TBK-Light.com

Yeah I agree.

2013 sucked because Vettel won 13/19 races.

2014 sucked because Mercedes won 16/19 races, with Hamilton taking 11 of those.

2015 sucked because Mercedes won 16/19 races, with Hamilton taking only 10 of those...lol.

2016 sucked less but Mercedes still won 19/21 races, but at least Rosberg won the championship instead of Lewis.

2017 was very disappointing as Vettel failed to take advantage of his good car.

2018, Vettel is barely hanging on but if he continues as he has recently, it's over.

2012 was the last decent season in F1, where quite a few different drivers won races and McLaren actually were still relatively decent. Even a Williams-Renault driven by a random Venezuelan won a race!

you can thank Lewis engine wenting kaputt at Malaysia for a bit better season

but concerning teams, all of them deserve our hatred, mostly for boring liveries, boring team calls, boring hirings and for boring political decisions

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Hey you know what, I've liked a lot of the racing in the past few seasons and actually like some things about the sport.

Even the increase in downforce for 2017, which ended up being a massive mistake I think everyone will agree, hasn't returned the sport to the nadir of the high downforce, refueling era of the early 2000s, and a boring race we bitch about in 2018 isn't quite the same as a zero action boring race of 2001-2008

Liberty seem to be a force for good in the sport, it's great we can watch highlights and onboards on Youtube after the race and not have that place as a ghost town for F1 action with all the takedowns, we do have 2 teams fighting for the title this year and mercedes isn't the fastest car overall any more (even if they're better at utlilising their package during race events it seems-who would've thought THAT during the early few races where they had the race won and threw it away due to being suprised about the VSC?)

So yeah, I know, everything sucks because we're not 15 any more and cars don't make noise and halo and blah blah

But there are SOME things to like about the sport....right?

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

each time a team starts dominating the thing, it seems is going on forever, is appalling

at least the 2000-2005 a better driver was winning and sometimes being challenged, today the challenger has retired and all we have is that austrian moron not letting the dominant team have a little action among their cars

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

^^ I agree with this

I think we all would argue there are certain aspects of the sport that need to be made less joyless, but the Mercedes era was never as boring as 2011/13 or 2002/04, because Lewis and Nico were allowed to race each other and often did. And the last couple of years we've had some good races, and a handful of great ones, which is about par for the course in F1 history. Not every race is going to be interesting, and you need to have some boring races to make the great ones feel so important - the emphasis should always be on drama rather than action, because that's what's remembered

I'd like to see more teams, more manufacturers, more sponsors, more tyre suppliers, more gravel traps and unreliability, and more aggressive and riskier decisions by the teams around drivers. But I suspect what we have now is the future because Pandora's box is open, and it's not as bad as it could be. It's never going to be 1997 again and that's fine. In some ways, maybe it would be better to go in the opposite direction of what fans want. I found it very interesting that Mark Webber recently suggested making the drivers more distant from the fans, because in some ways we're getting too close to them via things like social media. I think he has a point - there needs to be mystery there. We know too much

I just hope it develops organically into an interesting sport again. I don't think this constant top-down interference from the FIA has helped over the last decade. It feels like every big decision has had more negative unintended consequences than the positive aspects they were meant to achieve. But I think we have to let Ross Brawn get on with it. If anyone's going to sort it out, it's going to be him

It goes in cycles I guess.

Put it this way, people know I was a big CART/Champcar fan and hated the IRL
So from my perspective I loved the late 90s to late 2000s for Cart, then had to suffer through the Crapwagon IRLs and new chasis they just couldn't quite get right.
Now the FINALLY aren't scared to do things like CART used to, particularly in regards to a good looking car that can actually race worth a damn, and it's improving leaps and bounds

Same with F1, I got addicted to the sport and it seemed great when I was a kid.
Then getting the internet and access to the history of the sport, you realise the racing you're seeing is lacking
But because it's all you've ever known, you expect it to always be that way.
Then SURPRISE!, for 09 they slash downforce, for '10, they ban refueling and the final piece of the puzzle, Pirelli come in for 2011 and suddenly F1 is at a high water mark again and 2012 is the best season in the championship's history.
You mention '11 and '13 but I actually really liked those seasons too. Vettel ran away with the best car, but there was some damn RACING for every other position.
Obviously, they have to ruin a good thing eventually, but that's just F1 being F1.

I guess what I'm saying is, truely, the sport is never doomed. It just goes through different phases of what people within the sport thing is important IE techincal purity or on track racing.
In the 60s there were people lamenting front engined machines.
In the 70s, there were people bitching about wings being added to the cars (hey, they had a point )
In the 80s, people were bitching about fuel saving and that turbo engines weren't F1 (lolololol)
In the 90s, people bitched about refueling and safety cars coming in, as well as the narrow track grooved tyres when they arrived.
In the 2000s they bitched about team orders and dominance and shook the sport up as a result. Oh, and breakaway series.

Now, they bitch about the engines, about tyres, about 2 tier f1 and whatever else that's the problem of the moment.
But don't forget, your worst era ever is someone else's golden age.

If you don't like F1 at the moment, just wait 5 years for the next set of techincal regs to shake things up, then give it another go

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

The days where you could expect to draw a crowd for 2 hours to watch a predictable spectacle with the tiny hope of something unexpected happening are over. While we're debating whether today's races are more or less boring than ones 20 years ago, younger generations today are drawn to shows that offer more entertainment in less time. The racing series that survive will do so not with gimmicks but with competitive racing and a business model that makes it worth it for competitors. F1 isn't showing any signs of ever offering either, and its history and prestige won't save it forever.

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Motorsport as a whole is on the downturn, not just F1

We might be the last generation that gets to enjoy it, at least in this form.

Hell, if they invent some green energy personal drone flying machines as our main mode of transport in the next 50 years or so (this is the best I can come up with, a little bit more realistic than my first idea, star Trek style beaming :P ) , cars and therefore car racing will be done.

People on here know I moan about the introductions of VSC, Halo and SC starts in wet weather and whatever, I've come to terms with the fact that each year you watch the sport is a case of diminishing returns. Every year gets a little teeny tiny bit worse.
But there's also, glass half full mode engaged, a lot of positives to keep you watching too
And sometimes, like Indycar, it can surprise you by heading in a good direction

I guess that's my point overall, it's only going to get more annoying and frustrating if you focus on the negatives. I know we're heading towards a future with covered cockpits, covered wheels, tracks denoted by white lines in supermarket car park swathes of tarmac and probably the driver sitting in the pit lane controlling it remotely. I know too, I'll still be watching at that point.
Bitching about it, no doubt, but still watching.
It's still my passion, it's still the reason I get out of bed at 9am on a Sunday morning after a night out just to watch Mick Schumacher dominate the field.
And it always will be.

Try to enjoy the parts you can and filter out all the negative stuff and we'll enjoy it a lot more
The forum might become a ghost town without our channeled bitching, but we'll be happier :P

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I don't know if that's entirely true - I think the attention span thing is overplayed. People still watch grand slam tennis matches, test cricket, NFL games and baseball games that all run well in excess of most F1 races, and football and rugby matches are roughly the same. If F1's less relevant today, it's not because of the length of its events

My own theory is that F1's big problem at the moment is political. This generation of young people across the Western world is generally a lot more left-leaning, or at least sceptical of big corporations, and motorsport is founded on big business, a glamour associated with ostentatious wealth, and the old Bernie realpolitik of cosying up to questionable world leaders like Putin and the Bahraini royal family. Add in a group of extremely wealthy, mostly white male drivers who come from privileged backgrounds and now live in tax havens and yeah, it's not going to be as attractive. In the past I've often struggled to square my own politics with that of F1 - I decided to live and let live, because ultimately I like fast cars and have done since I was a toddler, but I find other people a lot less forgiving

My concern is I don't see the F1 paddock ever becoming self-aware enough to realise that the very basis of the way the sport is sold to people is massively out of date. The canning of grid girls suggests Liberty might have some idea of this, but I'm not sure how far they will take it. Granted, fashions go in cycles and it's possible that F1 could become fashionable again, but I suspect that would require a big cultural shift, which seems unlikely at the moment

remove F1 from pay tv and bring it back to available channels to all. Sure they lose some income in the short run but it will save them in the long run

That and bringing ticket prices down. Ordinary people are effectively being priced out of seeing F1

the future is ROBORACE

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

But to go a little off topic, IMHO todays young generation are force fed a left wing narrative by the education system and the various media and social media outlets, so it comes as little surprise.

I would argue those sports have other things going for them, such as actual entertainment value/unpredictability or being the sort of activity anyone can take part in as a hobby.

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I don't think that necessarily works - an F1 race with Vettel and Hamilton on the front row is a lot less predictable than a grand slam tennis match between Djokovic and anyone who isn't either Nadal or Federer, for one. Tennis has just been better at selling itself - there was massive interest even when Rafa and Roger were winning all the slams and no one else was anywhere near them

For all the talk of F1 being predictable, 5 different winners this season is pretty much average in F1 history, and there's still plenty of opportunity for Kimi to make it 6. I mean it's not 1982, but equally there were only 5 winners in 1986, which is usually regarded as one of the best seasons ever, and I guarantee you that the cars at the back of the field were a lot less competitive than Williams this year: http://www.statsf1.com/en/statistiques/ ... annee.aspx

Isn't there just four different winners this season?

Last time someone won in a car that was not Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes was 2013 Australian GP when Räikkönen won with Lotus. So yeah, it's pretty predictable as Mercedes has won most of the races in the turbo era, Red Bull has won 11 times and Ferrari 13 times.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

Oh christ yeah, Bottas hasn't won a race either. Completely forgot that

they should wipe 100hp from Mercedes and Ferrari each time they win 2 in a row

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I'm less bothered with the whole dominance things since Vettel. I did dislike it when Ferrari obviously used Barrichello and Massa as a bitch and totally unnecessary let Schumacher pass.

What bothers me more is that everyone is on such a short leash that there is absolutely no way to catch up.
Renault and Honda missed the boat and keep struggling to catch up. Partly because of their own faults but also because they almost have zero play room to try and test things.

I still trust on success ballast until the teams start seeing that spending gazillions is not the way, but a fan friendly with loads of action

if they don't like it, just don't let the door hit your ass

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now