Friday, June 20, 2014

The Death of Racing Supplemental - Terrible Le Mans Coverage!

 The technology showcased at this weekend's 24 hr of Le Mans (refreshing to not see any corporate sponsorship of the race, yet) is very relevant to the road cars you will be purchasing in the future. However the presentation that Fox (Speed) does is TERRIBLE and is just as old as carburetors and bias-ply tires.

 First they are too cheap to send a crew over on location. They figured if this works for F1 (they pioneered this) it will also work for sports car racing especially Le Mans and nobody will notice.

At the very least they could fly out on Test Day weekend or even up to Thurs qualifying race weekend and talk to the teams and drivers. But they don't; they don't the teams or driver's well and I get tired of Dorsey Schroeder always referring back to his limited experience with the Audi R8 when he drove it briefly in the early 2000's. Dude that was over a decade ago and the R18 has about as much in common with the R8 as it does with a A8 road car.

 Brian Till is really pushing my buttons as well. A guy with middling success behind the wheel, he should be assigned to pit road or color duty, but they let him lead broadcast which he's not best suited for. I am not one to mess with a man's money, but something needs to be done here.

 Bob Varsha and Calvin Fish at least know personally many of the younger drivers (and veterans) at Le Mans because they have come up through the feeder series ranks, like GP2 or F3000. In my personal opinion these should be the only two guys to lead Tudor races and lead the extended broadcast of races like the 12 hours of Sebring or the 24 hrs of Le Mans.

 We don't need a 3rd person in the booth. For some series it works, for most it doesn't, especially when they have almost nothing to add of value, except to constantly refer to his belief that technology has made the race cars of day easier to drive (Dorsey Schroeder).

 If you must have a 3rd wheel, Tommy Kendall's information is relevant as he was at Le Mans in 2013 with the SRT (Dodge) Viper team.

 I finally had enough about mid way through the race and switched to Eurosport. That's not the complete truth. I had errands to run on Saturday and spent 8 hours getting caught up to the live coverage.

 Next year I may purchase the WEC stream and use RLM for audio, I've had it. I am tried of the commercials that have to be run every 15-20 mins, cutting right away from a great GTE Pro race. Even worse is to cut away to talk to their friends at Corvette and Audi.

 The coverage of major motor sport in America is TERRIBLE! If that offends hardcore fans like myself, imagine what it does the so-called casual fan?

 Congratulations to AF Corse #51 of Bruni, Vilander and Fisichella for winning the GTE-Pro class without one mistake and changing the brakes further into the race than anybody else.




It was also the best race of the weekend, if you watched the race or was there, then you know what I am talking about.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Death of Racing Part 1 - If they don't do something, its all over...

 I have been a fan of auto racing since I was very, very young. 

 It has survived everything from a serious accident at Le Mans in 1955 that came close to killing the sport over safety issues; to mid 70's fuel crisis and tightening emissions/noise pollution regulations.

  Now I believe the greatest threat is coming from several directions -

 Gen Y is generally uninterested in racing and cars in general. Traditional racing such as stock cars and Indy car has sunk to all time lows. Some blame the terrible television coverage.




 On this week's Mid-Week Motorsports, a good chunk of the show was devoted to talking about the mishmash that is internet streaming of racing including; horrible highlights packages, geo-blocking to protect local viewing contracts and other shenanigans.

  As was touched on, old media has no clue about new media. Otherwise it would be more widely used. But honestly I think they are protecting senior leadership that operates the cameras and makes the decisions in the production truck.

 Moving to robotic cameras and using three man crews (the call, color and pit-lane) reduces production cost significantly. For example this weekend's Tudor PC, IMSA Lite race at Kansas won't be seen anywhere, unless you go to the track. It could easily be done with two/three man crew and four cameras because its a roval.  

 All that said, giving access and gauging interest are basic marketing failures by all the major racing series.

 There is no explanation for camera and audio problems that plague SCCA World Challenge. What the hell was the TC/TC-B race in New Jersey? One camera on top of the timing tower, really? I mean REALLY???? Since the start of this season they have eliminated post race interviews, forcing fans to watch the highlighted coverage on NBC-SN.

 This is 2014 there should be no excuse for this. What's hard to understand is why the fanbase is so quite about it? 

 In Part 2 like my video -





 I'll break down what all these series can do. One of them is to secure your base before pursuing the mythical casual fan. They could start by NOT REPEATING THE RULES at every single race!

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