as good as it can possibly be, and that's great. Unlike the tyres which, to use the popular word, are a bit "artificial".

This is particularly difficult to enjoy if it places *greater* emphasis on preservation over speed. There has always been and always should be some balance to be struck between the two, but when the former is *more* prevalent, it starts to become a problem for me.

Nevertheless, the bottom line comes down to revenue, sparked mainly by tv ratings and race attendance. Whatever the balance is between purist and spectacle that proves the most popular is, that's what we'll stick with.

[xpensive]

Purist vs Spectacle? In all honesty, I fail to see the contradiction there.