Qatar Airways replaces Emirates as the official airline sponsor of Formula 1

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• lonjams says:

  28 Feb28 February 06:13

  Honestly why would anyone waste their time/money/points on Formula 1? Surely it has no sporting integrity? They threw their rules out of the window to annoint Verstappen champion at the expense of Hamilton and acted like nothing had happened. Verstappen’s team was then caught and admitted to overspending the budget cap that same season (essentially cheating) and all they got was a slap on the wrist. How can you be sure when you watch this farce that you are watching genuine sport and not a pre-fabricated outcome?

  • Nick says:

    28 Feb28 February 08:00

    I love it! Over the past 10 years or so I’ve been to McLaren F1 factory tours, dinners & car launches (using HH points), as well as Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 functions (using Marriott points), many of which we got the heads up on from Rob.

    I’ll be looking out for these too!

  • Spare says:

    28 Feb28 February 08:18

    Just say you are still bitter and stop to all the non-sense.

    • Novice says:

      28 Feb28 February 08:32

      I don’t think some ppl who still say stuff about happened are bitter. I genuinely stopped watching or following the sport because of the dishonesty. I have never supported LH. I was a Vettel fan. I just can’t support cheating.

  • HH says:

    28 Feb28 February 08:36

    1. I really don’t think the Abu Dhabi 2021 farce was a conspiracy, it was just Masi’s human error / misjudgement in the face of pressure. He paid a steep price for it, and FIA admitted it was wrong in its report. Whether the result should have been changed retrospectively is open to debate, I can see both sides to that argument.

    • Michael Jennings says:

      1 Mar1 March 10:52

      I agree completely. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just a stuff up, although a bad one.

  • HH says:

    28 Feb28 February 08:40

    2. There were mitigating factors like the delayed HMRC rebate due to Covid, which offset most of Red Bull’s overspend. Besides, the overspend seemed to be genuinely over matters of interpretation rather than deliberate obfuscation. I think the financial hit and loss of aero time was fair enough, especially in the first year of the cost cap – even financial regulators are lenient when they first bring in a new rule / law.

    • dougzz99 says:

      28 Feb28 February 09:27

      OK Christian we get it.

    • Panda Mick says:

      28 Feb28 February 09:28

      @HH This is not the place for facts…. Opinions, maybe, but certainly not facts 🙂

      Wasn’t aware of your second point. I don’t think RB set out to overspend…

  • Will says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:03

    Since liberty media took over its nose dived.
    Was Masai under pressure from them for the best final lap ever?
    Everything they do is about getting more viewers to increase its value to sell it on to someone else for a profit.

    • Rob says:

      28 Feb28 February 09:17

      As opposed to what alternative strategy exactly?!

      In a parallel universe you’d be writing “Everything they do is about letting the sport decline, pulling in money from their existing contracts whilst not investing anything to help the sport grow and develop.”

      • Andrew says:

        28 Feb28 February 09:34

        Some would say the current strategy seems to be about maximising short term gains whilst harming long term value. The final couple of laps in Abu Dhabi were incredibly exciting but why invest days of your life watching the other 21 races when the rules can be interpreted on the fly and all that matters is the last 2 minutes of the season?

        Making the results random seems exciting at first but turning a sport into an effective coin toss is not going to build long term support.

        • will says:

          28 Feb28 February 18:21

          Exactly this, my thoughts on this more widely are long and without firm conclusion but they revolve around:
          1. Capitalism in it’s current form encourages short term gains for specific private enterprises without regard to the longer term (that’s waffle I know, in the long term everything is space dust but there’s something to it particularly considering humans have finite lifespans and are more concerned in general with bettering their own life and less concerned about what happens once they are gone).
          2. With sport in particular, it’s proven possible to buy a monopolistic position and that exploit that monopoly. The analogy is with buying up all the water, once you have it you dictate the price and become relatively unconcerned about it’s quality as you have a thirsty customer base regardless of the quality of product you pump out. At which point you focus on selling salt to make people more thirsty.

          If I told you that building a house in your back garden would make you wealthy, you might be tempted, but over the long term you might really miss the back garden that is now gone.

          At what real price are races in Saudi, Bahrain, Qatar previously Russia? Liberty love them as they pay a fortune in royalties to host. Do we need Miami where celebrities appear to be the main interest?

          I’ve followed it since I can remember, maybe it’s nostalgia deluding me but

  • r* says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:12

    You could say the same about football.

    • Spurs drive me mad says:

      28 Feb28 February 09:18

      I’m the same used to love watching the F1 but that was final straw for me in 2021. It wasn’t a “ mistake” it was blatant cheating to get the result they wanted.

  • David says:

    28 Feb28 February 11:47

    Lol, a sport… its overgrown children driving adult toy cars.

• Novice says:

  28 Feb28 February 08:28

  I was a f1 fan until they handed the title to crashtappen… If he had won on merit then fair enough but the way everything happened I just can’t be bothered anymore. I guess I wasn’t a diehard fan that could overlook the dishonesty and RB tactics.
  For me it had always been because I love cars. But I can enjoy cars in other ways. No need to waste time following a dishonourable sport.

• David says:

  28 Feb28 February 08:33

  Happy for those who are fans of this but I never understood the popularity. Sitting down to watch cars speed by doing their intended speed in the name of “sport”. Each to their own.

  • The Savage Squirrel says:

    28 Feb28 February 09:40

    I’m a fan of various sports (although not F1 at all). Pretty much all sports are inherently utterly ridiculous if you think about them too much. Still exciting and dramatic at their best though – last night’s Eng/NZ Test Match being a great example.

    • Aston100 says:

      28 Feb28 February 11:52

      Nothing will ever beat the excitement of Hungry Hippos on Boxing Day.

  • The Lord says:

    28 Feb28 February 12:14

    F1 has always been a sport for those who aren’t really interested in any other sport

    • Aston100 says:

      28 Feb28 February 12:54

      I thought that was golf?

      • AJA says:

        28 Feb28 February 13:09

        🙂 I’m with George Bernard Shaw who said golf was a good walk ruined.

        • Numpty says:

          28 Feb28 February 13:16

          Hmmm, he didnt say that, apparently neither did Mark Twain.

• Little Littlewood says:

  28 Feb28 February 10:37

  I could ask the same question about football?? All sports have cheats, some more obvious than others. Wonder if Man city where offering tickets this way if the same would be said??

• The Streets says:

  28 Feb28 February 11:07

  Can’t wait for the new electric go-kart as part of the new deal at the Tottenham Stadium

• Ironside says:

  28 Feb28 February 11:57

  Never mind, Emirates. You can go and sponsor that other bastion of ‘sports entertainment’: WWE.

• babyg says:

  1 Mar1 March 06:55

  “I know one reader paid just over 100,000 Emirates Skywards miles for 2 x 3-day Paddock Club hospitality packages for a European race last year.” – this only happened as Emirates-F1 auctions were “relatively” under the radar and you could often win Emirates F1 auctions at close to the starting bid, HfP didnt talk much about these, hence they stayed under the radar..

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