By Edd Straw | |
Editor-in-Chief |
Correlation does not equal causation. If the 2017 Formula 1 season happens to be a classic, be very cautious about concluding the new regulations are therefore a triumph. If the Australian Grand Prix is a thriller, the 'success' of the new rules will be the talk of Melbourne. But it would be folly for F1 to mistake dumb luck for clever design. The rules were predicated on a single idea: that the magic bullet for F1 was to make the cars four or five seconds per lap faster. If Pirelli has done its job, producing rubber that is not only around 25% wider, but also more durable and requiring far less management from the drivers, then it's true that there will be more grip and drivers will be able to push harder. So that will change, and it will probably be for the better. But fundamentally, this will make little difference to the quality of the racing. It'll make the cars look a little more spectacular on track, albeit not by as much as some anticipate, and the drivers will be happier, but there's no reason why any of that will make the racing fundamentally more exciting to watch. So how should Formula 1's new regulations be judged? It's a simple enough question, one that will be asked and answered countless times between now and in the aftermath of the season-opener in March. The answer, surely, is by the quality of 'the show'. But that is based on a very dangerous assumption: that how closely fought the on-track racing is has anything whatsoever to do with the regulations. At this stage, we don't know what will happen in Melbourne. It could be another Mercedes walkover, Red Bull-Renault might be on top, it could be a thrilling race between the two teams decided only in the closing stages, or any number of increasingly outlandish scenarios. The single most influential factor in dictating how that race pans out will be the job the leading teams and engine manufacturers have done. If Mercedes and Red Bull-Renault produce cars capable of lapping on close to the same time in both qualifying and race trim - maybe Ferrari too - then the racing should be, at the very least, intense. If the big teams, all of which might be said to have similar potential, achieve very different levels then things will be spread out. Both are possible, perhaps with the bias towards the latter, less exciting, eventuality. If it's close, everyone will laud the new regulations. While it's true that a change of regulations can lead to a shake-up, that says nothing in itself other than when things change, there's more scope for teams to get things wrong. If it's a Mercedes cakewalk, everyone will condemn the regulations for achieving nothing. But neither conclusion will be justified simply on that basis - doubly so in the case of things closing up. This is where we come back to correlation and causation. If you consider each team's potential to be based upon its resource, which ultimately boils down to its financial might, then there's no reason why Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren-Honda and Renault can't compete at roughly the same level. If Mercedes achieves 99% of its potential and McLaren-Honda only 90%, then that explains the gap in performance. If Mercedes and Red Bull are both at 99% and have similar performance levels, then that says more about the organisations themselves and far less about the rules. It's a similar story down the grid. Force India has had a remarkable rise since Vijay Mallya acquired what was then the struggling Spyker squad back in 2007. It finished fourth in the championship last year, but to do that it had to rely on teams such as McLaren underachieving. If Force India achieves 99% of its potential and so does McLaren, then there's going to be a big gap in favour of the latter. The topic of the inequitable distribution of wealth in F1, and its consequences on the quality of competition, has been addressed in depth elsewhere. But at the risk of being repetitive, the division between the haves and the have nots is very clear. By definition, there is a Class B in F1 comprising Toro Rosso, Force India, Sauber, Haas and, yes, even Williams that has its potential limited by its resources. Swoopy aero and wide tyres does not change that. So the key question is, what has really changed? Not much. It's still inequitable, the teams with the biggest resources will prevail, and unless you make the rulebook so restrictive that it's indistinguishable from one-make, you have no chance of ameliorating that situation. What might change things is luck. Had Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari done equal jobs coming into 2014, we might be raving about how those new regulations heralded a classic era rather than one of predictable domination. Same rules, different outcomes - and the danger of very different conclusions. The rules are not the be all and end all. Mercedes should not be blamed for getting its act together, and if you want genuine competition (and most people claim they do) you have to be willing to risk such domination. That's what makes it a sport. This brings us back to what really matters. More than anything, F1 needs a genuine title battle between at least two different teams on equal footing. It had that in 2010, when Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull were all in the mix but most of the races then were criticised for being dull one-stoppers. Before that, the 2007 and '08 seasons were a period when McLaren (14 wins) and Ferrari (17 wins) went toe-to-toe, producing two thrilling world championship battles. Does that mean ridiculously elaborate aerodynamics creates that situation? No. It was luck. It was nothing more than a consequence of two teams of broadly equal resource delivering broadly the same percentage of their potential. The ideal outcome is there is as much variety as possible. You want to be able to turn on the race and know that any number of drivers could win. Or is it? There is also the thorny question of how unpredictable you want things to be. When seven different drivers won the first seven races of 2012 (including Pastor Maldonado's famous win in Spain), there were genuinely complaints about things being random and confusing. Needless to say, that was also the first part of a year of a classic championship battle, and certainly represented the best season of the past five years. The reason for that was the change in the Pirelli tyres and the struggle as teams got on top of them. Once that calmed down, things stabilised and, by 2013, Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel were so strong that they won every one of the last nine races of the season. F1 might well luck in this year. Hopefully it will. But the big mistake would be to assume that it's anything to do with the new regulations, beyond the simple fact that change can be disruptive. It can be very dangerous to mix up cause and effect. New rules could shake things up, but things will then settle down as they have always done. And if F1 decides that 'faster' really is the magic bullet, that could lead to yet more poor decisions. This is something that is at the root of any sport. If you want it to be a genuine competition, you have to welcome the 5-0 walkovers by a superior team just as much as you do the thrilling 3-2s with a last-minute winner. And if you want to ensure all 20-odd F1 races in a season are 3-2 epics, then you can't expect the technical regulations to deliver that (even one-make series struggle to achieve that). Instead, you have to look to the sporting regulations. F1 has always been too reactive to the short-term trend (ie the last race or two) and under-reacted to the long-term trend. But it's not alone in that. Improving the speed and the spectacle of the cars is a decent enough move. But it is important to be aware of what aspects of F1 that does have an influence on, and what it doesn't. |
By Edd Straw | |
Editor-in-Chief |
Correlation does not equal causation. If the 2017 Formula 1 season happens to be a classic, be very cautious about concluding the new regulations are therefore a triumph. If the Australian Grand Prix is a thriller, the 'success' of the new rules will be the talk of Melbourne. But it would be folly for F1 to mistake dumb luck for clever design. The rules were predicated on a single idea: that the magic bullet for F1 was to make the cars four or five seconds per lap faster. If Pirelli has done its job, producing rubber that is not only around 25% wider, but also more durable and requiring far less management from the drivers, then it's true that there will be more grip and drivers will be able to push harder. So that will change, and it will probably be for the better. But fundamentally, this will make little difference to the quality of the racing. It'll make the cars look a little more spectacular on track, albeit not by as much as some anticipate, and the drivers will be happier, but there's no reason why any of that will make the racing fundamentally more exciting to watch. So how should Formula 1's new regulations be judged? It's a simple enough question, one that will be asked and answered countless times between now and in the aftermath of the season-opener in March. The answer, surely, is by the quality of 'the show'. But that is based on a very dangerous assumption: that how closely fought the on-track racing is has anything whatsoever to do with the regulations. At this stage, we don't know what will happen in Melbourne. It could be another Mercedes walkover, Red Bull-Renault might be on top, it could be a thrilling race between the two teams decided only in the closing stages, or any number of increasingly outlandish scenarios. The single most influential factor in dictating how that race pans out will be the job the leading teams and engine manufacturers have done. If Mercedes and Red Bull-Renault produce cars capable of lapping on close to the same time in both qualifying and race trim - maybe Ferrari too - then the racing should be, at the very least, intense. If the big teams, all of which might be said to have similar potential, achieve very different levels then things will be spread out. Both are possible, perhaps with the bias towards the latter, less exciting, eventuality. If it's close, everyone will laud the new regulations. While it's true that a change of regulations can lead to a shake-up, that says nothing in itself other than when things change, there's more scope for teams to get things wrong. If it's a Mercedes cakewalk, everyone will condemn the regulations for achieving nothing. But neither conclusion will be justified simply on that basis - doubly so in the case of things closing up. This is where we come back to correlation and causation. If you consider each team's potential to be based upon its resource, which ultimately boils down to its financial might, then there's no reason why Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren-Honda and Renault can't compete at roughly the same level. If Mercedes achieves 99% of its potential and McLaren-Honda only 90%, then that explains the gap in performance. If Mercedes and Red Bull are both at 99% and have similar performance levels, then that says more about the organisations themselves and far less about the rules. It's a similar story down the grid. Force India has had a remarkable rise since Vijay Mallya acquired what was then the struggling Spyker squad back in 2007. It finished fourth in the championship last year, but to do that it had to rely on teams such as McLaren underachieving. If Force India achieves 99% of its potential and so does McLaren, then there's going to be a big gap in favour of the latter. The topic of the inequitable distribution of wealth in F1, and its consequences on the quality of competition, has been addressed in depth elsewhere. But at the risk of being repetitive, the division between the haves and the have nots is very clear. By definition, there is a Class B in F1 comprising Toro Rosso, Force India, Sauber, Haas and, yes, even Williams that has its potential limited by its resources. Swoopy aero and wide tyres does not change that. So the key question is, what has really changed? Not much. It's still inequitable, the teams with the biggest resources will prevail, and unless you make the rulebook so restrictive that it's indistinguishable from one-make, you have no chance of ameliorating that situation. What might change things is luck. Had Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari done equal jobs coming into 2014, we might be raving about how those new regulations heralded a classic era rather than one of predictable domination. Same rules, different outcomes - and the danger of very different conclusions. The rules are not the be all and end all. Mercedes should not be blamed for getting its act together, and if you want genuine competition (and most people claim they do) you have to be willing to risk such domination. That's what makes it a sport. This brings us back to what really matters. More than anything, F1 needs a genuine title battle between at least two different teams on equal footing. It had that in 2010, when Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull were all in the mix but most of the races then were criticised for being dull one-stoppers. Before that, the 2007 and '08 seasons were a period when McLaren (14 wins) and Ferrari (17 wins) went toe-to-toe, producing two thrilling world championship battles. Does that mean ridiculously elaborate aerodynamics creates that situation? No. It was luck. It was nothing more than a consequence of two teams of broadly equal resource delivering broadly the same percentage of their potential. The ideal outcome is there is as much variety as possible. You want to be able to turn on the race and know that any number of drivers could win. Or is it? There is also the thorny question of how unpredictable you want things to be. When seven different drivers won the first seven races of 2012 (including Pastor Maldonado's famous win in Spain), there were genuinely complaints about things being random and confusing. Needless to say, that was also the first part of a year of a classic championship battle, and certainly represented the best season of the past five years. The reason for that was the change in the Pirelli tyres and the struggle as teams got on top of them. Once that calmed down, things stabilised and, by 2013, Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel were so strong that they won every one of the last nine races of the season. F1 might well luck in this year. Hopefully it will. But the big mistake would be to assume that it's anything to do with the new regulations, beyond the simple fact that change can be disruptive. It can be very dangerous to mix up cause and effect. New rules could shake things up, but things will then settle down as they have always done. And if F1 decides that 'faster' really is the magic bullet, that could lead to yet more poor decisions. This is something that is at the root of any sport. If you want it to be a genuine competition, you have to welcome the 5-0 walkovers by a superior team just as much as you do the thrilling 3-2s with a last-minute winner. And if you want to ensure all 20-odd F1 races in a season are 3-2 epics, then you can't expect the technical regulations to deliver that (even one-make series struggle to achieve that). Instead, you have to look to the sporting regulations. F1 has always been too reactive to the short-term trend (ie the last race or two) and under-reacted to the long-term trend. But it's not alone in that. Improving the speed and the spectacle of the cars is a decent enough move. But it is important to be aware of what aspects of F1 that does have an influence on, and what it doesn't. |