Formula 1 team bosses predict the series’ new pre-season launch event will be a positive addition to the championship.
F1 75 Live, the first event of its kind, will take place in London next February. All 10 teams and each of their drivers are slated to attend.
The two-hour event will see teams present their liveries, but not the finished cars, for the upcoming season. Tickets to the event, which started at £60 including a booking fee, sold out within hours of going on sale last week, but some appear to have been listed on unofficial reseller sites at a considerable mark-up. F1 stated some of the tickets listed are fraudulent.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the apparent high interest in ticket sales showed an appetite exists for this kind of event. “The fans are pleased,” he said.
“I’d rather also not have sprint races, but the data says that fans like sprint races. Fans like these events. We’re in a data-driven sport, and if the data says that it’s really good, then let’s give it a try.”
Wolff compared the format to the American National Football League’s annual Draft, which is a major player recruitment event for the series’ teams. It was first held in 1936 and has been televised for over 40 years, becoming a significant focus of attention for the series other than its games.
“It’s a little bit like the NFL Draft but maybe a little bit with less consequences than the NFL Draft,” said Wolff. “I think we should be promoting that, we should be promoting testing much more than that, and I think Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] and Liberty are doing a really good job in doing that.”
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The format has drawn some criticism from fans because it will not feature current cars, despite some teams claiming on social media that their new chassis will appear at the event. Wolff acknowledged this would disappoint “hardcore” F1 fans but insisted the event will still have value.
“It is almost like a race weekend, we’re all coming together after the season, all teams will be present, the drivers will be present, there will be lots of media buzz around it, new liveries will be seen. Maybe for some of us hardcore fans you will be a little bit disappointed at not seeing the end product, but the truth is you will not see the end product until the end of…
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