This was originally going to be the year in which I abandoned the traditional way of ‘following’ the now Repco-backed Bathurst 1000km enduro (aka Australasia’s Great Race’) – via a sub to SkyTV – and did what, apparently, ‘all’ the ‘cool kids’ are doing these days; following the action remotely via the key social media channels serviced by Supercars’ own media unit; Facebook and Twitter.
No longer for me the rituals of the past – what? – 30 years. Hell no. This year was going to be the one in which I was going to free myself from the tyranny of being chained to the family TV for much of Saturday and pretty much all of Sunday – not to mention the not inconsiderable cost and frustrating lack of flexibility of a Sky TV sub – by going completely ‘on-line.’ And doing much of my watching via highlight videos like this one remotely via my Smartphone.
The result?
Well, all I can say is that I’m glad the blokes I was rooting for – Red Bull/Ampol Holden Commodore pair Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander DIDN’T win. Because, if they had I would have missed most of the ‘how’ that win came about.
Look, I don’t mind admitting that I never found a livestream (either via Facebook or Google that seemed even half legit. One asked me to ‘create an account’ before being allowed ‘in’ (which I wasn’t prepared to do), while another appeared to be some deluded individual from India gabbling excitedly away in heavily accented English to a TV running the race (well out of focus) in the background.
As someone who has been keeping up with national-level Drift competitions from the US and Japan via Facebook-based Livestream ‘broadcasts’ for, hell, it must be at least 10 years now, I know a good, informative ‘stream when I see one.
But bar the absolutely amateur rubbish being passed on second and third hand by talentless amateurs, I couldn’t for the life of me find any way of hooking up with or to any sort of non-shady, official (or even pseudo-official) Livestream covering the almost weeklong meeting from Bathurst this year.
Had one been part, for instance, of either the Supercars’ organisation’s website or Facebook/Twitter feeds I’d have happily paid – what? – $12-$15-a day – for complete and unfettered access.
Assuming that there might be 2-3,000 similar fans spread throughout NZ, plus up to – say – 5000 across Australia and – for argument’s sake similar numbers across Eastern and Western Europe and across Africa, and South America and you have a pool of 30,000 or so punters more than ready to part with something for the pleasure of checking out all or just parts of (first 10 laps/halfway point recap then – say – the last 20 laps) ‘Australasia’s Great Race.’
Yet, no one seemed to think that my contribution was worth chasing up, meaning more total rubbish filling the gap.
This ranged from the cynical to the truly bizarre – or both as the case may be.
Feeding the words ‘Bathurst,’ ‘1000km’ and ‘2021’ into the search box on my YouTube page – for instance – sent me spinning down into a vortex-like rabbit hole I immediately regretted.
My first mistake was clicking on a familiar looking graphic promising me (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘What a NASCAR fan thinks of the Bathurst 1000km livestream…’
Fair enough, I thought, this should be interesting, only to find out that rather than watching the Livestream WITH the ‘NASCAR’ fan we were instead watching the fan’s bemused (bearded) face via a Zoom-style close-up courtesy of his computer’s in-built camera as he attempted to answer a steady stream of typically inane questions his fellow viewers kept posting – at his invitation – ‘in the Comments section below.’
Fair play, I waited to see if ‘things’ got any better. But when after 5 to 6 minutes all I knew about the race was a casual comment that ‘the 25 car is still in front’ I angrily clicked out of the site – to check out what sort of fist locally-based Cricket-tragics, The Alternative Commentary Collective, were making of the first attempt (that I’m aware of anyway) at a major motorsport event.
And? Oh dear! Oh dearie, dear, me. Regular readers of this column will know that I’m no great fan of the antiquated stick ‘n ball sport spectacle that is Cricket; so, I’ve never had cause to ‘watch’ the Alternative Commentary team ‘in action’ as it were.
Having experienced probably around five minutes of their ‘coverage’ of this year’s Bathurst 1000 km race, all I can say is stick to something you actually know about lads (and lass) because in the company of Skaifey, Cromley, Larko and co. you come off as a very poor second….
Perhaps, if you are actually ‘at’ the cricket – or indeed were you at Bathurst on Sunday – having an ear on an expert ‘Alternative Commentary’ team relentlessly ‘Taking the Michael’ out of all and sundry may well have some merit…..particularly compared with some of the more flagrant politically correct BS that comes out of the mouths of the official match talkers…..
However, watching three blokes ‘ n a Sheila watching a race the viewer cannot see and listening to the four of them swap inanities with the all the casual sincerity of a DJ on The Rock had me reaching (simultaneously) for a sick bucket AND the on/off button of my computer.
By this stage, as I’m sure you can imagine, I was becoming increasingly desperate for the simplest of updates – you know, ‘who won the start?,’ ‘what was the race order after the first 10, 20 &30 laps, who – if anyone – had experienced some sort of mechanical drama in the first 500km or so, and finally, how was my own race favourite, Shane van Gisbergen’s quest to do the 2021 Supercars championship ‘double’ going?
Fortunately, despite obviously choosing NOT to share its ‘rest-of-the-world’ Livestream with fans here and at home in Australia the Supercars organisation uploaded short, snippet-style videos of exactly the sort of information I was craving……
I discovered later that they did a similar albeit briefer thing on their Facebook ‘Stories’ page.
As it turned out my best bet for a free ride to coverage of this year’s Great Race would have been a combination of the Supercars website and my own Facebook page – which has links to the Supercars Stories page, as well as to regular posters, Kiwi karters-made-good, Matthew Payne and Madeline Stewart.
In case any of you are wondering, yes, I do have a Twitter account too; in fact, it was to Twitter’s #Bathurst hashtag I went to first – only to be inundated with a bunch of smartarses taking ‘oh so funny (Not!!) pot shots at the event’s special guest, Australian Prime Minister, Scott ‘ScoMo’ Morrison.’
Now, ScoMo may well be one of the ‘least popular’ public figures in Australia at the moment but he is the current PM, and he was at the meeting in that capacity…..so IMHO (in my humble opinion) should have bene wined, dined, and generally shown a fine old time….without the need to shelter from a bunch of immature bloody haters trying to hi-jack a ‘pretty bloody important occasion’ in the history of ‘The Great Race’ for their own pathetic small-minded ends.
Wankers!
And the race itself?
Well, apart from another late race heartache for defending Bathurst 1000km race winner, Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen, and Aussie co-driver Garth Tander, (a front right tyre failure forcing SVG to slow dramatically while in second place with just 10 lap to go) the new Repco-sponsored 2021 1000km race will be remembered as the one in which Walkinshaw Andretti Racing’s lead driver Chaz Mostert came of age, and his co-driver Lee Holdsworth staked his claim for a return to ‘The Main Game.’
Me?
I learned a valuable lesson involving money…and the relative merits of spending a little to gain a lot. Love ‘em or loath ‘em Sky TV remains a one-way passport to some of the best – and for us the closest and most relevant – motor racing in the world
Year-in, year-out the local pay-TV provider has curated a broad mx of top=level motorsport content – and charged accordingly.
However, to say that I learned a valuable lesson – or rather a lesson in value – this past weekend – would be an understatement. So, this week I’m going to check out the company’s latest offerings and package deals, because…… in the case of Bathurst the Sky (TV) really is the limit!
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