The stats for Hungaroring are correct, attendance was up. There were, however, fewer tickets booked in advance, many waited for last-minute tickets.

And, your mention about the cost is the real rub, and why almost all motorsports face struggles. It's too expensive to attend. Le Mans and the WEC seems to have managed to turn it around. The ticket for Le Mans 24h main event is quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent type of ticket for any F1 event. Indycar is also struggling(At one race recently, NBC proudly stated that they had a new record of 25 000 viewers... ouch...). NASCAR are struggling, hence all their clownery, allowing nudging, implicitly encouraging fistfights(not as blatant as the scripted fights in the NHL though). And that's an area where I think Formula E is going in the right direction: Quiet cars, able to race in city centers, and with cheap tickets.

In fact, if you've been watching for as long as you've claimed, maybe it's not the racing, maybe it's just that you've grown jaded?

FIA mandates a lot of things for the LMP cars too.... Turbo-charged cars can't have the same volume as normally aspirated engines. Different displacements for petrol and diesel. Only piston engines allowed. Different fuel flow rates and maximum fuel loads allowed based on what engine and fuel you use, and your MJ rating for the hybrid system. There are also restrictor plates to limit to around 700BHP for the IC engine.

So, MORE regulations than in F1. Yet those manufacturers, unlike Ferarri in F1, make some crazy cars that even in endurance tuning pull some crazy speeds and corners(As mentioned, more downforce than F1 cars. I think they also have more downforce than IndyCars)

Both forms of drag racing. The Top Fuel cars just roar.

To offer a counterpoint to your lopsided highlighting, the last 10 years have also seen some tracks modified, meaning that old V10 records can't be beaten anymore either. Also, the drivers are NOT conservative, given the cars, given how much more actual racing action there is.

VJ Mallya being the leader of a mid-tier team that lives on advertising exposure more than any technical skill. And Ferrari who are constantly whining when they are not in their lead. In the last 20 years, they've threatened to pull out *Checks stats* 14 times. There's been too much focus on engines. Not enough focus on engines. Too much focus on aerodynamics. Not enough focus on aerodynamics. Whatever area they happen to be weak at. Of course the crybaby Montezemolo will say that it's bad when his team is an utter clusterfuck, despite having Alonso. Every single interviewed DRIVER has said that this years cars are more difficult to drive, and requires more skill.

One of the reasons why F1 and other racing leagues are putting clamps on innovation is because they are already at the limits of what they can safely drive without completely redesigning every single track more than they already have.

Also, teams have ALWAYS teetered on the brink. Minardi were such a hit, weren't they? *crickets... hoot of a lonely owl....*

Other races reported increased spectator figures compared to previous years. Hungaroring and Spa for example.

As for the Mulsane straight, from what I hear, most drivers like it, because it became more challenging, and thus required more of the drivers.

I was at the Mercedes grandstand at turn 8, and seated close to the edge so I had some view of Parabolica too.

As for your complaining about spark blocks etc, that's on the same level as wanting more noise just for the sake of noise.

The plan is that one day, they will have allowed that, when a battery swap in a race car during a race is not a close equivalent to juggling a live bomb.

Basically, they want a few years to get some safety into a race-capable quick-swap system to reduce the risk of bad accidents in pit lane.

"If anyone can figure out how to up the performance without sacrificing too much efficiency, it's F1. I'm excited to see them getting into this."

Eh, look into WEC. Those LMP1-H cars are insane. Pretty decent power, better downforce than F1's, while still tuned for endurance races

The interesting thing is that the current 3 LMP1-H teams all have different hybrid approaches: Toyota with a normally aspirated petrol V8 and a supercapacitor storage system for the hybrid boost. Porsche with a Turbocharged V4 and a Lithium-Ion Polymer battery. Audi runs with a Turbocharged diesel V6 and a flywheel energy storage system. They have all kinds of restrictions on fuel flow, fuel amount etc, which in many ways just makes it more interesting, due to the suspense. Even with the more durable V6's, F1 cars would break down long before LMP1-H cars would, in equal circumstances. Forget about the V10 and V8 F1's, they were just flaky....

Wait, seriously...

Are you saying that a year with MORE overtakes, FEWER processions etc, and due to the reduced downforce are actually more difficult to drive than previous years cars, is boring, because they sound different?

Because, let me tell you, I was at Hockenheim, and those cars are still damn loud when you're there in person. Loud enough that I used my Peltors.

Meh, if you went to Formula 1 or Nascar or Indycar for the sound you were doing it wrong anyway.

For sound, you go to Top Fuel drag races, or, even louder, air shows(The 16 Spitfire low-altitude flyby at Duxford in 2010 for example... Made any F1, Nascar or Indycar race seem tame, no matter what engines you wanted to compare with)

As for the rest, the V6's are just so much more impressive than the V8's and V10's, which several engineers from F1 have said were pretty much dead-ends upgrade wise. What makes this year's cars fractionally slower seen over entire laps is the reduced aero downforce. The top speeds on many straights have actually been higher with this year's cars. If the cars of this year would be allowed to run with the aerodynamics of last year, many records would have been smashed.

And even then, my favourite series is WEC, and I'll also be following Formula E closely.

And yet again you make an erronous assumption. Many non-geeks do those things for HOBBIES, and only have one computer(and maybe a tablet...)

Which means that they do those hobbies on their personal computer.

"When will CPU ever matter for gaming, unless your running some terribly-written Java game?"

When you have a game that does a lot of AI stuff? Sins of a Solar Empire and the Total War series both tend to hit the CPU quite hard when your fleets/armies become large....

To the point of "Don't zoom in, just let the fleet autoattack...." yet you zoom in anyway, and get 120 FPS thanks to the GPU, but no units doing anything except in a slideshow, due to the CPU being hogged... Of course, I probably shouldn't have enough carriers/drone hosts for 300+ fighter and bomber squadrons..... Nor should my opponent....

"Speed brings nothing to table in personal computing anymore (outside of gaming and i'm not and have been a gamer)."

That is just so stupid. Personal computing is not just about gaming or browsing or a bit of coding.

Many non-geeks do things that require way more computer horsepower than geeks do. Like 3D, video/movie, heavy graphics editing, music and the list just goes on.

Actually, the Copper did allow you to sidestep hardware limitations too. Hardware-wise you were limited to a maximum of 12-bit palette, but the Copper effectively let you get, IIRC, 18-bit palette.

Also, there were plenty of tricks to get NTSC Amigas to play PAL demos, and vice versa.

The statistic for EU as a whole is irrelevant, since the EU is not a country(for the moment at least, though they are working on making it one).

Then you also had the Amiga with its copper that allowed you to play all kinds of tricks to give you more colours, such as recomputing a new palette every line etc.

Between 12 and 14 minutes for me, based on what I usually get