Everyone knows Albert Einstein’s quote about the meaning of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. Well, Formula 1 became insane years ago with various ideas in efforts to make F1 more entertaining that either didn’t work or made things worse and their latest idea harbors similar fears among fans and teams.
Because Mercedes has been dominating Formula 1 since 2014 and Red Bull was dominating before that starting in 2010, Formula 1 and boss Bernie Ecclestone has had a problem of the same team winning just about every race and leaving the top spots on the podium to be rather predictable, causing fans to be jaded.
After coming up with some gimmicks that thankfully didn’t come to fruition (medal system instead of points, shortcuts, sprinklers that randomly went off) and some that unfortunately did (double points at final race, elimination qualifying), it now appears as if the cars are the next to change with new technical regulations coming next season to hopefully bridge the gap and cause excitement.
Formula 1 hopes these new technical regulations will do three things. One, end the dominance of Mercedes, or any team for that matter. Since 2015, Mercedes and their drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have combined to win 36 of 42 races with Rosberg currently on a seven-race winning streak. Two, reduce costs for teams and reign in out of control spending. Many lower ranked teams have having trouble keeping up with the big teams like Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull who seem to have unlimited budgets and staffs and in addition to a sponsor drought, things are getting worse and worse for an F1 team to survive, much less compete. Three, to improve “the show” and make the racing more exciting. Whether that’s unpredictability, more passing or something else, F1 feels there are too many races where after the start, whoever has the lead after turn 1 on the first lap wins and leads almost every lap. They want the race to be decided closer to the end of the race rather than the start.
But these new regulations, which make everything from wings, chassis and tires wider in an effort to increase downforce, give tires more grip and make engines more powerful and the cars faster by about five seconds per lap, have teams and fans uncertain this will actually do anything to improve what Formula 1 wants to improve.
Some believe this will cause things to be even worse and cause a team to be even more dominant and result in even less entertaining racing. Current points leader Nico Rosberg thinks so and is speaking out even though he out of anyone would benefit if this were the case.
“Our opinion was that it’s not the right direction to go, and we were hoping that they would definitely re-look into it and just make sure from a technical point of view to double check,” Rosberg said on Thursday in Sochi. “This is the way it is, so now all we can do is accept it and make the most of it and hope that there are going to be some surprises.”
And if new technical regulations are a way to keep costs down and help financially struggling teams, that doesn’t make sense either because now teams need to spend more to research and develop these new cars because their notes they have on this current car is worthless after this season. The big teams have more money and more people so they will figure out the secrets of the new car first and have an advantage over the struggling teams, potentially causing an even wider gap than we see now.
Also, if Formula 1 wants to have more passing, more downforce isn’t the answer either. Look at it like this. The more downforce a car has, the faster they can drive a car in turns and the more control a driver has on the car. If that’s the case and the cars are relatively similar speed, no wonder there isn’t any passing.
If you want passing, make the wings smaller and have less downforce. That will cause lap times to go up but you will increase straight line speed and cause drivers to have to slow down entering corners as well as trying to handle a less stable car, increasing the opportunity for a driver to make a mistake and thus have more exciting racing and more passing. Obviously, you cannot simply take the wings off because with how fast those cars are, you need some downforce or else there is a good chance of a crash. But surely there is a sizable gap in between that and the current situation in which the drivers would be comfortable with.
Whatever needs to be done, many feel the sport is getting worse instead of getting better. Many people have differing ideas on how to improve Formula 1 and it doesn’t appear what is taking place next year is the answer.
