Question: Is Formula One Boring?
- Thread starter Paul Jeffrey
- Start date
F1 is just too perfect today.
In the past eras of one-team dominance (McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull) you'd have an element of unpredictability. An engine would fail, a backmarker would f**k up while being lapped. A puncture would go unnoticed until it was too late. A car would run out of fuel.
The Problem
These things don't happen anymore, at least not to Mercedes. They execute their races with such sterile, surgical perfection that nothing can stop them (especially as Ferrari have become prone to f**k up their strategy and Red Bull are essentially a one-car team this year).
That's not to be blamed on Mercedes. When you are allowed to just throw money at something, you inevitably create a team that's really, really good. And a team that's really, really good just makes the good engineers, drivers and designers gravitate toward itself. The result? The best of the best work for one team.
The Solution
The only possible solution is to dramatically reduce budgets, costs and complexity.
The above should set F1 on the way to becoming a more entertaining motorsport event. But I believe there's several optional aspects that could and should be targeted in order to improve either the competition on track or the fans' opinion of the sport.
In the past eras of one-team dominance (McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull) you'd have an element of unpredictability. An engine would fail, a backmarker would f**k up while being lapped. A puncture would go unnoticed until it was too late. A car would run out of fuel.
The Problem
These things don't happen anymore, at least not to Mercedes. They execute their races with such sterile, surgical perfection that nothing can stop them (especially as Ferrari have become prone to f**k up their strategy and Red Bull are essentially a one-car team this year).
That's not to be blamed on Mercedes. When you are allowed to just throw money at something, you inevitably create a team that's really, really good. And a team that's really, really good just makes the good engineers, drivers and designers gravitate toward itself. The result? The best of the best work for one team.
The Solution
The only possible solution is to dramatically reduce budgets, costs and complexity.
- A reduced budget means reduced perfection, more room for errors and less dominance.
- Reduced costs mean more teams, likely a larger variety of engine manufacturers and subsequently (ideally) more on-track action.
- Reduced complexity means a more approachable sport for fans both old and new, while helping to keep cost low and decreasing the negative effect of a smaller budget.
- Strict aero regulations to get rid of all the serrated edges, fins, bargeboard swords.
- Simpler engine regulations allowing for various cheaper engine concepts (for example, readily available Gibson V8 engines as run in the WEC) to co-exist with the manufacturers' wishes for Hybrid engines. Downside: This would likely require heavy BoP measures.
- Reducing practice time to one 60-minute session on Saturday ahead of qualifying. This eliminates excessive tyre testing, leaving teams in the dark as to the performance of tyres in the races.
- Reducing telemetry available during the race. If teams can't tell from the pit a) what's wrong and b) how to fix it, we'd likely see more retirements across the field.
The above should set F1 on the way to becoming a more entertaining motorsport event. But I believe there's several optional aspects that could and should be targeted in order to improve either the competition on track or the fans' opinion of the sport.
- Bring back tyre wars. A variety of two, maybe three tyre manufacturers could play a significant role in bringing the field closer together. Especially, if different tyres worked better/worse on different tracks.
- Bring back refueling. I am aware that this is hotly contested, but fuel strategy was a brillant way surprise your opposition. In addition, there could be a limit on how much fuel a car may use per race, leaving the option open to run with 0, 1, 2 etc. fuel stops.
- Make the cars smaller. There are various excellent comparisons between early 2000s F1 cars and current cars highlighting just how enormously gigantic the current cars are. Reducing both length and width would increase overtaking potential even on narrow tracks like Monaco.
- Make the cars lighter. The current hybrid cars are extravagantly heavy compared to some of their predecessors due to the heavy battery packs and the cars' increased size. Reducing weight could help mitigate the negative effect on lap times that a loss of downforce due to strict aero regulations would have.
- Get rid of the illusion of relevance. Road car engineering has long since departed Formula 1 and overtaken the sport in many areas of technology. While F1 cars should be among the fastest cars on the planet, they do not have to be road-relevant. There's WEC and, increasingly, Formula E for that. F1 needs to accept that it's relevance for consumer-car production is near zero.
- Make the sport more accessible. F1 has made quantum leaps in terms of its social media presence in recent years. However, viewing numbers are crashing rapidly due to the disappearance of the sport from free-to-air TV. In addition, the dreadful F1TV streaming service desperately needs fixing.
And that happens how often? Sorry but that wont drag me in again. Formula 1 is lost - and boring.
Aren't we spoiled brats these days. 
We used to have much bigger differences between cars and no one complaining, and we have actually missing a lot of action simply cause there wasn't enough cameras and stuff. Fast forward at this modern age.
Now we simply want it all... entertain me, want to see lotsa fights, want to see tons of crashes, want to see all the possible angles, want to see and hear all the gossips, want to see and hear all the pit/driver communications, want this, want that, don't forget anything, I'm *** paying for it, remember ! Just entertain me, I'm waiting. On my couch. In front of my 110 inches UHD 4K 3D TV.
You guys should try some go back to the "good old times" and take a trip down the memory lane. You would be so bored.
Only thing I think were better than now was that they actually left them race. That's if one car can catch another, yes. Like I said... differences between cars were gigantic.
Fine example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_French_Grand_Prix
Make sure you take your heart medications before reading this.
Yup, that was 2.3 difference between first and second. And the last man was slightly over 9 (NINE) seconds behind pole. Good old time when F1 wasn't boring at all.
We become hungrier, that's all.
Now feel free to disagree with me.
We used to have much bigger differences between cars and no one complaining, and we have actually missing a lot of action simply cause there wasn't enough cameras and stuff. Fast forward at this modern age.
Now we simply want it all... entertain me, want to see lotsa fights, want to see tons of crashes, want to see all the possible angles, want to see and hear all the gossips, want to see and hear all the pit/driver communications, want this, want that, don't forget anything, I'm *** paying for it, remember ! Just entertain me, I'm waiting. On my couch. In front of my 110 inches UHD 4K 3D TV.
You guys should try some go back to the "good old times" and take a trip down the memory lane. You would be so bored.
Only thing I think were better than now was that they actually left them race. That's if one car can catch another, yes. Like I said... differences between cars were gigantic.
Fine example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_French_Grand_Prix
Make sure you take your heart medications before reading this.
Yup, that was 2.3 difference between first and second. And the last man was slightly over 9 (NINE) seconds behind pole. Good old time when F1 wasn't boring at all.
We become hungrier, that's all.
Now feel free to disagree with me.
I personally think it IS boring and especially ugly looking to me since 2014 with those ugly-ass front noses, halos, V6 hybrid, KERS, DRS, higher base from the ground and shortened rear sides to make space for that black ground space s*** whatever it's named lol (but at least they opted for wider rear wings which I do like quite a bit).
Honestly, if I want to bring back F1 to its earlier-ass glory of past years, first I would bring back V12 so badly and make it turbo too, then I would get rid of halos and instead implement AeroScreen like IndyCar is opting to use IIRC (don't give a f*** if drivers like Sebastian Vettel hated it a lot when they tested it out years ago).
Next make the ground effects lower like in the 90s where those wonderful beasts frequently made sparks on the track many times and remove all that tech crap like DRS, KERS to make overtakes easily and make them all manual like NASCAR is still doing with H-shift!
Lastly, like I mentioned before, make the rear sides wider to cover all of that black space just like with the 90s/early 2000s cars had since they look extremely ugly to me.
(And as an extra, please bring back the f****** old-ass styled logo again)
I extremely hope the FIA would make all of these changes in the future so that I could hopefully watch it again since I stopped watching it in 2014 onwards.
Honestly, if I want to bring back F1 to its earlier-ass glory of past years, first I would bring back V12 so badly and make it turbo too, then I would get rid of halos and instead implement AeroScreen like IndyCar is opting to use IIRC (don't give a f*** if drivers like Sebastian Vettel hated it a lot when they tested it out years ago).
Next make the ground effects lower like in the 90s where those wonderful beasts frequently made sparks on the track many times and remove all that tech crap like DRS, KERS to make overtakes easily and make them all manual like NASCAR is still doing with H-shift!
Lastly, like I mentioned before, make the rear sides wider to cover all of that black space just like with the 90s/early 2000s cars had since they look extremely ugly to me.
(And as an extra, please bring back the f****** old-ass styled logo again)
I extremely hope the FIA would make all of these changes in the future so that I could hopefully watch it again since I stopped watching it in 2014 onwards.
I'm tuned but sleeping, if that counts, well we can say that people "watch it" but maybe for medical reasons
F1 may or may not be boring but simracing is nearly always entertaining.
Aren't we spoiled brats these days.
We used to have much bigger differences between cars and no one complaining, and we have actually missing a lot of action simply cause there wasn't enough cameras and stuff. Fast forward at this modern age.
Now we simply want it all... entertain me, want to see lotsa fights, want to see tons of crashes, want to see all the possible angles, want to see and hear all the gossips, want to see and hear all the pit/driver communications, want this, want that, don't forget anything, I'm *** paying for it, remember ! Just entertain me, I'm waiting. On my couch. In front of my 110 inches UHD 4K 3D TV.
You guys should try some go back to the "good old times" and take a trip down the memory lane. You would be so bored.
Only thing I think were better than now was that they actually left them race. That's if one car can catch another, yes. Like I said... differences between cars were gigantic.
Fine example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_French_Grand_Prix
Make sure you take your heart medications before reading this.
Yup, that was 2.3 difference between first and second. And the last man was slightly over 9 (NINE) seconds behind pole. Good old time when F1 wasn't boring at all.
We become hungrier, that's all.
Now feel free to disagree with me.
I can only speak for myself, but watching F1 has never been worse in my country, a country with some of the most important car manufacturers and sports like Soccer/Football have taken over by far - wich at the end is a matter of supply and demand. This is not just a problem of the presentation and TV coverage but the image of the sport and the high predictability of it. I can tell you, F1 coverage was at it's peak in the late 90's/early 2000's in my country when we had proper broadcast of all the sessions from different perspectives and not just because we had Michael Schumacher.
Today we have Vettel, Hulkenberg and many more very talented people, but everything is just mediocre garbage. From the presentation to the racing itself. As other people allready mentioned I loved getting up in the night to watch races from Australia or Japan when I was a little kid aswell. Today I don't even bother with the European races. No question, there have been boring races in the past and even MotoGP had boring times when Mick Doohan ruled in the mid to late 90s, but atleast watching him riding that bike on the edge was pure entertainment and you still had some famous last lap battles. Watching a single ugly looking and sounding car driving over a parking lot is so far from being a good show that I don't know where I would even start cleaning up that mess. Tell me one reason why I should waste my time watching such a snoozefest, when my daily way to work on my MTB is more dangerous and thrilling?
A man with a Harmonica
@Simberia
A number of stupid decisions in a row, Jean Todt and its obsessions, worst tracks that they could pick up to assemble the championship (Paul Ricard is a complete joke), bizarre wide cars with tons grip braking one meter to the corners, wrong aero rules making impossible to overtake (and, when they do, are insipid DRS overtakes in the middle of straights with no talent or risks involved), no noisy engines where only two brands are capable of build competitive power units plus an unbeatable team with only one decent driver. The most expensive snooze festival in the world.
TheReaper GT
Learning stuff, eating cookies. :D
I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? I felt a sleep reading the title.
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 561801
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Deleted member 561801
I think F1 would be less boring if there would be the return of V10 engines.
F1 has always been the ‘80s sitcom of racing.
Predictable, funny in places, same as the episode you watched last week.
There’s something oddly comfortable about F1 on a Sunday though, like the grandstand score draws
“Partick thistle 1. Aberdeen Wanderers 2”
Ahhh calming.
Predictable, funny in places, same as the episode you watched last week.
There’s something oddly comfortable about F1 on a Sunday though, like the grandstand score draws
“Partick thistle 1. Aberdeen Wanderers 2”
Ahhh calming.
I had this discussion in years 1982 to 2018, and now 2019 The only thing boring about F1 discussing how boring it is
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