motorsportmania

OK, so our tongue is firmly in cheek here, but if Bernie can put pressure on the Aussies to run their GP in the evening so that us European viewers can watch it at our normal GP viewing time why are the Canadian, and the US and Brazil for that matter, organisers not under pressure to start their races on 0800 EST?

As you’ll see in our archives we at motorsportmania are firmly opposed to mucking around with GP start times. Yes we accept that advertising revenue brings in the cash to support our motor racing addiction and the races need to be seen on TV to help those advertisers shift product. With global brands involved then global broadcast issues do need to be considered.

But that should not include making races happen at silly times, and our question about the races in the Americas illustrates the point: Why not make them have the race first thing in the morning?

Would the local fans be less likely to come? So what, we’ve seen that not many turn out to watch a number of the races that Bernie’s crew have foisted onto the calendar in order to pull in the race fees, so let’s just adjust a few camera angles to hide the empty expanses of spectatot area and get on with it.

The argument making the Pacific rim races evening ones is also a fallacy. An oval race under the lights where you can see most or all of the track from your spot in the stands is a spectacle, so the NASCAr and IndyCar evening races on the banking are great fun, but F1? No, a road course race under the lights is no spectacle and, given the environmental impact, a complete waste of candle power.

So, once again, we put our case for leaving GP start times alone. There are probably even more people now only watching highlights packages since the UK switch from the BBC coverage to Sky so who cares about a standard start time now? Our manifesto is that the rule should be that the race has to take place in daylight, and that the organisers should have a free choice of the start time. If those in hot countries want to run them early or late to avoid the worst of the heat them let them. If they want to run them to avoid the inevitable 1430 (local) thunderstorm, let them.

We rest our case (at least for now).

Filed under: Cars | Tagged: australian GP, canadian GP, F1, formula one, Indycar, motorsport, racecar, singapore GP |