zoro_f1 wrote:I recently watched the half an hour interview with Ted Kravitz and Mr. Bernie Ecclstone and honestly I can tell that Mr. Ecclstone and the others which are running the F1 as a business over the world are making big mistakes and that’s why they are in a position that we are not seeing a race in Germany this year, but we must be happy to see races like Abu Dhabi or Bahrain (!?)
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The most successful drivers are from Great Britain and secondly from Germany, then Brasil and so on… but I am always asking myself, why always there must to be battles only from these nationality?
Other countries does not like racing? Does not develop racing tracks, teams, drivers… or they don’t bring money to F1?
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I wonder why there will never be a Macedonian grand prix or driver in F1… hell yeah… Mr. Ecclstone himself can tell you much more about it.
Thanks for reading me…
Zdravo brat Makedonski... I am also Macedonian, although I live in Victoria, Australia.
I can appreciate your post and I agree that there are many closed doors in F1, but unfortunately that is really the nature of the sport. Any sport or business for that matter, will generally perform at its best, when amongst a highly competitive local environment. I think its for this matter that F1 teams more often than not, set up there facilities in a general locality of England. It would be quite difficult to set something up outside of England where there is little chance of finding experienced employees. That is not to say that there are not for example Macedonian engineers/technical staff involved with F1, it is however likely that they moved to England in order to do so, remember that is where the majority of F1 teams have their facilities set up.
As far as seeing a Macedonian driver in F1, I highly doubt that will ever happen, and it is really a question of simple economics. Actually Nico Rosberg is a multi-national if I'm not mistaken, and might have had the option to choose his nationality. I expect people can understand that a German driver has a far broader marketing reach than a Finnish driver, I expect this to be the primary reason, amongst many others that a driver would choose to take the more marketable/profitable choice.
Frankly I think Finland stumbled across two absolute gems in Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen. Here are two guys who in different ways are remarkably charismatic, funny, personable and most important in racing, remarkably quick and talented. These are two guys who have enormous followings outside of Finland and I think that had a substantial impact on their marketing and commercial success.
As far as a Macedonian grand prix goes, I highly doubt that will ever happen either, perhaps in a similar way I highly doubt we will ever see a Finnish grand prix. To be frank, Finland is not too economically dissimilar to Macedonia, these are both small countries with low populations, somewhere around 5 million and 2 million respectively. Granted there is a large GDP/capita difference, but neither is a booming economy and for that reason, I highly doubt that there is the population or economics to support such an event.
I know that sentiment stinks, but we cant look past the fact that Bernie wants to sell hosting rights for largest possible sum. To put it in perspective, Australia is a rather large economy and even when multi-year contracts have been signed with FOM for hosting rights, the grand prix is always a hot political topic. The reality is that even in Victoria, the event is largely state government funded, ticket sales don't even come remotely close to covering the hosting cost. So I doubt that small nations, with proportionately small economies have they kind of disposable income to host these events. I don't like that this is the kind of state F1 is in, but we cant hope that is changes anytime soon. Frankly Bernie's appetite for money is insatiable.
As a side note, how long did the Korean grand prix last? What about the Indian grand prix? What about the European grand prix at Valencia? These I think were blatant money milking exercises on behalf of FOM, and like anything of commercial value, if its value is artificially inflated, the practice is on borrowed time, because eventually the organizers will no longer see it as a worthwhile investment.
I doubt that getting rid of Bernie will change most of these problems. I think the best we can hope for is that when he finally steps down or keels over, the hosting fees will become more fair and less inflated.
=D>
