Category Archives: Motorsport

Formula 1 2010

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Well, I got that a bit wrong, didn’t I?

I’ve really enjoyed the 2010 F1 season so far, and it’s shaping up nicely for an exciting showdown. Whilst Mr Schumacher hasn’t quite lived up to expectations (apart from that move against Barrichello in Hungary), the rest of the protagonists have all played their part, and with 5 races left the top 5 drivers are within one race win of each other. Fantastic stuff.

So, I unreservedly take back my somewhat scathing previous post, and admit that maybe, just this once, the clever people in charge of F1 might just have got it more right than I gave them credit for. Who’d a thunk it?

So, who reckons Jenson’s going to have a storming end to the season and make it back-to-back championships? It’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

Does the ‘F’ stand for ‘Fail’?

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Formula One. The pinnacle of motorsport. The best drivers, racing in the most advance racing cars in the world, on the best racetracks we have to offer. And this season, wow – what an exciting prospect. 4 former world champions; 2 of them racing for the same team! Michael Schumacher coming back after his short break. New teams, new rules. What more could a fan ask for?

Sigh.

3 and a bit years ago I bemoaned the lack of excitement in Formula One, and offered a few ideas to jazz things up a bit. Maybe someone read my blog back then afterall, as most of my ideas seem to have found their way into the rulebook (except the reverse grids… is that just BTCC?) Bernie even stole my ‘one point for a win’ idea and rebadged it ‘medals’, before he ran out of brave pills. And it got better. The racing did seem to improve. There were proper exciting races and tight championships going down to the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season.

And now they’ve gone and broken it again. Just one race into the new season, Alonso says races are going to be decided in qualifying and on the first lap of the race. Schumacher says the first race was fun but dull, and he’s right about the dull part.  Apart from a couple of glimmers of overtaking from the new boys, Webber’s overfilled oil tank, and Vettel’s cracked exhaust, nothing happened. The Ferraris held together, Hamilton picked off the lame Vettel, and 49 laps of mediocrity passed in a little under 100 minutes.

So, what to do?  Well, I’m afraid I’m out of ideas (sorry Bernie).  I suppose things might get better in Australia – at least there might be some discernible crowd in attendance to give things a sense of occasion.  Maybe a shorter track will mean more racing opportunities.  Maybe Webber will put a show on for his fairdinkum mates.  Maybe Lewis and Schumacher will get to go at it hammer and tongs, wheel to wheel.

I remain hopeful, but can’t help feeling that we’re in for a pretty yawnful year on the track.  It’s a sad state of affairs when you find yourself hoping for some off-track scandals just to keep the interest levels up.

So, come on you clever F1 guys.  Please think of something to keep us watching.

I want my 4 hours back!

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Did you see the Grand Prix yesterday? You did? What, all of it? You didn’t slip into a coma after 20 minutes? Well, congratulations…

What’s happened to F1 then? The last 2 races really have been dull as ditchwater. Cars only overtake in the pits because it seems that every track is “notoriously difficult to overtake on”, yet other series don’t seem to have the same problem. Drivers are encouraged to turn their cars down because to actually try to race might jeopardise their car’s performance at the next meeting. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the main point of racing is to race, to duel, to be better than the other guy. Now it’s all about not risking the points you have for the chance of a few more. It’s about hoping your pit crew, strategy, or reliability is better than the other guy’s.

It’s not about racing. It’s about boring the proverbials off of spectators.

So what can they do? Garry and I were having a bit of a discussion (or moan, rant, call it what you will) yesterday, and came up with a few (semi serious) ideas:

  • One point for a win. Zero points for losing. That’s it, none of this “saving the engine and taking 2 points” rubbish, you win or you don’t. You score or you don’t.
  • Bring back slick tyres. F1 cars can’t overtake because they rely so much on downforce, and the aerodynamics go all wafty when you’re in the car in front’s dirty air. They rely so much on downforce because they have to use those silly grooved tyres. Scrap the grooves, reintroduce slicks, outlaw most of the downforce devices. You’d get closer racing and real overtaking.
  • Let the teams do whatever they want between races. If they want to rebuild the engine between weekends, so be it. It just means they’ll be too busy doing that to spend time on R&D. Penalising a team for dropping an engine is just silly.
  • Grid = reverse of last race’s result. Let’s see just how good those drivers are. If you win race 1, you start race 2 at the back. Cue lots of overtaking, lots of swerving (“who left that Stupid Aguri Honda there!?”), and all round merriment. I can see the drawbacks of this, but it’d be a laugh.
  • Ban electronic driver aids. An actual serious suggestion. Things like ABS, Traction Control, and Electronic Stability Programs reduce the amount of skill required to get the car round the track, and remove some of the opportunity for driver error (replacing it with the opportunity for malfunctions, of course). Let the cars wheelspin and lock their brakes – it looks better (we like smoke), and you never know, the guy in 2nd place might just get up to 1st when the leader out brakes himself.

I’m sure there are more, but that’s about all I can remember for now.

I realise that F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport, and that a lot of the rules we’re moaning about are there to help ensure that there is a series to watch and moan about, and that the series has more than just 3 teams, but things are getting silly. I didn’t see a single overtaking manoeuvre yesterday, and that’s absurd.

Oh yes, and as for those 4 hours… If a certain Mr B. Ecclestone would like to offer some recompense for the time spent enduring the “spectacle” of the last 2 Formula One Grand Prix, then I think a suitable rate would be something like £100 an hour. Many thanks…