I’d never thought I would live to utter these words, but for once I’m glad of F1’s inability to come to a decision.
We’re all well aware of it. The sport’s notorious dysfunctionality. Wherein somehow disproportionate power has been given to the teams who with their vested interests barely can agree on what day of the week it is. And as a result the sport drifts; its major problems left untouched and unspoken of like the proverbial elephant in the room.
So I appreciate that celebrating this sounds odd. But please stay with me.
It’s all to do with the ‘F1 revolution’ – an overhaul of the regulations – which initially was proposed for as early as 2016. More powerful 1,000bhp engines, wider cars, bigger tyres, cars that are much more challenging for pilots to tame.
And cars that resemble those from sci-fi fantasy. Possibly. Ferrari, in a masterful piece of politicking, released an image of ‘an F1 car of the future’, which looked like something straight from F-Zero, on the morning of the day on which the ‘F1 revolution’ was to be voted on. It of course got fans purring not only at the car but also at the future shift that it was apparently associated with. Who on earth could argue with all of that? So why, when the afore-mentioned dysfunctional F1 types voted to delay any implementation to 2017 at the earliest rather than take the plunge, was I glad of it?
Don’t get me wrong, if considered in isolation there were in my view good ideas within the F1 revolution, indeed things that if I were designing a F1-type motor racing series from scratch I’d likely incorporate. I’m of a vintage that can recall the narrower tyres brought in for 1993, and the narrower track introduced in 1998, and I regretted both. Mainly an aesthetic grounds, as far as I was concerned the squat, big-tyred and aggressive-looking machines of 1992 and before represented a lot of what an F1 car should be visually. I recall a quote from Gerhard Berger stating that growing up he thought there was something magical and captivating about big slick tyres and I agreed absolutely. Moreover the changes deprived the car of mechanical grip which made following a car ahead closely much more difficult. It played its part in overtaking shrinking almost to an irreducible minimum in this time.
And as Christian Horner outlined recently the prospect of rip-snorting 1,000bhp is also a tantalising one: “I think it’s fantastic to be contemplating 1,000bhp cars” he said, “we want to make the cars harder to drive, more spectacular and the prospect of a 1,000bhp Grand Prix car is eye-watering.”
Mercedes engine boss Andy Cowell reckons too that this part can be achieved relatively simply, by increasing the fuel flow rate (that which became notorious in Melbourne last year) with the existing units: “I believe that the current architecture can produce roughly 1,000bhp and more sound if we increase the flow rate” he noted in the past few days.
Indeed there is certainly a strong case to be made for relaxing this rate, currently at 100kg per hour. Matt Somerfield has said that lifting the limit would only allow teams to get closer to the 15,000rpm limit, which in practice in 2014 they got nowhere near, while Edd Straw in Autosport argued for the flow limit to be dropped altogether. Peak power would be increased while the fundamentals of the sport’s efficiency formula would remain with the overall fuel limit. If nothing else, a few teams were thought to be short-filling last season.
But in my view there are plenty of reasons nevertheless to pull the reins a little on this. For one thing, in this ‘revolution’ there too have been rather a lot of low politics around (plus ca change…). Much of the initial call for change came from Bernie Ecclestone and those allied to him, and we can speculate all day as to his motives. According to reports Red Bull (which isn’t winning) has been pushing for immediate change in 2016; Mercedes (which is winning) has been urging a longer timetable and more reflection. Ferrari (which also isn’t winning) also has been pushing for change but not quite as radical as Red Bull’s. Reportedly too Ferrari was pushing for a V8 1.9 litre hybrid until someone pointed out that Mercedes would likely do a better job with that than the Scuderia, at which point those in red suddenly found their shoes captivating.
You might spot a pattern here. To quote Miles’s law: ‘Where you stand depends on where you sit’. And one team boss has been quoted as saying that more to the point there has been a focus on wider tyres, cars and more powerful engines simply as it’s “the lowest common denominator” that, uniquely, everyone can agree on. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Furthermore to my knowledge there has so far been very little meat on the F1 overhaul bone. If one is to be harsh it appears to have a lot of the ‘back of an envelope’ about it. And given the scale of what is being proposed it is important to get this right rather than proceed with ill-defined concept in mind.
And no, Ferrari’s concept car didn’t give us much sustenance either. For one thing we do not know at all if its ‘look’ is what is to be devised. And even if it is there is also the matter of how you achieve it. As Matt Somerfield noted on Twitter: “As striking as these concept images are from Ferrari the regs needed to implement them would leave far too much open to interpretation meaning they’d never actually look like that.”
Craig Scarborough too pointed out that “much of the shaping that makes the Ferrari concept car look so good serves no aero function, and might even detract from it”, before adding that F1 cars are designed by aerodynamicists and not stylists.
On the aesthetic point of wider cars and tyres already mentioned, some have argued that this rather than being a panacea simply reflects people of roughly my generation having a peculiar attachment to the cars that existed when they first were attracted to F1. It’s hard to tell obviously. Indeed while I detested the look of F1 cars prior to 2009, finding them unnaturally pinched-in, cluttered aerodynamically, and don’t get me started on grooved tyres, I’ve encountered those who love the look, perhaps because that’s what they grew up with.
Certainly given that by consensus attracting in more young fans is the main prize from any change designing cars to be a throwback for middle-aged people on the face of it is an odd way of doing it. Which is another reason why we should proceed with caution.
And indeed it appears – perhaps in an outbreak of common sense, certainly as an output if not necessarily as an input – that’s what was concluded when the matter went to the vote. Jonathan Noble reported that “according to sources, it was agreed that it would be better to spend more time working through fully concrete proposals for 2017 that would definitely make an improvement rather than rush things.”
Reportedly too Toto Wolff is one pushing for more research to find out what younger fans actually want rather than assuming it. As noted he as Mercedes boss might have an ulterior motive for procrastination, but whatever is the case it strikes me as sensible.
It’s also difficult to understand the urgency. Yes we know that television figures continue to fall, but that decline has been in motion since the mid noughties which indicates that its causes go way beyond the latterly-brought in regulations. Coverage disappearing behind paywalls and subscription services or else becoming less accessible in key markets are part of the explanation. And there’s evidence that the sport not attracting in young people, related possibly to the sport being slow on the uptake with digital and mobile platforms, perhaps even young people falling out of love with the automobile more generally (in developed economies there has been a downward drift over recent years in driving tests and car purchases among this age group), is a major driver of this too.
In other words it requires a heroic leap to conclude that the slip in TV numbers is necessarily explained in large part by distaste of the current regs.
But my main problem with this push for change, at least in the short term, is its timing. We are not even yet 12 months on from probably the most radical set of rule changes between seasons that the sport has ever undertaken, encompassing the chassis and (especially) the engine. That is no time for the new way to settle or in which to judge with confidence what impact the change is having. If it was a conspicuous disaster with the bottom falling out of the sport’s popularity and following that would be one thing, but that certainly has not been the case. Viewing figures in the UK and the USA are on the increase indeed, ticket sales for round one in Australia are up by 10% on last year (ironic given what its promoter Ron Walker had to say about the new rules last year), and though that may be in part explained by Daniel Ricciardo’s new celebrity it doesn’t suggest we have a sport that’s nose diving, while the promoter of round two in Malaysia, albeit attracting some mirth for saying so, reckons that the quieter engines will attract in new fans.
Not being complacent is one thing but this push for radical change this soon looks like knee jerk reaction. Perhaps even panic. And a sport engaged in such frenetic trashing is hardly sending the message that its product is worth consuming.
And we are where we are despite – with the honourable exception of Mercedes – almost none of the sport’s main players doing much or anything to promote the new formula and its technology. Whether it be the teams, the manufacturers, the FIA that did a lot to pen the rules, certainly not FOM, we’ve seen and heard next to nothing in promotion and way too much in bitching. You’d think that at least the sport would have resolved at least explore the avenue of talking what they have up a bit before resolving to abandon it and return to base camp.
Most pointedly there’s rather a conspicuous good news story to be told. Namely that the sport took new and complex technology of great importance to the car industry and got it working in no time, and at the same time adapted to a swingeing cut of a third of its fuel required to complete a race distance with a similar lack of rancour. All of which will have a benign impact an oil use, emissions and the like internationally, thus reversing and then some one of the sport’s biggest brand negative that it is one of irresponsible gas-guzzlers. It did it all without losing all that much lap time either. And all the while even though we had single car domination last season the racing entertainment was by consensus excellent. If F1 knew what was good for it all would be shouting this stuff from the rooftops. You suspect that very few activities other than this sport would somehow manage to give the outward impression instead that it is ashamed of it all.
Indeed as Joe Sward noted in recent days: “There is nothing wrong with the sport that some good promotion will not fix. Of course that would require the promoter to actually promote, and as the owners of the business do not understand the concept of investing for the future there is little chance of that happening.”
And Mercedes’s Andy Cowell, even with his views on increasing the flow rate, was clear that with this “we should not dilute the concept of energy efficiency. It would be a shame to lose sight of this goal. The technology transfer from motorsport is important for Formula 1. That is why Honda has arrived.”
Another reason to let the current formula settle a while longer is that there also even is the possibility that a few of the parts of the ‘revolution’ could be achieved, or nearly achieved, by doing nothing and simply allowing the habitual competitive technical development to take place.
On the 1,000bhp engine point the units right now are thought to produce something in the range of 850-900bhp, while between seasons Mercedes and Ferrari at least are thought to have found somewhere in the region of 50bhp. The development tokens dry up gradually over time, learning curves get shallower too, but even within the development freeze the manufacturers have ways and means. Therefore without touching the regs it seems probable that engines will be at least close to shoving out 1,000bhp anyway before all that long.
Then there is the point of whether the current cars are too easy to drive, which is a something asserted by many drivers past and present. It’s also been noted that a number of novices in 2014 hopped into an F1 car and almost immediately lapped within a few tenths of the pace of the incumbents.
Daniel Ricciardo for one in the days before all headed out to Jerez reckoned so. “A pretty good race car driver could drive within maybe 1.5 to 2 seconds (of the pace in a current F1 car), but still to get the last two tenths out of these cars is pretty tricky” he said.
“For sure the high speed corners we’re not as fast as we were a few years ago…that would be nice to get that back, to have some corners on the calendar where the real good guys are taking it full and the ones who just don’t have that last bit of commitment are having a lift.”
“We’re all obviously up for going faster and having more power. It creates adrenaline, and that’s a big part of why we all do it. And maybe it could separate a bit more the guys with a bit more commitment than others!”
But even with this upon being told that it was estimated that this year’s cars are reckoned to be two to three seconds faster than the 2014 ones, Ricciardo conceded a little: “two to three seconds sounds like a lot, I’ll believe it when I see it, but if that’s the case then that’s probably the sort of lap time delta that we need to create a bit more of a difference, so that could well be it.”
It’s another reason why it’s sensible to wait a little longer to see where this new formula takes us before we decide to change it.
Then there is the biggest risk. Change brings cost almost inevitably, and it can bring big costs if the change isn’t carefully framed. Red Bull indeed has warned that even the apparently innocent fuel flow increase will require a major engine redesign that will greatly increase costs. Big bills associated with this is of course the last thing the sport needs.
And as we’ve seen in the last 12 months much of the additional cost from change can be unintentional, and make itself felt in places where it can least be coped with. Perhaps the change mooted now can be done without major spending hikes, such as by standardising parts of the engine. But once again we must proceed with care and caution.
As Saward went on: “It is all expensive. It is far cheaper to spend a small amount of money in promoting the amazing engines that we have today. Tell people that these are brilliant and they will be brilliant…”
More to the point it all brings us neatly onto the sport’s biggest one of those elephants in the room mentioned; one that’s been lingering for years without it being dealt with. That of the sport’s cost crisis and its ridiculously skewed financial distribution.
We head into a new season with the smallest grid since 1967, Force India’s recent problems have been conspicuous and it seems impossible to think that Lotus and Sauber’s problems have gone away. Manor’s return still is a matter hanging in the balance. Which leaves but six teams only with secure existences seemingly. You’d think this matter is the one more deserving of the urgency and focus. But, as I said, F1 is dysfunctional.
