Formula One 2018

Jaybeez

Austin is on my 2018 bucket list. Lead guitarist in our Church band went last year and I'm looking to tag along in October.
I do both NHRA events in Pomona each year, and have the privilege of watching the LB Grand Prix (Indy) from the Press booth.
Still .... F1 is like that perfect set of speakers I've yet to hear ....

daddyjt

FestYboy wrote: »

From what I understand, the FIA dictates many of the aero package parameters such that what was allowed last year, or even earlier in the season, is illegal now. I've also noted the major change in tub/foot well design from year to year but all cars seem to run the same look per year.

Seems awfully restrictive to me, even with the interpretation allotted. F1 of the 70/80s was drastically different, and you could see it in the cars even without their livery. I suspect that you'd be hard pressed to pick out different manufactures today if they were all the same color.

The thicker that rule book gets, the closer to spec they become. (Again, IMHO).

If you look at Ferrari, Mercedes, and Williams, side by side, you will see numerous differences. The teams have a significant amount of leeway - more so than NASCAR or Indy - when it comes to aero tweaks.

If all rules were to be thrown out the window, and designers were free to design any care they wanted, I would be willing to bet the dominant cars would look pretty similar to the current cars. The real challenge would be ensuring driver safety, which is what a lot of the current design specs are actually intended to do, in one way or another.

And best of all, they don’t race on ovals.

billbillw

After years of watching the NBCSports crew broadcast, I'm interested to see the Sky Sports coverage this year. Overall, a much younger group of hosts/announcers. Hopefully ESPN does a good job of streaming it.

F1nut

Absolutely horrendous coverage and terrible timing of commercial breaks. On a scale of 10, I give them a 1.

maxward

Indeed!

Jaybeez

F1nut wrote: »

Absolutely horrendous coverage and terrible timing of commercial breaks. On a scale of 10, I give them a 1.

I wondered about ESPN, but a buddy at Church today said it wasn't that bad. I was skeptical about his assessment, given how bad ESPN was with NHRA.
Seems their lousy motorsports coverage continues ....

F1nut

It wasn't that bad, it was horrendous!!!

Clipdat

I also noticed that the camera work/directing wasn't nearly as good as least season.

F1nut wrote: »

Absolutely horrendous coverage and terrible timing of commercial breaks. On a scale of 10, I give them a 1.

daddyjt

F1nut wrote: »

Absolutely horrendous coverage and terrible timing of commercial breaks. On a scale of 10, I give them a 1.

My son and I stayed up and watched it live, and we were both very disappointed. No knowledgeable insight from the commentators,as mentioned bad commercial timing, and sloppy camera work. It felt like they were trying to cover F1like they cover NASCAR...

billbillw

F1nut wrote: »

Absolutely horrendous coverage and terrible timing of commercial breaks. On a scale of 10, I give them a 1.

I think the problem was that ESPN is over-writing the Sky Sports coverage during commercials. Sky has continuous feed with PIP during commercials, much like NBCSports did in the past. Sky has been covering F1 for many years and it is the sole F1 feed for most of Europe. They have a pretty good team of announcers. I actually enjoyed their pre-race coverage more than what I used to see with NBCSports.

Another thing to consider, Liberty is behind the camera coverage. They own the cameras around the track, and feed it back to race control. It is not ESPN. If the camera coverage was crappy, blame Liberty. They are trying to make F1 look different this year and are trying new things:
Motorsports.com

gfong

The coverage you watched on ESPN was a direct feed from Sky TV in England. BBC got out of the deal 5 years early because they said they did not want to compete directly with the F1 pay per use channel that is coming out later this year.
SKY TV has taken over and next year SKY has full exclusive rights to all the F1 TV except the PAY per view channel/app that F1 is rolling out soon but still will be using SKY TV cameras and editing with different content..

When BBC had the contract and exclusive rights to all races including the feed to NBC (USA)/TSN (Canada) viewership was 3.1 million in England, SKY TV only had 652,000.

So it seems we are stuck with the SKY TV and ESPN's feed of that broadcast and only 2 live races where you will see the SKY feed but have your own American announcers for the US GP and the Mexican GP.

Liberty Media (USA company) bought the F1 last year and are only starting to implement changes this year.

Below is a quote from article.... http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/42816877

Or to quote one senior figure: "This is the year we get to see whether what they're doing works."

In TV terms, a number of changes are being contemplated. These were presented to broadcasters as unconfirmed plans at a meeting this week.

Among the ideas were:

making the start time of European races an hour later in the hope of attracting a bigger audience - so a typical start would be 2pm in the UK, rather than 1pm

races to start at 10-past the hour rather than on it

Bahrain to become a full night race rather than start at twilight

improved engine sound from repositioned on-board microphones

make the cars look faster with different camera angles and static cameras

playing a soundtrack of music at occasional parts of the race

a highlights reel to play at regular intervals during the live broadcast

a potential deal with Netflix for behind-the-scenes footage.


I have been an F1 fan since the 70's and really hope the sport grows but with NASCAR ideologies (above) and an American company running a sport that has 95% of its roots in other Countries I don't think this is a good move. We will see. (just my opinion boys) Race on...

WLDock

As a kid in the 70's I used to build model cars, subscribe to Auto Racing Digest, and follow F1, Indy, Nascar, etc, motorsports. I wanted to be an auto racer.....born in the Motor City....crazy!

Anyway, even though it was not a popular F1 destination, I was fortunate to see F1 in Downtown Detroit in the 80's. When F1 got fed up with the Detroit event, the IndyCar Series took over and moved their events from Downtown to Belle Isle Island surrounded by the Detroit river. It was a different look and the area improved in later years. One year a friend was able to get a group of us VIP passes. What a great time!

I would love to see F1 in person again. After a long hiatus I've been trying to follow it some.

machone

Go Vettel !!!
Great race

recoveryone

Vette showed his skills set today, Mercedes thought they had out smarted them. But with the RedBulls falling out early made for some interesting racing for the other teams.

gfong

Good race today, Kimi fan hear, sucks that he had to stop. Hope the pit crew person is okay as well.

F1nut

I've got to give ESPN credit where credit is due. They got their act together quickly and doing it commercial free. You get 10 out 10, thank you!

ZLTFUL

Kimi's crew needs to get their **** together. I am a Kimi fan (Ferrari fan too but can't stand Vettel) but his crew was a shitshow this weekend.

Inspired driving by Seb (still can't stand him) with having to go from a two stop strat to a one stop strat and finishing the race on utterly shagged rubber.

OleBoot

https://roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a19734613/f1-races-on-espn-commercial-free-for-2018/

F1nut

I was wondering if they went commercial free just for the last race as a make up for the first or if they would all season. Very glad to see it'll be all season. For that ESPN gets 100 out of 10.

I have to think Liberty Media is paying ESPN to do that though.

OleBoot

F1nut wrote: »

I was wondering if they went commercial free just for the last race as a make up for the first or if they would all season. Very glad to see it'll be all season. For that ESPN gets 100 out of 10.

I have to think Liberty Media is paying ESPN to do that though.

I wondered that too - the only ad of any form I saw was "exclusively brought to you by Mothers" in the top right corner from time to time.

The whole story of the ESPN coverage is interesting. I believe that they were originally just going to use the FIA world feed with whatever commentators they have, but then switched to the Sky team. I would think because it looks like Murdoch is going to sell Sky to Disney, who own ESPN.

The Sky commentators look to be well qualified on paper, bur are pretty boring and humorless. Bring back David Hobbs, even if he is nearly as old as you.

billbillw

F1nut wrote: »

I've got to give ESPN credit where credit is due. They got their act together quickly and doing it commercial free. You get 10 out 10, thank you!

Yes, I was very surprised to see NO commercials! Liberty must have complained about the coverage because normally, ESPN would say suck it. It will be interesting to see if the commercial free coverage continues.

Viking64

OleBoot wrote: »

The Sky commentators look to be well qualified on paper, bur are pretty boring and humorless. Bring back David Hobbs, even if he is nearly as old as you.

I really liked the David Hobbs/Sam Posey era.

Clipdat

Chinese GP turned out to be a pretty entertaining race! I thought the camera work/directing was improved, and no commercials was nice. Audio was good as well.

Commentators still a little too chatty, imo. It's OK for there to be periods of announcer silence where we just listen to the cars!

How about Max Verstupid's unnecessarily aggressive driving and risky maneuvers? He needs to settle down.

Viking64

Verstappen zee race becuss uff Max again.

recoveryone

I started off watching 11pm PST Vette 1st, 2nd Bottas 3rd Kimi, 4th Ham dozed off woke up with Smiley finish 1st Bottas 2nd Vette 3rd......WTH

recoveryone

Big Trouble with capital T in the Red bull camp. Max has a history of doing the double move to defend (not allowed) and now its cost the team points. Will they be loyal to Ric or look at the long game and bet on Max?

Poor track marshall's cost Botas the win, but bold move by Vette to try to steal it.

machone

Crazy race!

F1nut

That was a wild one. I feel sorry for Bottas, but had to laugh at finger boy.

Clipdat

Can always count on the city tracks to provide a lot of entertainment!

I don't understand why Verstupid was so preoccupied with Ricciardo coming up behind and trying to block him. It seems like he was so busy doing that, that he forgot to brake for the corner.

I've watched the replay several times, and it seems like even if Ricciardo hadn't hit him, there was no way he was going to be able to make the corner anyway! Should've just let his teammate pass and maybe got the position back in the next 2 or 3 corners.

machone

F1nut wrote: »

That was a wild one. I feel sorry for Bottas, but had to laugh at finger boy.

Who is finger boy?