Unpopular Motorsport Opinions

I'm sure most of us hold some opinions which go against the grain or against established motorsport lore. Here's a place to share them. Get them off your chest and get your flame suits ready.

- Senna wouldn't have done much in 1994 and probably would have retired soon after.

- NASCAR is neither as great as people say nor as boring as people say. It's just... there.

- Mark Webber was never going to be a World Champion and got caught in Red Bull's updraft.

- Formula One would be better off sticking to the traditional tracks until Tilke knows how to build a new track with a better success rate. Sepang and Istanbul do not make up for the other crap tracks. I'd rather see a 12 race championship with a concentration of good tracks than a 20 race championship with lots of crap, filler tracks.

- Gulf is a grossly overrated livery. So is McLaren-Marlboro. And Williams-Rothmans.

- The 25-18-15 F1 points system is horrible.

 

I'll ruin the thread right away.

Hamilton is one of the greats.

 

- The Nurburgring is an extremely boring track to watch racing at.

- ALMS would have collapsed without the Grand-Am deal.

- The GT3 class will fail within 10 years without major regulation changes.

- The Mazda 787B really wasn't that great of a race car.

 

Richard Petty was only successful because of lack of competition. He was a great driver but Pearson, Yarborough, Lorenzen, Weatherly, Gurney, Hutcherson, Waltrip, Earnhardt, and Allison all regularly outperformed him when they did race(which was not as often as most people think). He also more often than not had the factory backing of whichever Moparhe chose.

 

Senna's death was a sad event yes, but in the long term it has been one of the best things that has happened to F1. The safety improvements since have meant that drivers like Kubica, Burti, Alonso, Webber, Diniz, Kovalainen etc are still alive and competing despite having horrific accidents in F1 that could have been fatal without the changes made in the wake of Ayrton's demise.

 

Lets see how many people I trigger this time (Some of these I already had discussions with in other threads)

- DP are the best looking Prototypes right now and I will surely miss them

- GT3 is ruining what can make particular race series unique and interesting and I hope it dies out for something new.

- National Championships should only have 1 - 5 Manufacturers

- Without Scott McLaughlin, Volvo would have left the VA Supercars much sooner than they are now.

- The Driver Championship barely matters in Sportscar Racing

- The naming of IndyCar and SportsCar is stupid

- The Monaco GP should be canned

- Racing in the same track twice in a season is totally fine.

- Senna is overrated

- The 25-18-15-12... points system used in most series is stupid and needs to be reworked.

- The 10-6-4-3-2-1 points system used in F1 before was terrible and it was a great thing when they canned it.

- 2000s GT1 needs to come back

- Toyota didn't "deserve to win" the Le Mans this year

- LMP2 was terrible to begin with, and was a cluster

- Silverstone is a horrible race track

- Road America is also a horrible race track

- I don't think it was Rick Kelly's fault when he spun out Craig Lowndes in the 2006 final round (wow that was 10 years ago)

- The 2014 Bathurst 1000 was the worst race in this current decade so far.

 

Alonso is/was on a different level to every other driver on the F1 grid, I don't think anyone was close to him in terms of skill.

 

Obviously we can't compare different eras but where does he rank amongst his contemporary greats?

- Button
- Alonso
- Vettel
- Räikkönnen

And so on. MSC doesn't count because he was well past it when he came back.

Personally, I'd be well on board with this. One of the all time greats.

 

Too many people in the motorsports forum think their opinion matters.

 

I don't think Massa was all that bad, just that his teammate was unbelievably good and the cars they were given were a bit crap.

It's the 2012 season that made my mind up, his ability to consistently score high points while not having the quickest car at any stage of the season was remarkable.

 

It would be rather boring if nobody shared their opinions.

 

• Pure Formula 1 racing would be the least entertaining thing televised, would make Paid Programming entertaining in comparison, things like the commentary and the graphics make it somewhat watchable
• The constant obsession with technological innovation has ruined racing.
• There will come a point where racing will be too safe to be entertaining. Have we reached it yet? No, but we're drawing closer

From what I've read of the non-NASCAR threads, 90% of the time no one shares their opinion, instead reporting on the race like most of the people in the thread aren't watching.

 

You clearly haven't seen an F1 thread when it's Hamilton's fault.

 

That's 9% of the remaining 10%, constant bitching about whatever opinion is popular at the time.

 

Interesting, I'd verify this claim but I'm sure you've compiled the facts and figures yourself and made a pie chart.

 

That can only happen to people who watch motorsport purely to see people get hurt. As long as you're moving very quickly in a car, you're not safe. Rapid deceleration injuries are something that will always exist. Injuries don't have to come from explosions or physical intrusions.

I watch racing for the racing - I'd hope most people do too. It's why I get just as excited about watching 1:1 cars race as I do 1:10 cars - I like watching things with wheels compete against each other.

 

What makes sports like this interesting for the casual viewer is the crashes and the risk offered. Why do you think sports that don't offer any risk aren't as popular casually.

 

...Well, I don't think this stands up as an argument at all, because motorsport is a very exclusive, niche sport. F1 has made its way into the mainstream because it has money on its side, but outside of that, motorsport gets very little to no coverage on international media outlets. Popular sport is dominated by football, tennis, cricket, rugby and the like - all of those are what you'd call "safe" sports compared to motorsport. The very opposite of your statement is true.

 

Pastor Maldonado is a great driver, he just causes accidents on purpose.

 

That's the casual viewer though, so why do we need to keep them happy when they aren't a core audience?

Now on to opinions.

• I prefer Prost to Senna.
• Mark Webber was literally just a number 2 driver at RBR.
• Night races in F1 are pointless.
• McLaren's current livery is good, the idea of Marlboro and orange cars isn't.
• I don't mind monochrome liveries.
• The Nurburgring 24 hours is a bit boring, especially at night.
• GTE will self-destruct very soon.
• LMP1 isn't as good as LMP2.
• WTCC isn't all that great.
• WRC shouldn't go back to Group B cars.
• Formula E isn't terrible.

And a bonus because I don't know if it really qualifies for this thread, but the SENNA movie was pretty awful.

 

If the core audience isn't paying the bills

 

Minor National and International Sports yes, but Major National Sports and F1 (in Europe mostly, not much casual Australians care about F1) are really big for certain countries. NASCAR in America, VA Supercars in Australia, DTM in Germany, I would argue that Super GT has a decent size of popularity in Japan etc.

Motorsport isn't really a little special snowflake.

 

F1 should drop the whole manufacturer-championship thing, come up with spec-cars (think Formula Renault 3.5 +plus+) and let the skill of racing decide who's "Number 1", rather than who's got the best car for the current rule set.

 

The people who only ever watch it "Because it was on" will?

 

• Drifting is more interesting to watch than Formula 1.
• Indycar/IRL is a joke
• Cars like the 458/488, Corvette, 911, Viper and 650S should not be allowed in GT racing because they're not GT's, they're sports cars.

 

That's not what a casual fan is. A casual fan is someone that follows the series, just not extremely close. They watch most of the races in a season and may attend a race or two. They probably don't know much more than the key players though and haven't spent much time looking up the history.

For instance, I would describe myself as a casual fan of NASCAR, I watch probably about a third of the races and read summaries for those I miss.

 

- BOP is pointless and only exists because no one wants to work for anything anymore. Let the fastest car win and stop appealing to the crybabies who are complete at making a competitive car.

- Nobody (including Sponsors) cares about the Trucks or Nationwide/Xfinity unless someone from Cup is there. That's the reality and people need to face it.

 

My main motorsport is, sadly, F1 so... yeah, there's a difference between the NASCAR definition of casual and the F1 definition.

 

The WEC, BTCC, WRX and WRC are all examples of series that get very little to absolutely no mainstream media coverage. All of them have manufacturers involved, or at least in the BTCC some kind of manufacturer partnerships, so the marketing money goes in - I'm sure all the teams would go delirious with excitement if their series started getting real news coverage. It doesn't though. But guess what? They all operate fine. They have the fans that pay to watch live events, they have fans that pay to watch live broadcasts either online or on TV, and they have fans that will watch TV broadcasts on minor channels. I doubt any of them have a real 'casual' audience, but they survive just fine - as will most series that have a sound financial plan.

The worst thing that can happen is when a series tries to grow beyond its reach. The ITC died not just because it was horrendously expensive, but because it started hopping across the globe because Mercedes wanted to shift mountains of road cars, much to the displeasure of Alfa and Opel. They tried to make the series a global event and attract everyone from everywhere - their 'core audience' wasn't good enough for them - and they paid the price.

F1 usually falls to the middle of the running order, maybe towards the back of the sports news in the UK. It might get the odd article in a newspaper every few days, but generally very little is covered.

I'll give you that, but it still falls behind the likes of baseball, basketball and American football when it comes to casual viewership.

I'm not sure how much everyday media exposure Supercars gets in Australia, but be honest, do you really see it taking top billing in the sports news over football or rugby?

I think you're severely overestimating the popularity of a national touring car series here. It gets live TV coverage on German sports channels like any other national touring car series might - there's not a hope in hell it could compete with mainstream sports for casual viewers. I doubt most of your average German citizens won't even be able to tell you what DTM is other than some kind of motorsport series.

Definitely more than DTM in Germany, but I think F1 still takes top billing - especially with Honda's involvement.

It is.

Professional motorsport is an exclusive sport, and it always has been. It's for a rich elite to indulge in a pastime far out of the reach of normal working-class people, or for big manufacturers to market themselves. Nothing about motorsport is cheap, nothing about it is simple or basic. Football, tennis and the like are popular because anyone can feel a connection to what they see - they could go out and buy a ball or some rackets and emulate what they see professionals doing. If you settle down to watch ELMS on a channel nobody ever knew was on their TV package, all you're watching is people with a lot more money than you drive things that cost a lot more money than you have. That alienates a casual viewer.

 

That's not a NASCAR definition, it's just the definition of "casual fan".