Formula 1 Rethink

Apparently, according to Seb Vettel, Formula 1 needs to 'bring back the fear factor'...

Ok, Seb, might I venture a few suggestions on that front? The last time someone died in Formula 1 was 1994. Ayrton Senna at the San Marion Grands Prix. Tragedy. Everyone (well, more or less everyone) in the world remembers, or at least knows, the name Ayrton Senna. They know that he was a racing driver and they know that he died. Roland Ratzenburger was also a racing driver and he also died at the 1994 San Marino Grands Prix. No one really outside of Formula 1 remembers his name. No documentary entitled Ratzenburger ever won the award for best documentary at Sundance. Roland Ratzenburger had, by all accounts, a bright future ahead of him. I'm not sure what point I'm making here, it's late and I'm tired, but I think there is a hypocrisy here. In fact I'm sure there is.

It's been 21 years since the last time a Formula 1 racing driver died during a Grands Prix. Apparently, that is how long it takes for people in the sport to start wanting the death back. There is a fantastic documentary about the dark days of F1 featuring lots of interviews with drivers and crew who had worked in the sport during the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and they all had vivid and upsetting accounts of watching friends and loved ones die - sometimes in truly horrific ways - more or less every week. Between 1953 and 1994, fifty drivers died in Formula 1.Ok, so I'll grant you, I don't think Vettel was talking directly about death. He was talking about the fear of death. But you can't have smoke without fire.

There is no denying that F1 is in a bad way at the moment. It is less exciting now than it's ever been, so dull in fact that even the drivers are finding it tedious. And as someone else pointed out, if you're driving a 900hp racing car at 190mph and you're bored: something is badly wrong. Recently, and for the first time in my living memory, Formula 1 asked fans for their thoughts on how to improve the sport. This was patently ridiculous. A Bad Idea in the grand tradition of Bad Ideas but at least we can be assured that nothing will come of it. I think what we have to accept, and this is something that the presenters of Formula 1 on the BBC consistently refute at every available juncture, is that Formula 1 is dying and that we should pull the plug.

Formula 1 is a relic of the time before oil shortages and climate change. As a spectacle it is hideously vulgar. This weekend is the most vulgar spectacle of them all: the Monaco Grands Prix. It's not even a race. No one can overtake on the track because it's too narrow and twisty. It's boredom incarnate to watch and it's ultimately just a thinly veiled advertisement for tax evasion. Formula 1 insists (and it can insist because it's a company run by a single octogenarian) that it moves with the times, and yet Monaco will always have a Grands Prix. It follows fashion in one breath while ignoring it with the next. And, like any attempt by an 80 year old man to be fashionable, its flirtations with it are usually misguided and always unpleasant to watch. Take the hybrid engines that we now have (and are apparently stuck with). That was an attempt to more the sport forward, yet it has backfired. The sport is now vastly more expensive to participate in and, unless you can afford one of the good engines made my Mercedes, you don't have a hope in hell of getting near the front of a race. And even if you did, you'd still lose to the Mercedes team because they don't just have the best engine, but they have a better version of that engine and a better car around it. This, we are told, is the price of progress.

Formula 1, we are told, is the pinnacle of motorsport. It is the testing ground for technology that will improve road cars of the future. It is the point, way high up in the clouds, from which progress in all areas automotive trickles down. And, you know what? I'd be fine with that. An anything-goes technological battle royale. With mad experimentation happening all the time, it would be crazy, but vividly entertaining, I have no doubt. But that's not what F1 is. It is the pinnacle of motorsport as decided upon by an 80 year old man. There are rules (thousands upon thousands of rules) and they're all in place to try and make sure this artificial playground in the sky is as level as possible, while also making sure that Mercedes still win almost every race. There has to be a clear hierarchy to the level playingfield. Maybe something Orwellian would do here. All playingfields are equal, just some are more equal than others? But let's face facts here. The most inconsistent component to an F1 car isn't the silly tyres that are designed to be awesome, then ok and then terrible at precise intervals... no, it's the driver. Why not take the drivers out of the equation all together? Make it a battle between algorithms! Whoever has the best algorithm wins! You wouldn't even have to stage a race. You could just decide each on on a computer and announce the victor there and then.

The thing is, Formula 1 must decide what it wants to be. And it must not be allowed to decide on something that is inherently self-contradictory. It can either be the pinnacle of automotive technology, or a level playingfield for the world's best drivers. The hybrid tech makes no sense to me. It's so complex that a lot of the control has been taken away from the driver and handled by a computer that in 1980 would have filled a whole row of terraced houses but today would fit into a fag packet. This means the drivers are not as involved and it's less a test of their driving skill as it is their ability to communicate with a computer. I'm surprised it still has a steering wheel. It doesn't need one. It's not attached to anything. Some of them even look like iPads. This does not inspire the viewing public. But here's the thing: you can't go backwards. You can't get rid of the hybrid engine and replace it with a vastly less fuel efficient screaming V8. You can't replace the iPad with a steering wheel. Nor can you replace run-off areas with concrete walls, tyre-walls with metal... you just can't.

It is widely understood that the 1970s was the most dangerous decade in F1, in rallying it was the 1980s with the Group B death machine; in touring cars it was the 1990s. Now, all of those sports have been sanitised to varying degrees. Now, almost no one ever dies. Rallying still exists, and people even go to watch it. It's not on TV in any way that you can really watch it but in the 80s more people watched rallying than F1. Rally driving looks like a huge amount of fun and I would love to try it. Formula 1 doesn't. And I don't. Formula 1 could ditch the razzle dazzle of multi-million pound sponsorships and VIP motorhomes and £20m-odd a year for Lewis Hamilton and go back to its roots. People would still watch it. I personally preferred it when it was tobacco dollars that had their names on the back of F1 cars, but that's just how I was raised. Better Marlboro than Bank of Santander any day.

Last year, an all electric formula was introduced. There was a brief flurry of interest when it was announced, a bit more when it got going and then nothing. I assume it's still going on, but I don't know. I don't know, because no one cares. If it was up to me, I'd let F1 as we know it die. It surely will when Bernie Ecclestone shuffles off this mortal coil. But knowing our luck, the twat will live to be a hundred and fifty. Maybe he's immortal. Maybe someone should check.