Why F1 requires a re-think

In many ways, the last two Grand Prix at China and Bahrain were great demonstrations of precisely what is wrong, in my view, with modern Formula One.

To the uninformed viewer, there was constant action up and down the field in both races. But, therein lies my biggest gripe – there was a lot of action, but not much of it actual racing.

At China, two principal elements served to ruin the spectacle – an option tyre that was only good for qualifying, and two DRS zones that reduced the art of overtaking to mere child’s play. It wasn’t so much a race at Shanghai as a scientific experiment in which the various tyre strategies of the 22-strong field simply played themselves out.

Thanks to DRS, there was no danger of Fernando Alonso getting stuck behind a slower car as the varying strategies overlapped, making the Spaniard’s victory virtually inevitable because of the Ferrari’s relative kindness on its tyres.

There’s nothing wrong with tyre management being an element of success in F1, and Ferrari, as well as Lotus, ought to reap the rewards for designing cars that can look after their rubber better than the opposition. But, imagine how much more thrilling the race would have been if Alonso had needed to overtake Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button without the help of DRS.

Were that the case, despite Ferrari having the best package, Alonso would have needed to work hard to capitalise on his tyre ‘kindness’ advantage. Had he got stuck behind another car, it would have given his rivals a chance to close in. He would have been forced to dive up the inside at turn 6 or turn 14 and hope for the best, just like in the good old days.

What’s worse, with DRS, in many cases the car ahead wasn’t even attempting to defend, knowing that they weren’t competing with the car behind. Once Vettel pitted for the final time at China to equip his mandatory option tyres with five laps to go, race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin told the reigning champion he could now race, as if to say that, up to that point, he had not been racing.

Isn’t racing what these drivers are paid millions of dollars to do, though? What we saw at China may have looked like racing, but the vast majority of the overtaking was a simple case of strategies overlapping, with the car on fresher rubber much faster, and not drivers on the limit fighting tooth and nail for every place.

Bahrain was less of an extreme as far as the tyres were concerned, but, on a track where overtaking is already eminently possible, DRS resulted in a race that was virtually impossible to follow.

The problem was that, having just been passed, a slower car merely had to remain within a second of the car ahead for the following lap in order to be more or less assured of regaining the place along the start/finish straight.

Whilst this generated plenty of action, much of it had an aura of meaninglessness about it, much like the non-stop overtaking seen in series such as NASCAR. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t 'real' overtaking to be found at Bahrain, but that just made the effects of DRS all the more maddening.

Turns 4, 6 and 8 all saw considerable action throughout the race, whilst the first couple of laps proved – before DRS was activated – that it was more than possible to overtake at the first corner without the need for artificial overtaking aids. Alonso’s comeback through the field after losing his DRS underlined that even further.

I recently watched the 2006 Bahrain Grand Prix as part of Sky F1’s ‘Classic F1’ programming, and it was a cracker of a race despite the refuelling, relatively durable tyres and lack of overtaking aids that proponents of the Pirelli/DRS formula seem to abhor. It was a straight fight between Alonso and Michael Schumacher, and the result was in doubt until several laps from the chequered flag.

Both men were on the limit throughout, knowing that their tyres would allow them to be. And, at an overtaking-friendly track such as Bahrain, plenty of passes were made up and down the field in a manner which the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna would all instinctively recognise.

If Senna was still around today, I’m sure he would lament the demise of ‘real’ overtaking and the increasing trend of faster drivers to simply wait until the next DRS zone to make their move. I would rather see ten perfectly judged, edge-of-your-seat ‘pure’ passes in a race, like the ones in Bahrain ’06, than fifty made with the help of DRS.

If it was up to me, I would ban DRS in a heartbeat. When it comes down to it, it’s an artificial solution to the core problem of cars being unable to follow each other closely enough to overtake.

A far better solution would be to adjust the technical regulations with the intent of dramatically reducing the aerodynamic efficiency of F1 cars. This could be achieved through a narrower front wing, perhaps with a mandatory single plane, or a spec diffuser. Perhaps a ban on carbon brakes would also help to facilitate overtaking by extending the length of braking zones.  

That said, I would settle for a compromise whereby the number of uses of DRS was restricted, say, to ten or fifteen times in a race – much like IndyCar’s ‘push to pass’ system – and was also available as a defensive measure for the car ahead. That would certainly eliminate the ‘inevitability’ factor of overtaking in a DRS zone and make the device far more tactical.

Moving onto tyres, in an ideal world, I’d love nothing more than a return to a full-blown tyre war. Just like DRS, the idea of Pirelli creating a tyre deliberately designed to degrade over a race distance is another ‘sticking plaster’ solution to induce overtaking that would be rendered unnecessary if the powers that be took the issue of reducing aerodynamic reliance more seriously.

A tyre war would be beneficial to F1 for the same reason there would be uproar if we had identical chassis. Variety makes things interesting as different packages perform, er, differently on different circuits, in different conditions, and in different circumstances. There’s no reason why that logic shouldn’t apply to tyres as well – more variables means more unpredictability.

The effects on pit-stop strategy would be difficult to gauge, as the last time we had a tyre war without refuelling was way back in 1991. But, as long as numerous compounds were available, we’d theoretically see a variety of strategies in play ranging from perhaps no stops at all to two or three, depending on the circuit and other factors.

Sadly, the economic climate means it’s unlikely that tyre companies would be willing to plough the immense resources into the development and testing that a bona fide tyre war would require. But, even if we resign ourselves to the reality of a single tyre supplier for now, there are still some tweaks we could make to the regulations to reconcile Pirelli rubber with ‘real’ racing.

First, the rules need to be adjusted as to ensure that, on Saturdays, none of the Q3 runners opt to not set a competitive lap time in order to save tyres. The obvious solution to this, besides perhaps some kind of penalty for not doing so, would be to award each of the top ten qualifiers a fresh set of option tyres solely for the purpose of qualifying.

This would mean in turn that the Q3 drivers could then start on whichever tyres they saw fit, giving them a wider range of strategic choices rather than having to start on worn option tyres. So too would abolishing the rule that requires drivers to use both compounds in a race, as this prevents drivers plummeting down the order late in a race by being forced to use less-than-optimal rubber.

Undoubtedly, there's a balance to be struck between the sport and the 'show'. After all, the former can't occur without the millions of dollars that are generated by television deals and sponsorship. Nobody wants a return to the kind of racing we saw in the early 2000s, and admittedly the current rule-set does guard against processional racing at the very least.

However, degrading tyres and DRS in the majority of cases merely give the illusion of real racing, which, it could be argued, may be even worse than what we had before. The danger is that 'hardcore' fans become disillusioned and switch their attentions to other forms of motorsport, leaving only the notoriously fickle 'casual' fanbase which is liable to desert F1 in favour of other sports at any time.

There is no reason why F1 cannot appeal to the hardcore and casual fan alike, and the key to this is close, exciting, but most importantly real racing. That means a return to somewhat more durable tyres and the scrapping of DRS. And for that to work without leading to a dearth of on-track action, the FIA need to get tough on aerodynamics once and for all.