Motor racing isn't even a sport... <run> Seriously though, if it does count as a proper sport then so should darts and Phil The Power Taylor should have a pile of them.
You could make a case for it being a team sport in a way. Yes, the top drivers are seriously good at driving but just as important to the success of the drivers are the teams of mechanics and the people who design and build the cars. The guys who run the pit stops must be unbelievably good at their jobs too.
Once again Gary Neville talking sense and with real lnowledge on the Monday Night Football. A superb analysis of De Gea's goalkeeping, confirming he is a top analyst.
Only tuned in at half past to hear Carragher going on about Lovren. God, he's boring. MNF spend far too long talking about games over the weekend and not enough on build up for my liking. Neville is very good but his bias is really irritating when he's talking about United.
There's lots of precision involved but there's lots of things that involve that kind of stuff and aren't sports. If your sport involves sitting down the whole time then it isn't a sport, in my opinion. I would be prepared to change my view on that if they made a motorsports triathalon, Motorbikes, speedboats and then F1 to finish. I'd watch that My main problem with it is that it's not competitive. 6 different drivers finished in the top 2 of a race last season and if you take out retirements to Hamilton and Rosberg then in all the races 5 cars managed to actually finish ahead of a Mercedes in any race all season. I don't think there's anyother sport where the equipment makes such a huge difference and there's certainly not one where the best equipment is only given to one team each year.
There certainly seems to be a few teams who have superior car setups to the rest each year but those dominant teams do seem to change a reasonable amount year on year, at least to the casual, occasional watcher. Vettel didn't win a race in the 2014 season but he steamrollered pretty much everyone the year before right? It seems that the base requirement to be successful over the course of an entire season is to have a good car suited to the driver. I guess there are 5 or 6 drivers each year who could win the championship, if their car is good enough that year. Mercedes seemed to do very well this year, but Red Bull were good the year before and I seem to remember Brawn GP having a monster of a car in 2009 when Button won the championship. I get what you're saying about 'equipment' having such a big say but drivers probably have more of a personal say in the setup of their car than a footballer does in the design of his boots (although that obviously makes less of a difference for the footballer). In the sense of it being competitive I think it is to an extent, but often individual drivers, regardless of skill level (to an degree), are relying on the other members of their 'team' to make them able to compete with their opponents on the track far more than a footballer relies on Nike or Adidas to make them better footballers on the pitch. Although in a team sport sense, a football team is often no stronger than its weakest player. Is the best 'equipment' given to one team each year in F1 or is it purely down to research and design? I've no real idea to be honest. As I said though, I'm no more than an occasional watcher of F1, certainly no big fan, and I could well be talking out of my arse on this subject as per!
This is my point. Did he suddenly become rubbish? Did Hamilton suddenly get a lot better? Or did one just get a much better car than the other in each season? One or 2 cars dominate each year so I don't see much glory in any victory.
I'm no oracle of formula one. However, it seems to me that the drivers, excepting a very rare minority, are largely incidental. If you don't have the right car and the right team, you're nowhere. I could make an exception for the very few drivers who were always made a difference, Schumacher, Senna, and maybe one or two others.
The comparison with F1 and football works only if you compare the Driver to the football Manager IMO. For the manager his team are the equivalent of the car. You need a good Manager/Driver but they can both cause more problems than solutions if they are not up to using their 'equipment' properly.
The comments about F1 are valid when there is one dominant team - as there has been for the past few years in Red Bull, then Mercedes. There is no reason why two or more teams can't be competing in ther future and them, with the cars more evenly matched, the skills of the drivers become more apparent. It's not just about racing and overtaking, but about getting the car round without breaking it, conserving fuel, limiting tyre wear etc. How good the drivers are is probably something that the public won't see until opponents are racing in evenly matched cars, but you could see that Vettel was better than his old teammate Webber at Red Bull and Hamilton was better than Rosberg, albeit the margins were smaller.
There was a comment in today's Metro suggesting that Hamilton should've been one of the nominees for Overseas SPOTY, prompted by Joey Barton's attack on him. I hate to agree with the dubious Scouser, but the BBC hailing the success of a self-confessed tax exile does seem a little off. Perhaps they should limit the nominees to those who actually own a TV license?
I'm sure the teams of mechanics, engineers and designers behind each driver see the glory in the victories though. There is probably a top tier of drivers in the F1 circuit who could all win the Championship if they're given the right car each year but winning is about more than just the drivers, as we're both saying I think. You don't get many truly outstanding drivers, who can consistently outperform others even when their cars aren't as fast in the straights or as good in the corners. Hence, as an individual sport F1 is flawed, I agree. But not if you view it as a team sport where engineers, mechanics, drivers etc. all have to perform in harmony to win races and championships, as I'm more inclined to view it personally.
Prost, Senna, and Schumacher clearly stood out as the best in their time they WERE exceptional drivers.
Mansell and Keke Rosberg were the best seat of your pants drivers I ever saw. Loved it when Senna ran away when he shunted Mansell off the track.
Steve Clarke back in football at Reading. It's a stable set up there and while John Madejeski continues to have a say then a manager should expect to be given a reasonable amount of time to do the job. Clarke is not my type of guy, but he ought to be able to make an impression at Reading.
http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896...TWUK_141217_tottenhamrestructurespecialreport Interesting piece on an apparent restructuring regarding transfers and recruitment at Spurs following the arrival of Paul Mitchell. No idea how reliable it is as journalism of course. An attempt to right what has been going wrong with transfers over the last few years, or another layer of confusion to add to the smokescreen that protects Levy et. al. from bearing true responsibility for failure?
