[DOF_power]

Street races concern Ferrari boss


Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has expressed his concern at the number of street circuits in Formula One.

Circuits in Valencia and Singapore have joined traditional street track Monaco on this year's F1 calendar.

But ahead of the inaugural Singapore race, Di Montezemolo said the lack of overtaking opportunities is not good for the future of the sport.

"I have the impression it will be one of those letdowns where you cannot overtake, like Valencia," he said.

"Going forward with these circuits heralds a bad future for Formula One."

The Grand Prix around the streets of Singapore on 28 September will be the first night race in the sport's history.

[onearmsteve]

street racing is not conducive to any kind of racing.

[DOF_power]

Felipe Massa - Overtaking to also be rare in Singapore Grand Prix
E-mail Source/Credit - GMM Wednesday, 24 September 2008


Felipe Massa has earmarked qualifying for this weekend's inaugural Singapore Formula One Grand Prix as a crucial element to his championship challenge. The Ferrari driver, who trails McLaren's Lewis Hamilton by a single point with four races to go, thinks overtaking will be even more difficult on the twisty floodlit city circuit than it was at Valencia last month.

Valencia's European Grand Prix, staged on a faster urban circuit than Singapore, was slammed as a processional race that lacked overtaking moves.

"Saturday will be very important, for sure," Massa, 27, told the local Straits Times newspaper on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of a good grid position.

"I've never driven on the Singapore track but it'll be even more difficult to overtake compared to Valencia, because the straights are even shorter," the Brazilian added. Formula 1 veteran David Coulthard backs Massa's views about the Singapore layout. "It appears to be less flowing than Valencia and more of a classic street track, with lots of 90 degree block changes, albeit a relatively wide one in most parts," the Red Bull driver said.

[Racer Duck]

Sounds to me Singapore will be more about acceleration and braking than top speed since the track appears wide enough for overtaking. Sometimes, old dogs need to learn new tricks. I'd hate to see F1 get into "cookie cutter" tracks like NASCAR where many are just slight variations of a common theme.

[DOF_power]

Only rain, witch usually happens there, can save the Singapore track.


As to why something like the superboring Valencia exists and also why Singapore has been added check the following article:

F1 : Report - Formula 1 race fees exceed television rights for the first time
E-mail
Source/Credit - Formula Money
Monday, 01 September 2008
ImageFormula Money report reveals that Formula One race fees exceed television rights for the first time : -

Formula Money, the industry monitor for Formula One motor racing, today launches its second annual review which reveals the extent of the sport’s drive into new markets.

This year, for the first time ever, race hosting fees bring more money to Formula 1’s commercial rightsholder than TV broadcasting rights. The addition of high paying new races in Singapore and Valencia has driven fees up to $403.5m, over $23m more than the amount brought in by television rights.

This year revenues from all businesses within Formula 1 will reach a record total of US$4.7bn. The biggest component of this is the $1.6bn spent by the team owners, which increased from $1.47bn in 2007 largely due to the arrival of Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya who runs the Force India team.

Team sponsorship increased slightly to $836.9m, despite the Super Aguri team leaving Formula 1 during this year. Ferrari led this increase and became the first team with over $200m in sponsorship in a single year.

Formula Money contains more than 200 tables which uncover every aspect of Formula 1’s finances from a valuation of every current team sponsorship deal to the typical budget for a Grand Prix.

It has expanded to 156 pages, adding sections detailing the finances of Formula 1’s feeder series GP2 and analysing the editorial print media exposure of Formula 1’s team sponsors, the first time this data has ever been produced.

To produce the print media exposure data Formula Money has carried out an extensive analysis of over 14,000 international media outlets for the full calendar year 2007.

Every sponsor’s name was searched in conjunction with two other terms, the name of the team sponsored and Formula 1. This monitored each sponsor’s exposure from its Formula 1 involvement and the search covered all languages.

The results were further broken down in languages key to Formula 1 and were also rated in terms of the sponsors’ estimated spending in order to calculate their return on investment. This new perspective on exposure enables better benchmarking and allows companies to see where their money is best spent.

ING got more print media exposure than any other sponsor last year with 883 articles mentioning its name and Formula 1. This was followed by Vodafone, Fiat, Shell and AT&T. However, spending an estimated $65m, ING did not get the best value for money. This accolade goes to Allianz, which received 225 articles per million dollars invested.

The combined total of all articles mentioning the sponsors’ names and Formula 1 in 2007 was 8,243, a slight decrease on 2006’s 8,338, mainly due to fewer mentions of Formula 1’s tyre partners following Michelin’s departure.

The authors of Formula Money, Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, are the world's only newspaper journalists to regularly cover the business of Formula 1. Their experience covering the sector stretches across all other types of media from magazines and books to radio and television.

The publishing partner of Formula Money is CNC, the communications consultancy which has worked with and represented several major sponsors, all car manufacturers and eight of the ten teams which participate in Formula 1.

[DOF_power]

They care more about the business than the sport.

[Racer Duck]

There's no doubt everyone is looking for ways to tap the Asian (Chinese) market. Singapore fits very well into those plans.

What blew me away was Ferrari's 24% share of the total sponsor money! You wouldn't think any single entity would garner almost a quarter of anything... Obviously their marketing folks deserve a raise!

[onearmsteve]

Originally Posted by DOF_power

They care more about the business than the sport.

welcome to the 21st century.

it's always about money these days.

[DOF_power]

Originally Posted by Racer Duck

There's no doubt everyone is looking for ways to tap the Asian (Chinese) market. Singapore fits very well into those plans.

What blew me away was Ferrari's 24% share of the total sponsor money! You wouldn't think any single entity would garner almost a quarter of anything... Obviously their marketing folks deserve a raise!

Enzo Ferrari went racing believing that a small and focused team is the way to do things, then he resisted big corporate sponsorship in the 70s.
Ferrari survived Ferrari.