24/03/2010
FEATURE BY GLEN CROMPTON
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Much media space and countless forum posts since the 2010 Bahrain GP have been given over to the subject of tedium. On the eve of my home race, this is not good news. Thankfully there is hope for a wet Australian GP but that comes from the local Bureau of Meteorology - a body whose work I personally distrust.
Meanwhile, draconian measures seem to be in demand. Some valid, some not and some just plain silly. F1's supreme commercial being felt the need to publicly warn against panic or calls for knee jerk reactions. According to the report I read, he added "I had a meeting with the teams and tried to explain to them what our business is all about, racing and entertaining the public, not playing with computers and being fast over one lap. The problem is that you cannot have the teams in any shape or form having a part in the sporting or technical regulations. You cannot have the inmates writing the regulations."
I doubt Bern won any friends among the teams by referring to them as "inmates", but then I also doubt he's losing any sleep over that. Prison overtones aside, I am overwhelmed by a strange sensation - the will to agree with Bernie.
Following the publication of my last article, I received the usual dose of reader feedback. Among the hate mail was a lucid note from a fellow I consider a bona fide F1 legend. I speak of somebody whose status is not born of driving prowess, rather his ability to place winning cars beneath the bums of the glamour lads who steer them. Thereupon started a most interesting and, for me, educational, dialogue.
Regrettably this fellow has requested that he not be named which is a shame, though I understand his reasons. It is however safe to say that he has been senior enough in F1 for long enough to be regarded as a reliable informant.
Being as even Bernie invoked the word 'entertainment', I was compelled over a series of emails to charge my new-found pen-pal with the task of authoring measures to render F1 more entertaining. What developed was akin to an unsanctioned, unofficial incarnation of The Overtaking Working Group. And with due respect to the FIA body of the same name, it must be said that whatsoever the extent of the power, influence and scope of the FIA version, as of the 2010 Bahrain GP, they seem not achieved much of value in the eponymous sense.
My correspondent's response initially decried his credentials for this task and made a compelling supporting case. He cited his favourite GP as one where his cars had lapped all but one competitor twice over. Therein is the validation of Bern's earlier quote. The very soul of any F1 team is to not merely beat the opposition, but to trounce them - preferably by laps rather than seconds. The teams are, by definition, the very worst people to consult about the entertainment value of F1. And that raises another rather jaded yet unresolved conundrum. Is F1 a purist sport or entertainment? Personally, I'd like to see it in the middle ground somewhere.
The problem might be self-solving. F1 probably cannot continue to exist if it is not entertaining. Well, I suppose it can but it is going to have to learn to live with 'clubbie' budgets. It's all very well to ponce about claiming to be the pinnacle of motor sport but if it is not entertaining, it may as well be the pinnacle of theoretical particle physics and I've not seen much of that on prime time TV. Eventually waning television audiences will so reduce the value of the sponsor's spend to the point where they will say "um, you know what, let's forget our outrageous F1 spend and just buy regular TV advertising because it's cheaper"
The teams, or inmates as Bern seems to see them, need to grasp this and soon. I say this because I am none too keen on the idea that to watch F1 may require tuning into an under-funded public access broadcaster in the wee hours of the morning and hoping that live coverage of the Nordic Leapfrogging Championships does not run overtime.
Indulge me and let's just take it as given that F1 needs in some way to address its existence between the dual worlds of sport and entertainment. And let's remind ourselves that the 2010 Bahrain GP wasn't very flash in entertainment terms unless you derive some inexplicable pleasure from watching the demise of a spark plug. Imagine inviting your best mates over to watch that race on the basis they would be thoroughly entertained. Chances are if the beer ran out before lap 10, they'd have been baying for your blood by lap 20 and resolving never again to attend a social function of your hosting. That than, is the problem F1 has to address. With or without the consent of teams.
So what is to be done? My correspondent finally did get around to his list of things that should improve the sport and it makes for interesting reading. In no particular order here's a précis of his suggestions which I hope do him justice.
My secret tutor noted something which will likely have him struck off Herman Tilke's Christmas card list as well as the lists of all those who've funded Herman's work on modern F1 circuits. Well, perhaps not all. If your interest in F1 is based in the Paddock Club or corporate suites that surround most Tilke-penned tracks, you probably love the bloke.
My correspondent has little good to say about most of the current GP tracks. He singled out only Interlagos as a track with plenty of overtaking potential. Monte Carlo was mentioned but the reference was unkind. Before you start authoring your hate mails to me, recall that this guy has analysed data from most every track in the modern era. My email pal had the good sense to note that while circuit design plays a significant part in the absence of overtaking, this particular problem is unlikely to be addressed in the foreseeable future. Think of the money spent on circuit construction and the contracts entered into by promoters - many of whom are governments. Nope, no quick fix here.
His next point concerned a problem equally unlikely to be addressed. Semi-automatic gearboxes. It may well be great fun for current F1 drivers to play with paddles on the steering wheel and some road car drivers to pretend they have the same thing under their fingertips - or even aging, balding F1 wannabes to clamp a facsimile in front of their computer screen. The fact addressed by my email chum is that prior to the advent of such devices in F1, many overtaking manoeuvres were likely the result of a duffed gear change. Me? I'd hand that error potential back to the drivers in a heartbeat and let the real fun begin. However the likelihood of a clutch pedal being reintroduced to the impossibly cramped footwell of a modern F1 car along with a fully manual gear lever seems about as realistic as hoping that the 2010 Australian GP will be a evenly fought by two dozen cars.
So much for the things that won't happen. Now for the slightly more realistic…
My educator made the most important point I've ever regarded in the potential framing of F1 rules. Up until his string of missives, I, like many, had been convinced that the biggest change needed to come in aerodynamics. He points out that legislative control of aerodynamics is important since mastery of aero has been a race deciding factor for decades. But he also points out that that the aero package is not the most important factor standing between an entertaining F1 and the current version. Besides, there is a much simpler way to mitigate the aero influence. In fact the same solution solves the impossibly short braking distances, horsepower disparity and the age old problem of "marbles" forming off the racing line.
All that is required is a tyre specification that is hard. Really hard. Really, really, really hard. REALLY HARD! A tyre that is not capable of fully transmitting the drive of the most powerful engines, the braking force of the best brakes and the aerodynamic grip so carefully authored by geniuses armed with banks of computers. Moreover, a tyre so hard that it cannot shred and shed itself into tiny balls inevitably winding up on the track surface either side of the racing line and rendering the 'off' line route required to overtake as undrivable. As a benchmark, think in terms of a tyre that offers about the same degree of grip on a dry circuit as the present wet option offers on a damp one.
Finally, perhaps most controversially, comes qualifying. Lovers of the single-lap heroics a-la Senna may as well stop reading now. You're not gonna like this.
My correspondent makes the annoyingly logical point that any grid system where the fastest cars are at the front is mathematically assured to afford a dull race. Put the field in pace order and all that is likely to follow on Sunday is an elongation of those pace differences. It will be duller than watching wooden planks warp in the sun but at the end of the day you can be sure that the best driver and car combinations will have had an hour an a half or so to assert their superiority. There won't be much, if any, passing, but for those who really think it matters, the best will win by about their per-lap qualifying advantage multiplied by the number of laps in the race.
As a solid example of what can happen, even under the existing rules, when the fastest cars are nearer the back of the grid, my mail chum reminded me of the famed moment when Fernando Alonso overtook Michael Schumacher around the outside at the 130R at Suzuka. Suzuka is a track not renowned for its overtaking potential, the 130R is one of the scariest in F1 and Michael is not driver renowned for his love of being overtaking. But it did happen.
Neither my correspondent nor I have any idea how best to reverse the grids. Actually, between us we have plenty but the problem is how to implement them in such a way that precludes the teams' natural urge to rort the system, given their endemic tendency to bend any rule to within thousandths of legality for their own best advantage.
But if F1 is to survive commercially, the "inmates" are going to have to agree to a form of grid that rewards the fastest with a place at the rear. Interestingly that particular solution might also do a lot to address the aerodynamic design of the cars.
All suggestions gratefully welcomed. I'd like to tell you to send those suggestions to M. Todt at the FIA but for now, how about you just send them to me and we'll see what we can do?