Not too long ago, I travelled to the US with a long-time NASCAR buff.
F1 admittedly doesn’t get his juices flowing. At some point, he declared: “F1 won’t last. It’s going nowhere and the races are boring.”
My eyes bulged, but I didn’t say a word.
Boring, I thought? He probably doesn’t watch the same Grand Prix as me. Or maybe he stopped following F1 in the early 90s when Nigel Mansell was winning everything!
At the German Grand Prix last Sunday, the lead changed 10 times during the 60-lap event. And better yet, several passing manoeuvres in the pack were accomplished without the help of the famous Drag Reduction System (DSR) that artificially increases the top speed of the cars.
Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso exhibited some superb overtaking skills on the straightaway in front of the stands – when the DSR couldn’t even be activated.
Which proves that passing is indeed possible in F1, contrary to what was going on for far too long.
And the races are extremely eventful. The last British Grand Prix in Silverstone was the stage of a ferocious battle between Lewis Hamilton with McLaren and Massa with Ferrari. It was all out war, wheels even touching in the last Club corner, both desperately trying to clinch… fourth place.
And what can I say about the Canadian Grand Prix, where on the 40th lap of 70 McLaren’s Jenson Button was dragging behind in 21st place? He steadily overtook the pack and even passed the leader, Sebastian Vettel, on the very last lap. That, my friends, is action.
So, even if DSR, the new Pirelli tires and the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), are artificial tools used to control passing, you have to admit that the F1 Grand Prix are finally exciting to watch and the end results totally unpredictable.
Driver determination and grit now pays off, and that makes for nail-bitingly dramatic races.
However: the FIA has to allow drivers to fight it out on the track and not inflict penalties for every failed manoeuvre, at the risk of killing a winning formula.
F1 admittedly doesn’t get his juices flowing. At some point, he declared: “F1 won’t last. It’s going nowhere and the races are boring.”
My eyes bulged, but I didn’t say a word.
Boring, I thought? He probably doesn’t watch the same Grand Prix as me. Or maybe he stopped following F1 in the early 90s when Nigel Mansell was winning everything!
At the German Grand Prix last Sunday, the lead changed 10 times during the 60-lap event. And better yet, several passing manoeuvres in the pack were accomplished without the help of the famous Drag Reduction System (DSR) that artificially increases the top speed of the cars.
Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso exhibited some superb overtaking skills on the straightaway in front of the stands – when the DSR couldn’t even be activated.
Which proves that passing is indeed possible in F1, contrary to what was going on for far too long.
And the races are extremely eventful. The last British Grand Prix in Silverstone was the stage of a ferocious battle between Lewis Hamilton with McLaren and Massa with Ferrari. It was all out war, wheels even touching in the last Club corner, both desperately trying to clinch… fourth place.
And what can I say about the Canadian Grand Prix, where on the 40th lap of 70 McLaren’s Jenson Button was dragging behind in 21st place? He steadily overtook the pack and even passed the leader, Sebastian Vettel, on the very last lap. That, my friends, is action.
So, even if DSR, the new Pirelli tires and the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS), are artificial tools used to control passing, you have to admit that the F1 Grand Prix are finally exciting to watch and the end results totally unpredictable.
Driver determination and grit now pays off, and that makes for nail-bitingly dramatic races.
However: the FIA has to allow drivers to fight it out on the track and not inflict penalties for every failed manoeuvre, at the risk of killing a winning formula.