Vettel Maggot wrote:And you wonder why F1 is dying. PU's, ICE's MGUH, DRS, tokens etc
For God's sake.
How can you explain all this to newcomers/casual observers.
It wouldn't have anything to do with the diametrically opposed issues that F1 faces...
Look at races before the Pirelli were brought in. Cars that weren't at least 0.5 seconds faster per lap COULD NOT pass cars ahead of them. With the removal of refueling and the durable Bridgestone tires, it was a sad game of Follow the Leader were qualifying was the race. It was to the extent that the FiA exclusively used Tilke to design tracks to promote more overtaking with long straights for aero drafting followed by heavy braking for slow apex corners.
Now, look at the start of the 2012 season. Complete nonsense tires that did not work with how teams had set up their cars. It took 8 damned races to have a first repeat winner. Some people thought that was amazing, while other people, myself included, thought it was a complete and utter joke.
It also wouldn't have anything to do with CVC/F1 not changing to meet the expectations of the times. The main broadcaster became a paid service for the UK and even more expensive for people world wide. I live in Canada and I only watch TV from streams of downloads. Why would I pay X amount of money to watch a few TV shows with commercials when Netflix (as an example) is shown in high quality, commercial free and whenever I want to watch it?
F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of technology; why isn't there a legal stream of every race that I can subscribe to? F1 tosses around BILLIONS of dollars, why can't they put the infrastructure in place to stream a 1080p broadcast for people that don't live in the UK and/or don't have cable television? I would gladly write a cheque, written in my own blood to Bernie, for ~$100 to legally and conveniently watch the whole season plus testing.
I can watch the whole damned 24 Hours of LeMans, 'most' WEC races, TUSC races and whatever TV shows I want online for either free or very little money; however, since I'm not the market demographic to buy a Rolex watch, Bernie and Co. would rather to keep losing viewers where the season is a foregone conclusion (most of 2011, 2013 and 2014) or where the artifical gimmicks are insultingly bad (beginning of 2012, banning DDDs, EBDs, FRIC and anything that wasn't a W05 in 2014).