Is F1 pricing itself out of business?

You wrote all this while day 4 of the Barcelona test was on?!!
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Last season I seriously thought about going to the Turkish GP. By going to a GP I mean, of course, for the whole caboodle, Thursday to Sunday.

To get there in time for the Thursday pit walk meant flying on Wednesday. The return journey was originally going to be Monday, but it turned out that it would be cheaper staying for an extra day, it would also give some time for sightseeing.

So I started looking around at packages and at DIY (my preferred method). Together with transfers to/from the circuit, going B&B was going to cost me in excess of £800. with meals and odds and ends it was beginning to look close to £1000. And this was with race tickets which were nowhere near the most expensive.

I decided that I could not justify spending that much money on myself for what is basically a car race of under 2 hours.

So we went to Italy instead.

For under £1500 in total we had a two week holiday in Milan and at Lake Maggiore. My wife had three days on her own, she went down to a beach by the lake and made some friends. It would not have been safe for a woman on her own to do that in Turkey. I was in the stand at the first chicane with an excellent view of the racing. We ate well, the transport was cheap, to and from the circuit was simple and we went for trips on the lake and sightseeing/shopping in Milan and the surrounding area. I could justify that for a spend on a summer holiday.

Is F1 pricing itself out of the market? My answer would be Yes, especially by going to places where they cannot even give the tickets away, e.g. Malaysia on the Friday.
 
It would not have been safe for a woman on her own to do that in Turkey.
Sorry but I have to take exception at that.

I have lived and worked in Turkey and it is a hell of a lot safer than the UK, in all respects.
There are no gangs of feral juveniles roaming about, incidents of violence, rape and other crimes are much lower than here.
General respect still exists, something which died a long time ago over here.
Most Turks are shocked when they see what British youngsters/teens/20 somethings are really like.
All the ex-pats I met whilst over there and foreigners in general had nothing but good things to say about Turkey.

I'm fairly well qualified to talk about the subject, my wife is Turkish and I've been going there for 15 years.

Conversely, when I lived in Milan, I was almost mugged 3 times whilst I was there - only my wits and a bit of brute force prevented it.

As an aside, my wife's cousin gets free tickets every year for the Turkish GP and has driven the circuit many times as he knows the circuit director.
 
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