Ok, first up, i think i've just invented a word. Right, now to the meat of the missive. I noticed this weekend that there is no atmosphere at this circuit at all, and the limited number of fans seemed to lack passion. This is in stark contrast to japan last week, where you can always rely on the fans to be in top form, and this has got me thinking. It's all well and good expanding the sport, branching out to uncharted territories (metaphorically), but if the locals seem to lack interest, it makes the venture seem worthless, and you're robbing a passionate country with a suitable infrastructure of hosting a second race. Look at countries such as Britain, Japan, Australia etc. These countries have passionate and knowledgeable fans, and have circuits capable of hosting races, yet get overlooked in favour of soulless venues such as Abu Dhabi, Korea, Turkey etc. If the race doesn't succeed, then surely that is a sign that common sense should have been used, and a second race in a suitable country would be better. Spain has 2 races, which is good, but then the arab states have 2 races, which is unnecessary. It just goes to show, F1 couldn't care less about the fans, as long as the new host country is an untapped revenue stream, great circuits, in passionate countries will wither and die.
It's pretty much all the new track's that have less atmosphere. F1 is all about money nowadays, not the fans.
Of all the pointless races, Korea is particularly bad... It's flat, featureless, the facilities are nothing to write home about and the crown is non-existent. Why is F1 there??? I can't remember who I saw post it, may have been here or elsewhere... but one person said, "Why go to an empty Korea when you could go to a packed Estoril". Think how many tracks you could apply that statement to.
Well Korean GP officials claim they'll sell out all 110,000 seats for the race, but i fear that is a load of tosh.
Bahrain has got to be up there. it's, imo the worst race of the season. I remember korea being good last year, but that was just due to the rain, I think...
Urgh... Imagine if they replicated Bernie 100,000 times and had him in every seat. Actually... Not a bad idea. You could add one former FIA president and when the race gets dull, everybidy can play a game of 'Where's Mosley'.
