The F1 rules change yet again

This one kinda flew over my head yesterday, but after reflecting a bit, it’s quite a game changer for this F1 season – the teams have agreed that for this year, the tyre they use for their fastest qualifying lap will have to be used at the start of the race as well.

These big black round things are the source of controversy again

Autosport, in the following short snippet, put it well as to how this will affect the racing:

This will open up the possibility of teams gambling on sacrificing the best possible time in Q3 by running a more consistent but less quick tyre so as to have a better chance in the race. Alternatively, teams may choose a tyre that is better over a single lap to secure a good grid position, even if it runs the risk of compromising race performance.

The teams hope that the rule tweak will serve to mix up the tactics throughout the grid and therefore lead to more exciting races.

Mix up the tactics, right… remind me of what was the point when they introduced refuelling back in 94? To mix up the tactics! So why have they banned it back for this season then? And what does this rule do? It “spices up” qualifying, by having teams doing well in qualifying that will afterwards be handicapped in the race, and vice-versa. But hey, wasn’t the point of banning refuelling so that we could see who really is the quickest in qualifying, without handicaps? So they essentially have gone with a rule that pushes racing in one direction, then came up with another rule that does the opposite. What the fuck are they actually trying to do with the regulations?

I’m not particularly bothered by the actual effect of this on the racing – we will have something similar to the last few years, with some slight differences, and that’s alright. As much as I loved the 1980s kind of racing (which we would have without this rule), and would want real, pure qualifying, the races were bound to be really dull with the current cars as they cannot overtake at all, and this helps the entertainment a little bit. What I am concerned about is the identity of the sport. Over the last few years, these are the rule changes ONLY concerning tyres (qualifying rules have been an even bigger mess):

• 2004 – anything goes
• 2005 – forbidden to change tyres in the race
• 2006 – allowed to change tyres in the race again
• 2007 – single supplier of tyres, everyone now forced to use Bridgestone
• 2008 – everyone now forced to use two compounds of tyres in the race
• 2009 – grooved tyres are gone, now they use slicks
• 2010 – everyone forced to use the same tyre at the start of the race, which they used in qualifying
• 2011 – Bridgestone will be gone, and everyone will be forced to use tyres by another supplier

Now imagine the FIFA were like this in handling football. Here’s an half-assed analogy as to what football rules would look like:

• 2004 – normal rules
• 2005 – hey, let’s try a season with no offside rule
• 2006 – normal rules again
• 2007 – single supplier of boots, everyone forced to use Nike boots
• 2008 – everyone now forced to do at least one pass backwards and one forwards before scoring a goal
• 2009 – back-passes to the keeper are allowed again
• 2010 – the team that is ahead in the league will start the game with a 1-0 disadvantage
• 2011 – Nike boots are gone and everyone is forced to use Adidas

That sounds completely insane, doesn’t it? People are getting more and more unsure as to what exactly F1 is all about, with the goalposts of the sport constantly changing. The sport isn’t a sport, it has been reduced to constant experiments in entertainment. What on earth is their long-term plan for the future?

I am really not looking forward to listening the TV commentators doing, yet again, a dreadfully boring 30 minutes explanation of all of these complicated regulations, during the first race of the season. Now, I can sit through it, barely, but what about the casual fan who isn’t a super-F1-nerd? Is this how they’re planning to conquer more fans?

Why Newey, Whitmarsh and Sam Michael are wrong

A couple days ago I had read a news article about Sam Michael, Williams’ technical chief, complaining that F1 needs to start focusing on changing the tracks to improve overtaking and forget changing the cars. I thought he was mad, but didn’t bother much with it. Now ITV has put a new piece on their site recovering Sam’s statements and adding new quotes by both Adrian Newey, legendary designer contracted to Red Bull; and Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren’s team principal, that supports him. It’s time to analyse it, and demonstrate why this is a dangerous way of thinking.

Adrian Newey is a legend of the sport, but that doesn't mean we should agree with everything he says.

Let’s get some quotes then. These are by Sam Michael:

“One thing that hasn’t really been addressed at all so far is circuit design,” he said.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, why do you go to a race such as Barcelona where no one overtakes, and then take exactly the same cars to Monza, Montreal or Hockenheim and you get lots of overtaking.

“Those cars are exactly the same aerodynamically, yet on one circuit they overtake a lot and on another circuit they don’t overtake at all.

And these are by Martin:

“You only need to do simple statistical analysis and look at where the overtaking moves are,” he told F1 Racing.

“If, say, we race on 18 circuits with 350 corners, then 90 per cent of overtaking moves in a year would happen at just 10 corners.

“You also have to look at the preceding corner.

“The fact that overtaking is focused on such a small number of corners clearly demonstrates that it’s circuit-dependent.”

All of this is… true and well observed. You do get far more passing in Hockenheim than in Monaco or in the Hungaroring. That much is obvious. The thing is, that has been true since F1 ever existed. It’s always going to be more difficult to pass in tight street circuits with many corners, than in wide circuits full of long straights. Yet, there wasn’t a problem in old F1. At the least-overtaking friendly circuits in the calendar, even if passes were rarer, they were still possible. In fact, old F1 was so much more overtaking friendly, that the Monacos were seen as an unique challenge, instead of as the-circuit-where-things-will-be-even-duller. All of this logic also applies to when comparing other categories against F1, since we have often seen lower formulas pulling great shows where F1 had processions. Unfortunately I don’t have stats for GP2, A1GP, etc, but I do have them for old F1 vs current F1 and it shows that this all isn’t just nostalgia bias, there really was a whole lot more of passing:

Overtaking stats in F1, from 1983 to 2009

Go check the individual tables for each track and you’ll see that in the 80s, Monaco had as much passing as we have now in the most overtaking-friendly tracks, like Bahrain!!! (average of Monaco 1985-1990: 15,7 passes/race; average of Bahrain 2004-2009: 17 passes/race). The better tracks of the time had three times as many. (average of Hermanos Rodriguez 1986-1992: 46,3 passes/race). If this doesn’t show that there is a problem with the current cars, I’m not sure what does. Now there’s a big question on whether it’s physically possible to have cars that overtake as much as the old ones, while lapping as quick as the current ones, but I can’t answer that, and Newey/Whitmarsh/Michael’s arguments aren’t based in that anyway.

Let’s move on to another two quotes by Sam Michael:

“One thing that hasn’t really been addressed at all so far is circuit design,” he said.

(…) “It’s because of the circuit layout – it’s because when they lay out circuits they don’t look closely enough at the combination of slow-speed corners onto straights followed by slow-speed corners.

The Sepang circuit.

On the first quote: Really??? What does he think that Hermann Tilke has been doing for the past decade? Because it seems pretty clear to me that the last few 6 or 7 tracks to have entered the F1 calendar, all designed by the german, have all been severely compromised for the sake of overtaking.  We have been left with many dull looking, copycats of each-other, utterly uninispiring tracks all full of huge wide straights and hairpins after hairpins, all in the name of improving racing, and yet, although one or two do seem to work a little (Bahrain comes to mind), it’s still not good enough. Some actually backfired, and we have had dreadful races in them. Valencia and Abu Dhabi have been terrible despite hairpins leading into long straights into hairpins, and the last few numbers of the Sepang races have also been poor, despite it being a good layout in theory (and we all remember some pretty fantastic A1GP races there…).

...and the Shanghai circuit. Spot the differences.

So I am afraid that either changing the tracks for overtaking is a pointless exercise, or that they have been doing it wrong. Or maybe a bit of both. Maybe they should look at the fact that holding races in the middle of the desert or in the middle of an industrial park is a bad idea as the track will be super dirty… or maybe they should realise that hairpin-into-mega-straight-into-hairpin isn’t all there is about it. Back in the 80s/90s there was loads of passing in the corner at the end of the back straight in Jacarepagua, or at the end of the Hangar Straight in Silverstone – both long straights leading into a quick corner, a feature unfortunately rarer and rarer in the F1 calendar. And there seems to be plenty of passing in the hairpin in the modern Hockenheim, despite the fact that the preceding corner is mid-speed. Get rid of this kind of things, and the designers will be so limited that we’ll get a full calendar full of the exact same thing in every track – is this what we want?

Doesn’t it make more sense to change the cars? I’d rather have passing in great, flowing, classical tracks than passing in dreadful tracks, and it’s not terribly more expensive to do it anyway, it’s just that the bill would be for the teams instead of for the circuits – maybe why the teams staff are against it? There just isn’t a great will to do it in that direction any more, apparently. Common sense would dictate for them to have agreed to ban the double diffusers many months ago…