ronebofh made me do it

[waider]

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.

Comments

[waider.livejournal.com]

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.

[waider.livejournal.com]

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