2012 F1 in HDTV - Page 24  

Maybe they'll get hit by an F-5

After > 15 years of watching F1 on Speed, I felt a little bit of melancholy watching it end.
The guys, in front of and behind the camera, hooked me on GP racing years ago.
I learned alot, and was exceedingly entertained every step of the way.

All I can hope for, at this point, is NBC has studied the Speed presentation and have learned what it will take to put on a great show for us fans next year.

^^^

i feel that way too... it's the end of an era...

yes to all.. this was the best f1 season i can remember... even the senna/prost battles couldn't touch this... as a fan of the red car (and a huge schumi fan), it was fun to watch michael dominate during the glory years, but it wasn't exactly exciting racing... it seems like they've finally (despite bernie) have finally come up with the magic combination of proper qualifying, tires, engine restrictions, etc. to give us a great race... the only thing i'd really want to change is to allow the teams unlimited sets of tires, as i think it would add a bit more strategy to the races... that would give drivers the option to either preserve their tires on the car (as they do now), or burn them up and make the additional pit stop(s)...

agreed on nico... it's called "racing" for a reason... i think that the whole "no blocking" thing has gone way too far, and some of the penalties handed down this year have been truly head scratching...

as far as the title goes... while it was disappointing to not see alonso win, red bull deserved to win... fernando drove better this year (hard to conceive of anyone driving better considering the non-competitive car ferrari rolled out this year), but red bull put together the better combination of car, driver and strategy... plus vettel wasn't exactly chopped liver behind the wheel... he had a couple of amazing drives this year... at the beginning of stint with red bull, i though he was like a "super version" of damon hill, in that if he had the best car and was in front, he was unbeatable, but he couldn't pass my grandmother... over the last 18 months, he has proved me to be very wrong...

imo, while alonso's dnf's were the turning point, it was a strategy call that ferrari made earlier in the year that cost them in the end... i can't recall which race it was off the top of my head (too early in the morning for me to think hard ... someone help me here), but it was the race where both alonso and vettel's tires both "fell off the cliff" with 10 or so laps to go... red bull made the decision to pit for tires, ferrari didn't, and vettel made up a bunch of points... bfreedma (surprised he hasn't made his way into this thread) and i discussed that at the time, and we hoped those lost points wouldn't come back to bite alonso in the end... sadly, they did... dnf's are somewhat out of the teams control, but strategy is not...

it's too bad... had alonso actually managed to bring that car to a championship, fangio/stewart/senna/schumi would have had to bring a 5th chair to the tablle of alltime f1 greats...

i'm already ready for next year...

I know very little chance of change, but you never know in those weather conditions, i wish the last lap of the race had been run regular instead of having to be behind the safety car, that took any chance Fernando had of winning away immediately. You never know, Vettlel could have spun out or gotten hit by someone else spinning out, but what can you do, they had to put the safety car out there.

This was one of the most interesting and exciting races all year IMHO. I really enjoyed it, wish every race had this much excitement.

Button really ran strong, he drove a great race.

Congrats to Vettel, a real nice guy and a proven world champion.

Congrats to Alonso, who did so much with a lessor car, and came oh so close.

I was hoping Michael would do better in his last race, but it wasnt in the cards.

You wonder about Hamilton and how good he is gonna do on his new team next year, Mc Claren cars now look fast, and i dont know how quick he is gonna be next year.

Hard to believe the season is over, and now NBC will do the races here in the US, dont know whats happening (if anything) with the broadcasts in other countries, but i am so used to SPEED here, it will seem strange to see NBC involved. At least we get 2 of the 3 announcers going from SPEED to NBC.

They really didn't have a choice about the safety car.
The Force India car was in a very unsafe place.

Besides, Button was far ahead of Alonso and Vettel had already decided to play it safe.
He seems to excel in those kinds of conditions.

+1

Unless Mercedes is going to exploit some loophole in the regs (ala Brawn F1 a few years back), I doubt they will be able to run at the front very often.
It takes time and $$$ to build a frontrunner.

I believe the contract with F1 and NBC only covers the television rights in this country.

The Brazil race was a great finish to what has been one of the most exciting F1 seasons I can remember. The rain, coupled with how close Vettel and Alonzo were to each other in the standings for the driver's championship, made this race heart stopping. Like everybody else, I fear the worst but hope for the best next season when NBC takes over the F1 telecasts.

Congrats to Vettel, although I think more of the praise should go to Adrian Newey for his usual brilliant engineering job.


The Formula 1 Debrief show this week is going to be a retrospective show, covering Speed's (I still miss Speedvision for some reason) years of broadcasting F1. Should be very interesting. Looks like I'll be setting the DVR!

+1

I don't think more or less of the praise should go to either. It's a team effort, Vettel couldn't do it without someone like Newey. By the same token Newey couldn't do it without someone like Vettel.

And here's the fundamental weakness of F1. The most money and best engineering buys the win. You can never be sure how great a driver really is, unless it's something like Alonso did with an inferior car. You didn't even hear about Vettel until the second half of the season after Newey dialed the car in. It would be interesting to see how someone like Timo Glock (yeah, I said It ) would do driving for Red Bull.

This gets to the issue of customer cars and whether it would be a good thing or not for the sport.
It's a tough call IMO.
On one hand, the team championship would become less important and the driver's title more.
OTOH, the pushing of the technology envelope would be less and the cost of buying/building a competitive F1 team would be less prohibitive.

I wouldn't call that a fundamental weakness of F1, unless you want revise your statement to include all of motorsports. It works that way in sports car racing, touring car racing, and NASCAR too. Vettel won because he's a top flight driver with a top flight team. You can put a second rate driver in a Red Bull car and Alonso would have mopped the floor with him. It's similar in other sports too. The top funded teams have the most success and recruit the best talent.

Alonso accomplished what he did because he's an extraordinary talent. But I think Vettel is too. He might not have Alonso's experience, but he has Alonso's potential. Of that I have no doubt.

^^^

yup... wanna go fast? spend money... wanna go even faster? spend even more money... iit's been that way since day 1 with racing...

and put a "fast driver" in the car... if it really was "only the money side", webber would have finished second in the championship...

of course, it helps to spend it well... and "spending it well" would include hiring newey...

for an example of "not spending it well", see the honda effort of recent times... they spent heaven knows how many yen, and accomplished nada...

i vote "very bad"... "customer cars" would reduce f1 to a glorified spec series...

Newey joined RBR at the end of 2005 season.

Vettel joined for 2009 season.

RBR had its first pole, and its first win, in 2009 with Vettel driving.

For awhile I thought Seb would be a Senna/Schumi clone, ton of talent but hard headed, win at all costs morons, and it distressed me a lot. But, like a lot of fast drivers that are a bit rambunctious in their early days, he straightened out. Add that up, and to me it makes him, if he lives up to his potential, the greatest ever.

That's an argument that will go on forever, mostly because the rules are so much stricter now that many say no one will equal Michael's paper record, but Vettel's sheer speed, in both quali and race (and on this years tires!) combined with his ability to keep his driving judgment together under pressure make him the driver with the most potential I've ever seen.

Every driver knows that to win the driver's championship (even though F1 is a constructors championship) means being in the right car with the right team at the right time. Vettel has often said in interviews that the team are all equal, and all work for a common goal. That one so young could appreciate that atmosphere makes my heart sing.

Time will tell, but I think we're witnessing something truly special in Vettel, and should be appreciated as such.

Amazing race! I wanted Hamilton to win, too bad he was kicked out the track in his last race for McLaren. Oh well, at least another McLaren won.

BBC's reporting is still top-notch. It is sad Jake is leaving BBC's F1 reporting for soccer, hopefully BBC will at least keep DC and EJ.

+1

+2

True, but what are we to do when the series has 12 teams, of which only 3 have a realistic shot of winning the championship?

+3

^^^

yea, i hear you on the "only 3 having a chance of winning the championship"... that is a bit of a conundrum... unfortunately, it exists at the "top level" of all motorsports... money rules... let's face it, if rbr had not come into the sport with the huge financial backing it did, they'd never have gotten to the point they are at now (side note: dang, i wish i had invented red bull...)...

i'm not sure there is a cure for that... one way to treat some of the symptoms would be to spread the money that the sport itself brings in a lot more evenly... that would at least put a bit more in the pockets of the lesser teams... and i don't think it would turn into a "just participate to cash a check" (i.e. start and parks in nascar)... if nothing else, everyone should at least get the minimum of 10 million that the (so-called) last place team gets now...

another idea might be for f1 to build a state of the art wind tunnel that would be accessible to all teams... also, possibly "series sponsored" test sessions, funded by f1... etc... since we have "customer engine programs" in f1 now (and judging by the success of "customer" teams, specifically rbr and mcclaren, they are getting the same engines as the manufacturer sponsored teams), f1 has turned into an aerodynamic battle... enzo's old statement about "aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines" is even more true today...

for better or for worse, the days of a ken tyrell building championship cars in a barn are long past... i'm not sure if that is solvable... the difference between a "championship level car" and a "10th place" car is pretty small in todays f1 (look at how tightly bunched qually times are at most races, even the top teams miss q3 every now and then)... a great driver (like alonso this year) can squeeze a few more tenths out of the car than is really there, but like always*, those last few tenths cost exponentionally more money...

wish i had a bullet proof solution to this...

* realistically, that's true of everything... the last 1% of performance costs a disproportionate amount of money compared to the other 99%...

About that Debrief show that Varsha alluded to - does anyone know when it's supposed to be on? Because it's not listed anywhere. It's not listed in any of the Speed Channel website daily schedules nor is it listed in their Formula One Debrief pulldown menu (says No Results), and i've even scrolled through my Tivo guide through Sunday Dec 9th and it's not listed at all, and i also did a keyword and title Wishlist search with no results.

I did spot a hint of things to come on Speed as it transitions to Fox Sports - there is a UFC Road to the Octagon sports special in prime time on Dec 7th. I think this is the first non-motorsports program i've seen in primetime on Speed.

+1?

A little Off Topic - if there are any fans of the other European Road Racing series here i've posted the schedule of upcoming British Touring Cars, FIA GT1, and DTM races that Speed is showing this year in another thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1441687/british-touring-cars-fia-gt1-dtm-on-speed-channel



More On-Topic: Some of the guys from the Speed Channel forums formed a new Motorsports forum with sub-forums for F1 Racing and F1 Tech and there's some pretty good discussion there:

http://w11.zetaboards.com/Motorsports_Mayhem/index/

Randy, I too can't find that show listed anywhere, i have been looking all over the computer and tv guide. I could swear they said it was gonna be Sunday, but i dont see it listed. I too would love to know when its going to be on.

Who is going to be our hero and tell us when this show will air?

Could Speed have "canned" the final debrief since they lost F-1? this would be sad:(

+10000

Thanx for that.

I thought Varsha said Friday.

Hobbs, and Buxton, and SpeedF1 have been tweeting about production. It looks like they got Buxton into the studio for it too.

Still cannot find Debrief on the Speed schedule:eek:

Via Twitter

THANKS:)

Perhaps they are replacing a show for this special one, as my guide on the tv shows a Barrett-Jackson "Sixty Years of Corvette" on at 10pm on Saturday nite. Hopefully it will be pre-empted for the special Debrief show.