Is Formula 1 racing a redneck sport in Europe?

[DigitalSushi]

At least NASCAR lets drivers pass each other. (I watch both series religiously.)

Is that a subtle poke at the Schumacher-Alonso incident at Monaco this year or just an outright comment on Monaco and Singapore every year?

Have you seen the rules for Indy Racing League?, I assume your a fan of F1?

Well in Indy they have to give up the racing line into a corner if they are ahead, the inside line and by proxy the apex of the corner which is the fastest way through is "give way to the guy behind you", I shit you not, thats why Indy has more overtaking than F1.

As for NASCAR, not sure!

I sure am a fan of F1.

And that Indy Racing rule (is that the Indy Car league?) seems superficial at best and absolutely mindblowingly unfair at worst.

Yeah one of the Drivers in May flipped his shit over it, he basically did not have the racing line while in front and still carried more speed and traction out of the corner hence he got the win...but he got penalised for not letting the other guy through... fucking madness I tell ya!

So whats your team?, don't tell me its McLaren?

I'm a fan of Renault, God I love that team especially with its traditional Black and Yellow livery, its like I'm a kid again!

 

[Noceus]

no, we don't have rednecks in europe

 

[ProtoChimp]

No, what the hell gave you that idea?

If there's any sport in Europe that's fandom consists primarily of imbeciles, it's Soccer.

Hey it's called footb- no I wont do that. I fucking hate, HATE people who do that.

 

[Wicky_42]

NASCAR's just driving in circles in almost identically matched cars. F1's about really stupidly high-performance cars going down complex tracks where it's as much about the engineers and car designers as it is about the driver. They're pretty damn different, really, and there's no derogatory term assigned to F1 that I know about...

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Yeah one of the Drivers in May flipped his shit over it, he basically did not have the racing line while in front and still carried more speed and traction out of the corner hence he got the win...but he got penalised for not letting the other guy through... fucking madness I tell ya!

That's fiercely unfair.

So whats your team?, don't tell me its McLaren?

I'm a fan of Renault, God I love that team especially with its traditional Black and Yellow livery, its like I'm a kid again!

Well, it used to be McLaren, back in the Hakkinen days. And I still don't mind Button.

But, now, it's Red Bull, due to the presence of Mark Webber, and, obviously, Renault, due to the presence of Vitaliy Petrov, who, as me, just happens to be a Russian.

Although Renault do seem to have noticeable pitting problems and a bunch of problems as a team (see last year scandal).

Also, Force India are pretty cool and Ferrari with their team tactics can take a flying leap.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

In America Nascar (our equivalent to Formula 1 i guess) is considered a "redneck" sport. Basically its biggest fans are under-educated, lower class, rural country folk. Most "intelligent" people consider a fondness for it to be a "lower class" pastime. Is it the same in the UK or Europe in general? Do upper-middle class snobs look down on it?

You realise that a 14, 24, 34 year old gamer from the UK or Ireland say hasn't a clue about the economic background of say a F1 fan in Italy or Germany? Europe isn't America, a gamer in NY can make assumptions about life in LA that gamers in .co.uk or .ie *cannot* make about .de or .it

Or that upper, middle class things is *really* a dated way of dividing up society? I mean, is a farmer who owns thousands of acres of land in the same social class as other farmers? Is a respected and tenured professor of philosophy who is homeless and doesn't always have a fixed abode upper class? Is a bodger of an engineer who only screws about with electical appliances because he isn't happy with how they work a just a deadbeat? Or is there an exception made when the same guy starts a business selling vaccuum cleaners and fans without moving parts and getting knighted by the queen of England? (James Dyson, look him up)

And if classes in society do exist and are meaningful, do the likes of him give a damn about what middle class people need to think?

 

[Mechsoap]

here its seen as very classy, so no.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

BTW, to inject the Australian perspective, our rednecks are called bogans

Bogans are mostly suburban white trash whereas in the US context 'redneck' usually denotes a rural or semi-rural origin.

 

[deedoubleyou]

This is the most Red-neck type thing I can think of that happens in Europe, though i'm sure there are plenty of other example I don't know about. I present, Cheese Rolling!


Little introduction to the 'sport'; "The Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake is a real laugh, but is a lot more dangerous than it looks. The gradient is 1 in 2 for most of the course but it is 1 in 1 in places and to make matters worse the surface is rough and uneven. When we did it in 2002 at least one person wound up being karted off in an ambulance after almost every run - and considering only 15 people participate in each run the odds of being injured are not favourable. The injuries are more than scrapes and briuses. In the run that I did Stuart Anderson broke bones on both sides of his right ankle and was taken to hospital where he received a metal plate and 9 screws."

Think there is something in Somerset to do with driving old bangers through muddy tracks that is a little crazy. Forget the name though.

 

[Monoclebear]

Many people here (germany) use the word Ossi, which means people from east germany, because people from the other side of the berlin wall were often depicted as dumber. (i have nothing against people from eastgermany im just telling what many peopla do)

 

[Red Albatross]

Nascar (technically NASCAR) actually has the most fans of any sport in the USA. All people I know do not "look down" on fans of it because it is a "redneck" sport. Some of the smartest people in the world design those cars, so I (and everyone I know) consider it an "intelligent" pastime. I'm "upper-middle class" by the way.

Having a team of incredibly intelligent people pouring every ounce of their intellect and creativity into such a project does little to detract from the following facts:

1) Most of the people who openly profess to like NASCAR will appear to be of less than stellar intelligence.
2)Most of the people who regularly win the races speak as though they are from a rural area (and the presumption of being a redneck follows naturally unless overwhelming evidence proves otherwise of course)
3) Those who watch the sport often assert that they only do so to watch the crashes
4) The races themselves consist of a series of cars that look fairly identical traveling very fast around a track that consists entirely of left turns. While it may be extraordinarily difficult in actuality, it appears both easy and, for most of the world, boring.

All correct except for number 2, a lot of the up-and-coming stars are from the Northern states. I know this because I live in a rural area, and have to hear people openly complain about the "damned Yankees" invading the...shit, I can't bring myself to call it a sport.

Regarding the OP, I've always wondered if Europe had rednecks. I guess not, although soccer hooligans still scare me a bit. I used to have a neighbor that was from Italy, he told me some horror stories, like how some assholes used to throw around darts (yeah, the sharp ones) at soccer games. I'm glad I don't have to worry about having a pointy object lobbed into the back of my head when I'm at hockey or football games...

 

[ashglent]

Does Europe have rednecks, or are they called something else? I don't mean people who are called imbeciles and what-not. Perhaps some term that isn't used in the States?

well in England it depends on where your closer to scottland or dover on who you insult

im from dover and yer basically every1 is a northener for us

 

[tk1989]

I personally think its a highly regarded sport in Europe, quite sophisticated if anything. Not that it would be wrong to say our version of the 'redneck' wouldnt watch it, but i would go as far to say that they would be more interested in something like touring cars, or moto gp

 

[fix-the-spade]

Is it the same in the UK or Europe in general? Do upper-middle class snobs look down on it?

Football is the equivalent to NASCAR in Europe.

Formula 1 is about as far from a redneck sport as it's possible to get. It's almost entirely abuot technology and tactics, for instance this year most of the talking points have revolved around two aerodynamic devices called the F-Duct (a driver controlled stalling device for the rear wing that lets the car go faster in a straight line for a given downforce settinng) and the blown diffuser (channeling hot gases from the exhaust to decrease the air pressure under the back of the car and generate more grip in high speed turns). It's also the most expensive and technologically advanced sport in the world, the steering wheels on each car cost about £30k and control everything from the steering to the fuel/air mixture and cylinder firing sequences for the engines, which they can change on the fly.

Unsurprisingly it's most popular with people of a geeky persuasion, but 5-600 million people watch it round the world, so it's kinda popular.

Also, spying, Formula 1 has lots and lots of espionage. No really.

 

[theevilsanta]

OP here: Thank you all for your enlightening answers!!

Things I find interesting:

1. F1 is a relatively upper-class sport that focuses on the car design itself! I find this bizarre because NASCAR races feature nearly identical tracks that would seem to emphasize small changes on the car, as opposed to the driver. I don't really follow NASCAR but it seems that the cars themselves are not especially focused on.

2. Football (soccer) is the "redneck"/"hooligan"/whatever sport if there is one in Europe. However the fan base is far more diverse than it is for NASCAR in the US. It's not surprising to me that football is what draws these kinds of crowds, however. It's probably the least inexpensive mainstream sport to play. It's the reason third world countries get to compete in the biggest sporting event in history every forth year.

3. I'm sorry if the original post sounded a bit classist. I was trying to be as succinct as possible to make my points clear. Despite my upper-middle class background I do think NASCAR is an interesting sport and playing it online and single player in the NASCAR games kicks my ass every time. There's still a lot to learn about that sport.

 

[AndyCobra]

It's actualy more of a high-class sport

 

[k-ossuburb]

If anything it's a nerdy sport. Car nerds mostly, the sort of people who'll go on for hours about valves and say things like "naught to sixty" and "horsepower" a lot.

For anyone reading this who's British like me, you'd probably agree it's an "anorak" sport. I've met a few in my time whenever I went to the Billing Land Rover Show for a bit of off-roading and a lot of drinking, I met a lot of people who'd comment on my Defender 90, talking with that anorak voice: "ooooooh, I see you've got the Scorpion mud tires and a lift kit in there, have you put a V8 or a TD5 in it yet?"

Although that's only if you're a massive fan of the sport, the casual observer can be from any walk of life.

 

[theevilsanta]

OP here editing some things: I'm not trying to group together Europe as a whole when talking about "class". I'm an American though. Your landmass and population is about equal. And Italy, Germany, Spain, France, the UK, and Scandinavia in particular are on pretty equal footings and I'd expect them to be the primary contributers to Escapist threads (also Poland, Austria, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Slovenia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and that little country between France and Spain). I'm looking for the generalization, that's all.

Also ideas about class are almost extinct in America, as far as I can tell, but there are generalization that can be most effectively described that way. So yeah. Thank you everyone for the info!

 

[k-ossuburb]

The closest thing in Europe to rednecks are people who live in slightly smaller castles than the average European.

Haha! Here, here! I for one am constantly having to call the Council out to take care of my dragon infestation. Those bloody things get everywhere and I can't do anything about it because they're an "endangered species", I miss the days when we could kill them for sport. Wot, wot.