The Top Five Friday returns with some F1 inspired top fivery, this time talking about five ways to save Formula 1.
Using the summer break of F1 with no racing to ponder the current Red Bull domination, we thought about what changes we could possibly make to either break up the same car winning everything, or at a minimum, liven things up elsewhere.
And our “best” five idea are outlined below, where more is more really.
MORE POINTS PLUS THE WEAKEST LINK
Some F1 fans have pointed out that perhaps F1 should give out more points paying positions to liven up some races. This sounds fair enough in the context of the TV coverage, which on many racedays is showing the battle for 12th, 13th and 14th because there is so little happening in front.
But how far down do you go? Surely not everyone who finishes a race deserves a point though. Look at most of Nicholas Latifi’s races, or a fine example is the 1995 Argentine Grand Prix where the Forti drivers were 9 laps behind at the finish. Surely that kind of slothery doesn’t deserve a point.
So one of our ways to save F1 is awarding points to 12th, but there’s a catch….
From the 50% race distance you simply start removing the car that is last, and continue doing every 5 laps until the end of the race. Since there’s nothing we can do about the all-dominating Red Bulls, why not spice up the back of the grid. Think of the desperation in battles when cars are driving not for an extra point, but for survival in that race, and to avoid the shameful enforced exit.
Drivers will be shown the all-new pink flag in the three laps leading up to the dismissal, giving them time to plan an attack, or set a fastest lap on the way out.
Of course every five laps is going to be harsher at some tracks than others, but that’s the fun of the new Weakest Link proposal.
MORE TEAMS
The ongoing saga of whether F1 will admit the new reasonable Andretti Racing team proposal is not only a shame, and a huge highlight of the greed and selfishness that is killing F1, but it’s also the wrong direction if you want to save F1.
Less is not more, limiting F1 to just 20 cars is boring. More is more.
A lot of pre-Netflix F1 fans can remember when a grid was full at 26 cars, and for some even nerdier F1 fans, they can remember when almost 40 cars were applying to race. The fields were so big they needed pre-qualifying to weed out the worst 10-14 cars. And it was glorious.
In our opinion the Netflix Drive to Survive making the team bosses the stars as much as the drivers has hurt F1, as their new-found stardom means they don’t want to share. How selfish.
First of all, a proper new team with serious credentials like Andretti Racing should be green-lighted, as you need more teams to challenge at the front to end the Red Bull domination.
But more so, it’s the charismatic smaller teams that make F1. Where are the Jordan’s with their animal inspired livery. The Lotuses and Tyrrells with their constant innovation. Or the hard working battlers like Osella, Minardi or Coloni. Or the downright hopelessness of Andrea Moda, Life, Forti, Mastercard Lola, USF1, Pacific, Zakspeed, RAM and Eurobrun. The back of the grid teams today are still too useful. Where is the instance life the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix where the Life car of Bruno Giacomelli was 5 minutes and 49 seconds slower than the pre-qualifying time because his seat belt had failed. Or the 1992 Andrea Moda effort, which was so bad the team were thrown out of the Championship because their hopelessness was judged to be bringing the sport into disrepute.
Before someone points it out, yes we are aware that some of the teams mentioned are actually still teams today but under different names, but it is more the spirit of the original teams we are talking about. F1 teams have become too corporate and stale, and you can’t blame Red Bull’s dominance for that.
MORE DRIVERS PER TEAM
So the greed of the current teams and commercial rights holders probably won’t allow new teams, so how about allowing teams to have more drivers.
Since the F1 world is being forced to compete for more and more races, since the teams are already going, why not allow the teams to have up to four drivers instead of the current two.
This would actually help matters at the front, unlike our suggestions so far, as Red Bull could simply hire more drivers to gives Max Verstappen some competition at every race.
Think of the current dilemma for Red Bull bosses whether to have Perez, Tsunoda or Ricciardo in the second Red Bull seat next season. Under his rule change, they could have them all.
And when Helmut Marko remarked that the perfect driver would be a combination of Nico Hulkenberg’s qualifying and Sergio Perez’s race craft, well under the new rule he could go all Old El Paso.
More drivers in faster cars sounds like a treat to us, and a no brainer. And if all teams take advantage of this, there will be more than 26 drivers, which could then bring back the dreaded Pre Qualifying. More on that below….
MORE QUALIFYING “TWEAKS”
The first victim of when F1 gets boring is usually the car or engine regulations, and failing that they try to tweak qualifying.
Some of them are good, and some like the double session effort of 2005 was absurd.
The current system is pretty good, but has gone stale a bit. The elimination of the bottom five is usually fairly meh, with the occasion big team choke livening up proceedings.
One proper suggestion is maintaining Q1 and Q2 as is, but turning Q3 into a one lap, one driver at a time showcase, with the order decided by the average time of Q1 and Q2.
At least that way you’ll see every car in Q3, unlike the current situation of being at the mercy of the TV coverage’s discrimination at the time.
But we think the culling in qualifying can go further.
As above we’re suggesting F1 open up more seats within each team, so this potentially could see up to 40 drivers vying for each F1 race, which then means pre-qualifying would be needed.
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s a range of woeful teams tried to make it into an F1 race, but the limit was 26 cars. So the worst cars, had a separate session on Friday morning. The top four would progress to Friday and Saturday qualifying of 30 cars, where the final four slowest cars were booted from the weekend.
But in some cases, the F1 weekend was over for some drivers and teams at 9am on a Friday. What glorious pressure to spice up an F1 weekend.
So if all four teams take up the offer on four drivers, then pre-qualifying would force the worst 14 drivers from the previous race to compete for four places in pre qualifying. Then after the Saturday session, the next four slowest drivers are out too. Imagine mediocrity being punished to this extent. Leaving just the best and fastest driver in the race.
But who need four drivers per team and 40 cars to have pre-qualifying fun. How about F1 introduce a pre qualifying style cull with the current 20 cars. For example, the two slowest cars in Q1 are not at the back of the grid, but eliminated from the weekend completely. How about that for some drama at the end of the first part of qualifying. Imagine then if Max Verstappen makes the rarest of rare qualifying mistakes, ends up 20th in Q1, he would then be out of that particular race, and thus give other drivers a chance to win.
It may not solve the dominance at the front, but sure punishes mediocrity, which is kind of fun.
MORE TECHNOLOGY
F1 cars become so similar that it gets boring. The new rules may have helped overtaking, but it still meant that one team is far better than the others.
Well we say there should be more technology, more innovation, more chances for teams to break through with something ground breaking.
Where are the new innovations? The six wheel Tyrrell or Williams, or the semi-automatic gearbox of the 1989 Ferrari that is now standard. The pioneering of the first turbo engine by Renault (when F1 had two different engine categories that teams could choose from).
On the flip side, where are the bad innovations when teams get things wrong like the ugly X Wings of 1998, or the McLaren MP18 that never made it to the track.
Perhaps the F1 bosses could have duel rules. Teams can either comply with the current F1 budget cap (or not in some cases), or take a 33% reduction in the Budget Cap, but have no or a lot less restrictions on technology to allow for massive innovation.
We guess the only problem there for ending Red Bull’s dominance is that they have Adrian Newey, exactly the best person in F1 to exploit anything new.
