The unofficial auto thread

[Lisnpuppy]

The US was until this season shown on Speed but NBC bought the rights and now its shown on NBCSports or if its a race like Monaco or Silverstone it is shown on the regular NBC affiliate which I like as they do a side to side with the commercial and still show the race feed minus the sound. The guys that do the commentating all have great race experience (including a former F1 driver and a pit engineer-both with years of commentating experience also) and they came from Speed so they have all been doing this with each other for years. Then they have a guy on the track..who I love. He is funny, knowledgeable and seems to get on well with all the drivers.

 

We do not get that many interviews though as maybe you all do. Just a few before the race and occasional during and after...the have a show F1 Debriefing or some such where they get an occasional interview but its rare. The only Americans that know the drivers are those that are already F1 fans. They really need to do much better promoting F1 here since there is a huge, untapped market. I feel that NASCAR is finally on the downside which I couldn't be happier about. I find that most fans of that aren't fans of racing but drama of NASCAR, hoping there will be a wreck cause they put 48 freaking cars on a track and all but encourage them to act stupid. I don't want to see a race whose winner does so because he or his team mate was involved in a huge crash.

 

So I see a great market here. Next year when they have the race in Jersey with the "Manhattan Skyline" in the background things might take off a bit. A big sponsor needs to get some drivers faces out there...like Coke or someone. They do it a bit with some deodorant commercials and Jensen Button and Tony Stewart (which are really funny) Tony (the only NASCAR driver I like really..since he did open wheel and won the IRL one year) did some in the past with Hamilton which were also funny. Kimi would be great in some commercials for watches like he does in Europe...where he can just smile and not talk. The women would love him. Hamilton also...he is great on camera (even if I think he is a butt in real) and could be used as he has a fan base already. However most these guys could walk down 5th Avenue and be unmolested since they just aren't known here.

[Vindekarr]

Yeah, we have a racing catergory in Australia which is sort of "what NASCAR might have grown up to be" called V-8 Supercars. It's funny, on a tech level, a NASCAR and Aussie V-8 are nearly identicle. They both have about 700 horsepower, both have 5-litre naturally aspirated V-8s, both have tube-frame chassis, but due to different things being popular, they've evolved into completely different sports. NASCAR is about drama and spectacle. I watched the Daytona race in person last year and it was just aweful, lasted for years, no racing worth note, just a lot of horrifyingly dangerous crashes. The biggest issue are the ovals, not only do they make the races mind-numbingly boring, they make any accident a hundred times worse.

 

NASCAR could learn a lot from Aussie V8s, which in turn based their rules largely off Formula One. What Aussie fans like to see are driver duels. Clean, fair, honest duels. So that's what the series is designed to promote. Cars are extremely equal on stats(despite having totally different engine types) so you get some extraordinary battles that can last for laps or even whole races. Passing is fairly easy given the cars were designed to have innately poor grip-especially at the rear, so getting past down the inside isn't hard. Pulling away is the hard part, and so when you get two good drivers with fresh tyres, duels often last until one of the drivers "breaks", their tyres too depleted to keep the pace.

 

It's a fun sport to watch, the cars are quite high-tech, but designed to be flawed. They're enormously powerful(640-680 HP) and have excellent braking(for their size) but they're a little unwieldy due to their length, they weigh almost two tons, have no electronic aids, and their tyres are designed to only provide the bare minimum grip to get them around the track-this really makes them a handful, and in turn, promotes driver skill, since a small mistake will result in a spin.

 

Plus let's face it, they're some of the best sounding race cars in the world right now. Somewhere between a NASCAR and an old American V8.(see video below)

 

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Lisnpuppy-There were THREE American rounds due for 2012-on; Long Beach, Austin and New Jersey. These deals were all planned prior to the collapse of the American economy.

 

http://www.pitpass.com/49623-Lauda-says-New-Jersey-has-been-dropped-from-2014-calendar

 

India has also been axed due to ongoing protest again it by the teams association, who were sick of the monumental taxes, red tape, and corruption involved with an event that attracted dismally low crowds.

 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/29/motor-racing-india-idINL4N0FZ1BI20130729

 

NOTE: this is an old story, Bernie's already confirmed it's scratched.

 

 

Just for the hell of it, a demo vid of the current-gen V8 supercar. Did I mention just how good these things sound?

Edited July 30, 2013 by Vindekarr

[JimboUK]

http://www.pitpass.com/49627-Problems-at-Ferrari Alonso needs to watch his step, Prost found out what happens if you publicly criticise the team. Ferrari are going through a rough patch but they're his only option, I don't think Red Bull would take him on, Mercedes would be mad to team him up with Hamilton and Lotus seem happy with their drivers, although that could change if Grosjean doesn't get his act together.

[Lisnpuppy]

Long Beach has never been mentioned much as an option. This is the last thing I read about it at all and it seems to be much rumor mongering more than anything. http://gazettes.com/news/business/updated-pook-back-to-formula-one-what-about-long-beach/article_0846fb62-bdbb-11e2-90fe-001a4bcf887a.html

 

Bernie wants a race with the Manhattan Skyline....it will happen next year I have no doubt. The track is done...its just the details to iron out.

 

NASCAR could learn alot from other racing but because of its "history" that they cling to at all times (ie moonshine running) they set themselves up to cater toward a certain type individual. They have a stupid point system then the "Chase" which is even more stupid. They consistently make decisions that put their drivers in danger. Someone is going to have to die before they change how they are running things.

 

Sadly....Americans love to see wrecks. If you have a clean race in NASCAR then everyone is disappointed. Many of the fans seem to want this to still be some dangerous moonshine running. You really would have to come here and listen to the folks to understand. It embarrasses me. Despite all this when the races were at Indy they were still some of the most attended races in F1. I think when I was last there it was about 120,000 people (which is about what Silverstone got this year) and this was not the highest attended (it pulled regularly at one time over 200k). A drop in the bucket however for what they could get here in the State which, despite the economy..people still have money to burn and its very easy to travel here. If F1 caught on they could easily support three races in the US. As I said its a great, untapped market that really needs some aggressive advertising.

[JimboUK]

Three U.S races would make sense, having them back to back and dumping a couple of those races where the seats are empty would cut down on travelling costs, the works teams would love the exposure too. The problem is Bernie Ecclestone, he wants so much money that a lot of places just can't afford to host the races if the government is not willing to chip in, the sooner he leaves the better.

[Vindekarr]

Well, compare that to our V8 supercars though. The first race of the season pulled 218,000 people each day over two days. Now, put that in the context of a country with only 11,000,000 people, and where most cities are atleast 1000 KMs apart. They've tried to launch it in America, but unfortunately it's only got a regional licence so they can only hold one race. It's at the Austin F1 circuit, happened to out-sell a few NASCAR races. It's basically what NASCAR would have grown up to be without the stupid traditionalism; clean, fair, close racing with an emphasis on passing and wheel to wheel mayhem.

 

And I do agree about America having a lot of potential for F1. The market is huge, the works teams love it, and honestly, if Austin is anything to go by, it's popular to say the least. One issue they are having are NASCAR themselves. American politics are lobby based, and so far F1 and American Le Mans are having a horrible time trying to organise anything due to the vast amounts of unnecessary red-tape being thrown in their faces.

[Lisnpuppy]

Bernie is the problem as he must line his pockets at all cost. He has to pay to get into heaven you know.

 

Seriously...most places aren't going to support their local government throwing in for a race track when the roads have pot holes all over. It used to be pretty easy for clubs to get a stadium built for football or baseball with a chunk of taxpayers money...that doesn't happen much anymore. Again...some big hitters like Coke need to step in and put in a bunch o' cash for advertizing and a nice track called The Coca-Cola Blah Blah and put a coke tattoo on all the drivers butts. Then they can have a third track. Or Bernie could stop being Bernie and they could race on some of the fine, existing tracks. Oh but then Bernie wouldn't get all that cash and have one of his special..no-body-can-pass-anywhere tracks.

 

The Texas track almost didn't happen when the locals got restless and the government was going to pull the money. IRL or whatever its called now can't catch a break cause they use corn fuel. Ain't none of those Senators gonna gainsay the oil lobbyists. But seriously....they won't. Do you have any idea how much oil money is in Washington? Also NASCAR (well except for Juan Pablo) is all good corn-fed, not fueled American boys (and that girl no one likes..lol) and not all those FOREIGNERS in F1.......Not a single American driver among them (do not even mention Scott Speeds name to me...do not!!!). Can you imagine! The horror!! *Le Gasp!* I am joking here but I am not joking. If you think its not like that then you'd be wrong. I can just see them throwing money at F1 and people FREAKING OUT.....all those jobs Americans should have..*laughs* We'd have to go learn the metric system first, right? *laughs harder*

 

Yes you can look at Texas and say...oh F1 is popular....but considering the number of people in the US...its really not. It is exactly NOWHERE in the news, on commercials....referenced on TV shows....magazines....nothing. Unless you already are a fan and know where to go look for it...you won't find much of anything about it. Now you can't swing a redneck's coon dog without hitting something about NASCAR.

[Vindekarr]

It's also a matter of what people grow up to expect.

 

In Australia, we've always been far more reliant on foreign imports, due to our limited industrial ability, and this was most prominently seen in cars. During the 1950s through to the 1980s, Australian cars were largely Australian-unique models made locally by Holden(owned by GM) and Ford's local arm. During this period they were literally the only competitive brands in the country, until being slowly pushed back by Japanese and European competition to the point that now only four models across both brands are made locally.

 

Nonetheless, local brands still featured heavily in local racing, even despite being hopelessly out-matched by cars like the Nissan Skyline GT-R, Porsche 911, Mazda RX7 and Ford Sierra Cosworth. This ended with a kneejerk decision in the early '90s to ban foreign brands from local racing, for a while creating our own NASCAR-like internal league. This plunged the league back into the dark ages for years; under NASCAR inspired rules, foreign drivers only got Wild-Card drives, and for a while the series succeeded, particularly among the local equivalent to the Redneck; the Bogan. Bogans loved it, but the sport began to develop a bad reputation; drunken rioting from fans, a dwindling pool of talent that was largely going overseas, and an increasingly successful Le Mans GT series meant that in 2013, the rules changed as I hope NASCAR will.

 

Gone were the rules banning foreign teams and drivers; Nissan entered immediately as a works team(that's their car/drivers in the vid above) and the Erebus GT team tossed three E-63 AMGs into the mix. Volvo bought Garry Rogers Motorsport(GRM, one the best teams) and Triple-Eight(the dominant team) became British and sponsored by Red Bull. And lo and behold the Bogans all went home, but what they discovered was that the real racers who had gone off to watch F1, came flooding back. The series has subsequently not just arrested it's financial tailspin, but started to flourish again.

 

Can NASCAR do something similar? Well, we learned that while there are a LOT of people who just want to see Aussies riding Kangaroos, that it's OK to make things more cosmopolitan. Because for every bogan, we found there were 2 people that simply wanted good racing. I think if NASCAR maybe added some more road events, allowed a more cosmopolitan driver lineup, and maybe shifted the focus more onto wheel-to-wheel racing, they'd be surprising how many people would watch. Everyone thought that going international would kill V-8 supercars. The irony is, the crowds this year are almost double what the old rules brought.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/1974-1976_Holden_HJ_Monaro_GTS_sedan_01.jpg

 

Though the days of Australian cars being world-grade are now long gone, for a while we did have some true classics.

One of the few that really does stand out, even in a global context is this, the Holden Monaro SS. With a de-tuned Corvette-derived

race engine, surprisingly good handling, and the practicality to be a family car, it was one of the last true classics we ever made. It was

recently re-introduced based on the 2008 Camaro's engine and running gear, and remains our most(only) genuinely good local car.

(1966-1979, 2003-2016)

[Lisnpuppy]

I really hope you are right Vindekarr...but I am skeptical. Based on the popularity of Honey BooBoo on the television I can't but be so.

 

It has only been a hand full of years since Toyota joined the main part of NASCAR. Still not too many of them.

 

And really...what sport makes it so that half your races don't count. After the Chase top drivers are sorted then I don't know why the rest of the pack even is let race. You can win every, single race of the 10 races after The Chase and not win the cup if you aren't in the Chase. You can win the Chase without even winning a single race. A person can have more wins that you...many more than youand still lose the cup to you. Unless the rest of the person's races are DNFs that boggles the mind.

 

At least 10-15% of the cars that run are...Hey lets get a few points then end this. They aren't competitive and in fact often impede the race. They shouldn't be on the track. Unless they all got The Stig's American Redneck Cousin driving them they shouldn't be there at all. (lol)

[Vindekarr]

Well, I had something of a fun day. The Skyline's more or less done, with the interior now being finished, it's been painted, and I've also had the chance to finally give it a new powerplant. It's amazing just how different it is to drive now; when I first finished it, it was loud, had a juddering, obscenely hard ride, and the cockpit reached abhorrent tempatures. Now, it's got a new(brand new) Renault VQ-37 V-6 engine that keeps things a bit quieter and cooler, I've calibrated the suspension so it's genuinely comfortable while still gripping well, and the heating troubles have been fixed with a new exhaust system and better ventilation. The exhausts are even shorter now, they come out just behind the front tyres on either side, and I've also added a pair of mufflers. The net result is less weight, waaaaay less cockpit heat, and a much, much nicer sound. If anything it sounds like an old Porsche engine, lovely smooth V-6 purr.

 

I also got passed by a McLaren MP-4 on the way home with it. They look gorgeous in games and on TV, but there's just something about the MP-4 on the road. It's just sexy; they sound divine too.

 

http://www.wheelsandmore.de/en/Tuning/mclaren/McLaren_MP4-12C.jpg

 

If you gave me my pick of ANY supercar, this is what I'd have. Compact, agile, powerful V-8, and supremely high-tech-all without losing it's credentials as a driver's car.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Vindekarr