There was a stark contrast in the entertainment value of the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix compared to the opening round of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) sportscars event at Silverstone last weekend.
In Shanghai, the grand prix was yet again dominated by one manufacturer, with little in the way of a battle for the lead or passing for position at the front of the field. It was a tedious 99-minute race.
In Silverstone, three manufacturers fought it out for the win in a six-hour race that saw multiple changes for the lead and the uncertainty of whether Audi, Toyota or Porsche would emerge on top among battles throughout four different classes.
It should be the other way round, where the premier open-wheeler series provides the better entertainment in its more condensed package with the best of the best in terms of drivers and manufacturers.
Many motorsport pundits now believe there is a move away from Formula One in terms of television audiences, sponsors and manufacturers, into categories such as the WEC, MotoGP and so on.
Indeed, by the time Nissan enters the series with its bold new GT-R LM Nismo, the WEC will have a bigger factory-backed manufacturer presence in its top-tier LMP1 than Formula 1. After all, the hybrid technology used in the LMP1 cars is more relevant to road-going cars for these manufacturers with so much more technical freedoms allowed than the restrictive open-wheeler category.
But the series has a long way to go to challenge Formula One. The WEC, a growing championship built around the showpiece Le Mans 24 Hour classic, will struggle to appeal to the numbers once attracted by Formula One.
At a time when attention spans are shorter than ever and demands on people’s time greater, getting Formula One-style ratings for six-hour endurance events will be difficult.
And until top-line drivers choose the WEC over Formula One, rather than moving into the sportscar series at the end of their open-wheeler careers Mark Webber style, then the WEC will remain a growing niche category.
WEC chief executive Gerard Neveu is aware of this, as he describes with a levelheaded rationale that’s befitting of how his series has grown in recent years.
“There is nothing to compare. They (F1) are racing with celebrities…in our championship the main actors are first the manufacturers. The car is the star,” he told Reuters.
“The angle they (Formula One organisers) have adopted for the public is totally different. We keep the door open, we have a low price; we try to offer different value.
“All I am looking for is to find a new potential of fan, and a new generation for each race.
“The idea is to keep the value and to modelise Le Mans and to transport this around the world.
“For Le Mans it was also very important to have this world championship because if you want to provide for manufacturers a correct platform for the future, a single race is not enough regarding the budget they have to invest for the car and research and development of hybrid technology.
“What we try to do in the next three years is to create the real value of this championship.
“There is more and more audience, more fans, more and more media. And it means there is more and more interest.”
We may never see another motorsport category reach the level of interest and support that Formula One enjoyed in its heyday. But what we are seeing is its audience splintering off into other categories, to the benefit of the likes of WEC.
steveng
Roar Rookie
F1 is not broken, its totally dead. F1 should go back to the type of racing and competitiveness as they were in the 70' and parts of the 80's where there were great wheel to wheel racing and the drivers were the winning factor(s) not so much the cars. Todays F1 is just been completely and utterly ruined by pit stops, tyres and regulations that have nothing to do with racing or F1 which should be the pinnacle of motor racing not street cars economy and hybrid technologies that have put the final nail in its coffin to a broken sport since 2014. We already have hybrid technology and racing and its called Formula E and the biggest mistake that F1 did is to mix the two together.
Andrew Kitchener
Roar Guru
I'm a huge WEC fan - that and IndyCar are my favourite motorsports categories - and I love both the great on-track product, the rules package and so many beautiful cars all on track. The Silverstone race was epic, and if it's a harbinger of things to come, this season is going to be insanely good. The fact that the series has an open paddock arrangement at every race other than Le Mans (due to a lack of space in the Circuit de la Sarthe) makes it that much more accessible to fans, whereas Formula One paddocks are closed off, and secrecy there is like at the CIA. What series' need is to draw fans in, and the way F1 does things keeps them at arms' length. Doesn't work. IndyCar has an open paddock arrangement, too, and it's great!
SM
Guest
I'd love for this to happen, but let's be honest here. Why did Group C racing suffer a long and slow death in the 90s? Why does the World Rally Championship not enjoy the great support it did until the early 00s? The FIA and Ecclestone don't like these categories getting too big for their boots and daring to challenge Formula One's supremacy in the world of motor sport. Despite their wishes though, the motor sport public are finally making their voices heard and seeing beyond the glitz and glamour nonsense. This hurts me to say as I used to love Formula One and along with football, was the first sport I properly got into. Grand Prix Racing is broken in my view, it's appeal is clearly diminishing, and hopefully through taking a different route, these other categories can fill the void.
nordster
Guest
The online space has it merits if its open and accessible. But its very fractured... and F1s appeal in past decades has been in being the high profile, showpiece type category. A time when one event or series could saturate media. With this in mind, they have more to risk than anyone so i dont know what else they can do online that individual teams are not already doing via social media etc. Online is tailor made for the rise of something fresh like WEC. As far as broadcasting goes, the paid tv model is teetering so they may be forced online at some point. The next broader economic bust could kill a lot of bigger established players, who's to say. Ending up online could be a necessity. Will it recover those lost revenues though? Unlikely... The future for f1 is probably being on a drip feed from benefactors....so expect more races in the middle east, and maybe a sheikh buys the whole thing when Bernie slips into cryofreeze;)
Michael Lamonato
Expert
It's such an interesting question. If you look at the WEC at the moment, pretty much the only thing standing in its way is how long everything is. But if it sorts out the delivery of its product — specifically how accessible it makes itself to all categories of fans online — it could be a huge fight for power. Formula One is, admittedly, finally waking up to the Internet, but then the approach it's taking leaves itself pretty open to any one of the many sports models being used around the world and particularly in the US to be adopted by a competitor and seize huge amounts of its market share. It's surprising how little investment is still being made in online when the gains could be huge. It could be very interesting when the first person realises...
nordster
Guest
It does celebrate the merits of a tiered system in WEC...even the gp bikes u have legit interest in the three levels of racing. I guess they have lower tiers in open wheelers but it gets little attention. Maybe if they had a smaller grid in F1 some of the smaller teams could fall back into a reinvigorated GP3 or whatever the next level down is. WEC has really taken the mantle as the development series like F1 was. And with motogp, a leading rider or team can dominate like marquez/honda but the races are still interesting. Maybe this is the nature of bikes versus open wheelers? There is always some battles down the field or passing going on with the bikes. I can happily watch a battle for fifth or ninth as much as the top spots sometimes. Its something about the different lines and rider/bike styles and weaknesses....a subtlety there u dont get with F1. In the last decade especially with F1 they have taken the character and soul out of it by making it all so prescriptive and over regulated. The danger with motogp next year is these common regs with more shared data and such which may do the same there.