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yuhoo~sesape rajin, meh bace artikel ni...best pengolahan yg dibuat~hoho
The Turbulent Times of Formula One
On a crisp day in Valencia, Spain, early last month, a small man in a cardinal-red jumpsuit walked a few steps from a million-dollar motor home and ducked into a lavish hospitality tent, both in the same bright scarlet. No one was allowed anywhere near him, but throngs of Spaniards hanging over the railing of Valencia's Ricardo Tormo racetrack went crazy. "Look up here, Fernando! Te quiero, Fernando!"
It was the first appearance of Fernando Alonso, a Spaniard and former world champion, as a driver for Ferrari's Formula One racing team. Whenever he briefly poked his head out, crowds hooted wildly and waved red Ferrari hats and Spanish flags. Further down the paddock, where the F1 teams park their massive rolling pavilions, journalists were shoving microphones and cameras at another small man, this one all in silver. Michael Schumacher, the seven-time F1 world champion, was coming out of retirement in the livery of his new Mercedes team. The questions were not tough. "How does the car feel, Michael?" "I feel like a kid with a new toy," replied Schumi. Several dozen blogs and tweets in half a dozen languages instantly analyzed what Schumi meant by this.
The F1 circus had come to town for its annual preseason trials. It was only a test session (racing gets under way March 14 in Bahrain), but it gives you a good idea why F1 is one of the biggest sporting enterprises in the world — part medieval joust, part moon launch. The pennants bearing each team's coat of arms flap jauntily from trucks that house enough computing power to send a man into orbit. This mix of techno-dazzle and hometown pride helps explain why 40,000 fans turned out at Ricardo Tormo to watch a nonrace with no winner.
The question is, will they keep coming? Last year, advertisers, fans, teams and media spent $4.6 billion on F1's festival of fossil fuel. Six hundred million people around the world watched some part of the season on television. That's why companies such as Korean electronics conglomerate LG Group are prepared to lay out "several hundred million dollars" to have their logo plastered all over F1, says Andrew Barrett, the company's VP of global sponsorship, who recently inked such a deal. "We were looking for as broad a global reach as we could get with one sport, and nothing else even came close."
But what the big numbers and the gaudy pageantry hide is how close the sport came to a total crack-up last year, and just how rickety it remains. At times over the past few years, Formula One has looked as ungovernable as California: big teams quit, and more threatened to do so; the financial industry canceled its lifeblood sponsorship almost en masse; track attendance is down; and scandals have tarnished everyone from a world champ to the former head of motor sport itself. Bernie Ecclestone, the septuagenarian who is usually described as F1's principal stakeholder (a description that doesn't come close to encompassing his power) insists that all is now well with the world. "The sport's in better shape than it's ever been," he says coolly to TIME. "The negative things are all ironed out." But others have a more somber, realistic view of the state of F1. "The sport has been damaged. We were firefighting our way through last year and we still have to finish firefighting," says Martin Whitmarsh, who runs the powerhouse McLaren team. "It's time for this sport to grow up."
More Dash Than Cash
Last summer, it looked like the sport might cease to exist altogether. Angry at Formula One's decision to impose a team-spending cap, Ferrari, the oldest team on the grid, threatened to lead the biggest marques in a rival series. The teams pulled back at the last minute, but demanded that Max Mosley, the president of the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), stand down after 17 years. Mosley did.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969288,00.html
pnjg artikel ni, tp bg aku worth reading it! ;p |
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Post time 11-3-2010 11:16 AM
pujian dan sindiran......
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