Monday, March 19, 2007

F1 versus MotoGP

In the interests of science, I watched the Australian Boremula 1 Grand Prix. Not live, of course. I barely stayed awake through the mid-afternoon replay, never mind watching it live at 2am. This was so that I could compare an F1 grand prix with a Motorcycle GP.
The first thing I noticed was how hideous the cars are these days. They're seriously ugly, with all kinds of chunks sticking out all over the place, but fair enough, if you want a race series based on aerodynamics then that's what you get.
The race to the first corner was quite exciting. Sure, you only get 2 or 3 cars abreast on the straight compared to 4 or 5 bikes, but they're racing close and hard. However, once they got to turn 1, they all funnelled into single file.
That's about it.
Nothing else happened. Well, actually, Coulthard did try to liven things up by crashing into and vaulting over another car. That was pretty cool. Webber did a 360 degree spin on the way into the pit lane. Don't see MotoGP bikes doing that very often.
So there were about 30 seconds of interest in the race. The remaining 90 minutes were simply a parade of very expensive, very ugly cars. If anybody wanted to overtake, they went into the pits to do it.
The "race" was spirit-crushingly, soul-destroyingly tedious.
I'm not rabidly opposed to car racing. Bike racing's my favourite, but I quite like watching cars race. I even like watching the Le Mans 24 hours, where they are expected to overtake the constant stream of backmarkers using skill, while in F1 they burst into tears and demand that the backmarker gets out of their way. (But of course, they can't even overtake a car that's 4 seconds a lap slower than them).
The recent sponsorship woes in MotoGP are clearly ridiculous. Sponsors throw money at F1, despite the fact that it's the most pathetically dull form of motorsport. That's due to the hype. F1 is the biggest show in the world simply because it says so, and millions of dimwits believe it. There is more excitement in a single MotoGP race than an entire season of F1, and that's not even an exaggeration.
Dorna has recently decided to link up with professional promoters to help find more sponsorship. This is a good thing. MotoGP needs to blow its own trumpet, because in terms of glamour and excitement it beats F1 hands down. MotoGP has characters, excitement, overtaking and innovation. Dorna have an outstanding product, they just have to sell it as effectively as those depressingly dull accountants in the F1 paddock.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

F1 is interesting if you make it interesting- that is, if you know what's going on. Watching someone overtake every two seconds isn't exactly entertaining either. There's no cheap thrills here. MotoGp on the other hand...well, I guess crashes are exciting, too, in their own way.

Jimmy said...

MotoGP doesn't have passes every 2 seconds, you're thinking of NASCAR.
Watching paint dry is interesting if you make it interesting.

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