I am now approaching my 61st birthday and have been a fan of motor racing all my life. Obviously a lot has changed over this period of time, some for the better, but not all.
Regular readers of Autosport magazine will have seen a few letters from me during 2011 on the same theme. This blog seeks to elaborate on this as well as eventually taking in other forms of racing, but, for the time being, I am going to concentrate on the World Championship of Drivers.
Fortunately, drivers still make enough difference for the best to rise to the top and I have no doubt that Sebastien Vettel would have won the title whatever the rules, but wouldn't it have been better if it was clearly all down to his ability behind the wheel and not strategy?
Am I alone in thinking that modern Formula 1 is too contrived and no longer about racing?
It has to be said that there have always been boring races and races where there has been little or no overtaking, but there have also been some very exciting races with lots of passing and genuine close finishes which we don't seem to get now.
These days, Bernie Ecclestone and the people who set the rules are obsessed with 'the show' as they call it. What has happened to the sport? In order to give the TV companies some passing to show we now have a situation where cars are equipped with KERS and DRS to artificially aid passing (further complicated by restrictions on DRS usage) plus the crazy tyres which are deliberately designed to not last long.
I can live with KERS and DRS, but those tyres drive me mad.
KERS works like the old Turbo boost control or the indycar 'Push-to-pass' button in that it can be used to give a power boost for a short time which could assist overtaking but it is often countered by the other car also using KERS. This is just a variation on racing so I am happy with that provided everybody has it as was not the case when it was first introduced. The clever trick is for a driver to fool the driver in front into using his KERS while saving his for later in the lap.
DRS is more complicated. The big problem ever since aerodynamic downforce was discovered has been that running close to another car causes loss of downforce to the following car which makes overtaking harder than in the days before aerofoils. DRS is an attempt to negate this problem by allowing a flap on the rear wing to move to a low downforce position while the car is travelling on a straight where downforce is not required. Where it differs from KERS is that its use is severely restricted by only allowing it to be used when closely following another car and then, only in a specified zone.
I find these restrictions annoying to say the least. What makes it all the more rediculous is that there is no restriction on DRS use during qualifying which means that it is used on all straights to increase speed and not part of overtaking at all! If this is legal for qualifying, why not in the race? I can see that it would become effectively redundant if a car being followed closely could use DRS at the same time as the following car trying to pass it. However, the current rules mean that it is (supposedly) easier for a car to overtake using DRS in the prescribed zone but the passed car cannot use DRS to try to get the place back until the next lap at the earliest, provided he is close enough in the zone. This is artificial passing and NOT racing!
I now come to the tyres. Please note that this is nothing to do with Pirelli who have simply supplied what they were asked for. In that respect, they have done a good job, but I can't help wondering how owners of expensive fast cars equipped with P-Zero tyres react to seeing F1 tyres with the same name having to be replaced every 50 miles or less.
To be honest, I'm not sure whether a single tyre supplier is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it was clear that a tyre war resulted in some teams being at a disadvantage through being contracted to the wrong tyre supplier for a particular track. However, it usually balanced out over a season with about half the circuits suiting either one tyre supplier or the other. In the days when there were 3 or more tyre companies in F1, there were some tyres that clearly were not competitive and tended to only be used by the lesser teams as the top tyre suppliers were only interested in the front runners. This sort of situation will not help teams move up the ladder and a single supplier certainly removes a variable which helps the likes of (for example) Force India wh are trying to close the gap on the front runners.
Meanwhile, the FIA, in their infinite wisdom (in this context I am using the term very loosely), having decided to only have one tyre supplier, then proceeded to confuse things by insisting on the use of 2 different compounds in a dry race. Having taken out the variable of having more than 1 tyre supplier, they thought it would be a good idea to introduce another variable with the different compounds which could introduce some strategy alternatives depending on when in the race a team (or driver) opted to use the other tyre. A bit like playing a joker in Jeux Sans Frontiers (if you are old enough to remember that) or a pub quiz. In theory, this should encourage passing with cars having different levels of grip at different times. Again, this is artificial but might increase the number of genuine passes if it worked that way.
The obvious problem is that everyone almost always takes the same route on compound choice, the main variable being the number of tyre stops and the timing of them. In other words, we are stuck with strategy. What Max Mosely likened to a game of chess (not much overtaking in a game of chess!) and I prefer to call passing in the pits.
Unfortunately, this kind of strategy game has been played to a certain extent ever since planned pit stops became part of F1 whether for fuel, tyres, or both. Alain Prost was a master of this. It often seemed to me that he just tooled around and somehow emerged in the lead without doing much in the way of actual racing. Back then, a single stop was the norm and most of the drivers were old school racers so there was plenty of action to watch. Now it's all got much more controlled and too many drivers are happy to just sit in line waiting for the all-important tyre stops to grab a position. If the strategy fails, they wait for the next round of stops. Finally, if they haven't got past the car in front, they concede and hold position to the end.
KERS and DRS have helped a little in this respect with some drivers actually trying to race rather than wait for the stops but, more often than not, what we actually see is 2 drivers on different strategies (which invariably means different stages of tyre wear) apparently racing but, in reality, it means nothing as the just passed car pits or the overtaker drops back down the order when his out of sync stop is due. We get passing on our TVs but the race result turns out to be the same order as the first lap because what we are seeing as 'passes for position' are actually cars that are not really racing each other, merely being on the same piece of track at the time due to strategy and tyre condition. In this respect, the Pirelli tyres of 2011 have only made matters worse at a time when KERS and DRS should have helped overtaking, if not actual racing.
As I said earlier, it is not Pirelli's fault. They were asked to supply tyres with a relatively short life, which they duly did. The theory is that a car with tyres that are 'going off' will be easier to overtake and this has been proven to work. However, this only goes to increase the amount of strategic planning rather than encourage racing. A lot of people have said well done because we are seeing more passing (or at least we were early on before the teams got the measure of the situation) but, as I have stated earlier, this pasing is rarely for genuine race position. It might improve 'the show' for casual viewers who don't really know what is going on, but it does not alter the result or improve the racing.
Apart from anything else, in my view, a pass that is due to one car having better condition tyres than the other is only valid if the tyres in question have become excessively worn as a result of aggressive racing, as happened to Chris Amon's Ferrari in the 1968 British Grand Prix for example. It's not the same if the wear is simply due to the tyres being near the end of their planned life cycle, and, actually, the car that has just gone past on fresh rubber was 3 places further up the order when he pitted and will be again in a couple of laps when everybody else has stopped.
Don't get me wrong, strategy has its place in motor racing, but that place is endurance racing where the emphasis is on the car and/or the team. Ask the average racing fan who won Le Mans last year and the most likely answer will be Audi. The drivers are less likely to be recalled. This is what that form of racing is about (and I am a big Le Mans fan). Strategy is a priority. Whilst having good drivers is very important, you want the kind who can drive to a plan rather than just go as fast as possible. This is a kind of racing where there is a lot of passing but nearly all of it is lapping slower cars. Formula 1 is different and should be primarily about driver ability. A Grand Prix is a sprint and the best driver should win, not the best strategist!
I mentioned Alain Prost before and you have probably already guessed that I was not a fan of his. Ayrton Senna, on the other hand, was a racer. Sometimes this was his downfall as he went for gaps that closed when it was too late to back out, but he was not one to settle for points or leave a passing opportunity for the pit stop round. He wanted to win and do it on the track. His famous 1983 Donington victory was basically sealed on the first half lap when he overtook 4 cars to take the lead in very wet conditions. That's what racing should be about, not sitting in line waiting for the strategist's call.
What can we do about it?
That's a good question. I think I have a very good answer which I will reveal in the next instalment of this blog. In the meantime, there is something that can be done to help right now, before the 2012 season starts.
It's very simple: Ban tyre stops!
This was done once before and failed simply because there were 2 tyre suppliers and Michelin got it right while Bridgestone got it wrong with the obvious exception of Indianapolis where the Michelin runners all had to withdraw after the parade lap (so technically they had taken the start which enabled the now ludicrous event to qualify as a race) because the tyres they had were not up to the stresses imposed by the banked corner at the end of the straight. After this 1 season, tyre stops were reintroduced, probably as much due to pressure from Bridgestone shod Ferrari as to worries about a repeat of the Indianapolis fiasco. Tyre stops would have alleviated the problem with blow-outs on the Michelins at Indy, but it is highly unlikely that Michelin would have made the same mistake twice anyway.
With only Pirelli supplying tyres, there is no reason why they can't go the distance. They could still supply a choice of compounds at each race which might see some cars better suited to one tyre while the opposition work well with the alternative. Indeed, if the choice of compounds is such that the softer gives slightly better grip but is marginal for race distance, we could see a situation where, for example Button's McLaren could be on the soft while Hamilton's would use the harder tyre due to his driving style making the tyre wear more. Still some scope for strategy there but not dominating the race, and based more around the individual drivers which could be very interesting and make for good racing. That's the key word here - RACING!
I will explain my idea for a radical rethink of F1 to improve the racing in the next instalment of this blog. If anybody wishes to comment on what I have written so far, please do.
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