The 2018 Formula 1 season gets underway in Australia this weekend. And while not much has changed in terms of on-track rules, the sport’s bosses, Liberty Media, have been doing lots of tinkering elsewhere.
Now, quite enough has been written about getting rid of grid girls, so let’s not get into that here. Except to note that, in a sport as high-tech as F1, it’s amazing nobody has yet invented a better way to tell drivers where to park on the grid than a numbered wooden pole that needs to be held up manually.
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Other notable but hardly revolutionary changes include a new F1 logo (my reaction: meh), and theme tune (no, it’s not The Chain). The sport even has a new ‘tagline’: Engineered Insanity.
No, me neither.
Still, shoving two unrelated words together into one largely meaningless phrase is at least evidence of the welcome attempts by Liberty Media to make the sport more accessible in the post-Bernie Ecclestone era – although most of the above equate to little more than redecorating a house you’ve just bought. At some point, Liberty Media will need to do some proper rebuilding work on the foundations.
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But Liberty has made one change that could actually have a fairly substantial impact on how most people watch F1: it’s moving the start times of races.
Races – or, if we’re being picky, parade laps – will start at ten minutes past the hour, rather than on the hour. According to F1 bosses, this is because many broadcasters go on air on the hour, so the delay means “television spectators will be brought closer to the teams and the drivers and fully enjoy the spectacle offered just before the red lights go off".
I’m not sure that stacks up, since F1 is increasingly aired on pay broadcasters, with more pre-race build-up than ever. Sky, for example, begins its pre-amble 90 minutes before the start. Still, an extra ten minutes to prepare a pre-race coffee isn’t exactly a hardship.
More significantly, the start time of the European races has been pushed back a full hour, due to research that “a wider TV audience is reachable later in the afternoon.”
For British viewers, that means European races will start at 14.10, rather than 13.00. And the French GP on June 24 has been pushed back to 15.10 BST to avoid clashing with the England vs Panama World Cup match (although it does now clash with the vital Japan vs Senegal encounter).
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All these opinions are doing
All these opinions are doing things to us and we need to focus more right now on kid writing. I think that if we can do it,then there are so many things that we can learn from them and get them.
+1I've always said that and
+1I've always said that and it was evident. The rules since 2017 are bad. I didn't understand the FIA.They have to reduce drastically the downforce and go further : - ban the radio (except a safety canal) - ban the telemetry - ban the DRS - why not ban the slick tires (and pit stops) and use tyres with tread as in Formula E - why not ban the carbon brakes to increase the braking distances
All these measures would improve the capability of natural overtakings and increase the role of the pilots ; after all the cars could again ride with that.
Tiny text
F1 has troubles. I expected the higher downforce introduced last year to make the racing worse, and it did. This year seems to be tinkering with the presentation rather than the racing. The biggest mistake I see (or rather struggle to see) is the tiny text for the onscreen info. It headache inducingly awful. White text on a black background is also a bad choice, especially for older eyes. There is plenty of space between the text to make it larger, and make the background a bit transparent like they have some areas, and it will be much better. Colour coded by team on black is also a bad choice for dark blue Red Bull. And the team logos are a mess at that tiny size.