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Somewhere out there is another group of people just getting into F1, who in 10 years will start a thread just like this one longing for the heyday of 2016.

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Or in 20 years for the likes of me, actually exactly that. I started for real in 96.

I mainly watch F1 out of habit. It's what got me into motorsport.

The racing is generally terrible and the tracks are too forgiving with tarmac run off.

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"Many people ask me why I always sign off Till We Meet Again, because goodbye is always so final. Goodbye Dan Wheldon." -Marty Reid

Another thing is stupid penalties for banging wheels.

Basically, if you don't like F1, wait 5 or so years for the next rule set and give it another chance

I got into it 20 years ago, hated it 10 years ago, am happy enough with it now, but I guess next year will return to faster cars with higher downforce levels, so it's up in the air whether that'll be good or not.

F1 changes quite a bit every time they shake up the rules.
Next year will probably be red bull dominance, will a Danny Ric Vs Max championship fight refresh some people's opinions of the sport?
Probably, until they win so much it gets boring again

Don't forget how much we were in favour of everything about the sport in the first half of 2014
Those races were fun....

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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 was a fan years ago, started to follow f1 in 1991 it was love at first sight.
i didn't miss anything, i used to buy magazines, i watched every race from start to finish no matter what time of the day it was broadcasted. i had a collection of magazines in my garage spanning more than 15 years, i think i throw them away some year ago.
i don't know what changed, if it's f1 or me, but nowdays i probably watch 3 full races in a season.

i find more exciting a cycling race than a f1 race and i'm not exagerating.

i think for me many factors occurs:

once, it was a race. it was simple. one hour qualify, You start, you finish, who ends up first wins. And there were drivers.

now, i find it just dull in so many aspects.
there are all sorts of overcomplications. Number of engines, dull penalties, virtual flags, all the gimmicks to produce dull overtakes with kers, mobile wings that you can use only in certain places in certain situations......

everyone gets penalized for "wreckless driving" for no reason

the tracks they all look the same nowdays ( how stupid is to have the same man going around the world to copy&paste the same circuit template over and over? ). Tracks used to have "souls", you could see the different philosophies of different countries by their circuit, you could recognize an italian circuit from a british circuit from a german circuit or an american circuit. Nowdays they go to race in places with no motorracing history in the middle of nowhere where local people don't give a damn about f1 and stands are constantly empty only because someone is paying a lot of moneys for that. Once you went to Imola, Hockenheim, Silverstone and you can think at when Clark or Lauda or even Fangio used to race in those places, now you end up watching a race in the middle of the desert in a track with no soul and you wonder what you are watching.
Even historic tracks get castrated for today safety standards, today hockenheim is stupid, monza has lost it, Silverstone has lost it sometimes i wonder how is it possible that spa still hasn't a chicane before the eau rouge or in the middle of kemmel or Blanchimont.
and i've not mentioned gravel traps or grass. now it's all tarmac with different paint schemes on it. You used to ruin a race for a wide run. Now you can make as many mistakes you want cause you're driving in a very big parking.
I wanna be absolutely clear about this: i don't want to see people risking their lives more than they should i'm more than happy that death is something from the past and that's more risky to play a football game than racing in a f1 race. But I want to see people racing on challenging tracks, 2nd Lesmo was challenging. Roggia Chicane is not.

the drivers, it used to be grown up men drinking and smoking and risking their lives. nowdays you have the first half of the grid with 18 years old top form bragging millionaire kids athletes with no personality who complains whenever a competitor's car is within 5 meters distance from their car and the second half of the grid with untalented spoiled kids of millionaires tycoons who buy the seat for their childrends while true talented drivers ends up in GT or endurance or american races cause they can't find the spot they deserve in f1.
And they have the same attitude of people playing videogames. Drivers used to have that "larger than life" attitude, they knew they could die and they used to live their lives to the fullest and develop caracter and wisdom from it early on.
Nowdays they have the "i'm not a person i'm a product on the market trying to make as many money as i can" attitude mixed to that annoying "i know it all" attitude young kids have making them as unappealing as ever. The more annoying of all are the thin skin spoiled drivers who have been raised as future champions since they were kids, like Rosberg or Hamilton. Also today social media made it even worse if possible.
If you had facebook in the 70 you would see james hunt posting pictures of himself in front of a trailer having a BBQ and drinking beer from a girl's tits before a race. Today you see Rosberg bragging about how much life sucks cause the Moet & Chandon in his 5 stars luxury hotel wasn't cold enough.

I can't stand Hamilton crying for everything, or Massa crying for his visor, or Vettel crying for anything or Britney crying for anything.
I miss the Mansell vs Senna vs Prost, i miss the Schumacher vs Hakkinen vs Montoya, in those days two drivers would come out of their cockpits and punch the living hell out of themselves, now you keep hearing radio messages like "OH GOSH, TELL CHARLIE TO PENALIZE THAT GUY, HE PUT HIS CAR WAS LESS THAN A METER NEAR MINE, HE TRIED TO KILL ME".
it's like the music industry, in the 70's you had led zeppelins and Queen, nowdays you have Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.

Rain. Rain races used to be exciting. nowdays it's almost like nascar, a drop of water and it's safety car or race suspended.

the cars. Nowdays cars are "too polished and overcomplicated". computers and regulations killed imagination.
In the 70-80 you had all sorts of cars with all sorts of different solutions. Nowdays the engines are all the same, the frames are all the same, many times it has been said that if you unpaint them you wouldn't be able to recognize one from another. And they are too complex. I know, f1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of technology so it has to be that way, but i started to follow when a driving wheel was a driving wheel and a paddle shift was considered almost cheating. Nowdays a driving wheel is a damn Nasa computer. An engine has become "a power unit" but it sounds like a chiwawa compared to 1990 engines that sounded like a damn Dies Ire.

overtakes. as i said something is wrong when a sport wich revolves around the concept of overtaking has to introduce all sorts of gimmicks to produce overtakes. Imagine if in football ( talking about soccer for non european readers ) they had to make the goals double the size or put weights on the defenders shoulders in order to have more goals each game, how stupid and wrong would that be?
I mean the history of F1 has been made by overtakes. If i say "Villeneuve-Arnoux" if i say "hakkinen on Schumacher at Spa" if i say "Piquet on Senna at hungaroring" everyone IMMEDIATELY knows what i'm talkin about and a big smile appears on his face.
nowdays in some years time who will dare to say "oh do you remember that overtake when Vettel pushed his kers and opened his rear wing" wow that guy could race.

and i'm already tired of writing this, i don't even want to go on. I know, i sound like an old man who complains about "the good old days". as i said maybe it's just me and all i said is just stupid. i'll let you judge it. Maybe you will tell i'm right on everything. Maybe you'll say that cause you're stupid too. You can't probably be right or wrong about this kind of things, it always end up being just a matter of opinion and this is just how i feel.

Sometimes i wonder how it would be a Nascar style F1. With grand prix that are true events for the crowd going at the circuit, not like nowdays when you spend a month wage for a ticket of a 1 1/2 hour race where you don't see nothing and you can't go anywhere. Cars that are simple and understandable. Rules that are closer to "just race and try not to kill yourselves in the process".

i don't have a wish to see people die. And i don't want to see a gladiator show. I wouldn't want to follow a motorsport where two or three drivers die each year like in the 60/70. But i think f1 has gone even too far in that direction.

F1 started to be all about excitement, nowday is as exciting as watching a chess game. And i'm not picking chess for no reason, f1 can look appealing only for engineers nowdays, how can a normal people relate to "power units, 20 buttons on the driving wheel, gimmicks, penalties, virtual safety cars, engine limits, tyre management" and so on? You have to have the same mindset of someone enjoying chess. Wich is a totally commendable mindset but is not something that common in the population.

Think about cycling. cycling is way more dangerous than f1. They race 100 kmh downhill with no protections other than a plastic bowl on their head, on open road with trees and poles and concrete blocks.
they race in packs elbow to elbow at 60kmh in the speed sections.
There's no race without someone breaking a bone. lot of phisical abuse. But cycling never get criticized for that, it's assumed as a fact of cycling, only critics you hear about cycling is concerning doping. There's risk, riders accept it, they get paid way less than a f1 driver.
You want to stay in the motorracing world, think about rally. they race in damn forests over muddy bumpy roads.

in F1 they build new tracks in the desert cause it's the only place where they can find enough space for todays runoff standards. As i said i don't want to see people die but when you watch a sport wich has to do mostly about bravery and there's no more bravery involved in it, something is missing there.

I don't want to shock anyone with my completely original statement here, but F1 is a business first.

It has priced itself out of the majority of Europe, so heads to the far east where they can afford to throw money around like Scrooge McDuck.
The motor industry has been chasing economy for almost a decade now, F1 was actually quite late in adopting this in 2014 compared to everything Le Mans and other championships were doing with it.
The days of screaming V12/V8 engines are long gone, now it's a race to see who can use technology to be the most efficient.
If you actually re-adjust your thinking that way, there's actually quite a lot of development to be interested in.
If you're just interest in pure horsepower numbers and noise levels, it's probably not going to grab you .
The manufacturers are here to increase the development of their economy engines and when they feel they've got enough development and PR out of it, they'll leave if it suits them.
That's what happens when you base your championship around manufacturer entries.

F1 can't be like it was when we all started watching it, because the world has moved on too.

You can either make your peace with what it is now and enjoy it, or go and do other things while watching classic races in your spare time.

It's never going to go backwards though, that's the point. Every time there's a "how would you fix F1" thread, the fan posts are always the same "They need to drop the economy, they need to go back to Europe!!!" "manufacturers need to just be engine suppliers" etc etc
Well, the horse has long bolted on that one, there's no money for pushing the envelope in engine or aero development, so we either enjoy what it is now or let the teams spend what they want and see the same 1 team domination only with less rear field action as the back of the grid teams are slowly priced out of the sport.

I'm not saying F1 is perfect, it never will be. But it's better than watch it slowly erode away through overspending.

_________________
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