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But where does a sport go from being a "sport" to being entertainment? As pointed out in the LMP1 future thread, MotoGP, F1, NASCAR and Indy Car have what I call a "cult of personality" in so far as that a lot of the stuff in those series are driver centered. The drivers are the main stars, at least as much as the cars.
And yes, until we have driverless cars, we'd have no racing without the drivers. After all, it's the drivers and teams who the fans and media interact with the most, not the otherwise inanimate objects that wouldn't even move without drivers or teams.
But in road racing, how can we have that on the same level when you have two or three drivers per car instead of just one? And where each team usually shares the same corporate sponsorship backing, even if it's from the car maker itself? In those sports mentioned, especially NASCAR and Indy Car, each team also has it's own sponsors who help fund the team. You don't see that very much in road racing.
As to the whole contrived competition thing, my thoughts are this. I've already mentioned that I'm not a big fan of BOP and that teams should be allowed and encouraged to sort out their issues without crying for performance balancing right off the bat.
But as I've also mentioned, purse strings have been tightening and people in high places want results and want them fast. That's one reason for BOP.
The other is to try and encourage different cars to race on a theoretical near-equal playing field. Let's face it, for better or worse, if there was no BOP, everyone would be racing Audi R8s, McLaren 650s, and Ferrari 488s. Why? Because they're the best cars out there. Without BOP, there'd probably be no front engine or rear engine cars.
And one thing that GT racing has done very well at is that the cars are identifiable and look different. You look at a car and tell it's an Audi, a Ferrari, a Porsche, an Aston Martin, a Corvette, and on and on. Without BOP, I don't think we'd have that.
The only alternatives to this BOP mess is the probably even messier realm of no BOP (no way to keep budgets in check or encourage customer programs, teams making up low volume homolgation specials, etc). Or we could have a situation like NASCAR or Indy Car where the cars are largely spec. I don't think that the road racing crowd would like that, either. Mostly because a lot of people would probably say that the racing is more convoluted with cookie cutter cars.
Is auto racing a sport? In broad terms, yes. Is road racing a sport? It's probably the most sport of them all right now. I'd argue that road racing is much bigger team sport than say F1 or NASCAR or other driver-centric racing classes.
My question is when and where is the line between a "pure" sport (which I don't think there's very many "pure" sports out there, even outside of racing), when does things become an entertainment exercise?
Allow me to give my own opinion on that question. When we talk more about soap opera-like things like driver rivalries and controversies that don't effect the bigger whole of the sport, then it becomes sports entertainment. And what comes to mind when we think of that phrase?
At least road racing doesn't have that type of ego problem among most competitors or teams.
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