I got stuck on an Aston Martin car dealer's mailing list that I have no business being on. This "opportunity" pretty much sums it up. WTF:
I got stuck on an Aston Martin car dealer's mailing list that I have no business being on. This "opportunity" pretty much sums it up. WTF:
Lol!
If you buy an Aston, you are feeding your ego. Dropping that much dough to be "admired" is a bargain.
Makes yer pecker longer.
In reply to kb58 :
Ok ok ... I'll go with you since you're buying but dinner is on me.
That's just the Vegas race. It's trying to be the Monaco of the US. The Paddock Club at any F1 race is for high rollers. If you want to watch a race instead of being a VIP and get some bang for your buck, go to Texas.
If you don't think F1 is popular in the US, you haven't been paying much attention.
Daughter tells me a bunch of girls at Miami University are F1 fans. They watched the Netflix series and watch the races. My kid watches the races and is somewhat interested.
Every day is a new surprise with my daughter.
Keith Tanner said:
If you don't think F1 is popular in the US, you haven't been paying much attention.
And then some. Because of the fiasco at Indy, people constantly overlook that the crowds at the brickyard were the largest in F1. By a pretty wide margin.
The big issue with F1 fans in the US is that we are really spread out.
And I would not extrapolate anything from the Vegas race, especially the crowd they are apparently trying to attract. I really doubt I'll even bother to stay up to watch it live.
In reply to alfadriver :
I think the Vegas race will be a heck of a spectacle on TV and pretty much impossible to see live. The sightlines will be impossible, but the cars against the neon will be amazing in the longer shots. The entire point of going to the Vegas race would be the perks and the VIP treatment. The sort of thing that you'd pay lots of money for because it shows you can pay lots of money.
I've got a place to stay during the race. I might go down for the weekend, see if I can hook up with someone in the paddock (might have an in or two there) and then watch the race on TV back at the timeshare :)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
The race is at 1am here. The last time I stayed up that long was to watch a race in Australia probably 20 years ago. No way I'm staying up to watch it- the season will probably be meaningless by then and the track seems, well...
Highlights will be enough.
Keith Tanner said:That's just the Vegas race. It's trying to be the Monaco of the US. The Paddock Club at any F1 race is for high rollers. If you want to watch a race instead of being a VIP and get some bang for your buck, go to Texas.
If you don't think F1 is popular in the US, you haven't been paying much attention.
I don't know enough rich folks 
Floor seats at the Lakers are expensive as well. It's a premium product with a premium price.
alfadriver said:And then some. Because of the fiasco at Indy, people constantly overlook that the crowds at the brickyard were the largest in F1. By a pretty wide margin.
Yes, although that's at least partly because Indy is one of very few venues with over 300,000 seats available. I think Le Mans attendance gets close, but nothing else does.
The races at Indy were also known for offering regular fans a chance to walk down pit lane on Thursday when the teams were setting up, a level of access that's unheard of anywhere else.
It's Vegas thing; ticket prices for everything here are now insane.
You should see the prices they get for concerts.
I've watched it get more and more insane in the 45 years I've lived here.
yupididit said:Keith Tanner said:That's just the Vegas race. It's trying to be the Monaco of the US. The Paddock Club at any F1 race is for high rollers. If you want to watch a race instead of being a VIP and get some bang for your buck, go to Texas.
If you don't think F1 is popular in the US, you haven't been paying much attention.
I don't know enough rich folks
You don't know enough rich folks to go to the Texas race? Last time I went, we picked up GA tickets on Craigslist and parked just outside the track for $10/day. Stayed with friends. It's a little more popular now, but I think Texas is possibly the most accessible F1 race on the calendar for people on a budget.
Don't know enough rich folks who like F1? That's okay, there's no income requirement to watch it on ESPN like most of us :)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
When was the last time you went? Tickets were insane last I checked.
I turned down an offer to join an F1 fantasy league (not sure exactly what that is). I don't pay for cable so I have no easy way to watch the races.
I'm definitely not the target audience for this ad.
It seems expensive to ME, but i'll apply the same logic that i do to cars that are "not worth it".
"its worth what people will pay". Im gonna guess that this 19k experience will sell plenty, so, its worth 19k to some folks. Good for them. I bet its a helluva experience.
F1 races in the US?
accordionfolder said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
When was the last time you went? Tickets were insane last I checked.
This.
While still way more accessible and affordable than either Miami or Vega$$$, COTA has gone way up in price the past two years. They sell out immediately...even the GA tix. And throughout the year they figure out new places to put stands and then sell those out.
I live in Austin and don't go to the race there any more. It's just too much of a zoo and my couch is just too comfortable. Plus since I get to run at COTA myself frequently, the place itself isn't all that "special" to me.
F1 has become a victim of it's own rise in popularity here.
Montreal is the real gem for F1 in North America.
I wouldn't pay $19 for a ticket, much less $19k.
The higher levels of racing are pretty boring to watch to me. Anything more than the highlights is nap time. If I'm watching a live race, I'd rather go to a dirt oval.
The problem - if you want to call it that - is that F1 *is* popular here. That's how they can offer a $19,000 ticket and actually sell it.
I went to the USGP in 2016 at COTA and paid $250 each for a couple of tickets in the stands at turn 3/4/5 from a seller on eBay. In a fairly quick search of the same platform, I see that I could buy a single GA 3-day wristband for $550.
Looking back on it, I thought it was a little bit decadent to spend that much money on tickets for a race. I was able to find a conference in Austin that preceding week that I got my company to send me to so my hotel and airfare were covered and all I needed to pay for was the rental car, food, parking, and the ticket. I really couldn't justify spending on the airfare, hotel, parking - which I'm sure has gone up from whatever it was, - and other incidentals before then dropping another $550 to get in the gates. As cool of a spectacle as it is, I much preferred the experience of the Rolex at Daytona or even IMSA at Mid-Ohio.
Frankly, being at the track meant that unless we were watching on the TV across the track from us, we had no idea what was going on. You see the cars fly by, which is really cool, of course, but then they fly by again a minute and a half later and you're left wondering how Bottas got past Ricciardo or whatever. They don't use radios that can be picked up by a scanner, so you're still stuck with whatever radio traffic the World Feed Director decides to broadcast. Unless you're coughing up metric dollars, you're not getting anywhere near the garages or the cars or anything. Hearing the commentators is fairly difficult, even with the speakers they have set up and I don't recall that they had an FM re-broadcast of the track audio.
That said, I would totally go again, but $250 is about what I'm willing to spend for GA and I don't think I'd be willing to go more than $300 for a grandstand ticket. Obviously the market says those are worth waaaaaay more than that, and in a way I think that's a good thing for the sport. If they can sell out tracks at $500 and (way!) up for a ticket, then it's making money and that's awesome and they'll keep having races for me to watch on TV.
Maybe to get the same experience, I can take my TV outside, sit in the sun, and have someone rev a car engine every minute or so.
As a complete aside, btw, the fact that they're selling $19,000 (and up, btw) tickets for F1 races is a further reason that it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever that they expect the track marshals to be "volunteers". In my mind, that is absolutely no different than the Chick Fil A that tried to have volunteer employees that were paid in chicken sammiches. If they were scraping pennies together to be able to run this series at all, it would make more sense to me. But Liberty Media is making a rather tidy profit so they can afford to pay all their employees. And I say that as an unabashed capitalist who thinks that there's absolutely no such thing as "too much profit". I just have a problem with not paying the people that work for you.
Psssh...I see your $19k and raise it with my $63k!
Here is a laugh. Twenty years ago Atlantic City closed their airfield in an attempt to lure another casino (it failed) so they have been sitting on this mostly empty tract of land trying to find a use for it. It's right next door to a residential area, so this will never fly (not sorry)
In reply to dyintorace :
But you get to bring your pets!
Keith Tanner said:yupididit said:Keith Tanner said:That's just the Vegas race. It's trying to be the Monaco of the US. The Paddock Club at any F1 race is for high rollers. If you want to watch a race instead of being a VIP and get some bang for your buck, go to Texas.
If you don't think F1 is popular in the US, you haven't been paying much attention.
I don't know enough rich folks
You don't know enough rich folks to go to the Texas race? Last time I went, we picked up GA tickets on Craigslist and parked just outside the track for $10/day. Stayed with friends. It's a little more popular now, but I think Texas is possibly the most accessible F1 race on the calendar for people on a budget.
Don't know enough rich folks who like F1? That's okay, there's no income requirement to watch it on ESPN like most of us :)
I lived in San Antonio for 4 years (2017- Jan 2022). Every year I've tried to catch F1 at COTA and either it was sold out extremely quickly or overly expensive but mostly both. So, I'm not sure what your reference year is for it being the most accessible. Anyway, my 'knowing rich people' post was just a joke based on having to know people or have bunch of money to attend these events and enjoy it at the same time. I've never had cable either lol.
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