The first part of the automotive hobby will be the death of motorsport. How do you think it will happen?
FIA Formula One's viewership has fallen, LeMans peak years have past, WRC is barely alive, NASCAR's demographic is on its death bed, DTM and Super GT are shadows of their former self, V8 Supercar is dead.
Will the car community benefit froms it death? Will performance cars be next?
f1fanatic.co.uk
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Super GT has seen a huge upswing in viewership and the racing is currently at it's peak. IMSA has also seen double digit gains in viewership and attendance. Some series do better than others, things change and things come and go. We're FAR better than where we were in the early to mid 2000s.
They need a real homologation GT series. Imagine mostly stock Camaro ZL1, Mustang GT350, GTR, M4 GTS, etc. all going at it. This magazine lap time/nurburgring time thing is already popular, would be awesome to see real racing with near street cars. Ballast should be adjusted by cost, so they could run a Porsche GT3 RS, 488, etc. but would be at a disadvantage to the $80k cars.
You mean FIA GT4?
youtube.com
Lookup
Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R
Ford Racing Mustang GT4
Nissan 370Z GT4
BMW M4 GT4
Thank you for adding to the "heartbreaker being retarded" screenshot folder
f1 lost its audience because it's run by morons.
there's nothing wrong.with hybrids but shitty rules and regulations ruined it. they're only allowed to use a certain amount of electric energy per lap which is fucking retarded.
It's too safe. Give the people their blood.
Motorsport is all about the sounds and close calls/dangerous driving, without them, you lose most of your viewership. Regulations deemed most motorsports to be too hazardous to the general public, and to the drivers. Racing is just boring now.
Pretty much all sports are taking hits in viewership as of late, but motorsport's shifting away from the biggest competitions to more low-level competition which isn't a bad thing.
F1 sucks now
No wonder with all the boring safety and engine regulations in recent years. Rallying was at its all time high in popularity when people died next to the track.
Agree with the safety nazis killing the sport.
I have three local tracks within 2 hours drive from me. I used to spend a lot of time at the 1/2 mile oval when I was younger, especially for demo/endurance races, they used to get fields of 30+ cars and the stands would be full because it was cheap fun. you and a couple buddies could build a car in a couple weekends for dirt cheap, now it costs way too much to build a car to pass tech for a demo race that nobody is doing it anymore. The stands are hardly 30% full and the last time I went they only had 8 cars pass tech
>verstappen passes kimi on last turn to get a podium
>this is illegal
The only pass that race was illegal.
The engine formula is trash and has led to no racing and the fan base has devolved into celebrity worship. See reddit f1 or even F1 general. Its best driver is shit and everyone knows it.
The most exciting part of the race is whether 8th can pass 9th
the saddest thing about F1 losing its way is the iconic tracks getting mutilated and slowed down like Hockenheim, San Marino and Fuji
that is why I like the TT and "real road racing" not because of the danger but because all the tracks are temples of speed
The cars used in motorsports are unobtanium for the common person. I mean look at nascar, those cars aren't stock wtf. F1 cars have technology that isn't accessible for non f1 teams.
The joy of watching motorspors was watching your car win a race, it was your team. Now people have no connection to the sport.
This. If NASCAR ran actual stock cars like they did back in the day I would watch the fuck out of that.
Things like hillclimb racing, world time attack, formula drift, Super GT are all doing really well in terms of relative popularity at the moment. I think now everyone has internet aka access to all of the different disciplines of motorsport the 'big name' divisions of motorsport will lose popularity and be replaced with a larger spread of smaller more specialised divisions.
Don't forget nobody under the age of 35 buys cable and instead watches a stream. The numbers are going to be deflated because illegal streams aren't counted.
No no no, when wigglies go zippy zoom on the peeway, there's a hotdog that says 'hey, I'm a processed meat product, how and why have I been formed from a eurethra'? But that's what happens in hell, kiddo! You pee hotdogs! So drive your little nibbly pibbly car on the pee track because Satan is waiting for you with pee! Shame! Hell! Depression!
...
hey
psst
hey
get this
autonomous
GROUP B
All those series except Super GT made multiple retarded decisions and are now suffering as a result.
Super GT is great right now, attendance is up, viewership is up, car counts are up, racing is competitive as fuck. Best racing series in the world senpai.
Cost and safety are killing motorsports.
And the drivers. Most drivers now are boring, almost robot-like, characterless, dull, soyboys, the lot of them.
>Most drivers now are boring, almost robot-like, characterless, dull, soyboys
If they say or do anything with personality, the sponsors drop them due to complaints about discrimination. Look at all the past cases, and you see how the anti-discrimination stuff leveraged sponsors into removing any sort of controversial personality characteristics from the race drivers. So it's no wonder that the drivers all behave like scripted robots. They're forced to be that way in order to keep their sponsorships. The problem is that the sponsors are too skittish.
No wonder it is dying cause the driver part has almost completely engineered out.
Take F1 for instance, it really doesn't matter who the driver is in the best cars, they win cause car is so good.
Take WRC, Ogier won the championship although he was mostly 2nd or 3rd in most rallys, he didn't even try to win most rallys
Same is happening everywhere, money wins races not drivers, I mean F1 has a teenage boy racing up there with veterans, this just doesn't make sense
Group B should come back just like it was in the 80's. Imagine a lifted GT3 RS with gravel tires and light bars racing an M3 with similar mods on some windy dirt road in europe. I would pay for cable to watch that live.
I stopped watching F1 when the cars became ugly and boring and passing was only done with gimmicks like KERS or wahtever the fuck
>NASCAR's demographic is on its death bed
While not the primary reason, Insurance company rates discourage the existence of drivers hooning their car. Efforts to reduce the amount of enthusiasm of people for their cars probably contributes something towards reducing interest in autosports.
F1 cars should be outrageous machines, pushing the limit of technology and drivers.
GT should be about stock cars racing. Not standardize bullshit. Still best series nowadays.
Because rally has turned to a lawnmower engine fest.
Also, technology wise, drone racing is the future. Obese fucks in an air conditioned room controlling the machines on track. A blend of E-sports and motorsports.
trying too hard
And autonomous group C
>would fucking kill to see a c9 and 962 barreling down the Mulsanne again
Barely made it through the first sentence
>implying insurance companies haven't always done this
Meanwhile motorcycle motorsports are at an all time high. The motorcycle world is in a Renaissance right now
shut up cuck
>>>/Facebook/
cant cuck the zuck
>Drives in a cage, separating himself from the elements
>Needs music to enhance the driving experience
>Body position doesn't matter, you're just pressing buttons and moving a wheel like playing a video game
Don't get me wrong, I love to hoon in my car as much as the next guy, but motorcycles are on a whole different level of immersion.
There will never not be racing.
Humans are addicted to speed and competition.
First we ran, and when we could run no faster we tamed an animal that could. Then we replaced that animal with a machine that could outrun every creature on the planet, to which the natural response was to build another machine just like it and see which one goes faster.
As long as human civilization exists we will be racing anything that moves.
The problem is that professionnals racers and their families are usually able to afford armies of lawyers and the last thing you want in a bunch of millionaires starting a class action lawsuit against you.
The will to win is about testosterone and the natural human condition. Once we're forced to consume enough soy, everyone will be happy with being equal.
Wut? F1 lost it's spectators because of literal shitheads running it. I think it has something to do with some shitty female driver they appointed claims that women shouldn't race alongside men.
But IMSA, Super GT, and Blancpain are doing fine. IMSA is actually doing great.
Illegal streams? That shit is mostly free.
>lifted GT3 RS
Probably more like a stupidly boosted Turbo S because AWD and lotsa power.
cost has nothing to do with it
they are unlicensed unauthorized streams and so do not count toward viewership
>FIA Formula One's viewership has fallen
i dont know if its the same for others but speed getting axed didnt help me
>F1 cars should be outrageous machines, pushing the limit of technology and drivers
Have you noticed that F1 has gone from setting trends to following trends.
As long as there will be people with money to spend, there will be Motorsport.
Racing cars are for the rich. People pay to race, racing teams are businesses just like any other, they make money by renting their cars and/or technicians to people willing to pay for the driving seat. This is true from the first step above amateur racing to the very top, excluding some works team that are paid by a manufacturer, but those are not the majority.
There are championships that routinely race with empty grandstands and are still going strong, because the whole machine is fueled by the drivers' money, not by the spectators' money.
Yes, rules get changed constantly to please the spectators too (because hey, people still love to watch racing cars, so why not capitalize on that?), but rest assured that they could ban all the spectators from seeing any race and stop selling race tickets from tomorrow and there will still be cars racing like nothing happened.
It's a complex subject, at the end of the day we can't really quantify the importance of viewership numbers. It is important, but not that important in my opinion.
Drivers pay obscene amounts of money to drive, there have been cars racing at Le Mans with not a single sponsor on their liveries except for the ones imposed by the championship or by the car manufacturer, these people don't get a single penny by spectators or TV airing rights, yet they still race because they have the money to burn and the desire to sit behind the wheel of a goddamn race car and have some fun.
Take the WEC for example, do you think they turned the championship inside-out and created this 2-year monstrosity we have now because of the lack of spectators or is it because the ones who brought the big money (LMP1) all jumped ship?
LMP2s are the new cash cows, they are trying to get as many as they can despite historically being the class nobody gave a shit about and they will no doubt try to get the DPi class on board too in the future.
Because new technology was considered too expensive, so they solved that with literally the most expensive engines ever and all the fans hated them. Le Mans has the same problem. Lower level racing is as strong as ever, because it's built around the competitors, spectators are a bonus. Touring cars and sports cars are doing fine.
Oh okay. Never considered that.
motor sport used to be a lot more fun to watch, i think they just added too many rules, i was watching some 80s and early 90s f1 and indycar and it just looks at lot more interesting to watch.
Pls watch our league.
>FIA Formula One's viewership has fallen
F1 has been shit since the early-'00s. But to viewership is another matter since the broadcast rights are now all over the place and intends to move from broadcast networks to paid cable networks.
>LeMans peak years have past
I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.
>WRC is barely alive, NASCAR's demographic is on its death bed, DTM and Super GT are shadows of their former self, V8 Supercar is dead.
All of this is false.
>f1fanatic.co.uk
Nigga, you posted an article from 2 years ago. The decline in viewership has since stopped and in fact has increased:
espn.com
Also, you ignore the massive growth of sportbike racing, Formula-E, and GT-category racing.
OP is a fucking casual who barely follows motorsport as it is. He/she is not in any position to comment on the state of racing. I'm pretty sure OP made this thread on Veeky Forums because he/she would be called out for his/her BS and general ignorance in every reply.
Sage this fucking garbage thread.
>social media
kek it's only growing like that because Bernie didn't give a single fuck about it in his day.
>trusting liberty
KEK
f1broadcasting.co
>formula e
You can say what you want about FE, but it's one of the very few (if not the only one) pushing hard for spectator involvement with that fanboost gimmick.
Not to mention the fact that they can race where absolutely nobody else can race and get extreme visibility because of the whole "racing in the middle of a big metropolis" format.
You can hate on the cars, but you can't hate on the format
The whole thing is a shit gimmick that eeverbody can smell from a mile away
They don't even release attendance figures, but there's some fuckery in Canada about it and they released some numbers and...
It's a big meme. Manufacturers are there just to collect some good boy points with the media after their emissions scandals.
That's why I said it was a gimmick, but people love it so it works, even if it has no real practical effect on the races themselves.
I don't even know how you would calculate actual attendance figures for such events since everyone living near the track will be renting their balconies and rooftops to spectators willing to watch the race from above (and there are many)
At the end of the day, spectators are spectators, what difference does it make if they pay or not?
Like said here , race tickets don't sustain motorsport.
My point was that FE is the only one pushing for some serious spectator involvement, be it via gimmicky vote systems or free tickets, it's still better than anything else in this regard, even more so since they race in the middle of big cities where everyone can just take a bus or a bike to watch the race anywhere they can.
>spectators are spectators, what difference does it make if they pay or not?
if the race cant make its money back it wont happen again
see: Malaysian Grand Prix
>he didn't even bother to read the article
You're an idiot who needs to be spoon fed everything:
>Newly released figures, published by FOM on Friday, show that the sport enjoyed a 6.2 percent increase in TV audience compared to 2016 across all F1 programmes broadcast throughout the year.
>Positive growth was registered in the top four performing markets in Italy, Brazil, the UK and Germany, while viewing figures also rose significantly in China, Switzerland and Denmark.
>there was a one percent increase in the live audience, as well as rising viewing figures for both practice and qualifying sessions.
Yeah but the Malaysian GP really didn't have people going and still managed to survive 20 years.
In the case of the link you posted, people were actually there and were still paying for burgers, beers, T-shirts, upgrades to their tickets inside the closed paddock area. It's not just the ticket itself that makes the difference.
If attendance was what makes a race track survive, they would shut down the track, not the event. Track usage is paid by the teams racing there, the spectators are icing on the cake.
Sepang will survive just as well, even without F1 support.
>increase amount of "F1 programmes"
>overall viewership goes up
incredible!
Meanwhile UK viewership is down, and this years Brazilian GP had the third worst rating ever on Brazilian tv.
I'm talking about the race not the race track. MotoGP packs Sepang every year.
>I'm talking about the race not the race track. MotoGP packs Sepang every year.
I see what you mean and I kind of agree with you.
F1 is quite a special subject, there is a lot of manufacturer money involved as opposed to other privateer-heavy motorsports, so spectators are valued more in that case, because it's sort of directly linked to profit for the teams racing.
The WEC, for example, doesn't have this much stress over attendance and viewership, because most of the field is made of privateers that don't care about spectators as much (even more so now that proper LMP1s don't exist anymore).
Of course any organisation is going to try as hard as they can to bring new spectators, because it's still money, but I think their role is quite overrated, or you wouldn't see world championships racing in fucking Silverstone in April when it's still snowing
I see plenty of you fags crying for stock series, yet every single one of you fails to acknowledge all the current series racing with stock or almost stock cars.
There is a reason why you don't see top competitions racing stock cars anymore, it's because it's fucking boring and nobody gives a shit about it
WEC has very few 100% privateer funded teams, attendance and viewership are definitely still very important there. GTE-Pro, P2 and P1 have bills to pay and sponsors to please.
The biggest example of 100% privateer race is probably the Dubai 24 Hours (which is happening now watch it here youtube.com
Other Creventic events are similar in how theyre still low profile like that but they definitely sell tickets.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't consider watching formula 1 on TV a hobby.
Pretty much all AM and P2 teams are more or less private, AMs especially race with older cars by the rules so I wouldn't see why any manufacturer would want to invest in them, considering the vastly inferior driver skill involved too.
Even the GT PRO class isn't completely manufacturer funded. Look at AF Corse, which is the only team racing with PRO stickers that doesn't proudly display the manufacturer they race with in their name and still retain their private identity (at least from the outside, but these subtle things are quite telling).
And if you take a look at a lot of the sponsors on any random car, chances are they are advertising some outrageously expensive product/service/company that has little to do with the average spectator.
Most of the time, the driver's rich friends and relatives are more important, for the sponsors, than all the normal spectators combined.
But hey, we clearly have different views on the matter, I think viewership and attendance numbers are vastly overrated. Important, for sure, but not that important for motorsport as a whole.
I think we are using different definitions of "privateer" here. While your definition is the correct one (team not funded by a manufacturer), the kind of team whose sponsors dont give a shit about how many people are seeing their sponsorship on the car are the ones funded by rich dudes who buy a seat with their own money, which isnt a thing for 99% of GTE-Pro and above teams, as they all have professional drivers to pay or professional drivers who bring their sponsors in.
Ferrari's participation in GT racing is more of a "if you have the money we will gladly help you" deal than directly funding teams. This led to no Ferraris racing in IMSA GTLM last year for example. Pretty sad.
Yeah that's why I cited AF Corse as an exception, of course the PRO class is almost exclusively funded by manufacturers with paid drivers, I never said otherwise.
But if you think about it, private teams with paying drivers make up like 90% of all the teams racing in any Motorsport, they are the guys keeping the whole business afloat with the few notable exceptions in the form of the various top tier series in any respective field.
These are the guys I'm talking about, the guys that could more or less happily survive regardless of public attendance, and these guys are the majority.
>>increase amount of "F1 programmes"
[citation needed]
>Meanwhile UK viewership is down
Wrong again.
Read. The fucking. Article.
>he/she
>his/her
Kys fag
...
>being this retarded
>Le Mans/WEC
Can they just fucking kill LMP1 already? Have it so LMP2 and GT1-esque cars are competing for top billing. I can't be the only one annoyed with current situation.
Since they got the new engine, LMP2s are almost as fast as private LMP1s from like 2 or 3 years ago with a fraction of the cost.
They made a lot of retarded decisions with LMP1: the private class had no reason to exist, the manufacturer class got too expensive too fast with very little competition and the cars could only race in one (1) championship and absolutely nowhere else. It made no sense from the beginning.
If was fun while it lasted, but now LMP2 is where the fun is at, I just wish they keep the current P2 rules, scrap the P1 class, name the P2s as just LMP, add Daytona Prototypes in the mix and leave the manufacturer competition to the GTs.
Or they could make P3s the new P2s and name P2s as P1 and be done with it.
You can't make a class with F1-tier costs and expect it to last when there are only six cars and three teams racing.
t. Never ridden a motorcycle
You'd be surprised how gravel-worthy the 991 is, really either of them could work
>Millenials killing NASCAR!
Perhaps the problem is just NASCAR itself is boring?
Who wants to see whats in effect a one-make race where all the cars look like something your grandparents would have driven?
Make it actually stock car racing again in venues that isn't just ovals and maybe I'd care.
>and maybe I'd care.
No you wouldn't, you can go watch stock car racing (any discipline, not just ovals) right now and you will be bored out of your mind.
It's fun maybe the first couple of times you see it, but then you realise it's mostly low level amateur racing with cars that look and sound too boring compared to all the cool looking and sounding alternatives.
How about an "Anything goes" attitude? As long as you're not trying to kill the other cars and a few things like rollcages, you can have any design and style of car you like?
t. Actually thinks driving a car is just pressing buttons.
Best bet is probably Goodwood or the Rolex Reunion at Laguna.
In response to this article, I agree with as far as it just being boring. I was born in 1982 and for as long as I remember, NASCAR has been associated with a few things: rednecks, being boring, and people watching for the crashes. I know there are fans that aren't watching for crashes but outside of rednecks, I don't know many people that consider themselves to be NASCAR fans, and watching them do 300 laps around an oval is boring as hell.
>Formula One's viewership has fallen
Merecedes wins LOL!
V6 LOL!
No working on your cars during the season LOL!
>LeMans peak years have passed
Dude 2 manufacturers lmao
>one-make race
When you realize that NASCAR is F1 with giant american boats you'll truly appreciate it
This driving around really fast around an oval is fun, watching someone else do it, not so much
TV viewership is down because they got the highest TV rights fees from channels with lower audiences (eg. cable or pay TV instead of public broadcasting) People suggest that in the long term this could be a problem because of fewer eyeballs on sponsors but the old sponsorship exposure model hasn't been working for shit for a while now.
F1 has always been about celebrity worship you stupid fuck, it's been almost 24 years and everyone is still riding Senna's dick.
Nah, Hamilton and Vettel are far from characterless, they're just unlikable.
So about 1985?
Modern LMP1 is the same shit as Group C as well as a lot faster. Don't even tell me the engines are boring when Group C was mostly goddamn droning low rev turbo flat 6 Porsches.
P1 is going to be fun as fuck this year, fuck off.
>Group C was mostly goddamn droning low rev turbo flat 6 Porsches.
youtube.com
don't be a retard
/thread
this user nailed it
>posts a video of 90% low revving turbo flat-6s
???
Historic Group C has like 1000% more stock block V8 IMSA cars than the real thing ever had by the way. (rather more V12 Jaguars than any given race would have had either)
I think Dakar is doing well. The competitors pay 15k euro entry fee (515 competitors this year) and the fans can watch it for free in the middle of no where. People also get airlifted to hospital almost everyday, so the speed and danger still exists. Worst part is that the footage is typically not great/mainly helicopter based.
>P1 is going to be fun as fuck this year
>Toyota wins everything except LM24 because they are cursed.
Yeah... "fun."
Yeah a single official P1 manufacturer and maybe 3 teams in the private class, they basically reversed what happened two years ago with 3 official teams and one private (I don't even count Bykolles because come on).
I honestly preferred if they scrapped P1 altogether and filled the gaps with more P2s, it's not like those aren't fast or entertaining to watch, it's just that nobody gives a shit about them because they aren't associated with famous brands.
the WSCC has been doing fine with just P2, current entry list sees 21 protos, of which 11 are legit P2 and the rest are DPi, with a total of 14 teams all officially competing in the same P class.
The WEC, on the other hand, will probably have around 15/18 total protos (ACO explicitly said they want to keep proto numbers balanced with GT numbers, and the full grids will be in the 30/35 ballpark) split in 3 classes, one of which has only one competitor in it. It's not like P1 aren't fun to watch, it's that seeing the top class with one competitor and the top sub-class with maybe 3 gets boring fast IMO, at that point I would prefer to see 18 P2 all fighting for the same objective and none of this incredibly mismanaged P1 class.
We'll see who's right next month when the official WEC entry list will be released.
WEC is a shit show this year. Has anybody looked at their calendar for this season? It goes for this May until the 2019 LM24. Then they follow that up with a shorter season going from fall 2019 to the 2020 LM24.
P1 is in its death throes and might drag the rest of the series down with it.
Circuit shit is boring it's all safe slow over regulated crap.
Same with all Motorsports they are so preoccupied making it as dull and mundane as possible to watch.
Glad racing is going underground on the streets again 1320 nights are much more interesting to watch than a weird f1 thing that hasn't really changed since the 90s and is handicapped by ancient restrictions and rules.
Fuck sake even 2017-2018 wrc eased up on the rules to get people interested again and it worked.
Spectator deaths and smouldering wrecks is the best part of any sport because it brings out the inner gladiator
That's because they want to make Le Mans the season finale, but they don't want to change it's date in the middle of the year.
So they're doing the "super season" to transition to a winter schedule
This is going to be the most expensive WEC season ever.
Two 24h races and one 12h race is gonna be hella expensive for everyone involved.
Considering how the FIA has been trying to cut costs since forever, I wonder what the fuck were they thinking when they planned this shit
As a season yeah, but month to month costs are pretty much the same if not lower. There are more races but it's an 18 month season.
Teams who entered for the season will still have to race the whole season. You can skip races, sure, but that kind of defeats the purpose of fighting for a championship.
My whole point was about season costs, obviously.
I'm sure many possible participants willing to upgrade from minor series were seriously put off at the prospect of committing for two 24h races and one 12h in a single season, switching from ELMS/ALMS/IMSA is already a huge jump in budgeting.
They will obviously fill the grid anyway, as there is hardly a shortage of rich people willing to pay for this superseason, mine was just a consideration about how the ACO/FIA keeps making more problems than it solves.
>That's because they want to make Le Mans the season finale
There are several reason for it doing it that way, but making the LM24 the season finale is far from the most important.
One of the main reasons is the high speculation that Toyota is looking at exiting WEC after 2019. They already openly said that they were committed through 2019. With the "super season" format, they get to do two LM24 races in a single season and still keep their promise without having to do the extra 5-6 rounds that would normally be in a full season.
Most likely they are waiting to see if P1 shapes up or not which leads to the second reason: It's a last-ditch effort by the FIA to save P1 and attract more entrants. Without another major manufacturer to race against, Toyota is most likely gone regardless of what else happens in P1. However, there's still some hope left for a completely privateer P1-Lite category if there are enough entries to keep it afloat.
Another reason is that Mexico, COTA, Nurburgring, and Bahrain were dropped from the calendar. In their places there will be a trip to Sebring, a second round at Spa, and another LM24.
Furthermore following the 2018-19 super season, there will be a 2019-20 mini season with only 5-6 races. This is mostly for security of the privateers who may buy a P1 this year some security that there will be a few more races where they can drive it.
>FIA Formula One's viewership has fallen
>make a million stupid rules
>no more manuals
wow be shock. Yuropoors like real racing not that stupid bullshit
Toyota will win Le Mans this year.
Then they will get disqualified from the race and permanently banned from WEC.
Mark my words.