Can F1 be saved?

Question

I've been thinking about this for some time but after reading something that rosbif said it really hit home.
He mentioned that Murray Walker spoke lots of the old days and when Murray dies people will forget the older drivers.
This would be awful really as with the arrival of Lewis Hamilton there seem to be hoards of new fans who don't know how entertaining F1 used to be.
What makes things worse is a lot of snobs don't want F1 cars to be restricted from a technological perspective. "It's supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport!" they sneer.
Yes, it is, but can it be considered sport if the drivers aren't challenged as drivers and the best car is always the winner?
Surely it makes sense to try and bring the teams closer financially and technologically so as to put on a show of great driving skill.
Let's face it, F1 is pretty boring at the minute and if fans switch off F1 dies.
So, with that in mind, can the constructors be brought into line to save a once great sport?

Answer 1

If there were no vested interests this is what I'd do:

Remove all pit-to-car telemetry. Allow onboard recording of data, but it has to be transferred by a physical connection. This would prevent much of the adjustments made to cars during the race being made from the pitlane...and a driver turning a knob costs a lot less than a technician pushing a button to send a message via very expensive technology.

Have one tyre supplier, with one compound per race for everyone. And make them BIG slicks, to help overtaking. Not only would this get the costs down, but it would also improve the entertainment, as well as removing the artificiality of having to run two different tyre compounds in a race even if one of them is 5 secs a lap slower than the other.

The FIA should pay all expenses for all teams during the whole season, including travel to and from test sessions. This would save a large expense from the budgets of weaker teams and make sure that all the teams go to all the official tests.

Make the aerodynamics on the cars simpler. Simpler aerodynamics = less testing; I'd start by removing the front wings and any smaller side wings and barge-boards. This would also reduce cornering speeds, making for slower exit speeds and more chance of overtaking on a subsequent straight.

Get rid of refuelling. Make the drivers pass each other once the cars allow them to do so. Changing weight and balance of the car as the fuel load diminishes will also provide a new test to most of the drivers on the grid, and lead to different cars performing well at different points in the race.

The new rule coming in next season allowing entrants to run customer cars from another manufacturer will help immensely. It will also stop the nonsense that Honda and Super Aguri are two separate teams, as there will be no need to hide the links anymore. Expect to see Prodrive McLarens surprising a few people next year.

Allow teams to enter a third car whenever they want. That would add an extra element to the crucial races each season...imagine 3 Ferraris against 3 McLarens at the title decider. It wouldn't be financially possible for several teams, but it would be an exciting way of soaking up the extra cash of the big teams that my ideas above would leave in their budget.

Answer 2

At least this year (2007) we have 4 different drivers who have one races - compared to the M Schumacher domination of the majority of the last decade.
The 70s & 80s were years of a lot more competitive racing, simply because there were bigger fields and variety of teams.
Since 1970, 18 different teams won a GP.
Since 2000, excluding the aberrations of Jordan & Honda, only 4 different teams have won a GP.
The majority of GPs this season, the 4 teams have filled in the point paying place.
What's in it these days for the other 7 teams? apart from the Hungarian GP (which anyone can win) or the hope of rain!!
The "pinnacle of motorsport" is dominated by 2 teams with all the other playing catch-up - not even the biggest budget team (Toyota) is making in-roads on the track, even the lowest budget team (STR) is occasionally challenging them.
It will be interesting come 2008 when the customer chassis comes into effect - although this year with the STR being the same as the RBR, & Super Aguri being last years Honda - hopefully this will bring back the '70s way of competition.
Unfortunately until every team has such a similar engine (bring back the DFV) there will not be any competition for the Ferrari/McLaren domination of the results.
Until then the spectacle will be reduced to a procession, fans will still attend the races, but (like me) those who stay at home and record the races can still fast forward through the boring bits.

Answer 3

F1 seems to be doing just fine. If it's so dull, how come IRL and Champ Car don't seem to get much traction? They run cars that are more or less evenly matched and not particulary high-tech. Doesn't the kind of racing rosbif describes already exist? I doubt very much if the fans are going to switch off, and there are literally billions of potential new fans in Asia. If you took the technology out of it, then the major constructors would lose interest. Without the big budgets and technology that the major constructors bring, F1 would be just glorified Champ Car.

Answer 4

yeah I see what you meen, we can't give the drivers all the driver aids, because like you say, they need to be challanged, for the race, the top cars are very evenly matched, so races are won and lost by qualifying and pitstops/strategy rather than outright overtaking. This is mainly because, as you know, the sport is now very technical with not a lot of differences between the cars.
I was at Silverstone today watching the Grand Prix from club corner, and it wasn't the best race I've seen, the only thing that livened it up was massa! (although I havn't watched the re-run on TV yet)
I think we should limit the number of driver aids and maybe a few development rule changes/restrictions, to narrow the gulf between mclarri and the restmaybe just until the rest of the teams can catch up and bring back the viewing figures.
F1 is in a difficult place at the moment, stuck between a rock and a hard place

Answer 5

Excellent question, Derek. People have been trying to solve this since I started watching in the mid-80s though, so I suspect that there are too many fingers in too many pies for there ever to be any real change. Rosbif, Haggiskiwi and Chrisbowe all have good suggestions, and I support Booboos idea about everyone having the same standard technology for driver aids.

Sorry Ben, but you can't go around being rude to people like that. If you've been watching F1 since 1972 then you really should know better by your age. Go answer Qs about Lewis Hamilton being God if you don't like real opinions from people who know their stuff. I don't see rosbif saying anywhere that he wants fiery accidents either, pretty disgusting of you to try and attribute that to him.

Answer 6

Get a life, Ben.

As usual I agree with most of what rosbif says, and I'd go further and have standardised driver aids (one traction control system, for example), like there were FIA pop-off valves in the late turbo era. If the technology doesn't exist to enforce a ban, then at least level the playing field technology-wise.

Answer 7

I get tired of listening to all you people complaining that F1 is boring. If you find it boring, watch something else. F1 has been a yearly thrill for me since I first started watching, which was probably 1972 or 73. Yes, it's different than it used to be, but there has never been a race (except the 6-car Indy race) that has not put me on the edge of my seat at least a couple times. The old days were fun, so are the new days -- and without the added excitement of guys dying in horrible flaming wrecks. You want that again, go ahead and pay attention to blowhards like rosbif, whoever the hell he thinks he is.

Answer 8

Use the search tool on windows search.

Answer 9

no
F1 is dead
Champ Car is the future