Does F1 really deserve all the negativity?

Joe feels that there isn’t as much wrong with F1 as people think. Whenever there’s a dull race in Formula 1, the F1 media (or what passes for it these days on the Internet) immediately start to ask, “What’s wrong with F1?” A couple of weeks later, when there’s a good race, such stories disappear. The truth is that there’s not a great deal wrong with F1, but media content is thin on the ground – and so those who have to deliver 10 stories a day, run out of ideas and start making up stories about F1 being in need of a fix. There are things wrong with F1 that need to be addressed, but not as much as people think. The drivers need to change their attitude towards the media and be more natural. At the moment, they’re afraid of their own shadows because sponsors and teams don’t want them to say anything controversial. The cars are fast and very safe. They have been faster in the past, but can anyone really tell the difference? And the idea currently doing the rounds that F1 should be more dangerous is fine until there’s an accident and then all the Internet sites will be screaming that the sport is negligent. There is much fuss made about tyres, brakes and fuel, but these have always been limiting factors for drivers – and with DRS there is now much more overtaking, just like in the old days when there was slipstreaming. If there is one problem, it’s that Mercedes has done a better job than everyone else, and we must now wait for the others to catch up. That will happen with time because there are limits to every kind of development and over time all the competitors will get closer to them. It’s almost always the case with the introduction of a new set of rules – someone gets it right, and others get it wrong. The best racing comes when there are mature regulations that are not forever being fiddled with. My feeling is that the biggest problems with F1 are in the financial arrangements and in the governance. I don’t think that teams should be involved in making the rules. It makes no sense at all! That’s the job of the governing body, and the fact that Jean Todt sold the FIA’s right to make such decisions is something that will follow him in history. He screwed up. OK, he needs to fund the FIA, but if he stopped messing about with road safety it would cut back on costs. There are plenty of perfectly well-established road safety organisations and lobbies from the United Nations downwards, and the FIA doesn’t need to create a parallel one. The FIA needs to concentrate on its core business and run the sport, as well as develop an economic model that enables it to not have to kowtow to the F1 commercial rights holder. The rights holder needs to look at the way in which it derives revenues, because it makes no sense to drive away customers by charging too much for spectators and for TV viewing. It would also be sensible for the Formula One group to adopt a sensible strategy regarding social media, rather than trying to use it to squeeze yet more money from the fans. I continue to believe that F1 must drive forward technology. This is what makes F1 cars special, and while the work on hybrid engines has been spectacular, the PR of the sport has been a complete disaster. People should be told about the new engines, and how much better they are than last year. Yes, they sound different but that’s because they’re not wasting energy on noise. The opportunity has been missed, but other opportunities await. Grand Prix racing has always been about the latest technology and there’s a long list of automotive technologies that began in motor racing before being adopted in production cars. The adoption of hybrid engines in 2014 returned F1 to a leadership role in automotive technology. Electric cars may be the longterm future, once the problems of range and recharging have been solved, but for the moment hybrids are all the rage. After more than 150 years of constant and concentrated development the petrol-powered internal combustion engine is still very inefficient. The average engine today has a thermal efficiency of between 25-30 percent. The use of direct injection has raised maximum efficiency to around 35 percent and the F1 world has been working hard to win back energy with recovery systems for heat and kinetic energy from the vehicle itself – but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. How about allowing laser ignition? That seems to be the likely next big step forward. F1 should adopt it. Joe Saward has been covering Formula 1 full-time for 27 years. He has not missed a race since 1988.