Game used to be about driving everyday civilian cars fast.
Now its about who can parse the rules the finest.
It isn't "organizing" things that spoils them, its the organizers.
Now its about who can parse the rules the finest.
It isn't "organizing" things that spoils them, its the organizers.
The funny part is that keirin is one of the few sports in Japan that people can bet on (with large prizes for winners, too), so the mere inclusion of gambling doesn't necessarily mean bad outcomes.
If you want racing series about driving civilian cars fast, they do exist. Nascar just isn't one of them. The only one I really heard about is "Stock Miata" racing, but I'm sure there are other series using stock street cars, or at least having the exact same cars for all competitors.
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/culture/commutin...
> Anyone can place a fixed-price bid on any car, and the buyer is then chosen by draw. The fixed price in Finland is €2,000 (≈US$1,650) or 8,000 SEK (≈US$1,000) in Sweden. Refusing to sell is grounds for having one's competition licence revoked
seems like the original article is extremely outdated. USD/EUR never came close to that exchange rate in the last 10 years according to xe.com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Folkrace&diff=pre...
The EUR value has been updated without updating the USD value.
I don't like it anymore than you do, but it's not exactly a new issue.
Regarding tires, the lack of refueling means they have to make some kind of choice to add strategic opportunity and forcing at least one tire change per race is about the only thing they can do. It's a lot more interesting to watch something like IMSA where a damaged car is put into the pit, a mechanic jumps on the bent hood to squash it back down, and then they put some sturdy duct tape on it to hold it down for the rest of the race. In F1 any damage means you won't get into the top 10, so you won't get points, so you may as well not even finish the race.
Racing still needs to be a spectacle at some point, and I can only imagine being a fan who watched Senna in the wet back in the day, engine screaming, passes made with skill, and comparing it to a modern race where the engines are quiet and they had to add push to pass systems like DRS and the "add 160 horsepower" electric motors just to try to allow drivers to pass in the first place because the cars are so much larger than they used to be. I'll always be a motorsport fan but F1 kind of seems like a shell of what it could have been.
I suppose this is where it "gets political" but the F1 regulations are also attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of the sport. A lofty and worthy goal, but I don't think the cars themselves make up the bulk of the carbon footprint - transporting the cars all around the world does. So how about we make the cars fun to watch again? Improve the carbon footprint of the transport, and don't restrict the cars to try to offset it. Just let the cars be cars! It feels like artificially limiting the amount of food you can feed a champion race horse just to say "We reduced grain dependence across the whole sport!"
Making fast, unpassable car is just to easy. Regulations are about crippling them enough to make racing interesting. If you have to do it anyway then why not add other lofty goals like driver's safety, efficiency, disallowing solutions that would drain everyone's budget etc.
Or ridiculously dangerous. The cars are much less fast than they could be.
With your horse analogy, imagine mixing in the champion's genes back into work horses. Probably a net win.
F1 can be very boring, the guys that were starting first were finishing first, I would watch it to see overtakes and piloting skills and the problem is that without limits the company with the big money will win. This is not fun, it does not make money and rules change to limit costs so all the teams can compete using a similar budget.
I stopped watching 2 decades ago, I stopped also watching or reading the summaries, it got to boring for me but I suppose that there are soem that want to see that kind of sport where the teams have no limit and you just watch the cars running around in circles and admire them.
I think there are only a few engines providers anyway , so I am not sure on what they are optimizing on this days, maybe aerodynamics and fuel strategy.
Since you mentioned you are too young to even have watched the refueling era of F1, you need to understand: F1 could always be boring to watch.
During Schumacher's era you'd see P1 and P2 lapping over P4 or even P3 sometimes. Reliability was a mess, engines exploding, some races had barely 8-10 cars finishing; richest teams could run 3-5 engines in a single weekend while the non-competitive teams couldn't simply because they didn't have the budget.
The races now are much more competitive, even though RBR has been dominating, and previously Mercedes, the difference in lap time nowadays is much more competitive and entertaining to watch the midfield than it ever was in the 90s/2000s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16
Edit: BRM are sometimes referred to as "British Racing Misery"
That's not entirely true. F1 tires today are vastly grippier and stronger than they were in the James Hunt Nikki Lauda era because the downforces they need to withstand are also much stronger.
Sure, by F1 regulations, Pirelli needs to intentionally make the upper layer of their tires have a short lifespan in order to make the race more exiting by forcing the team strategy to come to the pits more often when their tires wear out, instead of staying out the entire race on one set of tires, but you can't say the tires are made as poorly as possible.
In fact the innovations in them are quite remarkable. They're intentionally not as hard wearing as the Michelins of the Michel Schumacher era but they're way grippier.
The America’s Cup, (yacht racing) is another good example of this. Half the competition is in the court room, which isn’t that interesting from my point of view.
Everyday civilian cars aren't anywhere near as safe as NASCAR race cars but some are likely faster and/or handle better.
They were always modified to be faster and to hide booze.
From day one.