2023 Formula 1 Season: Official Discussion Thread

Other Motorsports Incl Sim Racing
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Two very different articles that reflect on the F1 Vegas weekend. One cynical of the attitude displayed by race organizers and F1 about the drain cover issue (and of the F1 teams towards the damaged Ferrari), the other article so apologetic and optimistic of the Vegas race you would think Liberty Media paid for it themselves:

I have my biases. Like Alan Dove, I’m a bit purist when it comes to the sport as well, even if I don’t follow Formula 1 anywhere near as much as I did years ago. And I have strong opinions about this event as well.

Having pre-race entertainment before a race is nothing new in Formula 1. But before it seemed like it was there solely to entertain the at-race crowd who were waiting for the main event to begin, not intended for any TV audience.

It feels different now. In the Liberty Media era, the pre-race entertainment and glitz is integral to all of the racing. They’re using it, not just to entertain the crowd present, but to sell it to the public at large. Obviously trying to rake in as many casual viewers as they can, to sell it as a very affluent, cosmopolitan, high-net worth thing.

But the more they try to push it to the casual consumer with all of this extraneous stuff, hawking it everywhere on social media and elsewhere, the more it comes off that the core product, the racing itself, is lacking. A long-term follower of F1, it’s grating, even if I think the sport in nowhere as good as it used to be and don’t watch it often, seeing Liberty Media trying to pimp it like a cheap whore to every ******bag with a little extra disposable income.

On the subject of Monaco, I don’t think it was a coincidence a couple years ago, when F1 was negotiating with Monaco race organizers on a new contract, there was a flurry of articles questioning the point of racing in Monte Carlo at all. After years and years of bestowing it the Crown Jewel of the F1 circuit, it was suddenly deemed by some journalists as stodgy, antiquated, uncompetative, a relic. It’s no secret Liberty Media is pushing for events similar to Las Vegas and Miami, potentially at the cost of more traditional venues like Monaco, Monza, or Spa-Francorchamps.

In Las Vegas, the race circuit traveled down The Strip and went by hotels like The Venetian, Paris, and The Bellagio. While Liberty Media tries to pull in the casual fan with more events like Vegas, I can’t be the only one who sees the irony of F1 forgoing GPs in the iconic places of Europe, in order to race by casinos pretending to be them.

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They had to repair the track. I do not know what that costs, but probably more than people think. We do not know the commercial implications of not running the rest of practice and moving the other practice. I think people were required to leave and not watch practice. That surely affected their profitability. I think their repair resulted in filling drains. Surely they will have to undo that. Road construction is never cheap. And they got a bunch of negative press. I do not think Vegas emerged without consequence

852

While I do not really care what happens before or after the race I agree when racing series try too hard to pull in general public that is seeking entertainment instead of focusing on being the best racing series, it works out poorly. I think NASCAR has struggled with this after the explosion starting in the early 90s. If F1 really does reverse grid, it will entertain, but it will be worse racing.

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I just wish IndyCar could decide on an identity, stop trying to undercut themselves all the time, and embrace some modern marketing initiatives.

It is everything in terms of an on track product I wish F1 was.

The way F1 and Liberty handled the city of Vegas and attendees was unacceptable. The race was decent.

I don’t know what you do about a driver and team steam rolling the rest of the field, but it really is remarkable how much a competent broadcast can improve otherwise lukewarm on track action.

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IndyCar is limited in what it can do. The cars are spec-chassis which limits potential hugely. There’s no real team loyalty when all cars are the same pretty much and that impacts the sport massively. I know about damper development and different engines (just two), but that’s not what hits you as a viewer. Without the Indy500, the series is very low-stakes. It’s club racing dressed up as something important. As harsh as that sounds, that’s the bare bones of it.

‘good, close racing’ is in plentiful supply around the world. I can find better on track action at my local kart meeting than Indycar as well. What isn’t in plentiful supply is high-stakes meaningful racing. With the thousands of people behind every F1 car it inherently has more stakes (more intrigue too). That’s where it derives it meaning from. IndyCar can never compete with that in its current form no matter what marketing does.

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I think Sargeant sealed his fate with that q1 exit on track limits twice. Had a car capable of q2 and possibly q3 and wanted it.

How do you go wide in turn 1 twice?

856

It would have been close. His time with going wide was only 0.068 above 15th.

857

Logan has had soooo many quali laps deleted this year. Clearly is just trying too hard.

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Pourchaire being F2 champion is great, but I can’t help but feeling disappointed by his season. Everyone else in the top 5 was more impressive than him this year

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I really can’t tell if you are trolling or serious sometimes. You’re talking about subjectives opinions as if they were facts. I knowing you really like karting above all else, but this a pretty shallow view of Motorsports.

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No serious, and the initial post was about marketing. I don’t mince my words. Often in motorsport people try to shy away from these kind of things. Behind the scenes this is what will be being said.

The reality is you have several drivers in IndyCar who would drop it in seconds to get a drive in F1. That immediately undermines it (and this effects all non-F1 motorsport, even MotoGP oddly enough).

It’s very difficult to market a series as something worthwhile and high-value if the top drivers are trying to position themselves in an F1 context. It is club racing on steroids. Spec-chassis racing is always lower stakes and something that really should be left for the club-racer, not professional motorsport competition. If you cant have high-stakes racing, and this is the core of any marketing strategy, then you’ve got problems. IndyCar can’t move away from its current format because its financially very weak, I know, but that will make it extremely hard to market. It has the Indy500, and that pretty much is what the whole series rests upon.

The same marketing teams promoted Avengers Infinity War & The Marvels. Marketing can only do so much when you don’t have meaning.

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I guess my question is… what makes a particular type of racing meaningful.

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Other than the first and last few laps, I literally was falling asleep.

I do think Checo’s 5 second penalty was a wrong call, but overall another unimpressive qual and thus race for him. Leclerc smartly tried at the end to try and salvage some points for the team, but it wasn’t to be.

So why is Checo safe for 2024? This is certainly a case of, it’s not the driver it’s the car that allowed him to get second place in the driver championship. Albon was certainly more impressive from a driver’s view this year, dragging Williams up to 7th.

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I believe F1 should have ballot racing.
Not reverse grids, absolute random grids.
The race means nothing when the fastest qualifying car starts first and everyone else just follows them around the track.
I’m a little in favour of cost caps, but I’m more in favour of even distribution of funds, you want 18 or whatever cars racing wheel to wheel, stop giving the top teams so much of a share of the money that they leave the smaller teams in the dust.

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A culmination of these factors.

  • The amount of emotional investment each fan has for their team
  • The number of people who engage with a sport
  • Cultural and historical heritage
  • The effort required to build each car
  • The desire of each driver to compete within that competition.
  • Something being ‘proven’

I have a lot of problems with F1, but it ticks more ‘meaning’ boxes than any other competition. It means more to more people because of them.

IndyCar has one of those boxes now and that’s the Indy500. Everything else it’s lacking. It doesn’t have a large fan base, and that fan base is generally not heavily invested in any particular team, this is partly due to the ‘spec’ nature of the chassis. The teams are staffed with far less people. The drivers quite clearly would rather be somewhere else if the opportunity arises.

You can’t divorce marketing the from the product. A marketer will ask “where’s the story, where’s the meaning?”, they will see the story with IndyCar is actually F1. The commentators for some mad reason will mention F1 during the races (which I think is mad). They derive value from F1. “Hey, look an F1 driver has entered IndyCar. Hey McLaren makes F1 cars” etc…

You don’t want 18 cars races wheel to wheel. You want strong narratives, real competition. That means you need clear performance differentiation. F1 only needs two teams going at it for a legendary season. If it becomes random racing you soon start to lose people, a bit like IndyCar or BTCC which can often feel like random result generators.

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Indy 2023

Alex Palou 5 wins
Josef Newgarden 4 wins
Scott Dixon 3 wins
Kyle Kirkwood 2 wins

Roughly 82% of this years races were won by roughly 15% of the field. That does not say random number generator to me. It says good competition

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I’d like to see a mix & match of F1 & Indy car racers… Max, Lewis, Lando racing in a spec Indy car…

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I said often, but not always. It’s not good competition, in my view. 2022 had 9 different winners as did 2021. Or put another way. Dallara has won every race. So it’s either a little bit random, or it’s hyper predictable. Either way, it lacks meaning because of it.

There’s less competition if the cars are the same. Every component, well almost, on an F1 car is an area for development, for competition. Right now we have departments at F1 teams making fuel lines that are in direct competition with each other. I know IndyCar has damper development, but generally speaking is bereft of competition.

It isn’t really open for debate that IndyCar as an tiny viewership globally compared to F1 and a fraction of the column inches. The racing is somewhat inconsequential. To route back to the marketing thing. It’s incredibly difficult to market IndyCar beyond where it’s at because it’s fundamentally lower stakes. it’s easy to attack marketing, but it’s an uphill battle with Indy.

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Its all about perception and what YOU the viewer or attendee value.

F1 is living off the past and the reputation formed as the pinnacle of motorsport and innovation. The on track product sucks. Zero race day strategy involved, and there hasn’t been real passing in quite some time. Every race is the same tire strategy for almost every team…snoozer… Mistakes and crazy weather are all that make the races interesting. I still watch, my son (who races) does not any more. Give them time and they will evolve into spec car racers like the rest, all in the name of cost control.

Indycar and even Nascar used to all pursue innovation and drivers frequently moved between them all. Nascar was the first to move away from innovation and clearly the least alike and had the least crossover. Modern Nascar has wandered so far from its roots in the pursuit to capture fanbase that it has lost what made it unique. The on track product is pretty boring, the cars can no longer relate to the consumer, and the drivers are all whitewashed corporate poster boys with no character.

Indycar used to have much more, but eventually had 2 ways of thought and foolishly split. One was road courses and international drivers and big budgets, one was spec cars all ovals and Indy 500. The model holding Indy won out despite being the inferior product. Fast forward and they now have road courses and ovals with essentially spec cars. The on track product is some great racing, but the lack of team/car identity does hurt them.

F1 gets mentioned all the time in Indy coverage because they have a long time F1 commentator now covering the races. He lost his job when the F1 monopoly feed switched to ESPN. Can’t really call it the ESPN broadcast, its just the ESPN commentators, they have zero control on what the video feed is.

Having been to multiple Indy, F1, Nascar, NHRA, and Super Cross events I think the most accessible to fans of all of them is NHRA and the most exciting on track product is Super Cross. I still watch them all, and they all have pros and cons. I can say, I will not fork over the $$ for another in person F1 race, but all of the others I will.

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Red Bull’s innovative dynamic contact patch reduction system. :grinning:

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