What's with rich people and Formula 1

>>1664315
>What is it with rich people and [needlessly expensive hobby]
It keeps the poor people out of sight (home behind their TVs), and it shows off to other rich faggots that they have money.

>>1664315
Just a theory.

I always thought it might have to do with the equestrian class. In other words, racing has always been a sort of affluent activity, and I don't mean stock cars.

>>1664315
which do you mean? the corrupt pigs who run the show or the bored idiots who throw money into the pig trough?

>>1664315
they don't watch it unless they are rev-head/nerd/engineer guys, they go to the pitboxes for like 3 races a season as a way of entertaining their business partners. Shake hands with the drivers, and show off their influence. Drink champagne, hand out a few business cards "I'll be in Gstaad next week, we'll do lunch and talk abut the acquisition".

It sounds self indulgent, but for some weird reason a esoteric sport like F1 with all it's nerdy ever changing rules is the highest rating sport in the world, I don't even think the NBA gets numbers that high. Only the Olympics and WorldCup beat F1, but those are once every 4 years, Formula one is every-year. Infiniti's sponsorship deal with Red Bull they recon yielded them over 1 billion dollars in exposure in 2014.

poor people also enjoy watching F1

people of all classes enjoy cars

if you mean PARTICIPATING in F1 and all the festivities, well, obviously F1 cars are kinda expensive and anything involving drinking champagne at 3 in the afternoon surrounded by sponsors like Gucci and Red Bull is probably not going to be for the peasants to do.

the peasants do AutoCross or RallyCross and drink light beer while jizzing over home-printed anime stickers at around 5 or 6 in the evening instead. It's basically the same thing but instead of trading business cards, you trade hand-written notes scrawled on napkins.

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>>1664315
Motorsports in general are a rich man's sport. No matter which class of racing, you gotta have money for the car(s), the engine rebuilds, new tires every race, entry fees, the huge amount of time and traveling required, your team, and all that fun stuff.
An F1 racecar represents the absolute pinnacle of automotive technology and design. The cars must be built from exotic materials that can withstand the extreme level of performance. For example, the engines are capable of hitting 20,000rpm and producing up to a thousand horsepower while having less than 2L displacement. If you don't know anything about engines, take my word that those numbers are fucking mind blowing. The level of downforce the car produces exceeds the weight of the whole car. That means that at full speed, it would be possible for the car to drive upside down and stick to the road surface. The only racing class that exceeds F1 in raw performance (and maybe even $) is top fuel drag racing. If you aren't familiar with top fuel, the cars go from a standstill to 300mph in about 3 seconds and produce 8000hp. The lifespan of the engine is measured in seconds, and they have to be rebuilt every single pass down the drag strip.

>>1664922
>Motorsports in general are a rich man's sport. No matter which class of racing, you gotta have money for the car(s),
Case in point: Max Chilton, Lance Stoll, Nico Rosberg... all got their careers paid out of daddy's pocket.

Having said that, do drivers contribute to the costs of racing in GP2? I know like in the lower Formulas they probably have to pay for it out of their own pocket, but at what point can they actually start monetizing their skills?

BTW to the rest of /biz/ Formula One is a great place to study business strategy and metrics, as Ron Dennis said, the difference between leading in the championship and dead last is something like 1 second. Which over a 94 second lap means a performance difference of less than 2%! Few industries have such incredible competition with such a small margin. It's the ultimate law of diminishing returns: the smaller teams like Manor probz spend like $50million a year, while a team like Ferrari may spend as much as 10 times that! All for a 1% performance improvement.

Also you get R&D to release like you wouldn't believe, new aero parts can be designed, manufactured, tested, and on the race car within 3 weeks.