More cities to get F1 Live London-style events in 2018

2018 F1 season

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More events like F1 Live London are planned for cities around the world in 2018 according to Formula One’s managing director for commercial operations Sean Bratches.

The first-of-its kind event on the Wednesday before the British Grand Prix attracted 100,000 fans and featured all the teams and drivers with the exception of Lewis Hamilton.

Bratches told SportsPro the event was “representative of the new way of thinking” by Formula One’s new owners which they intend to repeat.

“We raced cars up and down Whitehall, we had Bastille, Little Mix and Kaiser Chiefs, sponsor activation, fan elements, show cars,” he said. “I’ve got a tender out to seven different firms to create fan experiences, fan festivals in city centres in proximity to grands prix next year.”

A new microphone was tested during the United States Grand Prix weekend with the intention of improving the quality of sound recording from F1 cars. Bratches said FOM is looking for improvements in how races are broadcast.

“We’re going to produce it better than it’s ever been produced before, really show the speeds, the sounds, the wheel-to-wheel racing, what people are really, really interested in.”

“But at the same time, the digital side is really interesting to us,” he added.

“We have an RFP [request for proposal] in the marketplace right now to create a live and non-live over-the-top [OTT] product and to better utilise the data and metrics that come out of each race. There are 1,500 points of data that come out of each of these cars every second of a grand prix.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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14 comments on “More cities to get F1 Live London-style events in 2018”

  1. What about Indian cities?

  2. ATHENS!

  3. It’d be nice if Britain wasn’t limited to being just London. Why not give another city a chance next year

    1. I agree @strontium. Silverstone is about the same distance from Birmingham as London is, so what about Brum for next year, but would it attract 100,000?

    2. @strontium The problem is city size and concentration of people working down-town, Birmingham is feasibly the only other UK city large enough for an event like this to get the numbers.

      1. Yeah but think how funny it would be if they took it to, say, Shetland, right?

  4. Montreal downtown ahead of the Canadian GP, for example, or Shanghai downtown ahead of the Chinese GP, Barcelona downtown ahead of the Spanish G, Abu Dhabi downtown ahead of the Abu Dhabi GP, or perhaps even Melbourne downtown ahead of the Australian GP just to name a few.

  5. In the US, it should be more than just one city but a tour of cities like Boston, Chicago, Miami and others in a run-up to the USGP.

    1. @photogcw Next year there’s only 11 days between the Japanese and US grands prix. Insufficient time to move everything across the Pacific and take part in anything like a tour.

      1. I understand that but don’t use present 2017 cars for the tours. Use last year’s or previous years cars for the demonstrations. In most cases, the public would not know the difference. And plan these tours during the off season or mid-season breaks. It can be done with judicious timing and planning.

  6. Utilize the data and metrics? It will be great to have some live onboard dashboard with oil and tire indicator and maybe a replay with real driver talk and their heart rate indicator.

  7. The London show was pretty aweful in compare to the one which was held in Rotterdam some years ago.
    In Rotterdam they actually tried to entertain the crowd instead of just passing by.

    was some clips on youtube to find out, it was called (Bavaria) City Racing

  8. Are f1 live in London 2018

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