Mark Webber on the future of speedway

[JoeyItaliano]

Mark Webber, a former Formula 1 driver, is closely following what is happening in the speedway world. In the past, the Australian has been a guest at Grand Prix competitions in Warsaw, Torun and Melbourne, but his interest in this sport is not limited to accepting invitations to the biggest tournaments. Nine times winner of F1 races, he is quite fascinated with speedway.
- Speedway is a terribly unique kind of motor sport. It reminds me of boxing, the riders on the track, they are like locked in the ring, they can't hide anywhere. There are some similarities between F1 and speedway, but when we move to finance in a global context, Formula 1 is unmatched. Its history grows from a different soil. Of course, slag also has its great names and legends, but the tracks and stadiums change. There is a lack of continuity of events in given places, a certain constancy that creates history. Over the years, a tournament takes place somewhere and suddenly disappears, it's hard to build the mood for a given sport in a particular city,' says Mark Webber. It's probably impossible to fill the entire GP calendar with such arenas as in Warsaw or Cardiff, but it's important to be independent of the weather, roofs, atmosphere on site. People have to be sure that if they get somewhere by organizing the whole trip earlier, this event will take place. There is nothing worse than to come to Denmark, for example, break down later by car and hear "sorry, it's raining". - he says.
According to the Australian, many elements of the speedway world need to be improved and developed, which could ultimately make speedway a more attractive product.

[lmmjvss]

I understand BUT they have to be careful and see what happened to the european rallycross championship.
RX is fun? To me? yes!... Then FIA thought "Oh, lets make it huge". They brought manufacturers, F1 tracks, F1 promoters, big names (loeb, ekstrom, solberg, villeneuve etc...) and then the people who put the money saw no return of investment - like AT ALL - Not only that, RX lost tons of privateers and traditional places, like LyddenHill (birth place of the sport) and estering (on the schedule since the 80's I believe) cuz "ewww we cant put our 5 million euro cars on the grass. I want a decent paddock".

FIM need to understand this. Those sports have their niche and thats it. Its not the "greatest sport in the planet"! They are not gonna get like... an audience to the size of MotoGP or MXGP. Dont raise the cost for riders, venues and fans cuz you are going to lose that niche for casual fans that will NOT attend to more than 1 race and will only watch 2 min highlights on youtube of the races.
F1 is a place for rich people.... Small nordic or eastern european championships are NOT.
Stop trying making everything look "sterile" and "clean" like F1, please!
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