Damian Stack: F1 serves up too much of a bad thing in Baku
With four competitive sessions across three days F1 tested the limit of fans’ endurance
Is there anything more F1 than to leave fans waiting for the bones of a month for any sort of action and then in the very next race overwhelming them with a glut of it?
To be fair to the sport, the long break between this race and the last was largely out of its control, the Chinese Grand Prix was cancelled due to the ins and outs of that country’s response to Covid leaving not enough time for a suitable (and cost-effective) replacement to be found.
It all meant that by the time last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix rolled around fans were unquestionably thirsty for some on track action and where better to provide it than Baku? Scene to some of the more dramatic races of the last decade.
And, yet, by the end of the Grand Prix on Sunday it was hard not to feel a combination of deflation and mental exhaustion. That it was a poor race, in what’s turning out to be a poor season, was no doubt the biggest factor in that, but we’d be pretty sure that the messing around with the race weekend format was a significant contributor to that sense of fatigue.
For the first time the sport introduced its latest iteration of the (rather underwhelming) sprint race concept, which this time would have no direct bearing on the Grand Prix the following day. To that end an extra qualifying session was added on Saturday morning solely for the sprint race.
In all that meant that committed fans had four competitive sessions (with qualifying for the Grand Prix on Friday afternoon) across three days to tune in for.
Sorry but that’s just too much of a good thing, or in this weekend’s case, a bad thing. It’s asking too much of people to expect them to put that much time aside and that’s before you even consider the repetitive nature of it.
In having what’s essentially a mini Grand Prix, presaged by a mini qualifying session, all it does is remove any potential interest in how things might play out the following day.
After the 17 laps on Saturday there was precisely no mystery remaining as to what would happen on Sunday afternoon – the race order was remarkably stable from one day to the next – particularly in this era of ultra-reliability.
If you’re going to do something like a sprint race you have to make it sufficiently different to make it worthwhile, otherwise don’t bother, especially if you’re decoupling it from the Grand Prix in the manner in which the sport’s authorities have now done. There are ways to make it a potentially more interesting, say by using a reverse grid.
The incentive to go as quick as possible in qualifying for the main race would still be there for obvious reasons, but in having the quickest cars start at the back the sprint at least would offer something different to the Grand Prix.
How far up the order could pole man Charles Leclerc have risen over the 17 laps had he been forced to start at the back? How long could the slower cars hold out against those quicker behind them?
It’s a bit gimmicky, let’s be honest, but the whole concept of the sprint race is gimmicky to begin with. Either embrace that, or call the whole thing off.
That’s what Max Verstappen is calling for and, while he can be a bit of a whinger (his spat with George Russell a case in point), he’s not wrong about on this.
FAI’s call for bigger cut cannot go unheeded
There’s the FAI report (compiled by KHSK Economic Consultants), there’s the Horse Racing Ireland report (compiled by Deloitte), and there’s the Irish Greyhound Board report (compiled by Jim Power).
We could be here all day discussing their relative merits. How receptive you are to each one’s conclusions is probably to a large extent determined by your starting point.
Are you more a fan of football than racing than greyhound racing? Then you’re likely to cherry pick the points of information that back your pre-existing world view and preference. So where does that leave us? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What share of government funding should each sporting body get? Is the current distribution of the betting fund equitable?
Our starting point would be to say that, no, it’s not. Of course, it’s not. Irish football is very much on the hind-teat when it comes to public funds. It’s badly, badly in need of additional investment. Just a straight forward look at the facilities in the League of Ireland would tell you that and that’s just the public facing element of it, the grounds.
In terms of investment in coaching and training facilities it’s light-years behind the GAA and the IRFU, as Shelbourne FC boss Damien Duff made plain when speaking last year.
Not all of that can be put down to the questionable leadership the FAI had during the John Delaney era. A lot of it is down to under-investment by government, plain and simple.
When you see how relatively little the FAI has received over the years in comparison to horse and greyhound racing, it really is jarring. Little wonder the FAI are seeking to redress the balance.
Last week’s KHSK report has drawn some criticism, Kevin Blake on At the Races wrote quite a thought-provoking rebuttal to some of it, but even if you take on board everything Blake says it still doesn’t make sense to us that football shouldn’t get a greater share of the betting fund pie.
And at the moment the FAI doesn’t have claim to any of it, despite a quite sizeable percentage of sports betting in this country now going on football matches and tournaments. Anecdotally alone we know that to be the case, so why shouldn’t football in this country benefit the same way that horse and greyhound racing does?
The Blake piece notes that “betting on League of Ireland soccer accounts for far less than 1% of overall betting turnover of Irish-based customers”, but while interesting that doesn’t quite convince for why the domestic game shouldn’t benefit from betting on games to some extent at least from gambling on English and European football.
We can understand the instinct to protect what you have, but given the participation rates in football – higher than any other sport in Ireland – and the current boom in interest in the League of Ireland, football has a meaningful claim to some of that betting fund pie (which doesn’t even cover the full subvention to horse and greyhound racing).
For the FAI to gain, somebody else has to lose out (even if that’s the taxpayer), and if anybody’s to lose out it probably should be greyhound racing, which seems lavishly funded considering the interest that there is in it. It’s a sport on the wane, with Government funding keeping it on life support. Irish football might not be perfect, but it’s growing.
Pardon the pun, but the Government are backing the wrong horse (or rather greyhound).
Banner day was a real treat for hurling fans
What an absolute tonic that was. Hurling has largely underwhelmed so far in 2023. The league was fairly watery stuff and even the first weekend of championship action didn’t quite hit the heights either. It wasn’t bad it just wasn’t anything special.
That certainly couldn’t be said of Saturday evening’s showdown on the Ennis Road. This was it. This was fire. This was brimstone. This was the Munster god-damned hurling championship at its very finest. It was one of those games that sort of built upon itself.
Not that it was slow to start or anything like that, it’s just that the intensity if anything just grew and grew as the stakes went higher and higher in tandem.
Having done so well for so much of the game – and having lost their opening round fixture to Tipperary in Cusack Park quite sloppily – Clare simply couldn’t afford to let this one slip and Limerick, well, Limerick didn’t get where they are by being generous to their neighbours (or anyone else for that matter).
It was a game of big moments, big plays, big emotions and some great story lines. Limerick losing their first championship game in four seasons. John Conlon, who went from best-man at his brother’s wedding to man-of-the-match in the space of a couple of hours. Even just the outpouring of joy by the Clare fans and players was heart-warming.
The aul GAA Grinch in us was half tut-tutting to ourselves that they’ve nothing won yet and to take it down a notch or two, but you know what? Take your joy where you can find it.
As a neutral we certainly did. More of this, please.
