Fixing F1
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010So this weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix was an utter borefest. If the prospect of several new teams, a bigger field than we’ve seen for many years, a ban on refuelling, a new points system and the return of a certain former champion didn’t get you excited, then it was probably just as well; at least you wouldn’t have found the race too anti-climactic.
The problem with the race was that there wasn’t really any racing. In forty-nine laps there wasn’t a single overtaking move of note. The teams – those which weren’t embarrassingly slow – trundled around as cautiously as they possibly could without going backwards, in an attempt to save their tyres and to get through the race with one pit stop.
To everybody but Bernie and the FIA, this was surely an entirely predictable result of banning refuelling but not tyre changes in the current climate. As soon as the teams established that the Bridgestone rubber was fairly durable, a one-stop snoreathon was always going to be on the cards. If it takes thirty seconds to make an extra pit stop, it’s worthwhile to run one second per lap slower for twenty-five laps. Not only did this hilariously conservative approach actually prove to be optimal strategy, but it gave the cars and the drivers an easier time of it. Running a second slower means fewer mistakes, fewer mechanical failures and longer-lasting engines.
Admittedly, it isn’t much of a spectacle. But when you see figures such as McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh lamenting the lack of action in the race, you should probably take their comments with more pinches of salt than you could get in a 2010 fuel tank. These guys are in it to win. The more variables they can eliminate from their afternoon, the less harum-scarum the race is, the better. They like a quiet race.
But – I hear you say – surely the winning strategy can’t possibly be one which precludes any possibility of overtaking? (Unless you’re on pole position, anyway!) Well, you’ve hit upon the central problem, of which conservative race strategies are merely a symptom. The problem is that overtaking is scarcely possible in today’s Formula One. This desperate situation points to issues with the FIA technical regulations which govern the cars, and with the very nature of the new breed of circuits. Both are in need of dire rectification if F1 is to maintain its position as the pinnacle of motorsport in an era which has already seen wide-ranging cutbacks and the replacement of well-supported manufacturer teams such as BMW and Toyota with a bunch of opportunist concerns in which the finances are hand-to-mouth and the pace is frankly embarrassing.
Firstly, the cars. The fundamental issue with today’s cars is that they have too much grip which is aerodynamically generated (downforce), and insufficient mechanical grip. These are the two means by which a racing car adheres to the track surface. Aerodynamic grip exploits the same principles which allow an aircraft to take off, but reverses them: the car’s front and rear wings, sidepods and other aspects of the bodywork channel air around the car, so that air flows over it faster than under it. This creates an imbalance in air pressure which ‘pushes’ the car downward onto the circuit. Designers have got this down to such an art that a modern F1 car moving at 120mph could supposedly drive across the ceiling without falling off. Mechanical grip, on the other hand, is generated the old-fashioned way: through the car’s suspension geometry, centre of gravity and through the qualities of the tyres themselves.
In an engaging racing series, mechanical grip should be dominant over aerodynamic grip. Not only does the level of aerodynamic grip increase exponentially with the speed of the car, but it’s also highly susceptible to disruptions in the air around the car which stop the chassis from working as the designer intended. The latter is a particular problem, because the function of aerodynamic devices is to disrupt airflow in a particular fashion. What is beneficial for the lead car is a big problem for anybody following, who encounters a turbulent current of air which reduces the car’s adhesion. (And air which has been passed over a wing behaves unpredictably, reducing the confidence of the driver who meets it. If you’ve ever been on a plane which has had to wait an amount of time to use a runway after the previous aircraft has vacated it, the danger posed by these unpredictable air currents is the reason.)
The rule-makers, then, need to find a way to reduce the level of aerodynamic downforce in relation to mechanical grip. Mechanical grip is pretty predictable and isn’t significantly affected by the car in front; the preponderance of mechanical grip would thus promote overtaking and make races more interesting. If you think this sounds like a no-brainer, you’re probably right. But the FIA apparently doesn’t – especially because the most significant technical rule change of the last decade acted to reduce mechanical grip. I’m talking about the replacement of slick tyres with grooved ones in 1998, which has now (mercifully) been reversed. With the aerodynamic problem already evident, reducing the surface area of the tyre and thus its ability to grip the road surface was a revealingly clueless move. If the FIA wanted to reduce the speed of the cars, they should have drastically simplified the front and rear wings and regulated the usage of the sidepods for aerodynamic purposes. By changing the tyres in a fashion which reduced mechanical grip, they forced the teams to compensate through aerodynamic innovation. The front-runners were so effective in doing this that lap times didn’t actually get any slower. But it was somewhere around this time that overtaking manoeuvres became an endangered species. The FIA encouraged this through its myopic rule changes, and needs to accept responsibility. It isn’t too late.
As I suggested earlier, the second problem is the circuits. Any follower of the sport will not have missed Bernie’s baffling vendetta against Silverstone over the last few years. The story goes that the facilities for the teams and for the fans, in comparison to new circuits such as Bahrain, are hopelessly inadequate. And this may well be the case – but it turns out that the prospect of abandoning your car three miles from the circuit and wallowing through a mudbath to get to the venue, before making a modest pilgrimage to procure some overpriced food to sustain you for the two hours it takes to get past Towcester on the way home is actually part of the fun of Silverstone – and more importantly, it’s a price worth paying to see some compelling racing. In Bahrain, in contrast, those nastily clinical new grandstands are perennially half full – and it isn’t just because Bernie takes F1 where the money goes, rather than to countries whose cultural heritage features motor racing (hence why there’s a Grand Prix in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, but not in the United States, and only just at Spa.) The bigger problem is that the circuits are boring. They’re too narrow, they have enormous tarmac run-off areas and all the corners are really generic; the result is no overtaking and no spectacle. At the vintage venues like Silverstone and Interlagos, you might come away with trench foot, but at least you’ll have seen two cars alongside each other outside of the starting grid and parc fermé. The man responsible for the Bahrain track, as well as for the soporific Valencia Circuit and for Abu Dhabi, goes by the name of Hermann Tilke. This gentleman needs to be glued into this year’s ramshackle Hispania Racing car and made to complete a thousand laps of one of his abominable creations with Jonathan Legard’s awful commentary ringing in his ears. Perhaps it would encourage him to find another profession.
This is an issue which isn’t easily solved, at least in the short-term. The car problem is easily solved. The FIA needs to speak to a range of people who actually have experience driving Formula One cars, and enlist their help in drafting a new set of regulations which drastically reduce downforce and enhance mechanical adhesion. As I have suggested, simplifying wings (perhaps prohibiting the use of more than one or two horizontal surfaces) would be a productive starting point. Subsequently, an exhaustive test session should be carried out under the proposed rules (preferably one that’s not at Valencia) in order to establish that things are heading in the right direction, before the rules are set in stone and we’re subject to another year of excruciatingly processional ‘racing’.
And when the rules are set in stone, they should remain so for at least a decade. The current fashion of modifying the regulations and points allocations every year doesn’t only demonstrate the incompetence of the FIA; it also serves to confuse casual fans, who eventually lose interest. The same applies to the raft of ridiculously contrived race regulations which exist for no purpose other than to patch over the overtaking problem. The requirement to use both soft and hard tyres in the course of the race is currently the main culprit; it’s illogical, it’s confusing and it’s of dubious benefit. The same applies to last year’s KERS debacle, to the need to start the race on qualifying fuel/tyres and to Christian Horner’s latest proposal that two pit stops be mandatory. Rectify the aerodynamic obsession and you remove the requirement for these artificial rules.
I still love Formula One. But when Michael Schumacher finds a race boring, something is seriously wrong.