Is Ecclestone's "fake rain" a crazy idea?
Posted by Sport.co.uk on: 29 March 2011 - 17:17
Author: Sean Keywood
Bad news, he’s back. Back, and opening his mouth with more crazy ideas that show him to be completely out of touch with the real world, and to have no grasp of either the facts or public opinion.
No, it’s not George Osborne (hello, lazy political satire) but Bernie Ecclestone, who recently suggested that to spice up Formula One sprinkler systems should be fitted to tracks, creating wet races at the touch of a button. Now, this may sound a bit like the ‘added time multiball’ gag from the old Budweiser football adverts but Bernie claims to be serious, and you can certainly see his logic- fans love wet races, so make every race aquatic and the viewers will literally flood in.
Fine. Except that such a system would be hugely expensive when F1 is trying to cut costs (no, really), would be extremely wasteful at a time when the sport’s trying to go green (no, really) and extremely open to abuse at a time when the FIA wants to show that nothing underhand is going on behind the scenes (no, rea… oh never mind). After all, imagine if Red Bull and Ferrari were fighting at the front, Red Bull pitted for dry tyres, only for the rain to ‘randomly’ turn itself on and put the red cars in the box seats. How many seconds do you think it would take for the tedious and not-that-great-a-pun-actually FIArri joke to start doing the rounds again?
Quit Your Medalling
Of course, this isn’t the first time Bernie’s ideas have been somewhat at odds with the norm. His last idea was to replace the tried and tested championship points system with Olympic style medals, with the championship decided solely on the number of wins, turning every race into an all or nothing dash for first. And never mind the tedium for those not in winning cars who would have nothing to race for. Bernie has pointed out that if his system had been adopted last year we would have had a nail biting last round decider between the top three drivers, which sounds great until you remember that last season actually ended with four drivers still in the title hunt, and that the year before last the early dominance of the Brawn car would have seen Jenson Button wrap up the title before he’d unwrapped his Easter eggs.
Of course, the reason that Bernie keeps coming up with ideas that make F1 fans shudder is that Bernie is not an F1 fan. He’s a bean counter who has little concern for the sport’s integrity as long as it’s lining his pockets. On the other hand, maybe this is just the view of the hardcore fan speaking here? Maybe rather than catering to those of us who hang on every word of a Ted Kravitz bulletin about gear ratios F1 should be embracing populism, taking itself X Factor in a bid to reach the casual fan and secure the sport’s future?
American Dream?
Obviously, the place to go to see this kind of thinking in action is the land of the free refill with your quarter pounder with cheese. America’s NASCAR series prides itself on being all about what the fans want. For example, rather than being kept away from their heroes behind miles of chain link fencing fans can buy tickets that let them wander into the pit lane and meet their favourite drivers. Fans who want to bring an RV are encouraged to park it by the track and watch the race while sitting on its roof. The oval tracks are designed so that you can see the whole race from your seat. And some tracks even offer an ‘all you can eat’ package with the race day food.
All this stuff might seem alien to anyone who’s visited a Grand Prix recently, and might seem like an improvement. However, NASCAR’s drive for populism doesn’t stop there, as the kings of customer service are also king of the racing gimmick. For example, any NASCAR race will feature a number of ‘competition yellows’. In theory these are to combat issues such as tyre wear, but in reality many drivers and fans believe that the officials like to have yellow flag periods regularly because this closes the field up and makes racing more exciting. And then there’s the ‘Chase for the Championship’. Since 2004, drivers have battled it out all season long only to have their points totals zeroed with ten races to go. Then, the top drivers fight it out over those ten races for the title. This guarantees a close title fight, but means that drivers’ scores for most of the year count for nothing.
Well That Figures
It’s a pretty sure thing that if either of these measures were introduced in F1, fans would freak. However, this is the kind of thinking the interests Bernie, and the reason it does is because NASCAR is hugely successful. It’s the most widely viewed sport in North America except for the NFL, with over 30 million people watching the recent Daytona 500, and because of the size of the oval circuits seventeen of the twenty most attended sporting events in the world are NASCAR races. Clearly then, the way forward in commercial terms is populism- lay on the gimmicks, dumb it down, and watch the cash roll in. Except for one small thing.
While NASCAR’s audience is big, it has been steadily dropping over the last few years, with some observers feeling that gimmicks such as the chase are to blame. And if the NASCAR audience is big, than the F1 audience is super-colossal. Last year’s championship had a global TV audience of 527 million people, nearly a tenth of the world’s population, making F1 the third biggest sporting event on the planet, behind only the football World Cup and the Olympics. Confronted by these figures, surely only a moron could think that F1 should be more like NASCAR. Which of course brings us back to Mr Ecclestone.
Winging It
However, there is one final twist. A few years ago another US racing series, Indycar, introduced a moveable rear wing on their cars. The idea was that this would reduce drag, and make it easier for cars to overtake. However, the idea was soon abandoned as the wing made overtaking too easy, taking all the skill out of racing and effectively turning races into a basketball game where the last one to pass won. The thing is, this moveable wing system has now been fitted to F1 cars. The rule makers say that they’ll be watching closely to make sure the same problems Indycar had aren’t repeated, but it’ll only be the racing this season that tells us whether this particular gimmick has a more lasting appeal. Assuming Bernie hasn’t decided that all cars must now be fitted with laser cannons. And fuelled with custard.