37 replies to this topic

[mzustak]

The Strategy Group, Bernie Ecclestone, the FIA, CVC, team principals, drivers, fans and the media have all voiced their opinions about ‘what Formula 1 could and should be.‘ Faster cars, refuelling, bigger tyres, wider tyres, noisier engines, more competition, more overtaking, less tyre saving, less fuel saving, less complex technology, more risk, fewer penalties, no grid girls, the list goes on. The ‘what’ question however misses the point. If you look at the really successful enterprises – as Simon Sinek argues – they tend to operate from the inside out, starting with the question ‘why’, only then followed by the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. It is not the product features alone (engines, tyres, banned radio, or manual starts) that engage the hearts of your customers and get them addicted to your product; something more fundamental is required to achieve that. Would man have made it to the Moon had the Kennedy speech been about rockets, fuel, spacesuits, and landing modules?  

 

So why did Nigel Roebuck get hooked on motor racing watching Jean Behra at the Pau Grand Prix 1954? Why did Max Mosley decide to pursue single-seater career following his visit to a race meeting at Silverstone? Why did Adrian Newey decide to design F1 cars rather than the Airbus A380? And why the new generation of millennials does not appear to be much interested in motor racing despite the fact that they are passionate about music as much as the older generations were in the 70s or 80s?

 

Here is my personal ‘why’ statement:

 

- Because as a boy back in 1985 I needed a hero I could identify with, someone who was doing something cool and exotic that only a few people in the world could engage in. F1 happened to fit the bill. I wasn’t interested in ‘puppets’ whose strings were pulled by the masters in the pits, who weren’t gladiators in their own right but only served as remotely controlled PR robots delivering the last mile of a complex team effort.

- Because I was proud of the space-age technology (there were no Moon landings in the 80s) that seemed to defy the laws of physics and that allowed humans to walk away from 300kmph accidents (sadly only until 1994).

- Because F1 offered a cocktail of legal drugs that attacked all your five senses – engine noise, petrol smell, incredible speed, grip/friction of the tarmac, taste of danger.

 

- Today, I’m passionate about F1 because it is like a book of short stories, sometimes with happy, sometimes with tragic ending. A great story is one in which the motivation of the main characters (drivers, team principals, engineers) and the plot (race) are brought to their unexpected, but inevitable and earned ending.

- Because F1 brings constant change, novelty, and unpredictability. All the same, this unpredictability must come about by the natural competitive order and not artificially.

- Because I love watching characters fighting and sometimes winning against all odds (think Nurburgring 1999 or Monza 2008).   

- Because I love watching drivers expressing all their prodigious skill and talent, and not just during a couple of laps before the pit stop. How exciting is a football match where the teams are playing at 80 percent of their ability except for the last five minutes?

- Because I love pure racing. This also means that no amount of twists and turns (overtaking) in an otherwise artificial and predictable plot will make much of a difference.

- Because I love watching drivers being tested to their physical and mental limits, exposing their character, willpower, inner struggles, mistakes, their darker side, and their humanity.

 

Why are you passionate about F1?

 

Once F1 figures out the answers to the fundamental question ‘why’, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ should be much easier to agree on.

[uffen]

Wow, what a great angle. Well done, Mzustak.

For me it was the lure of watching a driver do things that were not easy to do well. To do them lap after lap with someone hanging on their exhaust pipes, trying to get past.

The cars were tough to master because although they were fast and elegant and refined in some ways they were also brutish and stripped-down and primitive in others.

All the driver had was the fundamentals - a steering wheel, an accelerator, a brake pedal, a clutch and a stick to stir the gears.

It was watching them manage to drive fast and accurately and smoothy and keep it all together for the race distance.

It was the assault on the senses: sounds, smells, colours.

[oetzi]

What Mr Sinek is missing is that that's where they start.

F1 has been going a while.

The 'official best company ever', Apple, has completely lost its way at least three times already, and is now run by beancounters and is busily copying its 'inferior' rivals.

Nothing 'is' anything.

What people want changes.

Not many people like big, noisy cars these days.

Dead sportsmen look bad on Twitter.

These are just the first random thoughts about the problems of answering your question that came into my head.

[noikeee]

Why are you passionate about F1?

 

I'm not. It's just something I follow out of habit.

 

A very long time ago something made me start, but it's been so long and it's been so different to the current "product" I can almost pretend effortlessly I don't know what enticed me in the beginning.

[uffen]

Well, oetzi, some problems for you indeed. But since you follow the sport (I assume) there must be something you can come up with to respond to the "why" question.

"F1 has been going a while." I don't see that as a problem.

"Apple, etc." Not sure of your point with that one.

"Nothing 'is' anything." Too metaphysical for me.

"Not many people like... noisy cars." Disagree, especially as it pertains to fans of racing, but in any case, it seems you may have liked them at one time.

"Dead sportsmen look bad on Twitter." Given that dead sportsmen look bad in any media, you still seemed to manage to be a fan.

 

I don't intend to deny you your opinion, but there must be something that brought you here in the first place.

[oetzi]

I was saying you're asking the wrong question. Or at least one so complicated you have no hope of getting a satisfactory answer. Unless you just want a scrapbook of individual memoirs.

If it's that, then my first F1 memory is the 76 Japanese GP (on TV). As for what drew me to it at that age, it's too long ago to remember.

Since then, I've enjoyed different things at different times - tech stuff, drivers, sounds, looks, politics, predicting things, introducing people to the sport, visiting tracks and factories, finding out what really went on in some old, long gone situations (well, what one side saw). And plenty more.

Right now, F1 is harder to enjoy in my opinion. There are too many people who should watch and enjoy who seem to feel they have a vested interest in a particular outcome. That goes for media and fans. So perhaps there we get close to what I enjoy most about any sport. Seeing who can do what they're doing best on the day, be they a team or individual.

But that really doesn't narrow it down much for an F1 focused question. Sorry.

I did my best

[oetzi]

I forgot Scalextric

[RSNS]

Good question, good topic.

I think F1 is all about individual achievement. The hero, willing to run risks to dominate others is, I think, the reason people love f1. This, coupled with the sheer power and dramatics of top cars is all f1 is about. A kind of substitute for the knight in a tournament.

I don't know the trouble of present day f1 (it seems more or less as it has always been, except for Mercedes dominance and no particular driver standing out in terms of charisma)). Perhaps drivers are too young to really be role models for a hero? Or the danger gone, the heroics are gone too?

[RealRacing]

I think all of F1 stakeholders know their "why"; after all, F1 was not invented recently. The problem is that those "whys" vary enormously. The "hows" and  "whats" are just reflections of trying to compromise all of these different "whys".

 

Having said that, I was brought to F1 relatively young, at 15 or so. Like many kids, I had always liked cars and speed and one day I saw a race on TV: it had everything, the beautiful, strange open-wheeled cars that looked so powerful, the men in helmets, the colors, the different designs. And then, they not only went fast by themselves but they were competing against each other on a track purposedly built for it, racing, passing, risking. It was the embodiment of the racing I did in my head and my games. 

[Nonesuch]

Why are you passionate about F1?

 

 

Because, amongst other reasons:

• Ferrari is part of the competition as an official works team. I'm not sure if I'd still be interested if they decided to call it quits.
• F1 cars are still the fastest (non-oval) race cars around, and other series often don't even come close.
• The drivers can't easily be mistaken for glorified console-gamers (see: junior formula racing).
• Despite the ridiculous wings the cars still have that aggressive (or to use Ron Dennis' word, 'predatory') look that closed-wheel sports-cars mostly do not.
• The drama surrounding the races are like a bad but compelling soap-opera, including badly written relationships, ubiquitous product placement, and characters everybody loves to hate.
• It is part of a long tradition of racing that goes back decades and which includes countless impressive tales and characters. This history imbues the current racing with significance that outshines that of most other series. St. Martin's Cathedral is just stones and wood, but at the same time it obviously isn't.

Part of the magic was seeing the - at least to my mind at the time - underdog (Ferrari) take the fight to the best team (Williams) in races like Spain 1996, one of the first races I saw. It had all the elements of competition: challenging conditions, different cars and engines, fantastic drivers, great rivalries, etc. Looking back at it now, a lot of that was probably exaggerated, but I suppose the (young) human mind loves these simplifications, and lets freely flowing imagination fill in the gaps in its knowledge.

 

 

Perhaps the more we know the easier it is to look past some of the myths that make F1 racing seem like more than it really is.

Edited by Nonesuch, 03 July 2015 - 10:33.

[sopa]

Throughout my life I believe the 'magic' factor has somewhat been shifting. When I started out, I am pretty sure exotic-looking machineries (not like your random cars on the street, but uniquely shaped machines with wings and stuff), sheer speed and the challenge of racing against others on a circuit with different corners, were exciting aspects. But I think these factors are important today as well.

 

Actually... fun thing to remember now, but first I was introduced to "F1 racing" as such was via a computer game. It was in the early 90s and this racing game was certainly pretty basic compared to what we have now, but I was attached to it. The speed and racing against others, trying to beat them and the challenge of getting your lap/corners right and getting good laptimes. When I played that I knew nothing about "real world F1". It reached me a couple of years later. But the seeds of giving it an attention had been sown already.

 

Today...

I like to look at the 'wholeness'. F1 represents sort of a microcosm of the world/society. But operating on a very high level. Business, careers, technology, racing, sportsmen, circuits/countries, cultures/fandoms. Everything is geared to such a high level in many aspects. But the simple racing aspect that first made me in awe is still the key - the whole concept of racing against each other while going in circles. Around this everything else is geared.

 

Why I like motorsports more than other sports? Because in addition to "simple" sporting event it has an additional element - cars, technology, sheer speed. It is a combination of man and machine, plus everything in the background to make them perform well. It is sort of a high-tech sport, almost like alien. Fascinating stuff.

Edited by sopa, 03 July 2015 - 11:15.

[superden]

For me, it was cars like this ...



... to a child with a car obsession, they were loud, brutal and exciting. They looked like nothing else on wheels and these outrageous works of art were the best thing since sliced bread. Races were in places that, to a child in the early 80's, seemed impossibly exotic. You could see the drivers working hard, taming these physically punishing beasts. You saw things then that would never happen now, who could forget Mansell passing out, pushing his car in a vain effort to get it over the line?

It was a different world I know, but I prefer it to that which we have now. Others don't and that's fine, the circus moves on but for me, the magic was lost a long time ago. I still watch F1, but it's not the same. It's entirely subjective, so I don't care what anyone thinks of my opinion. The cars have become less and less interesting, the spectacle less and less jaw dropping and the racing less and less enthralling. Personalities have waned, corporate crap has flourished. The facilities are cleaner, but who cares? Sadly, for me, it's probably more habit than anything else now.

Edited by superden, 03 July 2015 - 12:01.

[mzvztag]

It is a bit strange how many people consider F1 a habit here. But I have almost the same feeling myself. I've been following it for 35 or so years and was in fact always a fan of a driver (Piquet, D. Hill, Schumacher, Alonso - only 4!) despite my huge love for F1 cars.

I got hooked in late 1970s, after seeing Lotus 78, a car ahead of its time in this incredible JPS livery. For me F1 represented the top of engineering, beside spacecrafts and planes. But it seems that my passion is affected when my favourite driver is not fighting at the front. Maybe I'm getting old but I did have a great passion in 2012, it's a pity it ended as it did.

As I already wrote in this BB, I am in a schizophrenic situation this year: my favourite team's (Ferrari) cars are driven by my two least favourite drivers. It's hard to feel passion about it now.

[phoenix101]

Motorsport was interesting when it was a creative problem-solving endeavor. The engineers often went astray, but the governing body tended to reel them back in. Unfortunately, several problems persist, and motorsport still hasn't figured out how to address them.

 

1. Aerodynamic downforce. It's essentially useless for the production car industry. It tends to ruin racing by making cars dependent on clean airflow. Aerodynamic gains tend to make the sport more dangerous.

 

2. Driver Aids. Driver aids are nothing more than engineers seizing control of the car from the driver. Corporations don't want 25 year olds to lead billion dollar motorsport teams so rounding off the sharp edges makes business happy, and ruins one of the main intrigues of the sport. Engineers don't like accomodating the limitations of human drivers so control the clutch and throttle (and much more) with electronic machines.

 

3. Parity. The sanctioning bodies tend to let dominant teams stay dominant or they impose bankrupt ideas like spec cars or balance of performance or sometimes both.

 

4. Tires. The least troubling problem, since control tires aren't loathed as much as spec engine rules and restrictive aero rules. Fans can't really see or hear the differences in tires so they don't care about them, though tire strategy, which was a mainstay of the tire war, is definitely amiss.

 

The sanctioning bodies could easily address these problems, but they are too cowardly and too lazy. Aero-balancing is common place. It would allow the aerodynamicists and stylists to have fun. Nope. Too lazy. Can't fight the aerodynamics purists, who are ruining their own engineering discipline and enraging fans with their dopey DRS solutions. The sanctioning body could easily pay the tire companies to make lots of tire options to create more complex risk-reward for tire strategy. Nope. They want to milk the tire companies for money, which ultimately ends up costing the sport money because the competition is boring and one-dimensional. The electronics are somewhat contained, though creativity has been killed, and the teams arbitrarily decide to ban certain functions for "entertainment".

 

The biggest problem, though, is parity. The sanctioning body could easily implement a system of handicapping to prevent dominance, a condition that undermines the value of sport (like a monopoly undermines a market), but the sanctioning bodies are too scared. Somehow they think fans will complain more about handicapping than they complain about shoddy spec cars with uniform power units. Pure genius. A simple sanctioning method that could render most technological restrictions unnecessary, thereby recreating the glory days of Formula-Libre-style F1 is going to make the fans cry themselves to sleep.

 

The stupid is piled so high and deep in motorsport, I don't know if it will ever recover.

[BlinkyMcSquinty]

Edited by BlinkyMcSquinty, 03 July 2015 - 14:15.

[Radoye]

One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my grandpa's lap and watching F1 on a black-and-white TV set. Grandpa was a big Ferrari and Lauda fan, so naturally i "knew" Lauda was the best. Then Nurburgring happened. I have no recollection of anything about that race from that time - of course, i have since read and watched everything about it i could find - but i vividly remember worrying and pestering my mom about "Mr. Lauda" and whether he will be racing next weekend, are there any news, etc. I guess that was my first contact with the idea of human mortality. And when Lauda came back, in my mind it was set - racers are superheroes, indestructible, stronger than fire, capable of cheating death. Lauda immediately became my favorite superhero, right there with Spiderman and Batman.

 

(Oh how wrong i was about the indestructible and death-cheating part, but what could i know? In any case, the first driver death that i was aware of was that of Ronnie Peterson; the first that i witnessed on live TV as it happened was that of Gilles Villeneuve - i still remember exactly where i was standing and what i was doing when that happened. )

 

Sometimes later, i guess it was the summer of 1978, as me and my family went to the coast for the vacation, down on the beach i saw a couple of German tourists and the guy was reading a magazine in German with Niki Lauda on the cover. I went over and stared at it like hypnotized, so much that my mom - who was a school teacher, teaching German - had to apologize and explain my behavior. The German guy was friendly enough to offer the magazine to me - and over the next while my mom had to read me the Lauda article over and over and over and over...

 

F1 dropped off my radar when Lauda retired for the first time, as it happens with early childhood fascinations, but as he came back in 1982. i, now ~almost~ 9 years old , started following it in earnest. And when he won the title in 1984, i knew i was forever hooked. I started following any and all forms of motor racing, but i was always predominantly an open-wheel racing fan. And F1 was the undisputed king.

 

Since Lauda was now driving for McLaren, i became a McLaren fan. Later when Senna came by, and even more later with Hakkinen, i again had a favorite driver as well, but i always cheered for the team first. I stuck with them when they were winning and when they were hopeless. They were - and still are - my team.

 

However, lately iv'e been getting more and more disappointed in F1. As teams struggle to survive financially, and we the fans are getting priced out, the powers to be seem to do everything they can to avoid the elephant in the room and rather keep trying to fix things that ain't broken. The racing is getting more and more gimmicky, in a misguided attempt to "spice up the show", instead of addressing the burning issues. It is kind of sad watching something that has been an important part of my life since i know of myself being deliberately run into the ground and destroyed.

 

I still watch every race, i still follow the news, but it is more of a habit these days than anything else. Nowadays, to get my fix, i've been going to IndyCar. F1 has lost its magic for me. I hope they manage to turn it around, but i doubt they will.

 

I still admire the bravery and skill of the drivers, which far surpasses anything i can do, but there are no heroes anymore, no genuine characters. Just a bunch of puppets parroting the company line. Granted, nowadays being significantly older, hopefully wiser and undeniably much more cynical, so it's somewhat harder to impress me now than my 3-year-old self from 1976...

[Collombin]

Villeneuve's crash shown live on TV? What country were you in when you saw it?

[aramos]

Formula 1 above all is about the drivers. This is one thing they forget at times. No one would tune in to watch automated cars, its about the characters and personalities that pilot them. They wonder when Alonso and Button are stuck in that McLaren this year that ratings are falling. The same 2 drivers that got named the 2nd and 3rd most popular in the sport.

 

But its about more than that, its about the pinnacle and the signs and sensations that go with that. The excitement of knowing that winning a race or a world championship, however artificial is the passion of someones life work that hundreds of others haven't been able to achieve.

 

But I think more than anything it appeals on a visceral level that you can't properly describe. The speed, the sound I do think people relate to it like they do some aspects of nature that arouse fear and excitement. I remember how excited I used to get at the start of a race as the engines screamed waiting for the lights to go out.

 

But I think all of those things are slowly being taken away. The sport is feeling more artificial and cold and it doesn't 'feel' like the pinnacle of anything at the moment.

[Marklar]

Its just the memorys. The memorys when I was 4 years old (yes, I'm watching F1 since I'm 4 years old) and tried to find a way throught our house to the living room to watch the season start in 4 o'clock in the morning live without my parents getting noticed me. The memorys back to these days when it was just racing, not business crap. The speed and the sound. The drama. The downfall of heroes. And the rise of heroes. That is what I love about F1.

 

But now if I would be again 4 years old I wouldn't probably started watching it because everything is different now.....

[Radoye]

Villeneuve's crash shown live on TV? What country were you in when you saw it?

 

We were in Hungary visiting our relatives there (i grew up just south of the Hungarian border in what was then Yugoslavia). Unlike our TV, the Hungarians used to show the F1 qualis as well.

 

Might not have been live but delayed, but that was the first fatal f1 accident i actually saw.

[YoungGun]

It is a bit strange how many people consider F1 a habit here. But I have almost the same feeling myself. I've been following it for 35 or so years and was in fact always a fan of a driver (Piquet, D. Hill, Schumacher, Alonso - only 4!) despite my huge love for F1 cars.

I got hooked in late 1970s, after seeing Lotus 78, a car ahead of its time in this incredible JPS livery. For me F1 represented the top of engineering, beside spacecrafts and planes. But it seems that my passion is affected when my favourite driver is not fighting at the front. Maybe I'm getting old but I did have a great passion in 2012, it's a pity it ended as it did.

As I already wrote in this BB, I am in a schizophrenic situation this year: my favourite team's (Ferrari) cars are driven by my two least favourite drivers. It's hard to feel passion about it now.

 

  Left Ferrari after Gilles perished and returned only this year after such a long time. My passion was rekindled because of Vettel moving to Ferrari, so I can understand your pain.

Edited by YoungGun, 03 July 2015 - 18:30.

[anneomoly]

It is a bit strange how many people consider F1 a habit here. But I have almost the same feeling myself. I've been following it for 35 or so years and was in fact always a fan of a driver (Piquet, D. Hill, Schumacher, Alonso - only 4!) despite my huge love for F1 cars.

I got hooked in late 1970s, after seeing Lotus 78, a car ahead of its time in this incredible JPS livery. For me F1 represented the top of engineering, beside spacecrafts and planes. But it seems that my passion is affected when my favourite driver is not fighting at the front. Maybe I'm getting old but I did have a great passion in 2012, it's a pity it ended as it did.

As I already wrote in this BB, I am in a schizophrenic situation this year: my favourite team's (Ferrari) cars are driven by my two least favourite drivers. It's hard to feel passion about it now.

 

I'm your polar opposite - my favourite driver is driving a Ferrari and I simultaneously like his achievements and hate them. To me, Ferrari are the villains you love to hate, not a team to support.

 

Why did I get hooked? Because the more attention you give it, the more it gives. I like sports that unfold rather than being over in the blink of the eye, that provide a sense of danger and where rivalries are both longstanding and close. Because it was a presence in my living room as a kid whether I was interested or not and Murray Walker's enthusiasm must have got more people than me hooked.

 

And I think those two last points are why the kids don't get hooked. It's not present in their lives - bearing in mind that to be ubiquitous today you need to be on the internet as well as just on tv - and there's no enthusiasm for it even from people that make their living from it. I mean, if I believed everything the drivers said I'd never believe that F1 was exciting enough to do as a job, let alone sit and watch. FIA, CVC, Bernie - they don't sell F1 to fans. The tracks and most of the teams are too busy trying to survive to have anything left to give fans. The drivers seem to be actively discouraging anyone from watching.

 

Basically, if no one sells F1, why are we surprised that no one's buying?

[mzustak]

What Mr Sinek is missing is that that's where they start.
F1 has been going a while.
The 'official best company ever', Apple, has completely lost its way at least three times already, and is now run by beancounters and is busily copying its 'inferior' rivals.
Nothing 'is' anything.
What people want changes.
Not many people like big, noisy cars these days.
Dead sportsmen look bad on Twitter.
These are just the first random thoughts about the problems of answering your question that came into my head.

Exactly, what people want changes, but the motivation why they want or do something generally doesn't change that much. Although in my case the reason why I watch F1 has changed since I was a boy as well, as I wrote in my original post. Regardless, it would be great to hear your own attempt at answering the 'why I got hooked on F1' question instead of just listing why it is impossible to answer it. And even if it proved not feasible to cluster individual answers into coherent universal themes (however, there are themes emerging from the posts so far), it would be still interesting to hear your story regardless of its ultimate intrinsic value or potential to solve F1's current problems.

I am intrigued to see how many people watch F1 out of habit. This is another hint why the millennials are not jumping on-board...

[ollebompa]

For me it was very simple. After having recived a F1 video game I decided to try the real thing, looked up the TV-times, tuned in, saw the red car, heard the V10 and was hooked. For a while I did not realize it was a racing series, but thought of it more as an engineering exibit, which I guess is a bit true.

 

Why was it geat? The uncompromising quest to go faster and faster by any means. IMO hadicapping the teams through regulations have taken much of the "simple charm" out of the sport and to get enjoyment you'll have to go deeper, something many fans maybe are unwilling or unable to do.

 

Is it possible to get that back? IMO, no. Technology has simply come to far. It would be too dangerous. I think we should accept that the times move forward try to enjoy F1 in a different way, thats what I do. Wilst I think F1 has its flaws, looking to the past in order to move forward is a mistake IMO.

[KingTiger]

Man against machine.

 

Where the limits of the machine are higher than what man can realistically handle. 

[MirNyet]

The magic is in the speed and spectacle - and modern motor racing does everything possible to remove these elements from the sport. The cars on track look slow, they cannot overtake without tricks and the drivers instead of being supermen are shown to be petulant children - overpaid, pampered and for the most part idiots...

 

The concept of the cars needs a radical rethink - downforce (it isn't going away) needs to be removed from the top of the car (wings) and put under the car (ground effects),

The amount of information - politics and infighting in public needs to stop - it brings nothing to the spectacle and for the most part just shows these people as greedy and stupid,

Driver interviews need to be frank and honest - no more press officers watching and scripting every word and gesture said,

Lastly, and in some ways most importantly - the way the races are shot and shown needs to change - the commentary is utter crap and needs an overhaul and the focus on pundits instead of actual garage and pitlane footage needs to change - I am not interested in what someone who raced 20 years ago thinks of the head games of this or that, or why a certain team painted their cars blue instead of green...

 

F1 has become too slick, polished and has basically disappeared up its own backside - it has lost its rawness and excitement...

[oetzi]

it would be great to hear your own attempt at answering the 'why I got hooked on F1' question instead of just listing why it is impossible to answer it.

Just scroll up a little

[BlinkyMcSquinty]

Its just the memorys. The memorys when I was 4 years old (yes, I'm watching F1 since I'm 4 years old) and tried to find a way throught our house to the living room to watch the season start in 4 o'clock in the morning live without my parents getting noticed me. The memorys back to these days when it was just racing, not business crap. The speed and the sound. The drama. The downfall of heroes. And the rise of heroes. That is what I love about F1.

 

But now if I would be again 4 years old I wouldn't probably started watching it because everything is different now.....

 

I'm old and when I first started watching there was no internet and the only thing I was exposed to was the race itself, and reading about it a month later in the magazines. But with the internet and pre and post race shows, we get to see too much of the sport, and sadly a lot of it is very sordid politics and shady characters. Oh, the days of innocence. That is when I truly enjoyed the sport.

[Seanspeed]

I've always been into sports, and even sports I don't watch I still tend to have an appreciation for.

And one of the things that always draws me to actually tune in to watch a match or whatever, even of something I don't follow closely, is elite level competition. I like the idea of the best of the best going at it. And this is something I think F1 will probably always have, or at least will have for the foreseeable future.

In terms of what initially attracted me to F1 specifically, I think I was initially attracted to the prototype, faster-than-sin open wheel cars, and that's another thing I think F1 will always have. There is nothing faster around a road circuit. Also, I started watching a few races here and there in 2005 and I got lucky and caught the Japanese GP that year, which pretty much got me hooked from then on.

The history of the sport is also pretty special and not something that can be changed or taken away.

So I mean, I think F1 still has, and will continue to have the core things that I desire. There's plenty of other things I love and hate about the sport, as it goes with just about any sport, but so long as these main facets remain, I'll be here.

Edited by Seanspeed, 04 July 2015 - 08:14.

[August]

I guess the reason I first got into F1 was Häkkinen's comeback from the Adelaide accident, winning WDCs a couple of years later. But for sure there were other reasons to get excited about F1, there were also many other sports with Finns succeeding that I didn't follow so closely.

I guess cars just attract me. And F1 having the Best Drivers™ sort of made me dismiss other series. And until 2010s when I became aware of the Nigerian options, very much the only motorsport I could see was F1 (+GP2), NASCAR, DTM, WRC, and MotoGP. I was never into bikes, WRC got dull, DTM is just a 2nd tier series, and I couldn't get into NASCAR's oval racing as I'd previously watched road racing, I only got into oval racing when I'd started to follow IndyCar more closely. And F1 being such a massive business also made it interesting; an aspect e.g. tennis of my favorite sports lacks.

And yeah, F1 has a great history but I don't watch F1 for the sake of tradition. Instead, I rather watched the Historique Monaco GP last year during the Spanish GP. Mostly I watch motorsports for pure racing, and F1 isn't the series that offers it the most nowadays.

[V8 Fireworks]

Why are you passionate about F1?

 

 

Very fast...

 

Very loud...

 

Very special...

 

Very unique...

 

Very exotic...

 

Very difficult for drivers to make it to race there...

 

Very difficult for the world's largest car makers to suceed like BMW, Toyota, Jaguar/Ford, Mercedes (Coulthard's engine goes kaboom again ) etc...

 

 

The modern F1 is far too mundane, far too ho-hum, nothing much special or unique 

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 04 July 2015 - 13:24.

[sopa]

 

Very difficult for the world's largest car makers to suceed like BMW, Toyota, Jaguar/Ford, Mercedes (Coulthard's engine goes kaboom again ) etc...

 

 

Very difficult today as well.  Renault and especially Honda are nowhere!

[V8 Fireworks]

Very difficult today as well.  Renault and especially Honda are nowhere!

 

That's true - mainly because they are roadblocked by, let's be frank, a horde of small second-tier teams who just happen to have no greater skill or excellence than simply a Mercedes customer power units. 

 

The engines were much more similar in those days, and there was more variety in engines     

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 04 July 2015 - 13:47.

[Radoye]

That's true - mainly because they are roadblocked by, let's be frank, a horde of small second-tier teams who just happen to have no greater skill or excellence than simply a Mercedes customer power units. 

 

So, what is the solution - to abolish all the small teams and have the 4 manufacturer teams each field more cars? It's not enough that Mercedes has locked out the first two podium steps, we want now an all-Mercedes top 5?

 

Besides, McLaren didn't exactly excel last year either, when they had Mercedes engines. In fact, they didn't won a race since 2012. And STR seems to be doing better than RBR with the same engine package.

 

So i guess all those small second-tier good for nothing teams are indeed doing something right...

Edited by Radoye, 04 July 2015 - 14:10.

[BlinkyMcSquinty]

That's true - mainly because they are roadblocked by, let's be frank, a horde of small second-tier teams who just happen to have no greater skill or excellence than simply a Mercedes customer power units. 

 

The engines were much more similar in those days, and there was more variety in engines     

 

If we remove all those Mercedes customers, the next best is Red Bull, and it's (let's compare Silverstone qualifying times) 1.4 seconds slower.  In Austria Both the Red Bulls and Toro Rosso were lapped in the race. That is not a road block, that is not having enough performance.

 

In my previous post I mentioned about the age of innocence, being detached and unaware of the negative crap that rains on any parade. This post asked about what makes Formula One attractive to many. The obvious answer is all the positive things, the amazing machinery, the brave and talented drivers, the passion and excitement. Yet now we're being sidetracked by those who wish to air their beefs.

[Radoye]

...we're being sidetracked by those who wish to air their beefs.

 

 

Couldn't say it better myself!

[August]

I have to add one thing the the 'why' question.

 

Williams are probably my biggest reason to follow F1 anymore. While I enjoyed racing last year less than in the previous seasons, Williams' resurgence actually made it quite of an interesting season. Maybe this year could get interesting if Williams could realistically challenge Ferrari for the WCC P2.

[ToxicEnviroment]

Why I'm passionate about F1 is because once upon a time when I was a little boy I thought that things like McLaren -TAG, Williams-Honda, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost etc, etc were the coolest things ever. They occupied my mind 24/7. Waiting for a race every fortnight was like a religious ceremony filled with drawing cars, circuits, helmets, writing down results and counting points.

Sadly each decade got watered down. Needless to say I didn't even bother watching today's race. In fact I watched only Melbourne and Malaysia this year. Or was it Melbourne and China. Not sure anymore. They look the same anyway.

Edited by ToxicEnviroment, 05 July 2015 - 23:20.