78 replies to this topic

[Don Capps]

I will moreorless repeat something I said over on Racing Comments: I feel absolutely no -- as in zero -- obligation or need to watch, support, or even like the F1 of today. If it is boring or unexciting or mindless or simply a poor waste of my time, I move onto other things.

If I never watch another F1 race will the world suddenly be the poorer? Will the tides cease to rise and fall? Will the Moon vanish from the heavens? Will Pi suddenly become an even number? Will Bernie Ecclestone rush to the phone to plead with me to return to the fold?

Of course not!

F1 is just another sport that is just another big business. That it allows many here at Atlas to enjoy themselves is wonderful.

That just because I enjoyed GP racing in 1964 does not necessarily mean that I have to enjoy it in 2004. Indeed, had I not enjoyed GP racing in 1964, I probably would enjoy F1 in 2004. I have problems "relating" to the F1 of 2004 and think that the product simply isn't that good. As a customer, why should I feel an sense of obligation to purchase a shoddy product or one that I don't need.

I certainly don't "need" F1 in 2004.

You know, I really feel sorry for Michael Schumacher. The guy can't get a break. A truly talented and skilled driver, he shows up when there really isn't a way to place his abilities in a context that can be appreciated. I think he would be a truly awesome test pilot, someone whose skills when strapped into an X-1 or the X-15 or an XF-104 would make even the dimmest bulb in the pantry sit up and take notice.

Too bad he doesn't have that Moss streak in him -- winning a race with a Minardi would be a superb way to make some folks zip their lips about him. And, let's be truthful, as terrible as the Minardi probably is, Schumacher could drag that puppy to places where it had no business being.

But, I keep thinking of Schumacher living in the German colony outside Charlotte and partnering his near-clone, Jeff Gordon, in Nextel Cup as Terry Labonte's replacement. Just think of often the number "5" would pop up in rear windows throughout America -- but there would go his anonymity in the US. He would have to vacation in Europe to escape.... Consider this any way you want, but it would be fasciating to see Ryan Newman and Michael Schumacher squaring off during qualifying sessions.....

Any way, you can probably tell that I have time on my hands.... :

[RTH]

Look at Rossi - its too easy to win the world title every year on the best bike - so this year he is getting on something which is very un-used to winning anything .

Well I would not dare put money on him not being champion again this year !


Fangio, and Stewart could win in some fairly unlikely cars - maybe Michael should have the courage to emulate them.

For me the state of the present situation is firmly at the door of the rule makers , its their championship - time they pulled themselves together and took decisive action on a long term plan to repair the damage their negligence has caused.

[Bumblyari]

Surely one of the reasons people (including me) find current F1 boring is that there is too much of it ?

In the old days if you wanted to watch a GP you had to be there, all that was on the telly was just the odd few laps squeezed in between the horse racing. And being there is invariably more interesting than watching it on the box. I would never willingly watch ballet on the TV but when someone took me to watch it in the flesh I thoroughly enjoyed it.

These days, F1 is beamed into our living rooms in all its minutest detail every other weekend with lots of other televised racing filling the gaps. What happened to the old adage of having too much of a good thing ? Probably if the Goodwood Revival Meeting was on every other weekend I would get fed up with that as well (after a decade or two).

What they should do is reduce the number of GPs in a year to 6, then each one would be that much more important and it would free-up the drivers to go and race something else on the other 46 week-ends of the year.

That's funny, I could have sworn that was a pig flying past my window.

[conjohn]

Originally posted by RTH
Fangio, and Stewart could win in some fairly unlikely cars - maybe Michael should have the courage to emulate them.

Wasn't that exactly what Michael did in 1996? He left Benetton after two WDC's to drive for a team that had won 2 races in the last five years. Admittedly a little better than Minardi, but then Fangio didn't switch to Connaught or Stewart to Surtees...

[fines]

I think Mattijs and Roger are absolutely right when they say F1 has a right to be boring - to the true enthusiast, it's never boring anyway! I used to think along these lines when I was still watching F1. But...

Nowadays, F1 is worse than boring, it's irrelevant. It used to be a sport, but they (Mosley & Ecclestone) tinkered with the rules to make it less sport and more entertainment. As a sport, it's non-existent these days, as entertainment it's a complete and utter failure.

I pity you who have to fall back on other sports such as NASCAR or Football (yikes!) to satisfy your needs. What a wonderful world it is when you get to the sports pages of the newspapers and ignore them totally! In fact, the best papers don't have any sports pages, and I don't miss them a bit.

[Barry Boor]

Picking up on Roger's suspicions regarding closet football fans....

If Mr. Beard and Mr. 1016 are so violently opposed to the noble sport of football, what on earth were they doing looking in a thread titled 'Millwall v Tranmere'?

I think we should be told!

[Richard Jenkins]

Originally posted by Barry Boor
Picking up on Roger's suspicions regarding closet football fans....

If Mr. Beard and Mr. 1016 are so violently opposed to the noble sport of football, what on earth were they doing looking in a thread titled 'Millwall v Tranmere'?

I think we should be told!

Not only that Barry, but look at the first post again - does Allen actually mention anywhere that it was a football match? Nope ;)

Not until Mr. 1016 says so - the quickest to react



Two things to pick up on -
1) Why do people here, with obvious brains, still listen to ITV? Keep the picture on & put on 5 Live. Whatever happens in the race, you won't be moaning about the commentary.

2) Sunday was a really great day of sport on paper, but by the time that crooked Australian ref cancelled two tries at the Millennium Stadium, I had the distinct feeling that with the GP, Q/F & 6 Nations, that I had wasted my time entirely & was better off watching the "Nana-Wilfred" storyline on Eastenders

[David Beard]

Originally posted by Barry Boor
Picking up on Roger's suspicions regarding closet football fans....

If Mr. Beard and Mr. 1016 are so violently opposed to the noble sport of football, what on earth were they doing looking in a thread titled 'Millwall v Tranmere'?

I think we should be told!

A. I read every thread.

B. I had no idea it was going to be about football.

[fines]

Originally posted by David Beard


A. I read every thread.

You masochist...

[VAR1016]

Originally posted by Barry Boor
Picking up on Roger's suspicions regarding closet football fans....

If Mr. Beard and Mr. 1016 are so violently opposed to the noble sport of football, what on earth were they doing looking in a thread titled 'Millwall v Tranmere'?

I think we should be told!

Ah-hah!

Well, I wondered what it was doing here, so I thought that I'd have a look.

And anyone in England who has read a newspaper, or even the Sun, will have heard of Millwall and its appalling "supporters".

I always thought that "Tranmere" was a lovely name; where is it?

Similarly "Stenhousemuir"

"Hamilton Academicals" is another good one; only a lunatic would come up with "Millwall Academicals"

PdeRL

[Barry Boor]

VAR, Tranmere is an area adjacent to Birkenhead on the Wirral peninsula across the Mersey from Liverpool.

Millwall supporters poor reputation has been forgotten many years ago, mainly when they moved from their tatty old stadium in Cold Blow Lane to the New Den, just up the road.

Hamilton Academicals is probably only equalled by that other well-known Scottish team Comical Diabolicals!

[Roger Clark]

Originally posted by David Beard




B. I had no idea it was going to be about football.

But you carried on reading it when you found out.

[Racer.Demon]

Originally posted by David Beard


A. I read every thread.

B. I had no idea it was going to be about football.

The opposite of A and B would apply to me...

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by VAR1016



I always thought that "Tranmere" was a lovely name; where is it?


PdeRL

It's a grotty part of Birkenhead, a fairly grotty town that faces Liverpool across the Mersey.

[Racer.Demon]

Originally posted by fines
Nowadays, F1 is worse than boring, it's irrelevant. It used to be a sport, but they (Mosley & Ecclestone) tinkered with the rules to make it less sport and more entertainment. As a sport, it's non-existent these days, as entertainment it's a complete and utter failure.

Good point, Michael, sums it up for me - and the best excuse for Don to stop bothering.;)

So how come I'm still watching? Force of habit perhaps? Is it the hope of seeing some flashes of fine individual driving? Or did Ferrari's dominance prove it's still a sport, no matter how hard Max, Bernie, the manufacturers and the team-boss gang try to transform it into a thriller/soap/videogame (depending on the kind of casual viewer)?

On a different note - the latest Autosport revamp (yes, I still get that) is further testimony to the dumbing down to a wide audience. "We've tried to pack in more analysis, more technical features and a better in-depth read", says editor John McIlroy. Har-har. So "Starting now: the best F1 season for a generation" (don't expect this week's issue to be covered by humble pie), the poor-pun-intended headlines in the Pit & Paddock briefs and new items such as "This week in pictures" or "Office obsessions" are a "better in-depth read"? I know, I know, I'm kicking a dead horse...

Anyway, I can also relate to your experience of having stopped reading the sports sections of the newspapers - or watching sports programmes on television. Sport is everywhere these days, the media have killed my interest with their overkill.

Today, I will only watch the marginal sports that my 5-year-old enjoys watching - such as motorcycle trials and ski jumping...

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by Racer.Demon

On a different note - the latest Autosport revamp (yes, I still get that) is further testimony to the dumbing down to a wide audience. "We've tried to pack in more analysis, more technical features and a better in-depth read", says editor John McIlroy. Har-har. So "Starting now: the best F1 season for a generation" (don't expect this week's issue to be covered by humble pie), the poor-pun-intended headlines in the Pit & Paddock briefs and new items such as "This week in pictures" or "Office obsessions" are a "better in-depth read"? I know, I know, I'm kicking a dead horse...

Last week's issue wasn't too bad. This week's is just page after page after page of tedious F1 willy-waving, and could have been the last straw.

[RTH]

Interesting story just appeared on crash.net

www.crash.net/uk/en/news_view.asp?cid=1&nid=87025

Britains MARKETING magazine is suggesting that the FOM's world wide audience TV viewing figures are compiled in a way that overstates the actual number of people who make a concious decision to sit down to watch a Grand Prix.

FOM Quotes 300million people watch each GP - Marketing say this should read 160million

Read the story for yourselves to get the full details and context.

If 'Autosport' was a horse it would probably be kindest to shoot it - call that a major revamp - its rearranging the deckchairs on the deck of the ..............

Still multiple pages of meaningless waffle, and why would I want to look at a 2 page spread of someones forehead and sunglass's? Photo's should report news - at present they are a waste of printing ink - most of it red.

They had better do a great deal better than this before my subscription runs out.

[ian senior]

Originally posted by VAR1016



"Hamilton Academicals" is another good one; only a lunatic would come up with "Millwall Academicals"

PdeRL

Or "Hamilton Ungrammaticals" as my BA (Hons) English graduate friend pointed out to me. Not quite sure where they get the non-word "academicals" from.

A pity racing cars or teams don't (generally) have such exotic names. I always did like "Knickers in Tins Racing", they don't come much more picturesque than that. Any others? Anyone remember a 750 Formula car called the the Tetranychus Telarius - that being the scientific name for a certain little red spider (which the car was).

[Tim Murray]

Originally posted by ian senior
Anyone remember a 750 Formula car called the the Tetranychus Telarius - that being the scientific name for a certain little red spider (which the car was).

Absolutely - usually referred to as 'Tatty Knickers' IIRC.

Talking about ungrammatical Scottish football teams, I've always wondered how on earth they came up with the name 'Airdrieonians'.

[LB]

Originally posted by ian senior


Or "Hamilton Ungrammaticals" as my BA (Hons) English graduate friend pointed out to me. Not quite sure where they get the non-word "academicals" from.

They were formed in a school (Hamilton Academy) and theres no s. Hamilton Academical F.C. is the correct name.

Airdrie are no longer Airdrionians ( which is just the name for people from Airdrie like Glasweigans) They went bust a couple of yers ago and became Airdrie United.

[Racer.Demon]

Originally posted by fines
As a sport, it's non-existent these days, as entertainment it's a complete and utter failure.

The television folk seem to agree...

http://www.grandprix...ns/ns12597.html

[LB]

Originally posted by VAR1016
I always thought that "Tranmere" was a lovely name; where is it?

Similarly "Stenhousemuir"

Stenhousemuir is a town near Falkirk. Umm maybe 20 miles NW of Edinburgh along the forth valley.

any more?

[LB]

Originally posted by Barry Boor

Talking of boring... I see we are in for an epic Cup Final this year....

Well my Dad is from Sunderland and If they get there I will likely be going so - hopefully

remember 1973?

[ensign14]

Originally posted by LB

Airdrie are no longer Airdrionians ( which is just the name for people from Airdrie like Glasweigans) They went bust a couple of yers ago and became Airdrie United.

Technically Airdrieonians went bust and vanished. Clydebank FC moved to Airdrie and changed their name to Airdrie United. Thanks to the genius administrators behind the Scottish FA who, when there was a gap in the Scottish League cos of the Diamonds' withdrawal, refused to allow new club Airdrie United to join but gave the spot to Gretna. So Airdrie Utd bought the Bankies. Which allowed them to start in Scottish Division 2, not 3.

The Cup Final will be an echoing void for me. So near, yet so far...

If Tranmere make it to the Final we may have the compensation of a Cup Final record by Half Man Half Biscuit (heroes behind "All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit" and "Teenage Armchair Honved Fan" and who refused to appear on The Tube cos Tranny were playing that night).

[conjohn]

Originally posted by LB
remember 1973?

With the greatest of pleasure ha'way the lads

[LB]

Originally posted by ensign14
Technically Airdrieonians went bust and vanished. Clydebank FC moved to Airdrie and changed their name to Airdrie United. Thanks to the genius administrators behind the Scottish FA who, when there was a gap in the Scottish League cos of the Diamonds' withdrawal, refused to allow new club Airdrie United to join but gave the spot to Gretna. So Airdrie Utd bought the Bankies. Which allowed them to start in Scottish Division 2, not 3.

Fair point but still Airdrie Utd picked up a lot of Airdries playing staff. I'd forgotten about Clydebank but as a St Mirren* fan you tend to.

*patron Saint of Paisley btw as opposed to St Johnstone which is literal - St Johns Town.

[Vitesse2]

Originally posted by LB


Well my Dad is from Sunderland and If they get there I will likely be going so - hopefully

remember 1973?

Oh yes. Funny story ....

Peter, the ten-year-old son of some friends of my parents came to watch the match on our colour TV (they only had black & white - those were the days!). He was a mad keen Leeds fan and of course expected his team to win by several goals. As the game wore on, he got increasingly desperate as the Sunderland keeper pulled off a series of impossible saves. By the end, when the underdogs of Sunderland had performed their miracle, he was in tears and inconsolable. After the medal presentations the Sunderland lads went round the dog track with the Cup: at this point, Peter spotted the Sunderland goalkeeper, pointed an accusing finger at the screen and, through his sobs, blurted out "It's all HIS fault!"

[LB]

ApparentlyI was dressed up in a red and white romper suit and can't remember that much of the game. (I was only 2 months old at the time)

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by ian senior

I always did like "Knickers in Tins Racing", they don't come much more picturesque than that. Any others?

A favourite team of mine when I was a nipper! Gorgeously turned-out red and black minis.... and apart from the skirts on the girls in the paddock the cars looked good too ;P