waider | ronebofh made me do it

Mr. EEEEEeeechverri, attempting to open up the floor asked me, (a) did this year's F1 season really suck, and (b) how dare I place any movie above Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

In order to stop him from posting further to an essentially dead-end location (HINT: I rarely bother checking my syndicated feed for posts; just email me if you wanna discuss some random point I made) I am commenting here. Take that, non-sequitor boy.

Did this year's F1 season really suck?
I daresay anyone in North America who's aware of F1 wouldn't need to ask that question, after the Indianapolis debacle. Essentially, the past few years of "levelling the playing field" (by which I mean "breaking Ferrari's monopoly on winning") and "making F1 safer" (by which I mean "making the cars more dangerous to drive at speed, in the hope that drivers will then drive slower") have resulted in a sport that's only more interesting than Nascar because the cars can turn in both directions. A F1 race now consists of

A mad dash to the first corner
A stare-down to see who goes for the first fuel stop
Repeat previous for however many fuel stops the race requires
Triumphant finish

. In between these points there's a whole lot of nothing going on, except during the last section of the race where cumulative tire wear can occasionally produce spectacular (albeit life-threatening) action - see, for example, Kimi Raikkonnen's suspension collapse on his final lap this season. Nothing like losing your front right wheel at 180+ MPH to keep you on your toes. The gradual erosion of mechanical grip - mainly through the banning of slick tires, and this season's single tire rule - means that the cars only stick properly to the road when they're in clear air. Get within 100 yards (possibly more; I forget the exact figure) of the car in front, and you're suddenly having to brake earlier for corners, reducing the chances for overtaking almost to zero. Lapping the slow guys does not count as "overtaking" either. F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of driving achievement and technology, yet half the features you'd expect to find in a decent racing car are banned - no turbo chargers, no slicks, no anti-lock brakes, traction control is allegedly being banned again next year, etc. etc. Frankly they either need to stop kidding themselves and turn it into another Nascar, or they need to stop being such pussies, accept - as the drivers do - that fast cars are dangerous no matter how you restrict them, and cut loose on the regulations.

How dare I place any movie above Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
Easy. I didn't much like CTHD. It was pretty, there were some nifty martial arts sequences, but the whole flying over rooftops and through trees simply ruined the movie for me. Having seen a few more of the genre, I still can't accept it; it utterly ruins any suspension of disbelief I've mustered up. It's not like Superman, where he's flying from A to B in order to kick ass or reverse time or whatever (plus I'm not 12 any more), and it's not Spiderman or Batman where there are pseudo-plausible reasons for the physics-bending, and when people fly they go "WHOOOOOOSH" rather than "fa-la-la-la, floaty floaty float". Thus, I can put pretty much any movie above CTHD, and will "dare" to do so on a pretty regular basis. Within the genre, Hero has been the one I've managed to stay most invested in for the duration of the movie and the one with the best pacing, i.e. it doesn't slow everything down right when you're expecting a dramatic climax. I guess I simply don't get the genre.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"breaking Ferrari's monopoly on winning"

Why does Ferrari have a monopoly? Why not just let 'em win if they're the best?

Like any sport, when one team is running away with the championship halfway through the season, fans lose interest.

OK, different question. WHY is Ferrari so much better? Can't the other teams, y'know, buy some fast cars and hire people who can drive them fast?

Because they have the coolest looking pony. :)

Firstly, I would disagree with Rone's statement that people lost interest in F1 because of Ferrari's dominance, not least because one of the biggest and most loyal (and most critical, as required) groups of fans in F1 are the tifosi, the followers of Ferrari. They're perfectly happy to watch Schumacher run rings around the rest of the field because they're there to see that. But even aside from that, Schumacher dominated the sport for the last several years - mostly with Ferrari - and growth in F1 interest seems to have pretty much matched his ascendancy. This suggests that it's not Ferrari's dominance of the sport that caused the loss of interest; the fact that Ferrari are running a poor third and in danger of conceding to Toyota, who are one of the newest teams in the sport, hasn't done anything to improve peoples' interest.

Secondly, I'm not really 100% qualified to say why Ferrari are so much better, but my unsupported statement would be that it's due to a combination of raw cash and persistence. They've had a downturn in both recently which may account for their poor performance this year; the parent company, Fiat, hasn't had the best of financials for the last few years, and Ferrari have possibly been on top of things for so long that they're no longer trying as hard as they were on the way up, which is what I mean by a downturn in their persistence.

No monopoly in F1 lasts for very long. Williams and Benneton were by turns devouring all around them in the 90s; the first McLaren-Mercedes scampered away from everyone when it was first introduced; and this year, as I said, Ferrari have been pretty lame, after having dominated the sport for the past several years.

Thus, to answer your first question: Ferrari have had a monopoly because it was their turn to do so. They snagged the best driver and didn't let him go through petty contract shenanigans (by which I mean the last time I heard what he was earning, it was about $45 million); they snagged the best strategist, they trained the hell out of their pit crew, and they tested relentlessly. It hasn't panned out for them this year, perhaps because it's hard to keep at it 100% when you're at the front, thus endeth the "monopoly". Which I guess answers the second question, too.

I daresay anyone in North America who's aware of F1 wouldn't need to ask that question, after the Indianapolis debacle.

I *said* "other than the tire debacle." Sheesh! Still, you've essentially repeated what others have told me, but i'm clearly still in denial about it. Maybe we should put a hit on Bernie E. and save the sport. Bah.

As for the flighty stuff, yeah, i guess you don't get the genre. They're superpowered and that's what it looks like over there. It seems silly to me to grouse about the way it looks; if you can accept Superman's superpowers, why not these guys? And CTHD isn't an action movie; it's a tragic romance involving superheroes.

I thought by the tire debacle you meant the one-set-per-race rule, which not only caused the mess in F1, but also led to a number of spectacular incidents this year, including Raikkonnen's aforementioned suspension collapse. Indy was symptomatic of a whole range of things, such as the obstinacy of both F1 management and the teams, the stupidity of the single-set-of-tires rule, and the dominance of the entire sport by egos with no real interest in the fanbase.

On the whole, though, I think that the FIA have ruined F1 by trying to slow the cars down through making them more dangerous at high speed. It's a stupid way of achieving what may not be a particularly smart goal; part of the rush of watching a live F1 race is the raw power of the cars. If the FIA really wanted to slow the cars down, they could dictate smaller engines and leave it at that - practically speaking, there's only so much power you can get out per cubic inch, and it would leave the cars free to return to slick tires which would in turn place less reliance on aerodynamic grip which would ultimately (one hopes, anyway) lead to actual racing on the track, rather than in the pit stops.

Duh. "...which not only caused the mess in Indianapolis..."

Well, I used to agree with you on movies. Hmmph.

ronebofh made me do it

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