You may recall the throng of empty seats in China being used as an advertising hoarding with the large letters spelled on them or that they bussed in school kids to fill seats. You may recall Bern-nerd Ecclestone suggesting that F1 is in no financial crisis, although you would be daft to believe it given the 2010 FOTA/FIA war, but now we can officially say that F1 has gone to great lengths to camouflage it’s woes…literally. The multi-colored seats at the Turkish Grand Prix circuit in Istanbul were covered with dark camouflage at the last minute to mask the fact that only 36,000 people showed up for the race. That’s only 30,000 more than our local dirt track Sprint Car race and they spend no where near the cash to host a race.
F1 is hurting and the track owners must be lamenting the FOM contract that would see them bleed cash with no real source for it. Mark Webber said:
“I am looking forward to Silverstone because I think it will be a great atmosphere, unlike here. There was no one here.” “Jenson and I spoke about this on the parade lap, that to get some more people in here, to let them experience our sport, we should have let them in for free,”
So Turkey can’t fill one grandstand properly and Bernie says that the British GP at Silverstone has old facilities. News flash! New facilities don’t put bums in seats and I will venture to guess that the race at Silverstone will have a much larger crowd than Turkey. I must say, the decisions made by Max and Bernie, in my opinion, are steeped in poor wisdom of galactic proportions. Bernie, Max and their money have ruined this sport. Greed and the desire to fleece third-world and emerging countries has proven to be a very bad idea and the money that is needed to sate the CVC debt is a driving force for some of the most outrageous decisions the sport has ever seen. I suggest that Bernie and Max go sit in a couple empty seats in Turkey this week and consider what they’ve done. Can I please have my sport back? May I? Thank you.
