TBK-Light.com

RTL is FTA and very few places have "pay walls". Half of the races are still shown live on Italy and UK. All of them are free on Germany, Spain, Brazil(these 3 are big markets with 320 million people in population).......

I guess lot's of old viewers stopped watching because of all the artificiality that involves F1 these days.

Here's just an example with Italy:

F1 have now less than half the spectators it had in 2006, there(an opposite trend to UK, as shown below)

I guess some spectators misses things like this, going by the comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svBJRumK6Vc



I'm not surprised, as UK seems to be one the most chauvinistic countries, when it comes to international motorsport:

92- Mansell dominating(even more than Ferrari/Schumacher in 2004)= +5million viewers
93- No British figthing for WDC= 3,9m
94-95- Hill fighting for the WDC but no dominance= 4-4,5m
96- Hill dominates with a far superior car= 5,3m

The British people prefered Hill walking away easily with WDC in 96 than fighting for it with a German guy in 94-95

2007- Hamilton appears, already in a top car, and fights for WDC= big increase in the audience
2009- Button dominates with Brawn = first time over 4m since 2000

By this graph, it appears British people don't like fierce competition(as another example, 2012). It seems they like nothing more than seeing a fellow countryman dominating the championship. Obviously, when it's a German guy doing it they whine and call it boring(second lowest rating). The same when there is a titanic battle between a German and a Spaniard in 2006(lowest rating). Then, a darling home boy surfaces in a Mclaren and the rating immediately rises

FE will only have good ratings there if somebody like Bird starts winning everything because the awesome racing, the series currently provides, is not what the average UK viewer appears to look for...

PS: Don't take the British motorsport fanatics that are members here as an indication of what the casual viewer is like.

Additional info about Germany:

http://www.speedweek.com/formel1/news/7 ... mel-1.html

Regarding the UK deal with half of the races now only available as Highlights on FTA via the BBC, My 1st exposure to F1 (Imola 1989) was actually the BBC highlights & I got hooked on F1 at a time when the BBC didn't show every race Live & back then there highlights were usually on BBC2 & 10-11pm.

Obviously it would be best is every race was live on FTA, But I don't think some only been highlights is necessarily going to stop new fans watching/getting hooked because as I say thats how I got hooked & how many others did before the BBC started showing everything live in the 90s.

Well, the technology focus in the auto industry isn't on raw power / speed these days, it's on fuel efficiency and automation. Probably that's part of the "issue" right there (it's affecting almost all motorsports forms, frankly...).

Does the lack of a German race mean that everyone will flock to Spa and Austria instead

With all the Dutch coming to the Belgium Grand Prix to see Verstappen it could get busy.

Thinking of how many attended Hockenheim last year, I would say the impact on the other races shouldn't be too big, should it?

fair point.

Better efficiency equals more power. The scale might change but a more efficient engine is more powerful. The auto industry isn't focusing on dumb power. Extracting every bit of performance, whether it's a 1.5L turbodiesel or a big 5.7L pushrod V8.

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Germans usually are the second largest group of spectators at Spa anyway.

who cares what engines they had

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Yeaaaah let's all stand here right on the start finish line, seems like a perfectly normal place to watch a race from.

Obviously today Gilles would've been disqualified for running off the track and then passing at the next corner.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

set freedom for engine development and limit only fuel consumption. there you go group C racing all over again

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I'm just wondering if someone has the official app and whether it's worth the money. I used the demo for Melbourne and it looked pretty neat

This man has the right of it.

refueling was not forbidden, just that it was not necessary, but Bernie was always a cheater and he continues to hate men who are higher and smarter him
.

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just saw this and got a lump in my throat

This is not the true speed. This video has been speeded up quiet a bit. Not that it isn't a good fight, it just looks a lot different in real speed.

it says that Alonso is undergoing medical tests in Cambridge university today, prior to flying out to Malaysia.

(and yes, the site is reliable enough)

- guess we will just have to believe you

They must be testing his IQ then if he's at Cambridge University.

But seriously, there is a hospital there, Addenbrookes, dunno why they'd choose that particular one though, would think they'd use one of the private ones, not an everyday NHS institute (assuming he is at Addenbrookes).