Category: Too Much Racing

A Proper Offseason

I’m priveliged to host two posts in this weekend’s VivaF1 Blog Swap, here is the second post which is by Allen Wedge from Grab Bag Sports.

As we set sail into this thing known as the motorsport off-season I can help but want to write a piece on how… boring… it is.
Truly, we don’t need to extend the seasons of Formula One, IndyCar, Rally, and for the love of all that is holy do not extend NASCAR. The problem isn’t the timing of the off-season, but that there is a literal break in action for about 3 months; and let’s not pretend testing and “Silly Seasons” suffice. For now I and many other await the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Do we wait because it’s a great and amazing event? Not really, we wait because it’s the unofficial beginning to the motorsports year, by containing drivers from 7-8+ different series providing almost an All-Star type nature. That’s what we’re missing for the off-season; something that fills the space of November/December/January (possibly even February).
We’ve recently lost A1GP which was out best bet, but it was run so poorly and spread out that I lost its way and died. The Race of Champions is getting better, but its own announcers are unsure of how it operates, rules, and no one is allowed to watch it live (without going the extra mile). In the USA we have major Karting events that pull All-Star type rosters, but the SKUSA Super Nationals were held the week before ROC, so even with these off-season events, we’re still stuck in a lull.

What Do We Need? We need a proper international all-star series. And it needs to not be an expansion of ROC, A1GP or the U.S.’s former IROC series. Instead it needs to pull from all of them, it needs:
Multiple Race dates and locations (happening ONLY during the off-season of major series). A1GP had one thing truly correct, multiple dates touring internationally, with the qualifier that a country needed a “horse in the race” in order to host. It doesn’t need 15 rounds, but anywhere from 4-8 would suffice.
Competition via Nations: A1GP and even ROC has proven this to be the most effective route to make fans/onlookers pay attention to something new/foreign. Anytime you can quickly look and see national flags, it’s easy to pick a rooting interest, regardless of having to know the participants. But there is something neither A1GP nor ROC have done, and that’s requiring the different nations to form a line-up of drivers. Ireland won A1GP using only a single driver, Germany wins ROC using two; essentially it’s not a countrywide effort.  So…
Force roster building and usage: Let’s say there are 7 race weekends involved. At each weekend there are two scored events (14 in all). Here’s the rule, each nation must field 6 different drivers in scoring competitions minimum (no maximum). This means Schumacher can’t run 100% of the events for Germany; at most he could run 9 of the 14. It needs to be more like the Ryder Cup in golf, or Olympics; countries need a strong roster, not just 1 person who holds it all up. Secondarily, it’s also so countries like USA, who have a MASSIVE/DIVERSE set of drivers to choose from, can get many of them in there; this year at ROC we were stuck (again) with Carl Edwards, a debatable-at-best champion, who went a whopping 0-4. This also means that a driver doesn’t have to go to all 4-8 rounds; they can just do one and then let countrymen pick up other dates if they have other commitments.
Competition diversity. This goes along with the schedule, but the rounds should tailor themselves more to helping the many kinds of drivers involved. A1GP was too strong for European drivers, ROC is at least better, but how about a round in the USA that resembles Rally X/Rally America; how about a round in Australia that more resembles V8 Supercars and some dirt buggying? ROC has many cars lying around, as does the former A1GP, which is for sale; and Rally cars aren’t hard to round up.

It needs more drivers/countries. ROC had a whopping 6-1/2 nations represented, not enough. Where were Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, and Brazil!? A1GP at least had that better covered, and it worked great because it let you learn about other countries and their drivers and driver’s backgrounds when they come from other countries.
Lastly, It needs a way for people internationally to watch, without having to pay additional money than what they already pay for internet or TV.

Now… someone with a lot of money, go and do this! I speak broadly above, but hashing out these details are not hard, I’ll do that work, just ask me to, we’ll all be a lot less bored if it can be done

Trop de Course?

This guest post appears as part of the latest round of the VivaF1 Blog Swap, and is written by Maverick from the host site itself.

One group who currently seem to have no fear of being snowed under with Too Much Racing seems to be the French, with no sign of the return of the French Grand Prix and the motorsport industry in general, in the doldrums. That said, you could be forgiven for thinking that as long as they have 24 Heures du Mans, they’ll remain happy.

Often considered the original Grand Prix, having first run in 1906, the French Grand Prix (or Grand Prix de l’ACF as it was) missed just one season of the Formula World Championship in 1955. That was, until 2009 when the race was cancelled with organisers citing economic reasons. Since that announcement at the end of the 2008 season, the French Grand Prix has shown little sign of returning regardless of the number of proposed locations, most notably at Flins-Les Mureaux where plans for a new circuit were eventually abandoned. Despite Magny-Cours recently expressing confidence that a series of improvements would see the race return in 2012, the already crowed calendar would seem to prevent that prospect for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the longer the race remains absent from the Formula One calendar, the less it can rely on playing the “historic race” card.

It’s not only France’s international status that has fallen in to decline. In 2003 the French Formula Three series merged with its German counterpart to form the Formula Three Euroseries as entries dwindled. While the Signature and ART Grand Prix teams have produced a strong French showing in the series, its notable that the French only host a small proportion of the series and just one of this year’s nine meetings took place on French soil.

So Le Mans remains strong but the Grand Prix has gone, meanwhile the third part of French motor racing’s triumvirate, the Pau Grand Prix has become a shadow of its former self. The Pau Grand Prix, the first race to carry the title “Grand Prix” back 1901 was for a period a non-championship F1 race before becoming the jewel in the crown of Formula 2 and then F3000. However, it has gradually lost its lustre in recent years before being suspended altogether this year. It remains to be seen whether the ambitious invitational event for F3 cars planned next year can revive this grand old lady of motorsport.

It’s not only the motor racing though but the whole associated industry that appears to be in the doldrums.

French motorsport as a whole may end up as wistful as Rene Arnoux at the 2003 Goodwood FoS

While there are sparks of optimism, notably Peugeot’s Le Mans exploits while ART Grand Prix has been a force to be reckoned with in GP2 and F3, the inflexible labour market has prevented teams from being competitive with outfits from other countries. If you consider that Renault F1 is fundamentally an English team funded by the French (and now only partly so) then the last French Formula One team was Prost Grand Prix which folded at the beginning of 2002 with debts in the region of $30 million. Prior to that, AGS and Larrouse suffered similar fates while the DAMS F1 project got little further than building a chassis.

The result of that has inevitably filtered down the feeding chain in the form of a lack of support for up and coming, home-grown talent. In recent years, Romain Grosjean, Sébastien Bourdais and Franck Montagny have quickly come and gone and the last French drivers to make a substantial run in F1 were Olivier Panis and Jean Alesi whose careers came to an end in 2004 and 2001 respectively. Perhaps, the few prospects for the future are this year’s British Formula Three Champion, Jean-Eric Vergne, who tested with Toro Rosso in the recent young drivers’ test, and Ferrari test driver Jules Bianchi. However, a few years ago the same would have been said about Grosjean. Unfortunately, the question is whether any of them can secure the necessary financial backing to fund their way to the top echelon of open-wheel racing in a climate of French motor sport apathy.

Still, Le Mans carries on shouldering a nation’s motoring pride (alas, Peugeot’s self destruction spoilt the party this year) and while the French Grand Prix’s absence continues, that reliance will only strengthen in the hearts and minds of the French.

Overall, it’s a sad state of affairs that the country that gave motorsport to the world finds itself in. The French created the Grand Prix and for the early decades of racing their blue cars dominated. Yet that appears to be part of the problem: A look at the racing calendar of French circuits sees classic car races predominant. In short, French motorsport gives the appearance of being content to dwell on the glories of the past with no plan for the future.

Appearance on the latest Sidepodchat

www.sidepodcast.com
Sidepodcast

Late on Friday night saw the recording of the latest in the occasional ‘Sidepodchat’ series at Sidepodcast.com, and I was one of the lucky people to appear. The concept is a short 10-minute show in which Christine and Mr C chat with a small panel of guests about a particular topic or theme. This week’s other guests included some of your other favourite bloggers like Gavin and Lukeh and SPC commenters Steven and Bassano

This Chat’s theme was the Renault F1 team and specifically the driver line-up for 2011. Who will join Kubica? What is the future of the team? It was fun, it always is! Keep an eye out for future editions, who knows you might even appear on one soon – anyone can.

Be sure to check it out here, at 12 minutes in length you have no excuse not to.

I’m Watching.. Race of Champions

This weekend I watched the online feed of the Race of Champions. On the whole I enjoyed it, unfortunately there were a great many problems with it this year – and they are fairly similar to problems with past events.

My RoC History

I’ve been disappointed by the Race of Champions in the past. I went to Wembley in 2007 to sit in expensive seats (they were very much over-priced, in hindsight) watching slow cars on a twisty track. Don’t get me wrong, it was a really good event and we had a superb view, it was just that the track was just too tight and too cold so the cars didn’t have any speed at all, so the costs didn’t justify it at all. I heard they became more realistic for 2008.

For the 2010 event I was really pleased to see they had been able to use the different dimensions of the ESPRIT Arena in Düsseldorf to create a faster, wider, more open race track. I’m also pleased they moved it a few weeks earlier and into a venue with heating, which I hope the crowd enjoyed!

The other problem in 2007 was that not enough information was given to the crowd. Stadium commentary from Martin Haven was good when describing the on-track action, not so good at explaining to the fans just who these people in the cars actually were. I swear most of the crowd were not dedicated motorsport fans so had no idea who half the drivers were, yet the whole organisation seemed geared around assumed knowledge among fans. I mean.. no video of their achievements on the big screen- surely this is a fairly basic requirement. To this day my Dad who came with me thinks ’07 RoC winner Mattias Ekstrom is a champion rally driver, I keep telling him he’s DTM but it doesn’t go in. What I’m saying is, the 2007 RoC was a good event with flaws, not the great event I’d expected and hoped for.

I’d not seen the RoC before or since because I didn’t have access to Sky Sports or Eurosport during this period and there was no web streaming. In 2009 there was web streaming but I was at work, for some inexplicable reason they’d held it midweek – all reports from those trying to watch it were that it was diabolical and the worst streaming experience they’d ever encountered.

This Year

This year there was web streaming for a fee, and coverage on MotorsTV which I don’t have. I wasn’t going to watch this year because of all the above problems and to start with I objected to paying for something other championships provide for free these days. But as the day approached I grew more excited for the event, the photos and videos being posted on Twitter by the likes of Heikki Kovalainen, Martin Haven and Neil Cole were really getting me into it. With less than hour before it started I’d decided, I was in. There were other reasons I relented:

  • I wanted to see this excellent match up of names;
  • This is an annual event unable to spread the investment costs of web coverage over a full season, on that basis a small charge is justified;
  • The circuit has been improved considerably, it is faster and more exciting;
  • I didn’t want to miss out on the excitement everyone else was getting caught up in;

Largely I am glad I did.

The Positives

– The actual racing itself was superb, there were some fantastic battles particularly in the VW Sciroccos with push-to-pass. When I first saw them I was convinced they would be the most boring vehicles of the lot, yet they really were the best as it seemed almost all the close finishes came with these cars. I wonder if it was the added bonus of the P2P tactics that brought me in? Not sure. Anyway, overall there were many close finishes and even some photo finishes, brilliant, this is why I got excited about it originally a few years ago. Loved both the Nations Cup and Race of Champions aspects. I have no complaints about the racing whatsoever, it was fantastic.

– As I said above, the track was far better than in 2007 and 2008, which I think was an improvement again over the Stade de France layout. I can’t speak for 2009 as like most people in Europe I was at work during that event and the streaming apparently didn’t work anyway.

– I liked the inclusion of the VW Sciroccos and the Audi R8s.

– Moving Martin Haven to join John Hindhaugh in the TV/online booth was a good decision, it didn’t always work (indeed for Saturday’s round-robin action they were thoroughly confused) but I thought when it did work it was really good (with the caveat of the criticisms below). Neil Cole and David Croft were top notch pit/paddock reporters and didn’t put a foot wrong all weekend.

– A big positive this year was the use of social media, @RaceofChampions was tweeting furiously throughout (including retweets of commentators, pit reporters and even some of the competing drivers – many of whom were posting photos/videos). Don’t underestimate how useful this was for catching things missed elsewhere and I relayed many messages on to my followers in case they weren’t following the account.

– Holding an event in Germany. Excellent choice.

– Despite what I’m about to say below I really did enjoy the event, the competition and cameradarie is everything it should be and more.

The… Less Than Positive

While the racing was good that’s not to say the weekend went smoothly. There were many problems, both major and minor. Several of them were fixed for the second day, some will need a bit more of a rethink on the part of the organisers.

– We have to start with the major problem first: the paid-for web feed was abysmal during Saturday’s Nations Cup. It stuttered, stopped and looped so many times it drove everyone to distraction and made the event unwatchable for a while. It started really well with a good quality feed so I wonder if the problems were caused by demand? I forget how long it was down for, it kept requiring a reset of the page (simple F5 and press Play again did the trick) which didn’t always work. Several of us missed a chunk of the Nations Cup because of it. Sidepodcast even gave up watching and demanded a refund, both actions I disagreed with vehemently because I had every expectation it would improve and it did, but the fact remains the stream should have worked well enough not to cause that reaction. It did eventually get going again without cutting out, but it was still scratchy with buffering and small amounts of looping and jumping. It wasn’t until Sunday’s running that the problems were truly cured, Sunday’s running suffered no problems whatsoever, it was flawless. It left me wondering if perhaps in 2011 they ought to offer Friday’s free practices live in order to shake out all these bugs, get them fixed for the real competition.

The stream was more than a little irritating and unprofessional. Had it been a free stream I’d have abandoned it just as early as others did without hesitation. Because I’d paid for it I was determined to keep trying until I absolutely knew it wouldn’t work, because frankly I’ve sat through enough web feeds of live sporting events to know they are incredibly tempermental and you just have to wait it out. This isn’t like some press conference in a hall somewhere, it is far more complicated, and equally these people don’t have BBC-levels of resources to provide their level of streaming. It means patience is required. Of course, if Sunday had been just as bad I’d have been queueing up for my money back.

There were two really bad instances and after that it got better, relatively. I did have to refresh some more times which was annoying, later that turned to buffering, frozen picture then replaying itself for 2-3 seconds as it sorted itself out which left me a minute or so behind. This kind of behaviour is what I expect from a web feed in my experience. For me it is is rare to expect a live web stream to work 100% flawlessly so I expect buffering and stuttering to some degree – then when it does work seamlessly I’m left impressed. The earlier stuff with the cut-outs and the dropping back 5 minutes were totally unacceptable though, more so since we paid for it.

– I am not sure what happened during the Nations Cup, it was one of two things:  Either 1) the commentary team had been given the wrong information beforehand, or 2) the organisers of the event changed the format at the last second. The opening rounds were set up like the World Cup, a round-robin competition with the drivers finishing 1st and 2nd in the group progressing to the next round, based on number of wins and with a tiebreak on time. Unfortunately Haven & Hindy seemed to think it was still the best-of-3 knockout competition of previous years. When they figured out it was a group format, they didn’t know what the ‘Time’ column meant on the on-screen captions. They knew it was a tiebreak but didn’t know if it was cumulative time, best times, or something else. All this stuff should have been prepped and learned beforehand, if it was their error I’d be quite surprised (but not impossible) because they are experienced guys so I’m willing to believe it was either a late change or someone had given them the wrong details. Haven and Hindy were left holding the baby, trying to work with it but really ought to have given up at one stage and went with the flow. I like to think I know enough about these guys by now that they’d do the proper research before the event to know what the format was supposed to be – surely? – so for the time being I’ll blame the RoC organisers. I might be wrong, it could be the guys’ fault. Sunday was pretty much flawless, there were a few calls of a driver leading when I was sure it was the other one.. but that could’ve been me.

– The TV coverage was on MotorsTV only, which was a shame. I quite like Motors and they do reasonably well on a tiny budget but their audience share is negligible. The Race of Champions should be on Eurosport, ESPN or Sky Sports. I don’t want MotorsTV to go out of business but ‘champions’ ought to be represented somewhere with a higher profile.

– Organising an event in Germany was brilliant. Doing so when their main domestic championship was out of the country was not. I’ve no idea who fixed a date first, it could be DTM’s fault – either way it was a disappointment. I have to assume RoC and ITR/DTM consulted each other and couldn’t reach agreement on a date. Shame. DTM champ Mattias Ekstrom is a past RoC champion and he demonstrated his Audi at Wembley.

Minor Issues

– The driver line-ups are still curious and there are some strange choices, many seemingly flouting the ‘Champions’ name. I still don’t know how Albuquerque, Pastrana and Foust qualify even though they are great personalities and great talents – indeed the first named won Sunday’s RoC so he’s no slouch and I think this event could be the making of the man. But.. if this is a true Race of Champions, what had they won before this weekend? It might be that some of them actually have won things – we weren’t told. Even with people as good as Kovalainen, people maybe ought to have been told he qualifies as winner of the 2004 Renault World Series (or Nissan, as was). And while the BTCC champion in my eyes is a perfectly valid addition, do many people outside the UK know who Jason Plato is? Do many in Europe know who Carl Edwards is, for that matter? I’m not talking dedicated racing freaks like us, I mean normal people! I do completely understand that not all invitees might be there, due to contractual obligations and such like.

It goes back to what I said before about telling the audience who people are. Haven/Hindy did a fair job but you have to wonder if it should be left to the commentary to do it. There were some great little segments introducing each vehicle before each round and these began to be repeated a little too often – could it hurt to have something similar for drivers in that space in the coverage?

– The failing of the circuit timing (apparently a new system) would not normally be forgiveable. As an end-of-year knockaround I’m not quite so bothered as I would be for a major championship event, and I wouldn’t be at all if it had remained a knockout format start to finish as the timing would be irrelevant. Since the tiebreaker for progressing to the semi-finals was based on time (though we’re still not sure how – it seemed to be the two best times added together) and the system was broken, you do have to wonder if any of the drivers or teams were promoted incorrectly.

– Tell the drivers what is happening, the pit reporters shouldn’t be the ones to tell them they are in the final.

Summary

Despite many flaws I really thoroughly enjoyed the Race of Champions. It may not seem like it but I’m trying to provide constructive feedback! Once again it was a good event with flaws, not a truly great event, and the reason I’m being critical is because the potential is there for everyone to see, it is so tantalisingly close. I don’t know many that don’t like the RoC as a concept, the execution could be a little better that’s all. If they are able to address even half of these issues – web streaming is a must – then it will be even better.

I have every intention of watching next year and I expect to see improvements.