F1 returned for its 2015 season last month - and I have to say the first race was troubling. I stopped posting last September, partly because I was too busy, but mostly because I was pretty uninspired. The past few years in F1 have been characterised by the dominance of a single team. For years it was Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel. Now, it's Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton won the 2014 world championship, closely pursued by Nico Rosberg. The dominance of the Mercedes cars was insane. Their engine was clearly fantastic, and the team were usually miles in front of the rest. So much so, that the past nine races (the final eight of 2014 and the first race of 2015) secured 1-2 finishes for Mercedes.
Now, I am a die-hard Vettel fan, and for years I've heard all the excuses in the world - "he's just in the best car!". Well, Red Bull were never as dominant as Mercedes, and largely their success came from finding technical loopholes before anyone else. The Renault engines were never the fastest, but the overall package they had up until the rule changes was enough to secure four world championships. Mercedes are just wickedly fast, and waiting for the others to catch up. I don't agree that the Mercedes cars should be slowed down (indeed, I think F1 should be faster, louder, and more entertaining), but the constant 1-2 finishes made F1 last year a bit of a drag, and many of us were longing for the others to catch up.
However, last weekend's race started to show a glimmer of hope. Sebastian Vettel moved from his beloved Red Bull to Ferrari and everyone was waiting to see whether this was a gamble that would pay off. Ferrari hadn't won a race since Spain 2013, even with Alonso in the car (probably one of the best drivers on the grid), so not many people fancied his chances against the Silver Arrows. However, Malaysia showed that Ferrari was a great move for Vettel after all, and we had our first non-Mercedes win in nine races. Alright, it's early days, strategy and weather may have played its part, but the race overall was superb, with battles all through the field. We can only hope that this entertainment continues throughout the rest of the season.
Now, aside from the races, F1 has had some odd news stories surrounding it lately. Mostly, these have been linked to ideas from Bernie Ecclestone about how to improve the show. The latest madness he's come out with is linked to the idea of a separate F1 championship for female drivers. Looking at the comments on the articles in question (always a terrible idea), this seems to have divided opinion somewhat.
Many people seem to view the matter in the same way as myself; the idea of a separate F1 championship for women is absurd, and women should be given the chance to race in the main championship. Others take the view that the current pool of female racing drivers simply isn't good enough for F1, and that there's nothing stopping women other than their own ineptitude. Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly, but a significant number of comments suggests the age-old argument that women simply can't drive. As a female driver (not in F1 or competition, but someone who just gets behind the wheel on a regular basis), I couldn't disagree more.
In my opinion, there are a number of issues that prevent women from getting into race seats in F1. In recent years we've had several drivers who have made reserve seats and third driver places (Susie Wolff, the late Maria de Villota, Simona de Silvestro, and - controversially - Carmen Jorda), but nobody who has yet made a race seat. One of the biggest problems in my view is the fact that there are so few women at lower levels of single-seater racing. The pool of female single-seater drivers is just too small, and the sport in general is dominated by men. This therefore isn't an F1 only issue. Let's look at the GP2 and GP3 grids over the past few years...
The 2015 grids are still being formed for these feeder series, however, we can have a preliminary glance at the drivers:GP3 has eight teams, each with three drivers. All bar one of the places has been confirmed for 2015 - and all the drivers are men. Even if the final place is taken by a woman, men are clearly overrepresented. GP2 has 13 teams with two drivers each. Again, no women have been confirmed to drive. There are four places left, but again, even if all filled by women drivers, women are woefully underrepresented. In 2014, GP2 featured no women at all, and GP3 featured Carmen Jorda for seven races. The picture isn't much better across previous years either. While other championships do slightly better than GP2 and GP3 in terms of the number of female drivers, overall there are alarmingly few women across the motorsport championships.
F1 is currently made up of 20 drivers. That's not an awful lot of the total motorsport population. Undoubtedly there are drivers out there who are much better than the current crop of F1 drivers, but who simply don't have the opportunity to compete. This isn't necessarily an issue of gender - there are most likely women out there who would prove much better than men, but the lack of F1 places means it would be impossible for them to enter this strange circus. The pool of potential F1 drivers is huge, while the number of actual spaces is tiny. Given that women make up a tiny percentage of the motorsport population at large, it's not particularly surprising that there are no female F1 drivers. It's not necessarily about ability in this case, but more about opportunity. The solution to this problem? Giving more girls and women the chance to compete from a very early age and working their way up through the ranks - same as the men.
Women face another barrier to F1, and that's the differing expectation that go with the gender. A few weeks ago, I had a lecture on unconscious bias - the judgements we make in a split second upon meeting someone. We assume things. Everyone does this, and it's just human nature - not necessarily indicative of prejudice, but just something we're socialised into believing about people based on their physical traits. During this lecture, we were asked to write down a 'secret' about ourselves, and we all had to guess who had written what. I decided to write about my years spent driving Land Rovers in competitions, and how I learnt to drive age 12. When my 'secret' came up, the majority of my class guessed that one of my male classmates had written this - not the nerdy girl. This is potentially another indicator of why women don't get into top-level motorsport. Young girls are often socialised into liking Barbies and dolls, less cars and F1, just because this goes along with traditional notions of gender. Again, there's nothing wrong with this necessarily, but from the off girls have less inclination to pursue a career in F1.
Similarly, look at how women are represented when they get anywhere close to F1. By and large, the most women we see on the F1 grid are the grid girls. When we see photoshoots of drivers, men stand proudly with arms crossed, looking determined, while women have the wind blowing through their hair, perfectly made-up - sometimes draped across the car in a completely ridiculous manner. The recent appointment of Carmen Jorda is somewhat suspicious - she's not a great racing driver, but she does look very pretty. Every photo posted of her by the Lotus F1 team is of her looking glamorous, rather than getting in a car. I won't even go there with the comments posted under these photos. Now, until women are promoted away from grid girls and models and towards SERIOUS racing drivers, I doubt much will change. The women who do get into F1 are also going to be held to a much higher standard. While it might be acceptable for Will Stevens or Roberto Mehri to race around at the back with Manor, I doubt a female driver would be so accepted - her slow pace would have nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with her gender.
There has been some progress towards gender equality in F1 - but largely in relation to team principals. Claire Williams and Monisha Kaltenborn have been doing a fantastic job in running their teams (alright - ignore the Sauber vs van der Garde scandal recently, and look at what their cars are doing on track), and it's heartening to see women in serious roles within top-level motorsport. I'd be interested to see how many mechanics are women too - although, again, women are woefully underrepresented in this profession generally. While their skill may match the men, there are just too few to have a statistical likelihood of getting into the job.
Overall, there's still much work to be done in getting women into F1 and other championships, and this isn't something that will happen overnight. A women's only F1 championship is ridiculous, and there needs to be a broader attitude shift towards women who choose to like cars. We need to stop viewing women as decorative grid girls, and start taking them seriously as competitors. If women can be taken seriously as F1 team bosses, I don't see why they can't be taken seriously in any other role. It takes work though, and the entire motorsport community should be there to support this change.
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Formula One Fans
As usual, it's been a while since I've posted. Hey, I'm a postgrad student (well, now I am anyway), not a journalist. Anyway, tonight I feel compelled to get back to writing about F1 (and motorsport in general). In particular, I want to focus on the lunacy surrounding Formula One Management's strategies of late, and look to the future of the sport. I suspect I may be sued at some point for posting this, but what's life without a little risk?
Tonight, while wasting time on a boring Sunday evening, I was browsing the amusing WTF1 website, looking at various motorsport videos - Nascar, Narain Karthikeyen crashing into something in another formula, that sort of thing - when I came across what I thought would be an amusing video of Russian commentators going mental over Dani Kvyat's save at Monza, when the familiar YouTube error of 'This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it on copyright grounds' popped up. I've seen this so many times - and it's becoming infuriating.
If you've been following F1 related news in recent months, you may have noticed that many people are starting to worry that the sport is losing fans, one reason being F1, and FOM's reluctance to engage with social media. Many team managers have also expressed concerns that F1 is losing a large audience by not engaging with anything other than TV. Niki Lauda in particular stated that younger people (a demographic I suppose I would be part of, being 22 years old) don't want to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the living room TV, but are more likely to consume their media on the move, or from sites like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. It's a reasonable proposition - while I am one of those people who will give up at weekend to watch motorsport on TV (assuming I can't get outside to a circuit and watch it instead), I can see where Niki and all the others are coming from, and can understand that teenagers and kids (and even older people on the move, for example) want new ways of seeing motorsport.
Engagement with social media has worked extremely well for other forms of motorsport. The British Touring Car Championship has its own Twitter feed, full of qualifying coverage and race commentary. In addition, BTCC is shown on free-to-air TV all season (including all the support races all day - my Mum loves it when ITV4 is on for six hours). MotoGP has similar, with a Twitter page and YouTube feed. While this is no longer on free-to-air TV, there's a whole host of ways to follow the sport from its official website, albeit with a subscription fee. Contrast this with F1 - no official, central social media pages (although teams and some drivers do have their own pages), fan-made videos removed because of FOM's copyright, and only half a season available to those who don't wish to pay for a whole Sky Sports TV package. Why? That's easy to answer - money. There's no way of monetising social media at present, and Bernie Ecclestone has stated that until there is, there's no interaction with social media. Huh. What happened to doing things for the love of the sport?
The recent stirrings over the lack of fan engagement have reached a point where Tata Communications have launched the F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize, a series of challenges based around communicating more with fans, and engaging people more with the sport. A $50,000 prize is available for someone who comes up with a good idea. Well, here's an idea for you, Formula One Management (you don't even need to give me the prize money), how about dropping the profiteering for a second, and allowing people to follow the sport away from subscription-based TV?
It seems that F1 in particular is more concerned about what the sponsors think, and if ideas don't make money, they don't happen, even if they could do wonders for viewing figures and engagement in general. There are a huge amount of things that could be done to help F1 through this strange patch of its life - we could get away from mad rules (standing safety car restarts next year, anyone?), and back to proper racing. This, however, is another issue. What could be done now though is remembering that motorsport is built on the support from fans. If we don't engage people - dare I say, 'the youth of today' - through something so simple as a Facebook or Twitter page, they're not likely to pay for a Sky Sports subscription later. Sure, Bernie won't make his millions through chucking a tweet out now and again, but in a multimillion industry, does this matter? What we need to remember is that motorsport - of all forms - started not because people wanted to make buckets of cash, but because people had an inherent love for what they were doing. People were passionate about the sport: fans, drivers and officials alike. There was admiration for what people could achieve in a car or on a bike. Instead of focusing on bank balances, perhaps FOM would do well to remember this fact, and start to give something back to the fans, without whom the sport wouldn't exist in the first place.
Tonight, while wasting time on a boring Sunday evening, I was browsing the amusing WTF1 website, looking at various motorsport videos - Nascar, Narain Karthikeyen crashing into something in another formula, that sort of thing - when I came across what I thought would be an amusing video of Russian commentators going mental over Dani Kvyat's save at Monza, when the familiar YouTube error of 'This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it on copyright grounds' popped up. I've seen this so many times - and it's becoming infuriating.
If you've been following F1 related news in recent months, you may have noticed that many people are starting to worry that the sport is losing fans, one reason being F1, and FOM's reluctance to engage with social media. Many team managers have also expressed concerns that F1 is losing a large audience by not engaging with anything other than TV. Niki Lauda in particular stated that younger people (a demographic I suppose I would be part of, being 22 years old) don't want to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the living room TV, but are more likely to consume their media on the move, or from sites like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. It's a reasonable proposition - while I am one of those people who will give up at weekend to watch motorsport on TV (assuming I can't get outside to a circuit and watch it instead), I can see where Niki and all the others are coming from, and can understand that teenagers and kids (and even older people on the move, for example) want new ways of seeing motorsport.
Engagement with social media has worked extremely well for other forms of motorsport. The British Touring Car Championship has its own Twitter feed, full of qualifying coverage and race commentary. In addition, BTCC is shown on free-to-air TV all season (including all the support races all day - my Mum loves it when ITV4 is on for six hours). MotoGP has similar, with a Twitter page and YouTube feed. While this is no longer on free-to-air TV, there's a whole host of ways to follow the sport from its official website, albeit with a subscription fee. Contrast this with F1 - no official, central social media pages (although teams and some drivers do have their own pages), fan-made videos removed because of FOM's copyright, and only half a season available to those who don't wish to pay for a whole Sky Sports TV package. Why? That's easy to answer - money. There's no way of monetising social media at present, and Bernie Ecclestone has stated that until there is, there's no interaction with social media. Huh. What happened to doing things for the love of the sport?
The recent stirrings over the lack of fan engagement have reached a point where Tata Communications have launched the F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize, a series of challenges based around communicating more with fans, and engaging people more with the sport. A $50,000 prize is available for someone who comes up with a good idea. Well, here's an idea for you, Formula One Management (you don't even need to give me the prize money), how about dropping the profiteering for a second, and allowing people to follow the sport away from subscription-based TV?
It seems that F1 in particular is more concerned about what the sponsors think, and if ideas don't make money, they don't happen, even if they could do wonders for viewing figures and engagement in general. There are a huge amount of things that could be done to help F1 through this strange patch of its life - we could get away from mad rules (standing safety car restarts next year, anyone?), and back to proper racing. This, however, is another issue. What could be done now though is remembering that motorsport is built on the support from fans. If we don't engage people - dare I say, 'the youth of today' - through something so simple as a Facebook or Twitter page, they're not likely to pay for a Sky Sports subscription later. Sure, Bernie won't make his millions through chucking a tweet out now and again, but in a multimillion industry, does this matter? What we need to remember is that motorsport - of all forms - started not because people wanted to make buckets of cash, but because people had an inherent love for what they were doing. People were passionate about the sport: fans, drivers and officials alike. There was admiration for what people could achieve in a car or on a bike. Instead of focusing on bank balances, perhaps FOM would do well to remember this fact, and start to give something back to the fans, without whom the sport wouldn't exist in the first place.
Monday, 7 July 2014
The British Grand Prix
Hello all! It's been a shockingly long time since I've posted on my blog - university exams, work, there are plenty of reasons - but at long last I've decided to revive the old thing and get back to writing about motorsport. As you're all very aware, I am a huge F1 fan (the blog is testament to this), but this year I have to admit that my interest is waning somewhat. No, it's not because Red Bull aren't winning everything, but I've found that the races are mostly lacklustre this year, aside from the final 10 laps which are pretty good if the two Mercedes cars are near to each other. The British grand prix though was a gem of a race, despite an hour's delay after one lap when Kimi Raikkonen's crash led to a barrier repair. I'm not going to recap the race in detail - those of you reading the blog have probably already seen the race, and there are thousands of blogs that write race recaps - but I wanted to talk about attending F1 races, the state of the sport in general, and why Silverstone completely shocked me today.
I've attended two F1 races - Germany in 2011 and Belgium in 2012. Both were amazing experiences, and in my opinion the tickets were quite reasonably priced. The Nurburgring cost in the region of £85 per ticket, and Spa was 125€ (so around £100). Of course, you have to add on the price of camping, fuel and crossing the channel, but I think on the whole both trips were around £400. Not bad for a whole weekend of entertainment outside of the UK!
So far, both my F1 experiences have been at classic circuits, rather than the modern circuits. I hope that in time I'll visit all of the main circuits - with Monaco, Monza and Silverstone (to name but a few) highest on the list at the moment. Today, Silverstone released their 2015 tickets, and I was surprised to see yet another price rise. Now, a general admission ticket for the weekend will cost you £175. Let that sink in. For me to go and watch my home race with another person, I will have to pay £350. I know Silverstone is a classic track, and the atmosphere is reportedly amazing, but £350 for two tickets seems a little steep (putting it lightly). Let's also remember that to watch a weekend of motorsport, the costs of camping will have to be added on. During my last two GP trips, we stayed at the circuits' official campsites. To do so at Silverstone would cost £158 (two people over the weekend staying in a tent - with no electric hookup either by the way). So, £508 for a weekend in the UK. Is it really worth that much, considering you could go to other races for less? I'm not convinced.
The price hike seems to me to be an indicator of how the sport is progressing. To watch a whole season of F1 now, you have to pay for a Sky Sports subscription. Alright, the coverage is great, but considering everything used to be free, it's not ideal. I wonder how many potential new fans have been put off because of the cost of watching the sport? Bernie Ecclestone has also come under fire recently for refusing to engage in social media and internet coverage. The main argument? It doesn't generate any cash. That's all well and good, but the world has moved on from TV being the sole source of information, and now people follow sports from a number of media outlets. MotoGP manages all of these things very well (although that too has since moved to pay TV), with Facebook and Twitter coverage, plus endless videos on the website and regular email updates. You can't help but think that F1 is really missing a trick here.
As well as the huge price tags and lack of coverage away from TV, F1 and the FIA seem to be losing their touch a little bit. This year saw massive rule changes to try as reduce the dominance of Red Bull, and create closer racing. Instead, Mercedes have had greater dominance than Red Bull ever had (2011 excepted, perhaps), and most of the battles are between team-mates, rather than between all drivers. Granted, now and again you have some exceptional racing between teams (look at Alonso and Vettel this weekend), but it's now and again and not all the time. I don't think that the racing is as good as it has been in previous years, I still don't like the sound (or lack thereof), and the cars look ridiculous.
In order to tackle some of these problems (admittedly, my views aren't universally shared across F1 fans), the FIA recently announced some further rule changes for next year - followed by collective groans across Twitter, as the changes were completely out of touch. Standing starts following a safety car period (although we were deprived of a standing start yesterday when the race was stopped - go figure) was one of the rule changes, and it seems completely and utterly unnecessary.
Many F1 races now feature a lengthy middle stint where drivers are concerned with fuel consumption and tyre wear. The 2014 rules about carrying less fuel were introduced to cut costs and appear more 'green'. I have previously voiced my views about F1 being eco-friendly, and I find it ridiculous that limiting the fuel of 22 cars on the race track for two hours will make any difference in the face of the hundreds of lorries, planes, private helicopters and such used to transport everything to each individual circuit. Something having more impact in my eyes would be to hold races in a logical order - heading from Austria from Germany, for example, and moving Canada before or after the US race, rather than the madness we have presently. Still, F1 is all about image, and as long as it appears to be doing something, that will be enough.
Overall, F1 is moving more and more towards obsession with money, and away from the love of the sport itself. Consider the recent virtual ads saying 'F1 - the world's fastest brand'. Personally, I think of F1 as a sport, not a brand. Unless F1 moves with the times, I wonder for how long the 'brand' will last.
I've attended two F1 races - Germany in 2011 and Belgium in 2012. Both were amazing experiences, and in my opinion the tickets were quite reasonably priced. The Nurburgring cost in the region of £85 per ticket, and Spa was 125€ (so around £100). Of course, you have to add on the price of camping, fuel and crossing the channel, but I think on the whole both trips were around £400. Not bad for a whole weekend of entertainment outside of the UK!
So far, both my F1 experiences have been at classic circuits, rather than the modern circuits. I hope that in time I'll visit all of the main circuits - with Monaco, Monza and Silverstone (to name but a few) highest on the list at the moment. Today, Silverstone released their 2015 tickets, and I was surprised to see yet another price rise. Now, a general admission ticket for the weekend will cost you £175. Let that sink in. For me to go and watch my home race with another person, I will have to pay £350. I know Silverstone is a classic track, and the atmosphere is reportedly amazing, but £350 for two tickets seems a little steep (putting it lightly). Let's also remember that to watch a weekend of motorsport, the costs of camping will have to be added on. During my last two GP trips, we stayed at the circuits' official campsites. To do so at Silverstone would cost £158 (two people over the weekend staying in a tent - with no electric hookup either by the way). So, £508 for a weekend in the UK. Is it really worth that much, considering you could go to other races for less? I'm not convinced.
The price hike seems to me to be an indicator of how the sport is progressing. To watch a whole season of F1 now, you have to pay for a Sky Sports subscription. Alright, the coverage is great, but considering everything used to be free, it's not ideal. I wonder how many potential new fans have been put off because of the cost of watching the sport? Bernie Ecclestone has also come under fire recently for refusing to engage in social media and internet coverage. The main argument? It doesn't generate any cash. That's all well and good, but the world has moved on from TV being the sole source of information, and now people follow sports from a number of media outlets. MotoGP manages all of these things very well (although that too has since moved to pay TV), with Facebook and Twitter coverage, plus endless videos on the website and regular email updates. You can't help but think that F1 is really missing a trick here.
As well as the huge price tags and lack of coverage away from TV, F1 and the FIA seem to be losing their touch a little bit. This year saw massive rule changes to try as reduce the dominance of Red Bull, and create closer racing. Instead, Mercedes have had greater dominance than Red Bull ever had (2011 excepted, perhaps), and most of the battles are between team-mates, rather than between all drivers. Granted, now and again you have some exceptional racing between teams (look at Alonso and Vettel this weekend), but it's now and again and not all the time. I don't think that the racing is as good as it has been in previous years, I still don't like the sound (or lack thereof), and the cars look ridiculous.
In order to tackle some of these problems (admittedly, my views aren't universally shared across F1 fans), the FIA recently announced some further rule changes for next year - followed by collective groans across Twitter, as the changes were completely out of touch. Standing starts following a safety car period (although we were deprived of a standing start yesterday when the race was stopped - go figure) was one of the rule changes, and it seems completely and utterly unnecessary.
Many F1 races now feature a lengthy middle stint where drivers are concerned with fuel consumption and tyre wear. The 2014 rules about carrying less fuel were introduced to cut costs and appear more 'green'. I have previously voiced my views about F1 being eco-friendly, and I find it ridiculous that limiting the fuel of 22 cars on the race track for two hours will make any difference in the face of the hundreds of lorries, planes, private helicopters and such used to transport everything to each individual circuit. Something having more impact in my eyes would be to hold races in a logical order - heading from Austria from Germany, for example, and moving Canada before or after the US race, rather than the madness we have presently. Still, F1 is all about image, and as long as it appears to be doing something, that will be enough.
Overall, F1 is moving more and more towards obsession with money, and away from the love of the sport itself. Consider the recent virtual ads saying 'F1 - the world's fastest brand'. Personally, I think of F1 as a sport, not a brand. Unless F1 moves with the times, I wonder for how long the 'brand' will last.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)