<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ Mar 22 2008, 08:40 AM)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>You have obviously not been reading my posts. I explained the basis of my opinion and asked you for yours, but all you offered was that i am wrong. Like you said competition and entertainment value are two reasonable criterea for judgement, and motor sports fall short on both of these in the general scheme of things. You make a good point about motogp vs. F1 though because i would be interested to know just how many people take part in motorcycle races internationaly compared to car races. Motorcycle racing is less exclusive (cheaper) than car racing and as a result could potentially offer more people the chance to compete. Interesting stuff
I probably should apologise, it was quite late in australia when I was posting and I got annoyed because I thought you were being supercilious, but then I was being fairly supercilious myself.
You are probably correct that popularity is the only thing that can be quantified in terms of which sport is "best"' which is probably a good reason not to try to quantify this, as in my opinion popularity is a poor indicator of quality in general; you are of course perfectly entitled to a different opinion. I tend just to follow sports that I enjoy and not rank them in any particular order.
For what it is worth, what I look for in sports, which obviously involves only my personal preferences, is the display of the exceptional by competitors, which in non-technological sports for me includes a variety of physical and mental aspects including pure physical skill in the sport, strength, endurance, mental strength, courage, discipline as well as tactical and strategic ability. In motorsports like you l think the opportunity to be cleverer with technology within the rules should also have some part; single-make formulae or formulae where competitors are excessively artificially equalised don't really interest me. Other factors also come into play, such as the spectacle the sport presents; having watched F1 live at the track as you have I think F1 ranks fairly high on this score. Personal aesthetic preferences also come into it; being a good synchronised swimmer obviously involves considerable skills, just not ones I am particularly interested in seeing displayed.
As far as F1 and motogp are concerned, I am an avid fan of both and which I am most interested in at any given time probably depends on whether I have a particular favourite among the competitors rather than anything more abstract or objective. I do think motogp has generally had a "better" balance between the contribution made by the driver/rider and the technology in recent years, but as has been widely discussed in this forum this may be changing. I also think max and bernie have been on the wrong track rules-wise for quite a number of years, because as we have discussed before I believe the fundamental problem detracting from the racing in F1 is that the current aerodynamics militate against overtaking; changes to tyre, tc, engine etc rules whilst perhaps laudable in themselves only play around the edges of the real problem in my opinion.
