Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Circus to Spectacle: The Evolution of Formula One in the Age of Media

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From Circus to Spectacle: The Evolution of Formula One in the Age of Media · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Grand Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix,
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  where we're always fixing the break into something motor sports related.
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  The following episode is brought to you in part by the International
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  Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive
• 0:16
  Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce and the Arts Inger.
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  James Miller's engagement with Formula One includes chatting about
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  race strategy with Nicki Lauda at the 1977 US Grand Prix, where Lauda
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  won his second world championship.
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  Now it involves at-home viewing of real-time in-car camera
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  images on a flat screen.
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  TV has Formula One left behind.
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  Its gritty, dangerous, and somewhat isoteric pass to become a cross
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  between the World Cup and Disneyland.
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  Think Miami.
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  How much of its new global popularity can be summed up as
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  perhaps merely media spectacle?
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  Dr. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Communications at Hampshire College.
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  He has studied new media as a Fulbright researcher in Paris and a
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  visiting professor at MIT's Media Lab.
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  All right, ladies and gentlemen, we get to the presentations and
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  the first one is Formula One.
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  From Circus to Media Spectacle.
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  Jim Miller will be our presenter.
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  And let me get his program up.
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  All right, Jim Miller, folks.
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  Well, I'm a little more nervous than I expected to be after Don said that
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  an academic and hope for eight or 10 people have taken interest . So I'd like
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  to start by expressing my pleasure in noting that there'll be two or three
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  other presentations today and tomorrow concerning media and motor sports.
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  So let's add that to, uh, Don's list of future.
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  Discussion topics.
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  I may be discussing something that's obvious to most of us in in this room,
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  but I'd like to take a first stab at describing it systematically and
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  then offer some preliminary analysis.
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  It's really a first draft of a, what I am discovering to be a really rich subject
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  that I hope to develop further, so please.
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  in his remark, brawn is writing in the introduction of the authorized
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  70th anniversary Formula one book written by Morris Hamilton.
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  So we should take his comments as the official word.
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  GAO was speaking informally in an interview, but I think the common
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  takeaway from both remarks is that intentional fundamental change is underway
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  in F1 with very specific objectives.
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  At the same time, there's a perceived.
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  Of alienating already contented Formula One fans, but I want to
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  argue here that there's something bigger and maybe unexpected, in fact,
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  with greater consequences at play.
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  So let's begin by looking at a casual variety of indications that
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  F1 is becoming a media spectacle.
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  Now, I can't help but make an aside.
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  The presentation of drivers I think is a critical element.
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  Of the F1 media spectacle, you know, max versus Netflix, and
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  now it's Max versus who is it?
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  O Sky.
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  And then Ricardo's Traves.
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  What's developing with drivers and apparently appealing to many new audience
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  members is pretty close to reality television, which, as you know, mixes
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  factual programming with sub-genres like game shows, travel logs, talent, competi.
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  Fly on the wall documentaries, creating what's called a fame
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  cycle for the individuals involved.
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  This oversharing regarding drivers includes the mob of fans in the paddock
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  that you saw at the Mexican Grand Prix recently, and it seems that half of
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  Martin Bruns grid walk interviews are with celebrity friends of drivers.
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  There's also a category that might be even larger still that the bbc, for
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  example, calls factual entertainment.
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  . And then I think the media net has gotten so broad that there's an in-depth
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  profile of Total Wolf in the current issue of what magazine, the New Yorker.
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  So, uh, let's begin though by establishing a baseline for change.
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  A past that people affectionately call the F1 Circus.
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  What might they mean?
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  Actual circuses were itinerant examples of live art.
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  According to a British historian, they.
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  Sideshows on the way to the main event in the famous three rings.
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  Think about track design critically.
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  He, uh, Helen Stoddard says that this is a really pungent quote.
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  The circus promotes itself as a public fantasy, a space of
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  exceptionalism, escape, and danger, where the rules that seem to govern
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  the world outside have no currency.
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  F1 was informal, even a bit amateurish with gentleman team owners, uh,
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  do-it-yourself atmosphere, uh, shoestring operations that included
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  very limited driver's salaries.
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  So Phil Hill reports that Ferrari never gave him a salary.
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  He only took a share of the, uh, start and finished money.
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  And of course, all of that was against the genuinely mortal danger of every race.
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  For my purposes, the circus was the sixties through the eighties.
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  . On our last gathering here, I mentioned to Duke that I had
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  come to several GP races here.
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  When was that?
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  In the seventies.
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  Ah, the golden days.
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  He said he's not the only one who might think that way.
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  This is an image from the uh, center's own website.
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  This is 1972 or three.
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  But beyond that, people looking back in time have characterized Watkins.
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  As something special, and I think very much like the circus that I'm
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  trying to describe, which to me, hints at the possibility of making
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  Watkins Glen a kind of in-depth case study, a baseline for a comparison.
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  There were lots of things that went, oh, how did that get in there?
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  Actually, I think the year before they, uh, sacrificed a Greyhound bus.
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  That's why the famous Bogue came to.
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  But that was part of the circus atmosphere, for sure.
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  Now, another way more formally of identifying the nature of the
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  circus was a much smaller scale with respect to race numbers and a
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  relative lack of media attention.
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  So here you can see how few the races were compared to today.
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  An early look at New York Times coverage shows, very few articles
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  about Formula One in their sports.
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  , the television story is a bit more complicated and it goes farther
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  back in time than I realized.
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  But we must remember that early on, American cable television didn't have
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  near the penetration rate that it has now.
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  And some of these channels were premium, meaning you had to pay extra to get them.
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  And then of course, many of us remember the NBC coverage as being three talking
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  heads in a studio saying obvious things about the global television feed.
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  Maybe this is a, a record.
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  Slowly increasing coverage in the realm of television, but mostly I
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  think it's, it's pretty limited.
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  Obviously, the circus left town in uh, January of 2017 when Liberty bought
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  Formula One and immediately began a cascade of significant changes,
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  and here were just a few of them.
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  Media related changes are very significant and involve big players
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  in that industry, which I think underscores the seriousness of.
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  And the very substantial capacity to invest in those changes.
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  So here's a sketch of the principle media organizations involved with respect
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  to television in the United States, and you can see that Liberty Media is
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  strangely the smallest fish in this pond.
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  So, okay, imagine you're accepting this contrast that I'm trying to draw
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  between the circus and the spectacle.
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  What, after all, is a media spect.
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  Well, I would say that it's a hallmark of our time and it has these broad conceptual
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  categories, which we could talk about at length, but we don't have time for that.
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  So I'll just say that global CIR scale is really important.
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  It means world circulation, although it's American inflected.
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  The media spectacle has been adopted to local conditions in
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  a way that I think has created a nearly universal multimedia form.
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  These things take place because they're driven by a search for
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  profit, by and large producers, distributors, advertisers.
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  They're all engaged in a quintessential example of late capitalism
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  commodification, market oligopolies stratification, but that's complicated.
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  Media spectacles, undeniable spectacles like Queen Elizabeth's recent death
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  and funeral that was not about profit making, and that conceptually needs to
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  be clarified or reconciled in some way.
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  So I just comment on the side about that.
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  Then finally, it's very clear that digital media or the Scenic Quan, there's
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  even the idea of media logic in which increasingly events are designed to
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  conform to the demands of media tech.
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  Well, okay, so what, what are the consequences of such a change happening?
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  Well, I would say there are two basic interpretations.
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  One says this is just another step down a glorious road.
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  And there's more to come.
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  And there's another which I'm going to embrace, which is more skeptical, and
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  it sees this as a kind of acme or peak moment in the development of Formula One.
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  And we all know if we walk across the terrain, Locally that when you hit
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  the peak, the other side is dissent.
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  So what could that mean?
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  Why would I believe that such interesting developments have this,
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  let's call it negative consequence?
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  Well, I think there are strong headwinds blowing.
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  Here are a couple, when you have a four-time world champion
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  making such critical remarks, that gets people's attention.
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  And of course, as with the, um, the coming world.
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  Charges of greenwashing often respond to attempts to address climate change by race
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  and other organizers, and there's cost.
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  The andretti seem to be frozen out, whereas the two German
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  manufacturers have been welcomed in.
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  What's that about?
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  There's the larger cultural issue of younger people being less interested in
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  automobiles and more in mobility itself.
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  Uh, what could that.
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  . And then I think really interestingly, there's the conflicting interests
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  at root among these very complex relationships among stakeholders.
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  These are all things that I think that could put a break on what's developing
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  and turn it into something else.
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  Okay, what happens next?
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  Then, if in fact my call it a prediction comes true.
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  Well, here's my current thought.
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  They'll be racing, but no race.
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  . And to make sense of that, let's look at John Bore's scheme
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  of three levels of reality.
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  So we have primary experience, which, which is what's going on in this room.
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  We're all present.
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  We smell the coffee, we're sitting next to other human beings.
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  There's the representation that's now streaming to the globe and,
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  uh, amounts to a kind of peep.
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  Observation of what's actually happening here.
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  And lastly is this new development that riar called hyper reality
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  in which new digital media allow the construction of a, call it an
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  event that never occurred, right?
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  Think about an 3D animated films, for example, as a, as an instance.
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  With that in mind, I might suggest that like Facebook, which has now become.
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  Formula One might move into a realm where racing, which can be highly
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  individualized, tailored to me.
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  I might be involved in a race, and remember earlier we saw how Formula
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  One itself is promoting simulations and video game kinds of engagements.
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  I might have be having my own Formula one in which I'm the team manager
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  and you're doing something else entirely, and we're both in very
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  different physical places, right?
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  A possib.
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  Doesn't mean that there'll be no primary sight where we can smell the unhealthy
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  fumes and hear are the wonderful engine sounds that damage our hearing.
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  Yes.
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  Why not?
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  And here are some examples of things that are already happening that have
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  that quality of reenactment even period clothing in very carefully
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  defined spatial places, right?
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  Vintage auto racing, and of course, They're about nostalgia.
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  They have no practical utility.
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  They're pleasure filled.
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  Another example would be, and I think this is very important, the various kinds
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  of automobile clubs, and I mentioned PCA because I'm familiar with it.
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  People come together physically, you're bombarded with, um, material
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  publications and stuff online.
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  You go to events that are close to other people.
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  Creates a community you meet, you meet people directly and become friends.
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  Why not have this kind of event happening to the side of the
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  Hyperreal racing environment?
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  But frankly, I think the best example of how that might take place with
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  respect to Formula One is horses.
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  At the turn of the century, there were a million and a half horse-drawn
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  carriages built in the United States, and there were something like 20 million.
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  And we know how that turned on a dime.
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  It transformed very quickly.
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  And yet today, how many horses are there in America?
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  Seven and a half million.
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  The horse industry claims it's worth 120 billion a year.
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  So maybe the future of F1 portends a kind of highly specialized reenactment.
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  Along the lines of dressage where skills are exhibited that yesterday
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  were just everyday activities.
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  We could resurrect the seventies right here at the Glen.
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  Now final words and, uh, I'm grateful for these.
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  Just the other day, the, uh, CEO of Disney described the principle corporate strategy
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  as combining the physical environment of things like cruises and theme parks
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  with this immaterial realm of movies and animations and characters and so forth.
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  Somehow bringing them together as a combined experience for their customers.
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  And lastly, a driver at the turn of the century.
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  Who observed something special about the United States as a, as a market,
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  if you will, for Formula One racing, and it makes you think that maybe
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  the seeds for the Formula One media spectacle were germinating all those
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  20 some years ago at the very same time when digital media were emerging.
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  And with that, I'll stop.
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  Thank you.
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  So do we have time for q and a?
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  We do.
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  Okay.
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  Please.
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  And again, I request your critical comments to help me develop this Exactly.
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  I'm less interested in, in the the eSports realm as a all lure for
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  potential drivers than I am as Corian kind of an alter alternative world that
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  might replace the Formula One media spectacle, which replaced the circus.
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  Because of some of the headwinds that I was trying to describe.
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  So yes, I think the expansion of the new audiences globally have been all about
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  younger generations who knew nothing.
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  But again, I would say maybe overstating it a bit in the terms
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  of a kind of reality television.
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  I mean, think of how drivers use social media, which I'm sure they're
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  required to do by their contracts, drive to survive type of programs.
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  Will that be just to Formula One?
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  I think we have an answer.
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  The road to the championship and what they're doing is very similar to what
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  Netflix is doing with Formula One.
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  They're going behind the scenes at the shops at the races, and they're
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  making NASCAR seem very real.
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  So you're with the drivers.
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  At home during the week when they're taking their kids to school, and then
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  you're with the crew at the track on Sunday as they're working on the cars.
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  I don't think it's getting, pardon the pun, the traction that the
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  Netflix program has with Formula One.
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  Maybe it has to do just with the culture of Formula One being so much, I guess,
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  more exotic than the culture of nascar.
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  The program was being streamed on YouTube.
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  With each weekly episode, the ratings have dropped so much that YouTube has dropped.
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  It kind of gives you a sense the Netflix program is flourishing and
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  the NASCAR program is floundering.
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  That's really interesting to know, uh, that cultural comparison
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  might be, might be very important.
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  Plus the global aspect of Formula One.
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  I, I do know that other sports are planning to do these kind, you know, like
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  tennis to do these kinds of, You know how long that kind of proliferation of
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  a particular way of constructing a sport can continue and be popular and so forth.
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  Someone else, someone give me a hard time.
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  Why is this a stupid idea?
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  I won't forget who you are, by the way.
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  Okay.
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  Joe just raised his hand.
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  I guess my biggest question right now is you mentioned various other
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  kinds of motorsport and presentations of motorsport as being for the
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  potential future, but really we face at the same time an extraordinary,
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  shall we say, movement against what Motorsport generally represents.
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  And I'm wondering, How you feel about the ability of motorsport to survive,
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  the influx of, um, electric automobiles and where kids don't want to get in their
• 18:26
  car anymore cause they want, because they want to be on the cell phone.
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  Talking about the challenges to automobile racing, other than the
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  one type you mentioned vintage racing, which is very popular.
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  Can motor racing really survive with those kinds of headwinds?
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  So my glib answer, Joe, would be that that's part of the
• 18:44
  transition to racing without races.
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  We talk about the transition to autonomous vehicles and uh, all
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  electric vehicles and so on.
• 18:54
  Well, that transition is so complex for all of these things.
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  How long will it take?
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  I mean, you would have to rework much of the established mobility system in order
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  to have autonomous vehicles on any scale.
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  Will that be in our lifetimes or?
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  . I think that motorsports in general are in trouble again, for some of
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  the reasons I tried to suggest.
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  And I think that maybe having, you know, a kind of virtual experience replacing it
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  based on, as we've seen a kind of global stimulation of interest in international
• 19:28
  settings, is not an unreasonable thought.
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  And frankly I should add to that.
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  If somebody like me is having this odd, but I think potentially, Perception.
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  You can bet that these big media firms are thinking along the same
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  lines and preparing grounds for it.
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  So they would be part of the engine of that transition away from actual
• 19:50
  racing, possibly someone else.
• 19:53
  I would be eager to hear from someone who challenges some aspect of this
• 19:58
  doesn't, some of what you're, you're driving at depend on just the, the age
• 20:04
  of the, of the people and my generation.
• 20:07
  Uh uh.
• 20:08
  So I say race fans.
• 20:10
  Concentrate a lot on the cars, but the people who watch the cars in the thirties,
• 20:15
  forties, and fifties are dying off.
• 20:17
  The younger generation doesn't seem to be interested in seeing
• 20:21
  the old timers run very much.
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  It's only the old timers that wanna see that run.
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  So this is perhaps a natural progression of the age of the people.
• 20:30
  Yes.
• 20:31
  Yeah, and I would add to that.
• 20:33
  Donna and I were talking yesterday about Haggerty.
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  They've transformed their business model, let's call it, in just the last
• 20:39
  three or four years with the stated goal of engendering car culture.
• 20:44
  So it doesn't die off with those of us who are not no longer young.
• 20:49
  Again, another place to look for understanding what might be a transition
• 20:54
  from actual racing to virtual racing.
• 20:56
  Uh, John James, just.
• 20:59
  A word on on Haggerty there.
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  I met Ma Haggerty in 2012 when the Revs program first came to Stanford.
• 21:07
  The changes that Haggerty have put in place were discussed, and Haggerty's
• 21:13
  change has not just come along.
• 21:15
  In the last couple of years, Haggerty have felt for some time that the hobby
• 21:19
  was changing and because of the way the people involved in changing the
• 21:24
  hobby, I guess I'm trying to say the, the Haggerty, you know, I saw Makiel
• 21:28
  Haggerty speak a couple of years ago at a conference and, and at that time
• 21:32
  he talked about how he wanted to.
• 21:35
  6% of the population to be a member of Haggerty's Driving Foundation
• 21:42
  and talking with people afterwards.
• 21:43
  Apparently that 6% number, that's the number of members the NRA have percentage
• 21:48
  of the, the population and the feeling is.
• 21:51
  Amongst people at Haggerty.
• 21:53
  Maybe I'm speaking out of turn here, but reading between the lines.
• 21:57
  I think Haggerty feel, wow, if we can get enough people to sign up, we might
• 22:01
  be able to have the same political power that the NRA have and that really orgs
• 22:06
  quite well for the future of of our hobby.
• 22:09
  And with Haggerty, what I would would say is look at how they
• 22:12
  are buying up every single.
• 22:15
  Conference, every single motor racing event, they seem to
• 22:19
  want to own the old car space.
• 22:21
  And for a time it seemed like a really good thing.
• 22:23
  And only in the last year or so have I begun to think, wow, do we want
• 22:29
  McDonald's on every street corner or did we quite like the mom and pop diner?
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  That is what Carl shows are at the moment.
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  Do we really want it to be commoditized and packaged in the way that you've said?
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  So I think, I think the Haggerty point is a really interesting
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  one you've raised there, James.
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  Yeah, I agree.
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  And their message is very overt and it's across media and
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  various ways of expressing it.
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  One that there really is a. Uh, sleepy interest among younger
• 22:59
  people, they just don't know it.
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  And two, that bodes very well for the future.
• 23:04
  And we're, we're going to, you know, fan the flames.
• 23:07
  It's a big bet.
• 23:08
  I was at the same conference.
• 23:09
  This was in Allentown, I think.
• 23:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:11
  . And, uh, I happened to sit next to him at lunch and he had pronounced
• 23:15
  several times already at that meeting how young people really cared about
• 23:20
  automobiles and everything I knew said the reverse, so I pushed him a bit.
• 23:25
  Well, what's your, He either didn't have any, or it was so proprietary
• 23:29
  he wasn't going to tell me.
• 23:31
  But I did wonder, you know, and then they began making all these
• 23:35
  huge investments going public on the stock market and so forth.
• 23:39
  So yeah, Haggerty's a very cool, maybe the Haggerty's shadow will throw itself
• 23:44
  over our gathering and will come back to it in various ways today and tomorrow.
• 23:49
  Anyone else?
• 23:50
  One thing I've noticed, especially in the younger generation, Teenagers to the mid
• 23:56
  twenties, a lot of them seem to be more interested in playing the video games
• 24:02
  and social media and that kind of thing.
• 24:05
  But I noticed that, uh, at least in my family, those that do that
• 24:09
  and their friends are bordering on obesity, I think what's, what's
• 24:14
  gonna happen when you're 40?
• 24:16
  Do you think that has anything to do with, you know, they just
• 24:19
  wanna sit around and play games.
• 24:21
  They don't want to move, maybe walk the dog and that's it.
• 24:24
  I'm not an expert on, on obesity, but I've observed, uh, anecdotally
• 24:28
  some of what you've said.
• 24:30
  I mean, my interest would be if they're playing games all all the time,
• 24:33
  does that lead them to do a similar activity in so-called real life?
• 24:38
  Or is real life not so interesting and they'll just
• 24:42
  stay with the virtual experience?
• 24:45
  , are you going to speak for the younger generations?
• 24:47
  ? You know that I am.
• 24:49
  Because I look around and I'm thinking I'm one of the younger people here.
• 24:53
  Yes.
• 24:53
  How mu how many of us are gonna keep showing up if every time we do,
• 24:56
  we get told, get off your phones.
• 24:58
  Okay.
• 24:58
  The phones are a way we communicate with people we went to school with.
• 25:01
  There are ways I communicate with other alumni, and it was actually
• 25:04
  one of the main ways when I was working in Hollywood, I got.
• 25:07
  Was, uh, a secret Facebook group for people who went to my film school, uh,
• 25:11
  sharing jobs and that sort of thing.
• 25:13
  So I don't think the online marketplace, I don't think it's
• 25:18
  actually gonna replace in-person stuff.
• 25:20
  I think it is, in addition to you wanted a hard time, so I'm gonna say it.
• 25:25
  The fear of, oh my goodness, they're gonna get rid of actual racing
• 25:29
  because there's digital stuff now.
• 25:31
  Sounds a lot like an older generation having basically fears that will
• 25:35
  be unfounded in the long term.
• 25:37
  Yes.
• 25:37
  Well, that's well taken, but I disagree with you.
• 25:39
  Yeah, yeah.
• 25:39
  Um, I certainly agree with you the first part of your claim that being digitally
• 25:44
  engaged doesn't mean you have no life.
• 25:46
  People talk about telepresence.
• 25:47
  We all live remotely in some, some way.
• 25:49
  Now it's inescapable, and I don't mean to make a moral judgment about any.
• 25:54
  But I do think for some of the reasons I tried to sketch, and we've heard
• 25:59
  some, I think supporting comments that racing in particular might be at risk.
• 26:03
  And that one way of solving the problem is to move almost entirely into the
• 26:07
  virtual realm with these more limited ways of doing des dressage when
• 26:12
  you can't ride a horse to your job.
• 26:14
  You know?
• 26:15
  So I think those are two different observations and, and I agree with you,
• 26:18
  there's a real, there's generational ignorance because many of us old
• 26:22
  people, Are not hip to new technology.
• 26:24
  We don't use it in our everyday lives and that that leads to fear and other things.
• 26:28
  I I agree.
• 26:29
  That's a problem.
• 26:30
  And just one follow up on that, I do Sure.
• 26:32
  Just wanna distinguish, we're talking about the hobby of racing and I think
• 26:37
  sometimes when we talk about young people in cars, what your earlier
• 26:41
  point well taken that sometimes we're talking about automobility versus
• 26:44
  actual interest in cars as a hobby.
• 26:46
  Yes.
• 26:46
  And I do agree that my generation is not interested in commuting with.
• 26:51
  We're interested in building a world in which we can commute in other ways, either
• 26:54
  digitally or through mass public transit.
• 26:57
  But I think the interesting cars as a hobby is there.
• 27:00
  I'll just say that.
• 27:01
  Well, that's another discussion.
• 27:02
  What, you know if, if I like to go to races, is that a hobby in the
• 27:07
  same way as if I'm building, I don't know, model railroad track things?
• 27:11
  You know, I think it's different.
• 27:14
  I just published something recently about trying to conceptualize what
• 27:18
  it means to be an auto enthusi.
• 27:20
  And hobbyists are one kind of model where you might think about that.
• 27:25
  So I think you're on the path to something interesting.
• 27:28
  I don't have a race car, but I do drive a sports car.
• 27:32
  I dunno.
• 27:32
  Is that a hobby?
• 27:34
  Um, well not to belabor this, but again, point well taken.
• 27:38
  Thank you.
• 27:38
  So being part of the younger generation, I think I kind of
• 27:42
  speak for a lot of us that.
• 27:45
  Involved in racing and have race cars and love this hobby.
• 27:49
  We would much rather have our hands in an engine bay and working on something
• 27:53
  in person and actually driving a car compared to sitting inside all day.
• 27:58
  SIM racing, you don't get the same adrenaline and the same experience
• 28:01
  of actually driving in person and getting to keep the sport alive.
• 28:04
  So, but you could have both.
• 28:06
  I mean, you could do this sort of vintage car racing on the side, small
• 28:10
  scale, nothing like Formula One, that that could still exist and then you
• 28:16
  could do sim racing at the same time.
• 28:17
  Again, they're not mutually exclusive.
• 28:20
  This is such.
• 28:22
  Divisive topic, and we talk about it a lot on our show, and I'm on
• 28:26
  the younger side of the generation just crossing into my forties.
• 28:29
  And the point that's missed here and something that we address is how to
• 28:32
  get the younger crowd into the hobby.
• 28:35
  There's two sides of the hobby.
• 28:36
  There's the collector and classic car side as well as the motorsport
• 28:39
  side, and there is an intersection.
• 28:42
  Of the two right vintage race cars, et cetera.
• 28:44
  But the point that's often overlooked when we kind of turn
• 28:47
  down and look at the younger crowd is the economic side of this.
• 28:51
  Those of us that are in our forties are at our peak earning potential.
• 28:54
  We have the discretionary income to start investing in.
• 28:58
  Classic and collector vehicles.
• 29:00
  However, when you look at the larger market, the older vehicles, let's
• 29:03
  say the cars from the fifties, I'm not gonna go back to the pre-war
• 29:06
  cars, they're extremely expensive.
• 29:09
  We have been priced out of that market, so it's difficult
• 29:12
  for us to get into the hobby.
• 29:13
  So what are we looking at as a 40 year old?
• 29:16
  I'm looking at cars from the nineties.
• 29:18
  These are cars that were often.
• 29:21
  Passed over.
• 29:22
  From a design perspective, there are marshmallows on wheels, right?
• 29:25
  They're very round, they're just very plain, mundane, et cetera.
• 29:29
  So you have to kind of consider what our generation is looking at.
• 29:32
  If you look further down the scale, what are these guys over here looking at?
• 29:36
  They're looking at cars from the mid to late two thousands.
• 29:39
  They're not looking at the fifties cars.
• 29:41
  Most of us, even in my generation, are Barracuda, Mustang and Camaro out.
• 29:46
  Those cars are a hundred thousand dollars a piece now.
• 29:49
  So what am I gonna buy?
• 29:51
  The V6 Camaro that was available five years ago.
• 29:53
  That'll be my next race car.
• 29:55
  I look to my daughter's generation, you know, much
• 29:58
  younger but not even 10 years old.
• 30:00
  What is she gonna be driving at 18?
• 30:03
  The cars that are coming out right now, because you put the drivers
• 30:06
  behind the wheel of vehicles that are about eight to 10 years old.
• 30:10
  So you need to look at these generational gaps alongside of the
• 30:14
  economic buying potential of the.
• 30:18
  So racing, you then quintuple that because it's even more expensive.
• 30:23
  So that's the thing that I think is missing from the larger conversation.
• 30:27
  I think car collection has two functions.
• 30:30
  One is an investment and the other is, well for fun.
• 30:34
  And you know, you drive a car occasionally as you, which I
• 30:37
  think is what you're describing.
• 30:38
  So if you buy that, there are these two functions.
• 30:41
  I would say that neither of those is hostile to the argument that I'm.
• 30:46
  Those would be examples of these little corners of material.
• 30:49
  Primary experience when professional scale racing can no longer be sustained.
• 30:56
  Thank you.
• 31:05
  That took us down a few alleys that we weren't expecting, didn't it?
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• 31:11
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• 31:13
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