Fans-eye F1 2021

I write this as someone who watches every race and qualifying session live and who still wants to see the sport offer up more than it currently does. Before I offer my opinions on a sport I've watched for over 40 years, some of what I've actually witnessed below:

• Williams' 1st (and every subsequent) title with Alan Jones (I liked Jonesy)

  

  1991

• Senna's 1st race and all his races & titles
• 1988 when the MP4/4 won 15 / 16 races
• The Prost / Senna rivalry 
• Honda dominating
• Williams un-retiring Nigel and the hugely dominant FW14B
• Renault's V10 dominating in the Benetton and Williams
• Williams 96 & 97's dominant car For Damon and Jacques
• V12's, V10's, V8's, turbo's, N/A and now V6 Hybrids
• McLaren Mercedes
• Ferrari/Schumacher/Todt/Brawn/Byrne and the 5-on-the-bounce 

  

  THAT rivalry 

• Michelin dominating
• Grooved tyres (what a mess)
• Refuelling stops
• 2.4 V8's

Alan Jones 

So, in my years of watching I've seen a lot of teams, engines and drivers grab the limelight and run off with the titles.  But, in all those years, with the possible exception of 88 & 92, the chasing teams were closer, they had more of a chance of taking 'scraps'when the lead team didn't win.  This season in particular, or since the introduction of the V6 Hybrid, Mercedes dominance has been crushing.  Their speed in qualifying, their race pace and their reliability has destroyed any competition from the sport, albeit Ferrari had more of a go at it last year but somehow manged to shoot themselves in both Italian loafers as only they can.

THE most dominant car in F1 ever

I do NOT subscribe to the current Playstation thinking that F1 has to be about overtaking.  Some of the best races I've seen have been with Driver A defending successfully from a faster driver B.  A famous example of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT6VkYUFSzw 

So, the 2021 rules and if I were able to have any influence, these would be my suggestions:

• Change the weekend format:  As someone who has attended over 80 Grand Prix, I no longer attend the Friday practice sessions, they are meaningless/pointless.  I'll revisit what to do on Friday's a little later as it is a complicated but workable solution.  
• Change the cars: The new blueprint looks about right, in fairness to Mr Brawn, he will know significantly more about aero and how to make one car follow another a lot better than I.



Why don't F1 cars look like this??

• Drop DRS: Overtaking for overtaking's sake is not why I watch F1, driver A should NOT be able to pass driver B with a 20km speed advantage on the straight. I'd much rather see driver A have to really work on passing into a braking zone over a number of laps, this is what keeps you on the edge of your seat; it is watching the chase, the hunt and then the pounce. With the new aero on the cars I am hopeful this will indeed happen.

• Engines: I do not fully understand why the sport was forced  to capitulate to the engine manufacturers in 2013, I presume there was some internal reason I am unaware of. So, now the new owners have a clean slate opportunity, they must wrestle control back from them, in my opinion the sport is in its current depleted state largely due to fans losing interest in one team dominating like no other and an uninspiring track-side experience.  My 1st GP at Stowe corner in 1999 I can still recall the visceral sensations of the cars, Monaco 03 my rib cage vibrating as I watched

  

  F1 Hybrid 

  from the side terrace of the Café de Paris, and now we have a low decibel and actually unappealing V6 hybrid format.  Ask any car nut about a car which they aspire to own and none of them will feature a 1.6 engine.  Make the engines far less complex and a lot cheaper for the non-works teams.  And, if it isn't already in the statute books, when the engine manufacturer finds an upgrade they can only introduce it to every engine on the grid.  Engine manufacturers should also be compelled to supply at least one other team in addition to their own and at a set price. (EG Renualt, Honda, Mercedes & Ferrari agree a price of $x.xx per unit with the customer team giving their engine partner a prominent decal/ branding on the car engine cover)  I firmly believe the teams would be AOK to be renamed "Haas Ferrari" / "Williams Mercedes" and so on if they could get the engines for a reasonable cost.
• Tyres: Allow as many tyre manufacturers into the sport as want to be in it.  If Michelin/Goodyear/Firestone/Continental want to come and supply even one team, let them! I recall vividly Budapest in 1997 with Damon Hill in the Bridgestone shod Arrows almost winning because of his tyre advantage. From memory, tell me the last time F1 had an 'unexpected winner'? (Hint, he is a Venezuelan who crashed a lot)  Also, tyres
  
  should not be manufactured to degrade, they should be able to last an entire Grand Prix should the driver wish to do a full race on one set, however, changing onto a new tyre should be worth at least one second per lap.  This is surely doable with a really sticky tyre which loses around 3 to 4 tenths per lap in performance for the 1st 20 laps or so then it balances out to a 'race pace'.  This could and should lead to more strategy calls of: 0/1/2/3 stops depending on circuit and would again lead to driver B hunting down driver A for position on fresher rubber, potentially offering a grandstand end to a GP.
• Fridays: Before I delve into this one, it is the most radical but also the most sensible to attract new fans and I shall cite Holland as my example.  Before Max Verstappen's rise, Dutch fans were into F1 in a modest way, now we have seas of orange at all the European GP and indeed we're going back to Zandvoort. Why?  Because Max has captured a nations interest.  So, what that demonstrates is new drivers actually help bring new fans to the sport, or they offer the disaffected a reason to come back.  On Friday's the teams can only run a 3rd rookie driver in FP1 with the input of the 2 'lead drivers'.  This  is a longish one, bear with me:   
• Driver 3: Must be a rookie to F1, never having driven an F1 car before.  Every team must bring a 3rd car and driver, this car may be liveried differently to the 2 main race cars allowing individual sponsorship for the driver.  Not massively different, ergo the colour scheme of the main team should remain but the livery can change to accommodate new sponsor logos. Fridays the 2 main drivers and the Rookie work on race set up in FP1 together.  In FP2 all drivers take to track and the rookies use this session to qualify at the end of the full session. (1.5 hours practice for all with 30 mins qualifying / 10 rookie cars immediately after FP2.)

  

  Leclerc, Albon & Russel

• Rookie race on Saturday with 10 rookies in their own car just before main F1 qualifying, F1 qualifying is pushed back by one hour to accommodate.
• Rookie's also qualify for the main Grand Prix with a 1.5 hour qualifying session as per the current format for all 30 cars. 
• Driver 3 can only be contracted to a team for a maximum of 2 seasons.  At the end of season 2 they must either sign the driver to the main team or allow him to move to another team.  The team can promote rookie to main team and he will then score championship points at any part of the season but cannot then swap driver 3 back to rookie status.
• Rookies DO NOT score championship points for main F1 only for their own title, they score the same points for sprint race and feature race.  EG: Driver 1 finishes 1st in Rookie race = 25 points, he finishes 4th on track at main F1 race (but 1st of all the rookies) he scores a further 25 points.  There is a "rookie championship" and "rookie of the year" ceremony at the end of the season.
• Rookie podium takes place just after main F1 podium.

  

  Karting days for two of F1's top drivers

• Teams cannot use rookie car in the event of a failure of main team car, rookie must participate in both races or their results from race 1 are cancelled out.  In the event of a crash in race 1, teams can rebuild car overnight with driver 3 starting at back of the grid.  (Imagine a couple of years ago having a Lando and a Leclerc starting 29th & 30th in a  3rd McLaren & 3rd Ferrari and the spark that could bring)

• Governance: Teams have no say in how the rules are made, how the rules are changes, which circuits they visit or how the prize money is divvied up.  They have input into the engine direction but not the final say. The sole responsibility of running F1 falls to FOM and FIA. Whilst on the money, F1 should distribute more evenly and award more cash per point scored, so the larger teams still have a cash advantage but the starting point for each team is the same.
• TV: F1 should return to terrestrial television with adverts as per the ITV deal of the 90's. Non-advert driven F1 is the sole domain of pay-tv.  Qualifying for F1 and the F1 race are the only live aspects for terrestrial with all other sessions / support races being shown exclusively by pay tv companies. 
• Race attendance: This is a tough one as all the races I've been to have been by-and-large excellent.  There are those who would open up the sport a little more but I don't think that is necessary.  You don't get to meet the team or run around the pitch at a soccer match, you don't get into the changing rooms at athletics so I think the balance of exclusivity they have right.  The sport

  

  Empty stands worldwide 

  needs glamour, albeit a lot of the hangers-on I see on the grid of an F1 event I barely recognise.  Tickets 'could' be cheaper but I don't think the cost is the prohibiting factor in keeping people away, I believe it is the lack of competition and getting value. The new owners are visibly putting more effort into the fan experience but they should not hog all the nice extras for their own gain (their own travel company) but give a small 'pre sale' selection to the general public too. (Pitlane walks, track tours, hotlaps etc)  Looking at the empty stands all around the world, just tinkering with the cars won't do it, F1 must be more radical. 
• Penalties: Make the penalty for an engine change championship point based.  Deduct x points for a gearbox, deduct xx points for an engine and stop these ludicrous grid penalties.  If team A has no points and they change a gearbox on the back of the grid, does anyone even care?
• Make F1 sexy again: Tree hugging engines, no grid girls, cotton wool drivers not allowed to

Why ??

say anything controversial for fear of a backlash from their paymaster sponsors, circuits with acres of run off (fill them ALL with gravel!), all the PC bull that bores us in everyday life is NOT F1 and neither should it be part of it, sport is escapism not real life.  There is far too much PC which has crept into F1, and I know most fans yearn for it to return to being a sexy sport.  It must as a base feature gladiators, it should have sex appeal, it should have danger and it begging for some characters.  Think of Hunt's smoking/drinking antics, think of Ayrton's outrageous remarks about his competitors, think Nigel's incessant drama or Schumacher's almost cartoon villan  ruthlessness.  Lately we have Alonso's radio outbursts....and ....erm.....a whole load of beige with a dessert of vanilla.  Danny Ric is doing his best to make the paddock a

Breakfast of champions....

fun place, Lewis does his social media thing....but.....where are the characters?  F1 is crying out for real characters again, make them interesting and make them gladiatorial.  If Verstappen wants to shove Ocon for a bonehead move (and there is no doubt that's exactly what it was!) then let him?  Don't penalise him for showing some actual passion.  If Vettel wants to bawl / shout / swear on the radio, let him! This is not namby-pamby-Sunday driving, this is, or it should be Formula One motor racing where gladiators come to do battle with each other in the fastest, sexiest and most dangerous cars on the planet.  As it is, it is almost like a heavyweight boxing match where each fighter has to be nice to each other or the ref will award the round against him for wanting to beat the other human.  F1 to a large degree has been dehumanised, it has gone too far toward corporate and the fans are left scratching their heads and turning off their televisions.  Worse still, they aren't attending, they aren't engaging with the sport and there is no real vision as to how to make it better. Safety is not to be compromised but when a driver makes a mistake he should be punished, simple as that.  Oh, and whilst we're at it, wouldn't it be loads easier to detect which driver was which with their halo painted the same colour as their T-bar camera? Why are these no-brainers only seen by those not in the inner-sanctum of F1??

• Refueling: NO.  100% NO.  NO.  It was garbage when it was reintroduced leading to pitstop passing, anything which aids artificial results (chewing gum tyres, DRS, refueling) should be stopped forthwith.  I recall with horror driver B cruising up being driver A and waiting and waiting for the pitstop to make the pass in the pitlane.  I don't mind pitlane passing now and again (Versappen / Leclerc Silverstone was fantastic) but not every single time.

So, there are my thoughts on fixing the current state of F1.  I have been bored to the point of falling asleep this season (France) and until Austria was genuinely in a slight state of panic. I work on the fringes of F1 and I happen to know as fact that the biggest event of the F1 season in Monaco was not well attended, and I mean really not well attended.  I've saw empty stands in Japan when a few short years ago I couldn't get a ticket, Singapore's disappearing or shrinking grandstands and the TV figures are dire - by any standards.  A radical rethink on the sport and drivers from countries currently not fielding drivers: The obvious USA, we have no Brazilian drivers, no Asian drivers (albeit Alex Albon is flying the flag for Thailand) no South Africans and only one driver of colour.  There are loads of other talented drivers out there, my 'radical' Friday / Rookie solution covers off a lot of F1's current issues and would reinvigorate fans from country's currently not interested in F1 to tune in if their driver is making an impact.  Look at Silverstone last weekend or any stand within 400 km of Holland.