I watched from the late 90s to about 2010. Most Americans never heard of it until Robby Gordon tried to give it a go, so it really isn’t aimed at American viewers. Mostly Europe and Eur-Asia as well as Japan. Mitsubishi dominated for a while there. The coverage was great when the old Speedvision carried the European coverage. They did about 1 hour a day split equally among bikes, cars, and trucks. Once nascar bought out Speedvision and changed it to speed, the coverage went south in a big way. I suppose to add more nascar related content or pit crew cooking shows or other such crap. I did away with my cable back then so it got hard to find coverage so I eventually stopped watching. I’ve watched only a couple of stages from South America and now Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t seem as good as it was in Africa.
Travis..
Yeah the coverage is still kind of crap even on the official YouTube channel, they can't even make a correct playlist of the highlight shows. At least this year they made separate playlists for the languages but it's upside down with the latest day first so you watch it backwards. I use to make up my own playlist starting at day one and progressing to the end but it's been years since I've done that. Way too much paff about riders/drivers lives and way back history in the highlight shows, I just want to see the days results, progression and standings, save that stuff for a separate show. It's a mixed bag with trying to please everyone ie newcomer non-race fans. Biggest change was no one really is forced to drop out or withdraw, you can miss a number of days/sectors and still finish and get your participation medal. Lyndon Poskitt riding in the privateer Mali-Moto no support motorcycle class did a blog on this and he thought it wasn't right. He got food poisoning or just got gut sick and missed a day and thought he was out and ready to pack it up and go home but they said no 'you paid your money' and he can continue on to finish. Your way down on position but you finish and get medaled so it seems like it's just a rich person experience now. I can maybe see why they do it to attract competitors as it's a very expensive and lengthy process to get in, ie you have to complete many other off road rallies to even qualify, then there is the health check. I enjoyed more of the fan videos posted up on YouTube during the South American stint, it was amazing the number of spectators lining the course and posting up videos. Argentina was mental with fans, even in the last days when it was only in Peru I even watched live streams from way out in the dunes in the middle of nowhere, it was pretty much piss poor quality but there had to been cell towers around for them to stream it.
Maybe just a sign of getting old I guess, this years Rolex 24hr had beautiful weather with record crowds, was tempted to go out just for a afternoon in the Grandstands but after viewing some SnapChat's of the crowds I decided to stay home and just watch to see how much more of the motorhome crowd has taken over the infield.
aaaYep pretty much all of the west horseshoe is all motorhomes now with just the turn 3 & 4 for tent camping.
They're assholes too, the 'Fence Wars' of decades ago did me in on the 24hr Rolex.
About the record crowds this year, Brad Pitt was there pretty much all week doing film shoots for some up and coming F1 movie, I think I saved a picture of a rolling shooting of 2 F1 cars on the high bank that was in the news which is stupid as not to say that Indy/F1 cars haven't been on the high banks of Daytona but it's too steep for those cars to work and they gave up on that idea years ago. I have no idea how or what this movie is going to be about but you wonder if the record crowds could just be paid extras for the filming?
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