F1 2011-2012 Season

[Alex]

Valencia is usually bad, but this year was horrific. Bernie never will, but drop the European GP and shorten the season by a race - with all these new ones coming in, it's not like they'll be short of money...

[chrisw91]

I watched it too...but I found the race boring.

  The best part of the race was watching the four cars battling for 13th, and we only saw that battle for about 90 seconds.

[Flounder]

With the exception of Valencia, this season has been fantastic, but realistically, setting a record for most finishers isn't exactly a good thing in F1.

[alphacharlie]

canada was one of the greatest races i have ever seen

[chrisw91]

With the exception of Valencia, this season has been fantastic, but realistically, setting a record for most finishers isn't exactly a good thing in F1.

  Even the British Grand Prix was more exciting this year. I was hoping Lewis Hamilton would make it all the way through to 1st or at least a podium but unfortunately McLaren messed up again and under fueled him. It was great to see Alonso finally get his first win though, I think he deserves it more than anyone at the moment.

[hemingway]

yeah he worked hard for it.

Shame for webber, though I thought he was a little closer to sebs pace than previous races this year (hard to know with tyre strategy though). typical media anti-climax re: off-throttle blown diffusers

[chrisw91]

yeah he worked hard for it.

Shame for webber, though I thought he was a little closer to sebs pace than previous races this year (hard to know with tyre strategy though). typical media anti-climax re: off-throttle blown diffusers

If it wasn't for team orders I am pretty sure Webber would of taken Vettel.

[chrisw91]

Did anybody see Vettel on Top Gear? He was awesome, and good fun in the interview too. He seems like a really cool guy.

[Alex]

yeah he worked hard for it.

Shame for webber, though I thought he was a little closer to sebs pace than previous races this year (hard to know with tyre strategy though). typical media anti-climax re: off-throttle blown diffusers

If it wasn't for team orders I am pretty sure Webber would of taken Vettel.

I'm going to have to disagree there, Seb was defending like a champ. Webber said he ignored the orders anywhere, so he didn't manage it in the end.

[hemingway]

yeah at the time I didn't think he would get past. couple more laps then yeah

[Daft]

Great race today, huh? Battles for the first 5 positions till the very end of the race.

But once again, Ferrari mechanics did a poor job in Massa's pit stop and he lost the 4th place at the end :(

[hemingway]

what are peoples thoughts on the bbc/sky deal?

As far as I can tell, Australia will continue to get every race live on free to air. Seems a shame for brittish fans thought!!

[Alex]

what are peoples thoughts on the bbc/sky deal?

As far as I can tell, Australia will continue to get every race live on free to air. Seems a shame for brittish fans thought!!

Especially as the BBC just won an Emmy for outstanding sports coverage. Money triumphing over sport again. Wonderful.

[hemingway]

I like Brundle :D

We get pretty good coverage here, which is the bbc feed but with our own post/pre-race stuff. Unfortunately there's a short ad break every 7 laps but with live timing on the pc screen we can keep abreast of who's moving during the ads.

Cheaper option for the Brits than paying for sky is to stream live races online

[Alex]

That's true, although I find often that online streaming is really poor quality and pretty temperamental. The problem people have over here is that F1 has been on free-to-view TV (excluding paying your license fee) for as long as most people can remember, and putting it on to a subscription satellite service makes it unattainable for a lot of viewers. F1 went through a huge decline in the UK, and viewing figures have been pretty rapidly rising since BBC took over. Shame that the sport will probably lose lots of these new viewers come next season.

Only positive I've thought of so far is that the BBC might just lose some of the slightly less interesting races (e.g. Valencia) and kepp the good ones, but that's really scraping the bottom of the barrel for a silver lining...