GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: John S on January 28, 2021, 04:23:12 PM
-
A company boss finally admits it's about media exposure and not the development potential for a motor manufacturer. :D
Wonder how that makes bosses of Formula E feel? ;)
https://www.grandprix.com/news/renault-using-f1-for-its-media-power-says-de-meo.html
-
Bottom line shareholder profits.
It is always about that, no matter how they spin it.
More exposure, more sales, more $.
-
In a continuing effort to save energy, will the last team to leave Formula E please turn out the lights.
-
In a continuing effort to save energy, will the last team to leave Formula E please turn out the lights.
Let's be fair to F-E. They serve a vitally important purpose of being a place to try out all the crazy ideas that 'spice up' motorsports.
Just like minor leagues in North America where they play test all the rule changes, they can mess around with F-E as much as they want without disrupting the F1 show, or career development of feeder series drivers.
In the event that F-E actually stumbles on an interesting rule, then F1 can use it.
-
I accept that FE must get some credit. It was a completely new series and yet made an international impact. Any event that can get cities to close huge areas and disrupt day to day activities must weald some considerable power.
The weekend I went to see FE in Hong Kong was incredible in all of the wrong ways. It left the waterfront near Central completely Grid Locked. I was staying on Kowloon side and the locals didn't even know what FE was let alone what was going on behind the barriers. You can walk most of Hong Kong which is just as well otherwise I don't think I would have ever got to my grandstand. The race was terrible. Even though the track is very short there was no vantage point where you could see much more than one corner and a bit of a straight. The 'burn-outs' moving from the pre-start grid up to the main grid was probably the most spectacular event. The motor whine is not remotely exciting and even the tyre squeal (I guess they use quite hard rubber because the tyres squeal all of the time) leaves you thinking more 'boy racer taking a roundabout too quickly' than pinnacle of motor sport (sorry to our North American friends who don't have the excitement of taking roundabouts too quickly ;))
-
I take it you haven't been over here lately, Monty. Roundabouts (or, as we call them, suicide circles) have descended on the land like a plague of locust. They seem to be the new fad in highway design. They travel in herds over here, 2 or 3 back to back.
Since most folks aren't used to them, they suddenly stop, look around in confusion and then proceed very, very slowly. |-(
-
I take it you haven't been over here lately, Monty. Roundabouts (or, as we call them, suicide circles) have descended on the land like a plague of locust. They seem to be the new fad in highway design. They travel in herds over here, 2 or 3 back to back.
Since most folks aren't used to them, they suddenly stop, look around in confusion and then proceed very, very slowly. |-(
I remember the first one to open up near me a few years ago. As you approached they had a big sign that explained how to use it... by listing a website to go to.
Personally I like them. If you do it right, it's just like coming out of the pits at the Milwaukee Mile!
-
... even the tyre squeal (I guess they use quite hard rubber because the tyres squeal all of the time) leaves you thinking more 'boy racer taking a roundabout too quickly' than pinnacle of motor sport (sorry to our North American friends who don't have the excitement of taking roundabouts too quickly ;))
Actually, watching FE, my biggest takeaway was to wonder what F1 tires sounded like if you couldn't hear the engines. Maybe they squeak just as much!
-
I take it you haven't been over here lately, Monty. Roundabouts (or, as we call them, suicide circles) have descended on the land like a plague of locust. They seem to be the new fad in highway design. They travel in herds over here, 2 or 3 back to back.
Since most folks aren't used to them, they suddenly stop, look around in confusion and then proceed very, very slowly. |-(
There's a little area north of me called Oro Valley that has begun putting them in. They raise the crosswalks like a wide speedbump and post a 15 MPH speed limit. Did I mention it's a retirement upper class town? That lays out speed traps all over? ::)
-
I take it you haven't been over here lately, Monty. Roundabouts (or, as we call them, suicide circles) have descended on the land like a plague of locust. They seem to be the new fad in highway design. They travel in herds over here, 2 or 3 back to back.
I haven't been anywhere for quite a while (COVID lockdowns!!!!).
Covered a fair chunk of Canada in two holidays 2018 & 2019 but certainly haven't travelled around in the USA since 2016. Through the years I have driven a lot in America and can't remember ever seeing a roundabout. I do remember my first visit many years ago sitting at a junction in Raleigh-Durham for two complete cycles of traffic lights before remembering I could filter on red!! Between work and holidays I have driven a fair bit of North Carolina; New York State & Florida and made many visits to Miami, New Orleans, Pascagoula, San Francisco, Los-Angeles, Connecticut and Newark. One of the best holidays I have ever had was a three week road trip from Santa Monica, inland to Las Vegas, then Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, through Death Valley back to the coast and along the coast to San Francisco via Cambria, Hearst Castle, Salmon Creek Falls, Monterey, etc.
Sorry about my off topic ramblings - I think I am getting a bit stir crazy as I am currently not even allowed to drive the 100miles to my second office!
-
Off topic is good. It's not like there's a lot of F1 news to discuss.
-
I take it you haven't been over here lately, Monty. Roundabouts (or, as we call them, suicide circles) have descended on the land like a plague of locust. They seem to be the new fad in highway design. They travel in herds over here, 2 or 3 back to back.
Since most folks aren't used to them, they suddenly stop, look around in confusion and then proceed very, very slowly. |-(
I think roundabouts are a British invention and are actually really useful when traffic is flowing as it generally keeps the cars moving. The problems start when they are added where a minor road crosses a busy major road (good luck going straight on on the minor road!) or when traffic is too heavy. The solution, especially to the latter, is then to add traffic lights. This always makes me chuckle, because they often replaced traffic lights in the first place!
In Europe the added problem is that drivers were used to the general rule of "priority to the right". Which is always true, except on roundabouts, where priority is given to those on the roundabout, and hence is to the left...
-
I never for one moment thought you'd go all Basingstoke & bring the weird world of roundabouts into a topic about Renault staying in F1. :o
Just in case you're not sure what I'm talking about there's a link below to the marvellous 35 roundabouts of Basingstoke. :D
The world record holder is Milton Keynes in the UK - currently 130 & counting. :o Carmel in California comes a close 2nd with 124 - but who knows it could be more by now. :DntKnw:
Oh and don't let's be side tracked by the mini roundabouts that now plague nearly every town & village in the UK. :nono: |-(
https://www.basingstoke.gov.uk/view-roundabouts
-
In the film European Vacation Chevy Chase
couldn't get out of a roundabout in London.
Maybe that's where we got the idea here.
-
The UK now has roundabouts around roundabouts. I think one of the first was in Hemel Hempstead which the locals refer to as the 'Magic Roundabout'!
-
In the film European Vacation Chevy Chase
couldn't get out of a roundabout in London.
Maybe that's where we got the idea here.
"Hey kids! There's Big Ben and Parliament! Ooops, can't get over... Hey Kids! There's Big Ben and Parliament! Why won't they let me in? Hey kids! There's Big Ben and Parliament!"
-
The UK now has roundabouts around roundabouts. I think one of the first was in Hemel Hempstead which the locals refer to as the 'Magic Roundabout'!
I had to have a look at this roundabout on Google maps, as I couldn't understand how it would works. It's quite scary, because normally you drive clockwise around a roundabout in the UK, but on the inside of this magic one, you drive counter-clockwise. Very confusing!
-
The UK now has roundabouts around roundabouts. I think one of the first was in Hemel Hempstead which the locals refer to as the 'Magic Roundabout'!
I had to have a look at this roundabout on Google maps, as I couldn't understand how it would works. It's quite scary, because normally you drive clockwise around a roundabout in the UK, but on the inside of this magic one, you drive counter-clockwise. Very confusing!
No not really I been through there several times, it's really a circular road with roundabouts along the circumference, just keep heading in direction you want, take each roundabout as single entity til you find the one you need, then take your road off the carousel.
If you miss your road off keep going round til it comes round again, or if you're brave you can turn back at next single roundabout. Much easier to do than describe. :D
Oh and it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out why Renault spends so much on F1 to come 5th overall and 2 places behind an Independent using the same engine. :DD
I'm seriously glad though that they do spend the money to stay in F1. :good:
-
Oh and it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out why Renault spends so much on F1 to come 5th overall and 2 places behind an Independent using the same engine. :DD
It has to due with the difference between heaven & hell: Heaven is where the British run the police, the French do the cooking and Germans build the cars. Hell is where the Germans run the police, the British do the cooking & the French build the cars. ;)
-
:DD :DD :DD :DD
-
The UK now has roundabouts around roundabouts. I think one of the first was in Hemel Hempstead which the locals refer to as the 'Magic Roundabout'!
I had to have a look at this roundabout on Google maps, as I couldn't understand how it would works. It's quite scary, because normally you drive clockwise around a roundabout in the UK, but on the inside of this magic one, you drive counter-clockwise. Very confusing!
It actually works very well and having used them many times in the past have survived to tell the tale.
-
Many years ago my family lived about 3 minutes walk from the 'Magic Roundabout'. Walking into town, it was family sport to count the number of accidents we saw :D
The problem was always when a local confidently went the way they wanted to go (generally at speed) and they met a non local who was in a mild panic and trying to deal with it as one big roundabout!
-
People do watch FE. However, channels make it rather hard to do. The UK, for example, puts Formula E on the BBC Red Button, which many people still don't have (at least, not with enough bandwidth on their TV that they can watch broadcasts that way) and makes no attempt to maintain interest between rounds (which are often too far apart for the 1/2-week cycle that most other series use).
In France (Alpine's home), the situation is even worse as pay channel Canal+ Sport has exclusive rights, with "select rounds" on obscure channel Q8 (I think by "select", it means the French round, which of course didn't happen in 2020). However, Canal+ as a whole only has about 5 million subscribers (which is around 1 in 12 of the French population) and not all of those have access to Canal+ Sport - 2.9 million of them are on the "free" platform (either actually free, or an upgraded version linked with their Orange mobile phone subscription), neither of which includes bonus channels like Canal+ Sport. So even if every single paid subscriber adored Formula E and watched every race, there'd still only be 2.1 million of them.
I should add that when Formula E originally signed with Canal+, its audience figures were much better - it had a propituous drop in audience between 2014 and 2017, losing around half a million paid subscribers per year.