My Problem with Modern F1

[keto95]

I hear that F1 is looking at a race at Zandvoort

Although Zandvoort is a great and characteristic track, it's totally unsuitable for modern F1. Only the S/F straight is possible to overtake, the rest of the track will be a 'following parade'.

Aragon is superb.

For MotoGP yes, but not for F1 imo.

 

[JusTiCe8]

IMHO, the main issue in modern motorsports, not only F1 is the huge pile of bucks and gold bars involved, teams doesn't care about true competition and sport, there only care about getting more and more $$$, that's why team orders are even allowed in the first place, despite being against the root of the competition.

Federations and shows owners (like Dorna for MotoGP) are first to blame, with "stutterish" regulations year after year because they're horrified about not earning as much as they plan. ACO just kill their own LeMans race, what's the point of having one or two teams at best able to fight for the overall win ? Nostalgia is what it is but back in group C and GT1 era, how many teams and cars were capable of winning ?
How many now ?

MotoGP is even worth, and commentators doing their job so badly (does they really know what they're talking about ? What the point of filling time with gossips), since many years, bikes have to be build around tyres, that's explain why they're all the same (Ducati with a V4, what a "betrayal" since the brand has made it's name over the big winning twin).
I bet the same happen in F1 and other single tyre manufacturer championships.

(Note: it's not exactly similar but Porsche never copy others and keep its very own rear-engine design and keep winning races, strange no other manufacturer have ever tried AFAIK, in WSBK, Honda was quite pushed to try the twin with the VTR before rules change, again)

There are also many "hidden clues" like in the great and so fair GT racing by SRO with the so great FIA BOP, manufacturers provide optional parts (most probably expensive, just to get a few ms better than the one who don't buy them), authorized by regulations, but only top teams can afford them, so the super fair racing display a few teams and drivers on top, the other are just there for the scenery, they didn't stand a single chance to win unless some almost impossible events happened and shake all the grid upside-down.

As a conclusion, F1 died in early 90s IMHO, turning from (quite)Fun-1 to Formula-(super)Boring.

 

[Sky]

i bet back in the good old days the people moaned that these new full faced helmets meant you couldn't see the drivers faces anymore and how rear engined cars were a fad and how sponsors replacing national colours was awful.

i don't particularly like f1 nowadays, but some people are rose-tinted to the point of blindness.

 

[Terry Rock]

Words like 'show' 'green' 'DRS'...these are what is wrong with modern F1.
Sport has to be about sport.
Management needs to be about management.
Its okay to have a bit of both. It just cannot be the number one priority on Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately, that is what we now have.
F1 has always been a business, complete with team orders, etc...
The difference is, we now have more incite and information to judge.

 

[Turk]

The problem when it comes to F1 development is the engineers pushed the envelope in the past and now there's nothing new to do. They will never have development like they did last century. It's just not possible, the major and minor advancements have been made and there's literally nowhere left to go.

People have got to get over the fact the past is the past, life has moved on, and we can't go in reverse, we can't forget what we know, that period of time is over and it's not coming back. Just like America in the 1950s isn't coming back and Britain isn't getting it's empire back.

The question should be how can we make the borderline magic technology we have today work as an exciting sport.

Celebrity is a joke, but it's the fans treat people like gods that are to blame there.

 

[Rodent]

Problem solved.... just watch Indycar, though all you folks in Europe will have to stay up a bit late, but it's worth it. It addresses almost all your dislikes of F1.
Cheers

Quite, Indy and IMSA have both been knocking it out of the park lately and are really easy series to follow via their Youtube channels etc, and it's about to get even easier here in Sweden with Rosenqvist signing on with Ganassi. We're all rooting for another Kenny Bräck.

F1 being "free" hasn't been true for a lot longer than F1s decline, the fan car, ground effects, active suspension and more all came and went during eras most of us would not view as years F1 were in a slump. For me it's a combination of the technology available has not translated into as exciting cars to watch/listen to, and the Tilkedromes replacing classic venues making the problem even worse. Indy brings technology better suited for an exciting race for the spectator, and classic race venues I want to see who wins at. I care who wins the Indy 500, I don't care who wins at Baku.

Oh wow this got ranty...

 

[Andrew Harper]

Ok, this is a tough one in some ways. As other have mentioned it's difficult not to take a rose tinted point of view when "looking back" at what you felt made F1 great.

I think my desire would be to get variety back into F1 again. Different engines, different tyre manufacturers, different styles of circuit (a street circuit should be as bumpy as hell not like a billiard table). That's what I miss. If I take Indycar as an example. They travel to a wide variety of style of circuits and that's what keeps me interested.

As much as I like tech, get away from hybrids. Get back to a simpler engine that can be customer made (and allow new teams to buy off the shelf and get racing). Get the costs down and get more teams back into F1 again. The manufacturers dominate both the series and the rules too much.

As far as access goes, I think more access would be better, nice long autograph sessions, something as simple as that would be great for paying visitors. I don't think open paddock is a good idea. I attended the WEC event when Jenson and Fernando were at Silverstone and they were just mobbed, pushed and it was utter madness and on occasion turned very nasty. You wouldn't want that in a F1 paddock area, a more controlled situation would be better. Although I admit it goes both ways, respect from those who are waiting as well as those meeting their fans.

As far as the cars go, well they are just designed around the regulations and yes they are ugly as hell but that's just the way it goes.

I tend to follow IMSA, WEC, Blancpain, because I love the technology, the variety, to see smiling drivers again! lol. Sometimes you have bad races and sometimes you have good ones, just the way it is. F1 for some reason has just become stale and I don't enjoy it as much as did. A shame.

 

[XCalinX]

I honestly think F1 is just as good as it was before. The only things that really bug me about modern F1 are the Mercedes dominance and the gap between the top 3 teams and the rest of the grid, but I can't point the finger at anyone for that.
But kudos to you for not crying about the V6s and the Halo like most "fans" do.

 

[Kaygeeoh]

I am 38 years old and have had a on/off relationship with f1 since Schumakers 5 on a trot. I dont have any feelings of nostalgia, so i dont really care or get hung up on what was. I have accepted that this is where we are, sometimes we have good races, sometime we have bad/boring, but it is what it is.

One thing i dont understand is that some people will complain about lack of personality in the drivers, and yet when Hamilton lives and behaves like a modern rock star we admonish him. For me this is the reason i like Alonso, Hamilton and Ricciardo, who seem to genuinely enjoy life, and Kimi, who doesn't suffer fools lightly. These are multidimensional athletes who seem to have something other than racing in their lives.

 

[2112]

F1 fans moan about the sport more than Brits about the weather.

Come on, have a look back at the recent seasons: 2014 was fantastic, 2016 was even better, 2017 was very good and this year is great too. This sport is as good as the 80s in spite of all the changes.

You are missing the point. F1 was a colorful event every race in which fans could walk among, and meet their favorite drivers and cars. The drivers where characters, each with his own colorful personality, and each driver seemed to make an effort to live up to our expectations about how he should act on the track and off.

Now days all the drivers and the cars seems so much alike: Canned answers to questions, team principals talking for the drivers, no real contact with the drivers except from behind a barrier, every car looks like the other, the noise is all the same, the tracks antiseptic compared to back in the day, etc...

As a fan since the 70's I can say that this sport is nowhere near as good as back then. Sure, there were only a few teams that won, just as today, but you could find as many followers of Arrows, Theodore, ATS, Rebaque, etc... as you would find of Ferrari, Lotus, McLaren.

The sport was much more colorful back then.

Drivers like Hamilton, Vettel, Raikkonen or Alonso have as much talent and personnality as their greatest predecessors. And others will follow in a few years time.

The talent is as good or better, but the personalities now days pale in comparison to when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Hunt would have been drummed out of F1 before he had a chance to win if he raced today.

The best personality these days is Raikkonen because he does not seem to care about what others think of him. He would have been a boring driver back then as they all had personality and were not afraid to speak out or act out.

By the way, those guys wear helmets that already are classics. How can you talk about lack of personality with striking designs like those of, for example, Hulk, Sainz, Magnussen, Hamilton or Vettel?

Those designs you laud are merely hash that are all look-alike color schemes that are covered with sponsor decals. Everyone knew who Mario, Piquet, Stewart, Lauda, ect... was because they never changed their helmet design. They had small sponsor decals but the helmet never changed much. Now helmet designs reflect nothing more than another blank space to stick a sponsor decal.

Now, please excuse me while I go out on my lawn to shout at clouds.

 

[cristianoid]

Grande texto, compartilho do mesmo sentimento de indignação e saudosismo de épocas onde a F1 era real. Meu desejo é que os carros tivessem uma mecânica muito mais simples e tivessem painel analógicos, sem tanta informática embarcada.

 

[Damage Inc]

For MotoGP yes, but not for F1 imo.

It's not just MGP that uses Aragon. Even so that's my point. Tilke CAN design good tracks. It's the F1 "requirements" to have stop start corners and DRS zones that are crap.

 

[Jose Borges]

V10's era was the best era for me. But, i was a 10 to 20 year old when those cars were around. It's the time i remember i loved cars no matter what, and the battles between mika and schumi were something on the next school day we'd be debating. We were enthusiastic for racing because it also was on a public channel.
Fans of f1 are getting older, kids have zero interest, and us, the ones that saw amazing racing in a time of great engines miss those days. I remember Alan McNish complaining about people complaining... He said "no one seems to remember that the turbo era meant some of the cars in the field didnt even finish qually and lost 4 secs a lap for the front runners on race day". So was racing that good back then? Or were we more enthusiastic about it?

It has evolved to the current smartphone era... those cars are extremely smart and fuel efficient. We live in the era of efficiency not total waste of resources.
I think they're not loud and thats a big flaw but i dont think they're not good looking. The halo is a safety measure and Senna would be around it his car had one. We have to live with it and it is there to avoid accidents and beheading haha
I would prefer changing the format of racing than the cars themselves.
Why dont they make the 300km in 2 races? Reversed grids? Maybe a qually race like the blancpain champ? Add weight to the front runner? Add a joker lap? There are so many alternatives... 1 lap qually, etc. Why dont they change the format every 2 rounds?
OFC any change the administrative side proposes will be scrutinated by the teams and under voting they'll do whats est for their teams... or threaten the board with a full removal of their manufacturer.

Thats why i basically oinly watch v8 supercars and even there interests play a big role.

 

[69Harder]

For me F1 is dead since the 80-90s !

It's like:

First corner
Pit stop
End

 

[Haiden773]

Jesus... The whining never stops. All things evolve. Nothing stays the same, and unless you own or run it, it's not your call, and no one cares if you don't like the new direction. When I stop liking something, I walk away and go engage with something I do like, instead of whining about what someone else is doing with their property. Not everyone hates modern F1. Some people revere the old days, while still enjoying the modern era. Many of the complaints are just dumb. The old school specs gave teams more latitude, sure. But the tech was simpler and there were less options available. With modern technology and rapid R&D capabilities, it would be an absolute cluster f'k today. That's totally obvious. Not saying the specs can't stand some attention and rethought, but I think it's pretty obvious why they evolved.

Sorry... I just get tired of "why I hate modern F1" articles and rants. Most of which are just ego-driven opportunities to demonstrate a long-lived passion for the sport from a thinly vailed, borderline elitist-of-a-bygone-era viewpoint.

There isn't a single sport that hasn't been transformed by technology, safety, and culture over the last 50 years, so just get over it already, because you can rest assured that the sport is not going backwards. F1 will keep evolving. If you don't like it, move on and go engage with something you do enjoy. Why waste your time torturing yourself week after week engaging with something that makes you sad?

 

[JoeSchmoe]

For me, it's been dead for about 20 years, and some of these "tracks", BORING! If you want to get a quick nap in, just tune in an F1 snoozefest..............And yes, I did move on, looooong ago..............

 

[Jack Straw]

You're spot on about the whining. I've certainly done my share. Rather than fuss over the boredom, the glitz, the terrible announcers, and all that rot I'm going to follow your advice.......and just walk away.
My sim-racing rig shows me more competitive racing than F1.

 

[cnuk]

Television analyst's expert commentary on lap 13 of 53 (as Vettel enters the pit lane):

Quote: "This for the race. This is where the real race is."

The "real race" is in the pits?! That's a problem.

 

[stormrim.zc]

I can't quite decide where to start but perspectives are different from Formula 1 as we know it or Grand Prix racing which has a far longer and different story.

As for Formula 1 14-16 are the worst three years in terms of competition. No single team including late-80s McLaren and early-00s Ferrari can, and be permitted, to dominate by such a large margin for three consecutive years. If someday in the future this sport truly dies it will be remembered as one of the critical blows.

But if one can see the whole thing outside of the F1 or whatever brand marques, then it is plain to see that GP racing, and indeed most part of the motorsport in general, just had reinvented themselves in a irreversible way. The last major timepoint can be placed at 1994 or 1982; after it men can only change the speed of the process, not the direction of development.

Before the transition motor racing is an extreme sport, chariot racing transformed with the full might of internal combustion engines, car manufacturing industries and a very special socio-cultural environment of the time. After that, it is merely a sport.

The rest of the problem is just personal preference. I myself will pick something closer to the classical definition.

 

[Robert_S]

For me there are two problems with todays F1. Annoying sound and annoying drivers