Quote:
Originally Posted by Last2LiftOff
Just a comment Grant from this side of the Atlantic where there's very little name recognition with your league football.
I've seen one SLF race, and this thread, and that's it, but here we are on page 6 and I don't recall that many references to this football club or that football club, but more this driver and that driver (and by a country mile?).
Could easily be a 10-tenths bias of some sort esp. in the National Single Seaters forums it seems, or the name recognition thing FAIK, but a curious sort of platform IMO.
Edit: and my apologies Grant, seems I've assumed you're not on this side of the Atlantic when of course, I have no idea.
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L2LO, you are right, I'm on the sunrise side of the pond. In theory the SF appeal is worldwide although currently the absence of international club competition (or indeed many teams) seems to mean that excludes North America.
What you see is the 10 10ths view of the thing. The direvers? Well, as one said when interviewed at Donington, he didn't know that much about football or the team he was driving for but he was learning quickly. Actually I think a couple of them said much the same thing when asked similar questions.
No doubt the football fans have a similar but opposite view of the cars and drivers.
Given that the Liverpool team was offering free e-tickets (wish I'd known) and that Donington Park were offering tickets to people in the local ara for £5 for the Sunday (but had to be booked in advance so presumably add a booking fee) although the newsletter that brought that to my attention arrived just about in time to miss the advanced booking opportunity, it didn't seem that busy with obvious spectators. Many of the people I stood near seemed to be friends and supporters of people taking part in other races. Not so many around were wearing the club 'colours', although those that did looked faintly ridiculous me. But hey, each to their own. I will admit that I was not in the more popular public areas for this one.
On the other hand the circuit had a lot of 'dressing' for the organisers to pretty the place up. (And it was stripped very quickly after the last SF activity!). There were also a large number of vehicles and many staff from the Dutch TV outfit covering the race. So I guess the TV distribution is more important than local attendance.
Considering this is only the second season and there are not so many races in the season the drivers seem to come and go or just swap teams very readily. When you get the team that is seconf in the League pulling out after 3 races and another re-joining it gets difficult to care about keeoping track of which soccer team is doing what. Not that it really matters.
With drivers now swapping race teams it should be interesting to see how they go. For example Ho-Pin Tung, having been substituted for a Spanish driver for an Iberian race, moves both race and soccer teams and lands in the Galatasary car which to date with Tappy has been sort of middle of the pack despite Tappy's exposure to the series from the first runs, and last weekend with Mansell (Scott) was pretty much at the back, though the circumstances were tricky. It should be interesting to see how Tung goes. The other Ultimate car, nominally lying second in the league before last weekend (but that position was for a soccer team that had subsequently withdrawn) had an 11th place finish in race 1 and a DNF after 10 laps in race 2 due to a car problem.
The comparison between Tung and Guerrieri could be quite interesting.