As a million memes these days have it: well, that escalated quickly.
Bernie Ecclestone’s F1 dominance was, after near enough half a century, ended in a stroke it seemed. Likely his days were numbered from the point that Liberty Media took over the sport’s commercial rights late last summer; perhaps you can trace it back further to various other things. Yet in the event BCE’s preponderance had concluded as Ernest Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy: “gradually, then suddenly”.
And in the short time since it was confirmed the sport’s commentariat have been like kids in a sweet shop, constantly identifying the next F1 problem that we’ll now at last be free to solve. It reflects that, for all that what Bernie for the sport did cannot at all be underestimated, he left it also with a number of conspicuous avenues to proceed much further into.
But there is one jar of sweets that we need to gobble before all the others – that of the quality of the racing. That modern F1 racing cars very rarely actually race each other (without gimmickry at any stretch), due to the lingering matter of ‘dirty air’ not letting them follow closely through corners and therefore have a reasonable chance of passing on the following straight. One suspects that if that is got right then plenty of the other problems that are cited – real though they are – will likely seem less pressing.
Modern F1 racing cars very rarely actually race each other (without gimmickry at any stretch), due to the lingering matter of ‘dirty air’. One suspects that if that is got right then plenty of the other problems that are cited – real though they are – will likely seem less pressing
Of course, F1 remains F1. Signed contracts remain signed contracts; many of them are long-term too. F1 governance remains slow and creaking, and self-interest among the protagonists will not disappear either. All this means things in any area are unlikely to change overnight. But that in itself may, in a way, not be such a bad thing.
This was outlined by no less a figure than Ross Brawn. The man who as part of the post-Bernie shake-up is F1’s new managing director for the sporting side. The man whose presence ensures that the sport’s leap into the new seems a lot less daunting than it might have otherwise.
Talking about the sport’s new aerodynamic regulations and tyre widths brought in for this season, and on any decisions taken in response to how these new regs go down in Melbourne in March, Brawn said: “I don’t want any of these things to happen in a knee jerk manner for the next year because that will disadvantage somebody and we don’t want to do that. We want to have changes planned over a long enough time that nobody feels they are disadvantaged and so they can join in the process and support it.”
Fortunately too Brawn eschewed the overtaking gimmickry we’ve mentioned in solving the problem. Such gimmickry was but sticking plaster, and while it allowed overtaking numbers to sky rocket its effect ultimately has become corrosive.
“I’m not a great fan of DRS if I’m honest” Brawn went on. “It artificially solved a problem that we didn’t want to tackle head on. It doesn’t have the quality or merit of a full-on overtaking manoeuvre, the fact that you can press a button and get past almost means we never see those full-on [overtaking manoeuvres]. We don’t know when something has been a really quality overtake because they are all button-induced now.”
I don’t want any of these things to happen in a knee jerk manner – Ross Brawn
According to the numbers there was a sharp increase in overtaking in the 2016 season from the campaign before, resulting in one of the highest annual totals ever, but it demonstrates merely the importance of getting context to go with your stats. Few fans had their heartbeats quickened by what they were watching.
Brawn’s warning of the knee jerk is apposite, as many fear that the mentioned changes for this year were made rather in haste. That they were framed a mere 18 months after F1 made likely its most radical shift in technical regs ever suggests this was so, as does that when it comes to the quality of the racing the consensus is that the change will be at best useless. Maybe it will be worse than useless.
The banner headline of the new way when it was conceptualised in 2015 was that F1 cars would be quicker – the figure of five seconds a lap was banded around liberally – with those framing things taking the odd view that this should be an aim in of itself for the rule-makers. They likely were panicked by complaints at the time about there not being a sufficient pace gap between F1 and GP2.
But as Martin Brundle outlined during this latest off-season, this is at best a secondary issue.
“A question I ask all over the world is, ‘How much slower than a top F1 driver is Valentino Rossi around Silverstone or Barcelona?’” said Brundle. “People say, ‘Three seconds? Five seconds? Ten? And you say no, half a minute! People can’t believe it, but it’s true.
“Half a minute a lap slower than F1 – but they [MotoGP bikes] look bloody amazing. Speed is not the issue…”
Worse though was how that fall in lap time for 2017 is to be achieved. “Significantly increased aerodynamic downforce” said the prospectus. That same aerodynamic downforce assumed invariably as the bête noire to wheel-to-wheel racing.
The paddock is full of amateur aerodynamicists, and actually when you get into the experimentation you find that things were not actually as you expected – Paddy Lowe
For many of the sport’s observers the means of getting cars to race each other seems glaring. Reduce the downforce and, perhaps while you’re at it, allow more grip to come from the car’s underside rather than the top surfaces. Simples.
It may not be simple though. That we’ve gone so long without landing on a solution to the sport’s ‘dirty air’ problem – it’s been really pressing for upwards of two decades – should indicate that the answers aren’t easy, even allowing for the sport’s habitual dysfunction and vested interest.
More pointedly as Dario Franchitti noted not so long ago cars with tiny wings may struggle more in another’s turbulence, as they become highly dependent on the small amount of aero downforce they can muster.
“I drove the Champ Car with the speedway wings on, I think it was 2001-2002,” he said, “and because they had limited downforce, if you were leading [and] had clear air, great. As soon as you got behind, running a second a lap quicker around a short oval, you just couldn’t get close because your car was so reliant on any fraction of downforce. So you have to be careful of that…Any car in the last 20, 30 years has had some [downforce], so when they say ‘take all the downforce away’ you’d have to take everything away.”
Paddy Lowe too has explained that when on the sport’s previous Overtaking Working Group (OWG), that fed into the 2009 regs, they discovered that of all of the possible changes that they looked at for the rear wing to reduce the negative impact of the wake on a car behind, removing the rear wing altogether was in fact was one the least effective solutions.
We can reflect in this ilk that at Monza (and before that at the old Hockenheim) where wing levels are shallow F1 races haven’t suddenly become overtaking-fests.
“The paddock is full of amateur aerodynamicists, amateur overtaking experts and car wake experts”, Lowe said, “and actually when you get into the experimentation you find that things were not actually as you expected.” Lowe added that the OWG’s work around ground effect also suggested that was far from the panacea that often is suggested.
We will move into new regulations without enough thought going into them. Many of the holistic technical regulations are done, in my opinion, without enough research behind them – Pat Symonds
Pat Symonds late last year got to the crux of this matter however. That F1 despite everything simply does a lot of these things blind, and doesn't take the time to properly investigate changes.
“It’s a true generalisation [that more aero means less overtaking],” he said. “[But] no one knows [whether the new regs will aid overtaking] and that’s one of the very unfortunate things about Formula One.
“We will move into new regulations without enough thought going into them. Sometimes it doesn’t need a great deal of thought, sometimes – for example with the safety regulations – a great deal of work goes in before they’re written. But many of the sporting and, shall we say, the holistic technical regulations are done, in my opinion, without enough research behind them.
“The trouble is there’s no mechanism for that so when you say ‘ok, is a 2017 car going to be easier to overtake with?’ well no one knows. It’s a shame because I think with a sport like we have, a global sport, a sport that has an awful lot of cash in it, we really should be setting up something that does research these things and gives us a much more long term view, particularly this year it’s been very knee jerk in a lot of regulation changes we’ve done.”
But judging by Brawn’s words after taking on his new role, it seems the sport is minded to change on this one.
“One of the things I want to do within FOM is to create the capacity to study those things,” Brawn said. “FOM’s never had that capacity and has always had to take the opinions given to it by other parties.
One of the things I want to do within FOM is to create the capacity to study those things. FOM’s never had that capacity and has always had to take the opinions given to it by other parties – Ross Brawn
“The FIA do a little bit of that, but what I would like to do is create a small group of people within FOM that have the experience and the knowledge to look at those problems and those challenges so that we have our own opinion on what could be the solution.
“We would work with the teams and the FIA of course, but we would also have some knowledge ourselves.”
‘Yes, but we’ve been here before’, some of you may be stating at this point. And you’d be right. One indeed can go back and flick through the Autocourse annual from 1996 and find an item stating haughtily that some or other think-tank to get overtaking back into F1 was to be created. Not sure what the fruits of that actually were.
Then we have not least those 2009 regulations based on the work of the OWG that we’ve cited, which, going by the fact this article exists at all, didn’t resolve the problem. Lowe has insisted though that those 2009 regs broadly achieved the OWG’s aims, albeit were scuppered somewhat by the double diffuser loophole being discovered and then were rather cloaked by the splurge of overtaking-but-not-as-nature intended brought about by DRS and gumball Pirelli tyres. In any case, Lowe recently added that “we are at that point in the aerodynamic cycle where it is time for a reset and to go back down to a fresh lower level of downforce, as we have done over the last 20 years.
"We have periodically reset the aero to stay within a certain window and at the moment we are at a historic highs of downforce, so it would be time to go lower and that would give a benefit in car following.”
And yes for the reasons given – that it hasn’t been resolved after decades of trying; that it’s not nearly as straightforward to solve as many suggest – the answers will not necessarily be simple as stated. But at least now it seems F1 is giving itself the best chance of finding them.
