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Author Topic: The State of Contemporary Formula 1  (Read 1703 times)

Offline Irisado

The State of Contemporary Formula 1
« on: February 17, 2018, 01:09:56 PM »
It's funny how time passes.  I've been watching a lot of old races from the mid to late 1990s and the early 2000s lately to test whether I've been looking back at the Formula 1 of my younger years with rose tinted spectacles.  I've discovered that I have not.  Contemporary Formula 1 is in a terrible state and I am struggling to find any enthusiasm for the forthcoming season, yet rather than just write a few lines about it, I thought that I would go into some detail to explain why I feel the way that I do and what I think needs to be changed to solve the issues facing contemporary Formula 1.  Before I begin, it is important to define what I mean by contemporary Formula 1.  Contemporary Formula 1, for the purposes of this discussion, is the Pirelli, DRS, followed by turbo era, so Formula 1 since 2011.  This examination of Formula 1 is going to be long and is also going to be a bit of a trip down memory lane, which may well be a bit sentimental and sometimes a little moving, but hopefully at least a few of you will find it interesting and will follow it through to the end.

I started watching Formula 1 in 1995.  Before the 1995 San Marino Grand Prix, I had seen bits of races in the early 1990s; indeed my first memory of Formula 1 was the pile up at the first corner of the 1994 Italian Grand Prix which took Johnny Herbert's Lotus Mugen Honda out after his stunning qualifying performance in that uncompetitive car.  The 1995 San Marino Grand Prix still sticks in my mind to this day.  I remember Damon Hill winning imperiously after an excellent drive, along with Schumacher crashing out after switching to slick tyres on a drying track.  It was dramatic, it was exciting, drivers going off were punished by gravel traps or barriers, and it was also diverse.  There were so many drivers, teams, and engine suppliers to focus on.  I was spoilt for choice.  As those of you who have interacted with me here will know, I was, and still am, a massive Minardi fan, but back in 1995, I also supported other small teams alongside Minardi, notably Forti and Pacific (I'd also certainly have been an Osella fan had I started watching Formula 1 earlier).  Every race in 1995 was an adventure.  There were dramatic moments, unpredictable race results, and inspiring drives or battles up and down the grid.  This does not mean that everything was perfect.  Overtaking was too difficult, the television coverage in terms of the local director following the lead cars for too long too often, it was too difficult to score points, and the distribution of wealth among the teams were all very problematic, but these issues did not undermine the diversity and the interest in the competitors for me.  Another issue that strikes me looking back at 1995 and other seasons that followed it is that the drivers were going as fast as possible on every lap of a race.  This meant that the racing appeared faster and drivers made more mistakes, making watching a Grand Prix a much more on the edge of the seat experience.

Let's compare 1995 to contemporary Formula 1.  Contemporary Formula 1 lacks this feel of on the edge racing because drivers are driving as slowly as possible in order to win.  This is the very antithesis of Formula 1.  In addition, the racing has become so artificial that it is really exciting.  DRS passes are lifeless, predictable, and dull.  They have taken all the skill out of defensive driving.  If a car comes up behind another on fresher tyres and with DRS, it will just sail straight by.  This is not exciting at all.  The Pirelli tyres, which initially made for some unpredictable races, especially in 2012, have since become very unhelpful.  Their lack of durability, combined with the characteristics of the tyre construction, means that they do not lend themselves to pushing hard throughout the race, thus meaning that drivers are well within their limits and are very unlikely to make any mistakes.  All of this results in sterile and predictable racing.  Even when drivers do make a mistake, they pay little or no penalty for it.  The circuits, compared to even the mid 2000s, let alone 1995, are excessively sanitised and do not penalise drivers for mistakes.  Worse still, the nature of the circuits now creates endless debates about whether drivers have exceeded track limits or passed a competitor off the track, so to speak.  There would be no issue about drivers exceeding track limits if there were gravel at the edge of the circuit, just as used to be the case in years gone by.  Finally, and most damning of all compared to 1995, is the lack of diversity, both in terms of the teams and in terms of the engine suppliers, and the associated homogeneity, penalty rules, and bullet proof cars.

Let's compare the entry list for 1995 with that of 2018:

1995:
Williams-Renault
Benetton-Renault
Ferrari
McLaren-Mercedes
Ligier-Mugen Honda
Jordan-Peugeot
Sauber-Ford
Tyrrell-Yamaha
Footwork (Arrows)-Hart
Minardi-Ford
Forti-Ford
Pacific-Ford
Simtek-Ford

2018:
Mercedes
Ferrari
Red Bull-Renault
Force India-Mercedes
Williams-Mercedes
Renault
Toro Rosso-Honda
Haas-Ferrari
McLaren-Renault
Sauber-Alfa Romeo

The differences are clear in terms of diversity, especially in terms of teams and engine suppliers.  However, it's even worse than it looks on paper.  There are only effectively nine teams on the current grid because Toro Rosso is a Red Bull satellite which very little, if any, independence from the Red Bull brand and policies.  Now, it is possible that Ligier was effectively owned by Benetton in 1995, but it operated as its own team much more than Toro Rosso is allowed to or able to in contemporary Formula 1.

In 1995 and for many years afterwards, the grid was decided on sheer speed and races would be decided on speed, strategy, and reliability.  In contemporary Formula 1, strategy is limited, speed is restricted (see above), and reliability is almost guaranteed because drivers are not going fast enough to stress the machinery and the penalty system encourages teams not to push the limits.  This results in a very predictable finishing order in the vast majority of races and the same faces on the podium time and again.

To illustrate this point, I will use the contemporary points system in Formula 1 on the 1995 championship (1995 system in brackets):

Schumacher: 268 (102)
Hill: 196 (69)
Herbert: 167 (45)
Coulthard: 154 (49)
Alesi: 137 (42)
Berger: 122 (31)
Frentzen: 94 (15)
Panis: 86 (16)
Blundell: 72 (13)
Hakkinen: 68 (17)
Barrichello: 58 (11)
Irvine: 54 (10)
Salo: 50 (5)
Brundle: 39 (7)
Morbidelli: 25 (5)
Boullion: 25 (3)
Lamy: 13 (1)
Suzuki: 12 (1)
Martini: 12 (0)
Badoer: 11 (0)
Katayama: 10 (0)
Diniz: 10 (0)
Papis: 6 (0)
Inoue: 6 (0)
Montermini 6 (0)
Gachot 4 (0)
Schiattarella 2 (0)
Wendlinger 1 (0)
Mansell 1 (0)
Magnussen 1 (0)
Moreno 0 (0)
Verstappen 0 (0)
Deletraz 0 (0)
Lavaggi 0 (0)

This shows that nearly all drivers would have scored points and all the teams would have scored points in much the same way as is the case now, but with greater benefits, as being able to score points more easily may well have saved many teams for having gone bankrupt over time, although I accept that a more even distribution of prize money would also have been needed, but that is still the case now.

Essentially, Formula 1 used to be much more unpredictable and exciting than is the case now.  Contemporary Formula 1 lacks the tension, the unreliability, the drama, the genuine racing, and the diversity of seasons gone by.  The powers that be are, in my view, failing to address any of the issues which are undermining the quality of modern Formula 1, so that begs the question as to what I think that they could or should do.

My suggestions are as follows:
1. Get rid of DRS.  I'd rather have less overtaking which is authentic than a lot of overtaking which is easy.
2. Get more teams and engine suppliers involved in the sport.  This would require a massive overhaul of the prize money system and the overall cost of Formula 1, but this needs to be done and very soon.
3. Scrap the gearbox and engine penalties and restrictions and bring back V10 normally aspirated engines.  All the gearbox and engine rule changes over the years have reduced diversity, increased reliability to excessively high levels, made a mockery of qualifying/starting grid order, and, most damningly of all, failed to reduce costs to allow small teams to compete.
4. Changing the philosophy of tyre construction to promote racing.
5. Maybe, just maybe, bringing back refuelling (I never thought that I would hear myself say this by the way, which just goes to show how much I want Formula 1 to change) to allow drivers to push hard throughout the race.
6. Reinstate gravel traps or an equivalent to stop all this nonsense about track limits.

This is just an initial list and I'd be interested to see what the rest of you think.

Hopefully, my trip down memory lane has been of interest to some of you and I also hope that some of the comparisons are valuable to you.  The comparison have conducted has all sorts of issues, which as a comparativist myself I am aware of, but as this is my hobby, rather than my job, I think that I can let it slide at this juncture ;).


Soņando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

Offline Alianora La Canta

Re: The State of Contemporary Formula 1
« Reply #1 on: February 17, 2018, 06:51:28 PM »
Thank you for the trip down memory lane, Irisado :) I started watching F1 at a similar time. I don't think I've ever considered looking at it with rose-tinted glasses, because the first - and nearly last - race start I deliberately watched was Imola 1994).

Back in 1995, budgets were much lower. Granted, Ferrari spent Ģ50 m on its 1995 campaign, but no other team spent more than Ģ30 m and many mid-grid teams were spending similar amounts - Ģ15-20 m. Yes, the top teams spent about twice as much and couldn't be consistently caught by them, but it wasn't quite such a yawning gap as the 3-4 times as much it tends to be nowadays (depending on if we're talking about Williams or Force India here).

Also, the rules weren't so tight as to prevent non-iterative, creative methods of going fast. The cheapest way to speed is simply to follow the data, improve by small amounts many, many times - which tends to reward those with more money much more than open rulesets (that give space for big teams to trip up, an invitation big-spender Ferrari frequently "accepted" in the early 1990s, again helping to improve overall competitiveness). Unfortunately, the logical methods of reducing the amount of money spent in F1 (budget caps, removing the technology, reducing team payments, recession) each have nearly-insurmountable or completely insurmountable downsides. Opening the rules would help, but without a reduction in money overall, it would only be a partial solution.

The 1990s were at the very beginning of the scientific investigation of how F1 as an athetic endeavour worked. Ayrton Senna had of course been investigating this for years, but it was the next generation of racers - notably Michael Schumacher, but to varying extents, everyone else - who used it to maximise their physical capability to race. As such, a distance that had been very difficult to even complete at maximum effort became fairly routine. The average heart rate of a Ferrari F1 driver in 2017 was 120 beats per minute - about the rate I manage on a low-intensity 2 hour aerobic workout. That's why nobody looks like they're pushing when they get out of the cars any more.

Now, the cars could have been made faster and more difficult to drive - but this was post-Imola, and the tracks, for the most part, couldn't contain a sufficiently significant speed increase (unless they had become Indy-style ovals, it's hard to know how they could have done it and still remain solvent - thanks to the high cost of staging a race). Races could have been longer - but TV would have hated it and this would have reduced the money in the system in a way that the commercial promoters and teams would not have liked (that this would have been good for them from a sporting perspective would not have been appreciated).

This has all made it much easier to predict. 2017 was an improvement on the last few years, but it got bad enough that in 2012 I was having to explain to a F1 journalist (of all people) why the theoretical capability to win easy money at the bookies was something I didn't relish. Needless to say, blancmange tyres and devices that remove the art of defending are things I consider to be utterly incompatible with a sporting endeavour, or any endeavour trying to have a relatively low predictability element.

Enforcement of rules has become very sloppy, to the point where even devices meant to improve enforcement (like the sub-sector system introduced in 2014) end up getting used merely to avoid penalising wrong decisions, or support inconsistency. There is no trust between the drivers and regulators either, so don't expect this to get fixed.

To address Irisado's six points:

1. DRS needs removing post haste. That it hasn't been yet is an indictment against F1's ability to understand its own nature.

2. Getting more teams/engines into F1 is desirable, and will take all of the following:

- Much lower cost of entry

- Much lower cost of maintenance

- A total moratorium on the FIA messing teams about (this is what ensured the doom of the 2010 teams, barring USF1 and its bad leadership

- Prize money to every team, with "start money" plus reasonable effort being sufficient to sustain a frugal and competent new team without sponsorship monies getting involved.

- Permission for teams to use something other than standard parts if they can source them cheaper

- Much more relevant engines. That means either all-petrol or all-electric - no more messing about with hybrids.

- A transition scheme for successful F2 teams (or other series - perhaps limiting it to those who have succeeded in series that give points for the driver's Superlicence), that allows them to gradually pick up the pieces necessary to become a full constructor. (I would not have this option for teams started by non-racing entities, to encourage them to get racing savvy first).

3. Something needs to be done with the engine/gearbox situation. The people who care about engine/gearbox endurance these days aren't in F1 - they're in sportscars, which test more thoroughly and much cheaper than F1 ever will. The only point of it now is to cut costs. I would prefer controlling costs by requiring standardised mount points, specifying as few other standard elements as necessary for a workable formula - and then saying that any team wishing to run another team's engine or gearbox has the automatic right to do so (notwithstanding contracts), given 6 weeks' notice at a set, low price per engine (if they blow it up, they must revert to their usual engine unless they thought to buy a spare). That should discourage ridiculously expensive items, and the 4 weeks means there's still a point in being innovative and a possibility of actually supplying the relevant components if asked. Obviously, all such racing would count towards the title, which currently would not be the case. (I'd also restrict the total number of teams an engine supplier can supply - perhaps to twice the number it is contracted to supply).

If reliability really needs to be retained, then maybe limit when engines can be changed, to just before qualifying and just before the race, and limit the number of engines allowed in practise sessions. (Also, move one practise session to Sunday morning, as a palate-cleanser between support series races, to avoid deliberate "qualifying specials").

4. Tyre philosophy change needs to happen. Given that Pirelli has repeatedly said it follows FIA instructions in this area, only the FIA can remove blancmange tyres. There was much less overtaking in 2017 than in earlier years, but considerably more satisfaction from the average spectator. The FIA must learn from this.

5. Unfortunately, the lack of apparent pushing is due to a combination of improved fitness, inability to make the racing significantly more challenging and engine rules. I'm happy to refuelling to be reinstated, though. Here's a thought: why not allow it for half the races and not for the other half? Cars that thrive in one probably won't thrive in the other, and it would increase unpredictability a bit.

6. For reasons relating to safety, costs and making tracks usable for (more profitable) motorbike racing, gravel traps cannot be expected to make much of a comeback. However, there is a technological solution that works regardless of the state of each track. A sensor array positioned a car's width from the maximum permitted area of the track could set off a light if it detects a car on it (the sensors on the cars would be in the wheel hubs and on all four corners of the floor). Three lights on the car = drive-through penalty, unless a stewarding panel exonerates one/more of the offs before the third light is lit (for example, if the off was due to another car hitting it, or if the car was damaged enough to need a pit stop for repairs anyway).
Percussus resurgio
@lacanta (Twitter)
http://alianoralacanta.tumblr.com (Blog/Tumblr)

Offline Monty

Re: The State of Contemporary Formula 1
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2018, 11:11:00 AM »
I started watching F1 as a kid and my older brother took me to see the Brands Hatch British Grand Prix in 1970. Names like Jochen Rindt, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart were battling, the cars were loud and smelly, the pits were accessible and glamorous. I was hooked! However, it wasn't until the 1980's that I could afford to start going to the British GP regularly. I am very clear that the racing was always good until the 'noughties'. After 2000 the races depended on pit stop strategies, overtaking became increasingly difficult and the gaps between positions started to stretch into half-minutes.
I did some racing myself through the years and I started to understand how difficult overtaking was with big-winged cars. I also understood that (even in strictly controlled formula) money could make a huge difference!
We could all prepare lists of improvements like Ali and Irasado and my guess is they would all be different!
In my opinion the first thing you have to decide is what you want:- fastest lap times, most overtaking, different winners, etc. This will dictate what level the rules need to introduce 'artificial' measures to balance the racing - ballast, standard parts, handicapping, etc.
The other thing I am sure of - do not change too much in one hit!
I have made my suggestions before. They include:-
Ensure the cars run at full power / speed - set minimum start weights (full tank of fuel) and maximum finish weights (empty tank of fuel).
Stop or ease the reliability penalties (and any penalty should only hit the constructor not the driver).
Use smaller, less aggressive wings and completely remove all other significant aero features (previous experience shows that reducing aero increases overtaking).
Introduce active suspension (much more like road cars).
Give points for overtaking (in racing conditions right through the field).
Have two types of tyre, one that will easily finish the race and another that is faster but will be marginal on finishing the race - jeopardy of having to ease off or change tyres.
Accepting that due to cost and safety, gravel traps and barriers will not return so introduce draconian stewardship - if your car exceeds track limits (such that you would have hit a barrier on gone into gravel) you have to do a drive through the very next lap.

In short - vote Monty for F1 controller  :D

Offline Irisado

Re: The State of Contemporary Formula 1
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2018, 12:53:14 PM »
It's true that we'd all have differences in terms of the changes that we would like to see made, but so far having the drivers actually being able to drive flat out and doing something about the daft penalty system seem to be common themes that we think need to be addressed.  At least that's something to build on :).
Soņando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

 


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