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F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

qz.com

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Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#21

Post by jacques_chester »

ra wrote: post #5
nicholassmith wrote: post #2

As someone who's been an F1 fan for a while (although less so at the moment, but I digress), I've always found it curious that it's never really taken off in America like it could have. Americans love cars, and love racing, it's easy to mock the love of the oval and NASCAR but American teams show up in Le Mans quite a lot, and have a long history of racing on the long, winding and, well, non-American tracks. Maybe it…

It's the same with Cricket and Rugby. By some quirk of history, Americans got into Baseball and Gridiron instead. They're both fine sports so it's all good; but we all have a chuckle when you have a 'world series'.

There's a theory (according to the relevant Wikipedia entry it's a controversial theory) that the World Series is named for the newspaper which sponsored early contests.

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#23

Post by chaosprophet »

nicholassmith wrote: post #15
objclxt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No American drivers, no American tracks, no American teams[...] F1 was run at the Circuit of the Americas two weeks ago, in Austin. I think F1 is to the USA as NFL is to the UK: there's a dedicated, small audience in both (judging from my Twitter feed), and they're both trying to extend their reach - F1 with more races in the US, and NFL with more games in Wembley. I think F1 is planning a New Jersey street race in…

Sorry I should have said 'previously no American tracks', was typing a bit too fast and I'll fix it.

There was also an F1 GP held at Indianapolis between 2000 and 2007.

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#24

Post by errnoh »

sergiotapia wrote: post #10
sabret00the wrote: post #8

"You don't have Javascript enabled" so let's show you just how badly we can make rendered HTML look. Great work there Quartz! As for the article, it's an article about racing, not sure why they mentioned football or the metric system at all, but to mention it in the context they have, they should've called it by it's proper name "Football" and then perhaps added "Soccer" in brackets.

If you don't have Javascript enabled that's a conscious decision you've made, fully aware of what the tradeoff is. Either turn it on for websites you want to read properly, or just accept the fact that it's 2013 and the vast majority of websites use it.

I do have JS enabled but still run into problems. Probably some script blocking plugin that's causing them but the cause doesn't really matter, what does is the fact that it's preventing one from reading the article.

There's really no reason at all to obfuscate text based information in such way unless you want to display ads or track the user. It even shows the actual article behind the loading screen but you can't read the article itself since the loading never finishes. That's just bad design.

It's not the first time I've had to open lynx in order to read an article that's behind some javascript nonsense. (note: the text data is fine, it's actually only broken on modern browsers which actually handle js)

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#25

Post by nicholassmith »

sjh wrote: post #13
smoyer wrote: post #4

I'm American, like F1 and NASCAR but rarely spend time watching either (or any other television). I also prefer to drive on a winding country road in a European touring sedan versus more boring routes. I played soccer (shouldn't he have said football?) when I was younger and I'm fine with the metric system (the real question is why they taught it in elementary schools starting in the '70s, but didn't bother switching…

It's 'football' in the UK, but in most of the rest of the Anglophone world, it's 'soccer'. Australia has its own 'football', as does Ireland.

Oddly in most of Europe it's 'football' as well, EUFA, IFA, Ligue de Football and so on, seems to be quite fractured depending on whereabouts in the world you are, and with the rise in people learning American English through TV/movies/etc I can see it becoming more popular to call it soccer.

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#27

Post by nicholassmith »

chaosprophet wrote: post #23
nicholassmith wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I should have said 'previously no American tracks', was typing a bit too fast and I'll fix it.

There was also an F1 GP held at Indianapolis between 2000 and 2007.

I still stand by 'previously' as 5 years is an awful long time to keep people interested in a sport that doesn't appear in your country and has none of your countrymen involved, especially with similar series (Indy 500 etc) running anyway. Especially 5 years in F1, where everything gets changed around and fiddled with.

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#28

Post by zalew »

nicholassmith wrote: post #20
zalew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's easy to mock the love of the oval and NASCAR Check out Top Gear s18e02 (edit: now I see you're British, so you probably have watched it). Not that I'm convinced or will watch Nascar, but how they pictured it in the show was hell damn exciting. > F1 suddenly got a lot more coverage in the UK when we had a couple of drivers Imagine what was going on here when Kubica appeared.

If you've never watched NASCAR, you should definitely do it. I've not watched a race in years, but it used to be shown on Channel 5 around 10/11pm, it's perfect 'crack a beer' TV. Very fast, very aggressive, very loud, very full of crashes. The street brawl to F1's refined Queensbury Rules. However, it is frankly ridiculous in many ways and it's very easy to pick on the fact it's beloved by red necks and so on.

Uhm, I don't have channel 5 because I'm not in the UK nor I do have a tv ;) but I have watched some fragments and I don't buy it due to the oval thing. The crashes, yeah, they are cool, but it's a bit like watching gymnastics hoping that the chick will fall off and crack her arm. It's too bad tourer races (DTM, WTCC) don't get as much attention as F1.

In the "sports I didn't watch" category I never expected motorcycle racing would be more exciting than F1. I've never shared an interest in bikes and I don't know most of the names except Rossi and Pedroza, but once got into watching a MotoGP race and wow, there is action!

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#29

Post by sergiotapia »

errnoh wrote: post #24
sergiotapia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have Javascript enabled that's a conscious decision you've made, fully aware of what the tradeoff is. Either turn it on for websites you want to read properly, or just accept the fact that it's 2013 and the vast majority of websites use it.

I do have JS enabled but still run into problems. Probably some script blocking plugin that's causing them but the cause doesn't really matter, what does is the fact that it's preventing one from reading the article. There's really no reason at all to obfuscate text based information in such way unless you want to display ads or track the user. It even shows the actual article behind the loading screen but you can't…

shrug

What can I tell you? If you are using a script blocker this is what you get in the current landscape. There really isn't a reason why text should be mangled without javascript, but that's just the way it is with some sites.

Re: F1, like soccer and the metric system, is OK for everyone except Americans

#30

Post by nicholassmith »

zalew wrote: post #28
nicholassmith wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've never watched NASCAR, you should definitely do it. I've not watched a race in years, but it used to be shown on Channel 5 around 10/11pm, it's perfect 'crack a beer' TV. Very fast, very aggressive, very loud, very full of crashes. The street brawl to F1's refined Queensbury Rules. However, it is frankly ridiculous in many ways and it's very easy to pick on the fact it's beloved by red necks and so on.

Uhm, I don't have channel 5 because I'm not in the UK nor I do have a tv ;) but I have watched some fragments and I don't buy it due to the oval thing. The crashes, yeah, they are cool, but it's a bit like watching gymnastics hoping that the chick will fall off and crack her arm. It's too bad tourer races (DTM, WTCC) don't get as much attention as F1. In the "sports I didn't watch" category I never expected motorcycl…

It was when you'd mention Top Gear and 'British' and I put two and two together and got 8. Honestly, you should try at least one race purely to see how aggressive some of the drivers can be. It's similar to the British Touring Car Championships, but even less polite.

Superbikes is one of the reasons why I don't watch the F1 as much, it's far more entertaining, the drivers seem to be a lot more humble, and rules aren't constantly being monkeyed.

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