French GP Chat & Predictions

[allsaintchris.]

Well I liked the spectacle that it brought and I found it exciting.

At first it was new and exciting and there were lots of different strategies, but after that it became just part of a normal pitstop so lost its shine as everyone worked out (as hey do with the tyres now) what the optimum strategy is and we had processional races for a long time.

 

[cosicave]

At first it was new and exciting and there were lots of different strategies, but after that it became just part of a normal pitstop so lost its shine as everyone worked out (as hey do with the tyres now) what the optimum strategy is and we had processional races for a long time.

"…as everyone worked out … what the optimum strategy is …"
Exactly. This is the underlying problem, all too easily overlooked with almost all suggestions for rule changes.

Changes in sporting regulations can work - but for the most part, they are short-term sticky-plasters which do little to address the underlying problem - perhaps upsetting the status quo, briefly - or at best, changing the pecking order. Although some may disagree, I think there are two which have been very successful: the current qualifying format is superb when compared to every previous incarnation; and (yes, I know I'll likely be derided for this…) DRS has, for the most part, actually worked!

BUT…

There is one huge elephant in the room which has been (conveniently?) ignored or side-stepped in one way or another for roughly half the time I've existed on this planet. I think we all know what it is. And it is much more significant than any change in sporting regs will ever be. Level the playing field! Completely remove 'historically' based payments (which in reality, are tantamount to back-handers, political persuasions or 'thankyous' - or plain, simple bribery!). They do nothing whatsoever to improve the spectacle - but far, far worse; they do nothing to encourage or improve competition. And when teams attempt to hold the FIA to ransom next time, simply bid them farewell, regardless of name or history.

Yes, I know I've been banging on about it since the inception of the internet, but it really is the biggest single change needed if F1 is to out-grow its own hypocrisies and truly reward human endeavour in both technical prowess and gladiatorial combat.

 

[ched999uk]

There is too much difference between the funding of the top teams and those lower down. I think the budget cap needs to come in BEFORE the reg change. Otherwise if the 2021 rules are announced together with a budget cap those teams who have huge money will plough masses of money into the 2021 rules. Thereby nullifying the budget cap for a few years! So introduce budget cap for 2021 then publish new rules in Jan 2021 coming into effect for 2022 season.

The aero is too complex, maybe remove all these little turning vanes, slots, gaps etc. So maybe just a simple 3 element front wing and a simple rear wing to balance the front no extra bits stuck on.
Somehow make it so there is a possibility for multiple strategies to work. i.e. at last weekends race they said 1 stop only way as such a long pit stop, it costs 25 sec to make a pit stop.

Tyres, well I don't blame Perrelli as they are doing what was asked of them. Somehow we want the drivers to be pushing to the limit so they are more likely to make a mistake. So maybe a dual compound tyre, so when 1 compound is worn out they have a very hard slow tyre underneath. Maybe even make it so the time difference between compounds means multiple pit stops are close in timing to a single pit slop on slower tyres. That may be difficult on different tracks with different pit lanes etc.

Maybe force then to carry the full fuel allowance, so with 'better tyres' and everyone with the same max fuel they have the capability of more pushing.

I personally want to see the drivers on the edge as much as possible. That way the drivers will have more on a effect on the winning car in a race. To a degree Lewis is right, the drivers need to be exhausted at the end of a race not just in terms of fitness but almost mental strength for max concentration for the entire race.

Better racing is a difficult one as there can be so many knock on effects and teams are very very clever at finding 'holes' in the rules.

 

[allsaintchris.]

"…as everyone worked out … what the optimum strategy is …"

There is one huge elephant in the room which has been (conveniently?) ignored or side-stepped in one way or another for roughly half the time I've existed on this planet. I think we all know what it is. And it is much more significant than any change in sporting regs will ever be. Level the playing field! Completely remove 'historically' based payments (which in reality, are tantamount to back-handers, political persuasions or 'thankyous' - or plain, simple bribery!). They do nothing whatsoever to improve the spectacle - but far, far worse; they do nothing to encourage or improve competition. And when teams attempt to hold the FIA to ransom next time, simply bid them farewell, regardless of name or history.

Yes, I know I've been banging on about it since the inception of the internet, but it really is the biggest single change needed if F1 is to out-grow its own hypocrisies and truly reward human endeavour in both technical prowess and gladiatorial combat.

Let's face it, the manufacturer teams may disappear, but so long as the drivers are there, which they will be as new teams take their place, F1 will still live on.

You'd probably even go back to the days when real racing teams compete, rather than manufacturer based advertising hoards go around the track. Isn;t that people are yearning for, the good old days?

The thing is, despite all of that, there will still be the haves and haves not. Ferrari spent years being the best funded team in the paddock yet could go years without winning a race. It would be good to see ingenuity taking the place of a bottomless pile of cash. Then you get to see what the new breed of Chapman's, Murray's and Newey's can really do.

Look how many designers etc have come out of top teams and failed when they've taken up a higher post at a smaller team without the budgets they are used to.

F1 may have a dip, in the same way that a lot of series do when they have a radical overhaul, but it would come back stronger. The problem is, it's not just the teams that are on the gravy train. Would the organisers really want to give up all the lucrative deals they get at the moment?

 

[Justjazz]

Let's face it, the manufacturer teams may disappear, but so long as the drivers are there, which they will be as new teams take their place, F1 will still live on.

You'd probably even go back to the days when real racing teams compete, rather than manufacturer based advertising hoards go around the track. Isn;t that people are yearning for, the good old days?

The thing is, despite all of that, there will still be the haves and haves not. Ferrari spent years being the best funded team in the paddock yet could go years without winning a race. It would be good to see ingenuity taking the place of a bottomless pile of cash. Then you get to see what the new breed of Chapman's, Murray's and Newey's can really do.

Look how many designers etc have come out of top teams and failed when they've taken up a higher post at a smaller team without the budgets they are used to.

F1 may have a dip, in the same way that a lot of series do when they have a radical overhaul, but it would come back stronger. The problem is, it's not just the teams that are on the gravy train. Would the organisers really want to give up all the lucrative deals they get at the moment?

At the end of the day, this is a business. As such, no one in the sport is going to accept a downturn in the expectation that it will bring about an upswing of greater proportions later on, perhaps.
Instead, this is going to be a gradual migration to a new world. Therein, picking the simple things first, that are going to have the greatest upside will be the chosen path. What that translates to is tinkering. Tinkering till they have done enough to raise the audience and response. The boredom debate has raged for decades, in truth. Everybody wants to see Williams capable of going from the back row to the front row. Tinkering won't do it. Taking out the manufacturers is a way, allow teams to easily switch from one engine manufacturer to another if they want, but I think Liberty won't allow that, too risky re the outcome.

 

[allsaintchris.]

At the end of the day, this is a business. As such, no one in the sport is going to accept a downturn in the expectation that it will bring about an upswing of greater proportions later on, perhaps.
Instead, this is going to be a gradual migration to a new world. Therein, picking the simple things first, that are going to have the greatest upside will be the chosen path. What that translates to is tinkering. Tinkering till they have done enough to raise the audience and response. The boredom debate has raged for decades, in truth. Everybody wants to see Williams capable of going from the back row to the front row. Tinkering won't do it. Taking out the manufacturers is a way, allow teams to easily switch from one engine manufacturer to another if they want, but I think Liberty won't allow that, too risky re the outcome.

Correct.

F1 makes too much money. Only when there is a tangible decline in the revenues from F1, such that they can't keep up with payments due to the teams (once they have skimmed off what they want at the top as well), will any serious attention be paid to it

 

[SgtBhaji]

That will come if audience figures begin to decline and they start losing revenue from TV rights, which surely must be happening.

 

[ched999uk]

Correct.

F1 makes too much money. Only when there is a tangible decline in the revenues from F1, such that they can't keep up with payments due to the teams (once they have skimmed off what they want at the top as well), will any serious attention be paid to it

I thought the team payments were a percentage of Liberty profits!!! So they should always be able to keep up payments even if they only make £1 then I think teams get 60p. Not sure if the 'bonus/backhanders' are a fixed fee or a %.

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

That will come if audience figures begin to decline and they start losing revenue from TV rights, which surely must be happening.

Saw somewhere that since 2013 tv audiences have dropped by about 75% .

On my tablet at the moment , but if I get the chance , will post it on here . I may have already done so .

Might have been in the Telegraph ?

The 25% are people who pay .

 

[allsaintchris.]

Saw somewhere that since 2013 tv audiences have dropped by about 75% .

On my tablet at the moment , but if I get the chance , will post it on here . I may have already done so .

Might have been in the Telegraph ?

The 25% are people who pay .

Is that worldwide or just UK?

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Is that worldwide or just UK?

Pretty sure it’s the UK

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Here it is .

Admittedly it's Canada , but still interesting IMHO .

https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/...-the-year-on-britains-channel-4/#38d6f1155230





Formula One’s audience on free-to-air television in Britain continued to crash at this month’s Canadian Grand Prix which had the lowest number of viewers of any race so far this season.
The Grand Prix, which takes place on an island in Montreal’s Saint Lawrence river, was the seventh consecutive race with a lower audience than last year and was watched by just 1.2 million TV viewers. It reversed by 5.1% on 2018 and although this isn’t as big as a drop as some of the other races experienced, it has still lost a staggering 74.4% of its audience since 2013 driven by a switch from showing live races to delayed highlights.
Montreal is five hours behind Britain so the race starts later than usual which means that the highlights are broadcast late in the evening. As a result of this it tends to have one of F1’s lowest TV audiences and the timing particularly affected this year’s race. The reason for this is that it was won in controversial circumstances which were discussed extensively on social media just moments after the dust settled on the track.
Reigning champion Lewis Hamilton finished in second place but was promoted to the top spot after Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel was given a delayed penalty for a racing move which was widely seen as being justified.
Vettel was reluctant to go on the podium and even went as far as to swap the sign showing Hamilton’s first place finishing position with his. Footage of it went viral on social media making it difficult for F1 fans to avoid finding out about the result before the highlights aired two and a half hours after the end of the race.
As the graph below shows, the Canadian Grand Prix audience has almost steadily declined over the past seven years with the biggest crash coming in 2016 when the broadcast moved from live coverage of the entire race on the BBC to delayed highlights on rival free-to-air station Channel 4.

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F1 switched gears again this year when it began a new contract which gives Pay TV network Sky Sports the rights to broadcast exclusively all but one of the races live. In contrast, for the previous three years around half of them were also shown live on Channel 4 which broadcast the delayed highlights of the remainder. That deal reached the end of the road this year and Channel 4’s contract now just entitles it to show delayed highlights of all the races except for the British Grand Prix in July which will be live.
Ironically, as we reported, in December F1’s global research director Matt Roberts claimed that the audience in Britain would actually accelerate this year because the highlights are being shown in later slot whereas the live races were on Channel 4 in the early afternoon last year.
“Channel 4 will have the highlights next year and we have worked with them to ensure they show the races in a favourable prime time slot,” he said. “We estimate that we will actually have more viewers next year in the UK (thanks to this prime time slot) than we had this year.” That forecast doesn't appear to be on track.
This year's Canadian Grand Prix fell two places to become the thirteenth most-watched show on Channel 4 during the week in which it was broadcast. It lagged behind Tricks of the Restaurant Trade, reality show First Dates and Great Canal Journeys: Asian Odyssey.
Britain is one of the few countries that publicly releases TV audience data and it comes from an impeccable independent source. TV ratings in Britain are collected by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) and its data is the official estimate which British networks use to sell advertising spots. Sky’s data for the Canadian Grand Prix is missing so it isn’t possible to say whether it compensated for the lost viewers on Channel 4 but it failed to do so with previous races.
In addition to the 1.2 million TV viewers, 30,462 people streamed Channel 4’s Canadian Grand Prix race coverage. PCs or laptops were the most popular digital devices as they were used by 18,735 viewers. This was followed by 7,039 using tablets and just 4,688 watching on smartphones.
Even including the digital viewers, the total is still down on 2018 and Hamilton has been blamed for this decline. He has won five of the seven races so far this season giving him a 29-point lead going into today’s French Grand Prix. His Mercedes team has won the championship for the past five years running which has fuelled criticism that F1 has become processional.
However, the graph above shows that the free-to-air audience in Britain had already started to decline before Mercedes first won the title and the switch to highlights actually made the biggest dent. The recent publicity of James Holzhauer’s record-breaking run on TV game show Jeopardy! shows that with the right marketing, sustained success can actually drive even more exposure than balanced competition. With Mercedes looking unstoppable this is the winning formula that F1 needs to find.

 

[allsaintchris.]

Okay, that's only looking at C4 coverage for a race, so not representative of all races.

Would be interested to see general UK figures for all races this year as well as worldwide figures to see how they are stacking up this year in view of another year of Merc dominance.

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Okay, that's only looking at C4 coverage for a race, so not representative of all races.

Would be interested to see general UK figures for all races this year as well as worldwide figures to see how they are stacking up this year in view of another year of Merc dominance.

Well volunteered.....

 

[Justjazz]

I don't enjoy the channel 4 coverage which is why I am doing a sports bar of late.
Benson wrote an article in January 2018 regarding the Liberty strategy and the fall in audiences.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/42816877

He rightly points out the attraction to the manufacturers is the size of the global audience which is only beaten by the Olympics and FIfa World Cup, neither of which are annual. The Sky contract runs till 2024 and is reportedly worth 200m a year to Liberty.

For the Manufacturers,
Mercedes car sales rose by 7.8% in AsiaPac in 2018, with declines in Europe and NA resulting in a total sales increase of only 0.9%

Renault grew car sales W/W by 3.2% in 2018 with AsiaPac growing by a whopping 68.3%. Renault are also seeing an increase in the NA market too. The objective of Liberty was reported to introduce OTT, popular with US audiences for NFL. Again a paid for service.

Based on this the manufacturers are going to be heavily interested in the AsiaPac audiences, less so Europe.

I went to business school in Singapore, they see the world differently to you and I. Very AP centric, as you would expect, with Europe only as an enabler for branding. That was a while back and may be changing but must still hold true to a degree. F1 is a brand, do Liberty really care so much about the jobs here in the UK?
In my opinion the discussions behind closed doors are more commercial than quality of racing. If F1 drives up the AsiaPac audience (very surprised about the India GP not running anymore) it helps the Manufacturers. Obviously quality of racing is important but I doubt we have the power we think we have. F1 is not the big influencer to car choice in Europe in the same way as it might be in other regions of the world.

However, that all said, declining audiences in Europe, of significance, must be a worry and that is already happening. Not yet convinced Liberty get the history of F1 and its birthplace. For the manufacturers this is more about car sales than racing.

 

[Big Ern]

Okay, that's only looking at C4 coverage for a race, so not representative of all races.

Would be interested to see general UK figures for all races this year as well as worldwide figures to see how they are stacking up this year in view of another year of Merc dominance.

is it accurate though? I watch most of them live on the t'internet and doubt I show up on any viewer list as they're all pirate streams. I'm far from alone on their either.

 

[SgtBhaji]

is it accurate though? I watch most of them live on the t'internet and doubt I show up on any viewer list as they're all pirate streams. I'm far from alone on their either.

I think online streaming numbers are somewhat of a drop in the puddle atm, but that wouldn't take in to account unofficial streams... So not sure how you'd go about estimating that.

 

[Big Ern]

oh dear, I used their instead of there

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[SgtBhaji]

oh dear, I used their instead of there

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You can take the public ridicule or take 100 lashes. Take yer pick.

 

[Justjazz]

You can take the public ridicule or take 100 lashes. Take yer pick.

When I was at school, the sports master gave you a choice of 50 lines or the slipper (if you had done something wrong). If you chose the lines you still got the slipper but for being a coward, so lines and the slipper.