A good distinction.
I prefer racing and technological innovation to driving so I'm quite pissed off.

They could mandate an aerodynamic device that creates a large draft behind each car, so there is continual slipstreaming?

The puzzle is: with a field within 1.5 seconds, why do the races get so strung out so quickly!?

Entertainment control yellows and double file restarts would not be such an unreasonable solution............

Does anyone think the safety aspect has anything to do with it. I know its sounds stupid its just a thought. Every since they have made the cars safer overtaking has went down. Its not likley related though

the old hanford wing?
the drivers have given up on trying to overtake for the most part, they just ease back to 1sec+ and wait for the stops... so they can look after the tyres etc
the rookie drivers have for the last decade have been ones making the overtakes, more than the seasoned chaps it seems to me too, racecraft isnt that important in f1 tbh

It very wierd that with all the brains in F1 they can't find a way to tone down the aero they themselves have created. This year had the new regs and the first thing they did was leave the diffuser rules vague and ramp it straight back up again .

I've been quite depressed with the amount of borefest races this year, though last year's races were helped a lot by weather and safety cars.

Aside from the lack of overtaking, actual drama in races is severely lacking - down to immensely reliable cars and lots of tracks which do not produce incidents due to all the asphalt.

If we looked at the early races, the non double diffuser cars could race each other, the DD cars couldn't.... If they had banned the DD the racing would have been slower but better, at least potentially.

There are fewer incidents at gravel traps, because the drivers cannot afford to dnf. Asphalt means the car that makes the mistake loses time but can stay in the race, it encourages risk-taking.

Qualifying, yes. Actual races? On average, not so much...

I felt bad today, becase the other day I watched 2005 suzuka that I have taped, to remind myself about suzuka a bit. And after watching todays race I felt sick.

1) there were no protagonists

2) there was no action


we really need fred, kimi and hami running up front all year and fighting for wdc, otherwise it is 2nd class event

and NO Vettel is NOT next superdriver, he can only win when every piece of the puzzle fits in

No, the actual racing gets in the way of the exciting stuff like where is kimi going, is alonso coming to ferrari, crashgate, liegate, the race for the FIA president....whose gonna be where on the grid, who should be disqualified, penalized, banned, how many seconds equal a WDC, why don't people like one of more of the following: Ham, Button, Vettel, Rubens, Kovi, Damon Hill, Gille4ever, alonso, Todt, Max, Benrie, ice cream, nelson jr,.........

Voted "dire."

This was so obvious today. Especially when viewing WSBK and MotoGP all on the same day! There is no comparison. Quite sad when it's @Suzuka. I really hope the season can end on a high with the final rounds.

Back in the late 80s / early 90s I used to watch each race twice.
Once on sunday, then watch the videotape later on in the week with the hindsight of how things were going to pan out.
Nowdays I only watch once, and in the case that I miss watching a race live, I come here to see comments in the forums of "most boring race ever" and dont watch it at all.

Overtaking as usual depends on the track.

Use old-style tracks and there will be very few, use new ones and there will be several.

It's all about the tracks and cars not being too far apart in performance (which has never been better than now).

We need to take the wings off or mandate primitive elements, such as flat plates instead of curved sections.

It would also make things cheaper to manufacture.

Could it have to do with the profesionallity of the sport? I mean, teams are much much better organised compared to 30 years ago and drivers are trained a lot better so they make less mistakes, all data is being analysed etc etc. A lot of action in the lower classes is down to inexperiance as well and lack of profesionality (not a bad thing!).

It is pretty dull.

There is clearly not enough risk taking from the drivers as far as overtaking is concerned. The tracks have become duller. Interesting that the older venues still witness the best racing.

There clearly needs to be more thought on how to give a following car some advantages for overtaking. More wing angle? Over-revs 3 times per lap?

Won't work really, drivers will use it to prevent being overtaken as well.

To me the answer is pretty cclear.

The ridiculously tight development rules (engine, gearbox, driver aids, aero) have stopped the teams being truely inventive with their cars... this means that you end up with a field of super reliable look-alike cars that all lap withing a second or so of eachother. What's the point really?

With the budget cap rules in place they should bin engine homologation, rev limit, and relax other areas of the rules. If a team wants to spend it's money developing a 21,000rpm monster that grenades once every other race then let them... at least we'll have some bloody drama back

Honestly, the current engine regulations have killed off any spectacle in the sport.

The racing this year has been woeful with the exception of China, which was wet. As usual, the opening laps are entertaining (though actually Suzuka's first couple of laps were pretty dull!), but apart from that, there's been nothing.

In fact, China is the only race I can really "remember" this year. Last year from recollection I think we had better races, mostly because of the rain though.

It also doesn't help that we don't really have a titanic championship battle going on this year. Again, maybe I'm looking back at '08 with slightly rose tinted spectacles but it seemed to me as though the balance of the championship was swinging back and forth all year, with both drivers making big mistakes and having the occasional reliability issues. Not to mention they were actually on the same bit of race track on occasion and racing each other!

Something that we haven't seen too much of this year IIRC.

I'm partially excited that next year we could see Alonso/Massa, Raikkonen/Hamilton, Vettel/Webber, Button/Rosberg scrapping for podiums and wins, but also a bit worried that no refueling could completely kill the racing.

Not really sure what the answer is to solve F1's problems, but with everything sealed until 2013, it could be a long wait before we actually see anything happen. And even then nothing guarantees a change for the better. But for some reason, I'll probably end up watching it because of the chance of seeing something.

Qualifying and practice sessions on BBC have probably been the best of F1 this year..

The car behind, with the benefit of the slipstream, would be able to over-rev much more than the car in front.

So it would definitely promote overtaking.

What racing?

F1 is a soap opera. We come here for the scandals and the driver moves and team gossip.

Anyway, the diffuser ruling helped kill overtaking and the ban on testing meant that those who fell behind stayed behind.

All in all it's been a pretty dismal season and I am dissapointed we didn't get a breakaway series. I really suspect F1 is rotten to the core.

How will improve the racing ?!

Speedcar went even further then that by using the old NASCAR twisted sister.
If the slipstream wasn't there, the overtaking was virtually nonexistent.
Unless you consider technical issues for the car in front as passing or some piss poor drivers that seemed to be 5 years olds getting late braked by former F1 drivers.
I remember Alesi, Herbert and I think Frentzen doing synchronized late braked where nobody passed nobody for half an hour.
Manual transmissions, steel brakes, no advanced aero and the racing still s***ed a**.

But you'd also have to eliminate a lot these damned chicanes to bring back the slipstream.

Unfortunatelly it's true.
Many of the true auto racing fans left.

The lack on track action, the lack of technological innovation relevant to production cars, the importance of collecting points for/given-to the championship have killed everything that GP racing stood for and brought this enormous mass of casual driver fan boys.

For me 2009 is the most boring season since the 2004 Schumi domination. That was even better. I'm glad I didn't expect anything from yesterday's race, and of course I didn't get up early since there was a repetition of the race later on the morning.

Last season was much better, without all these non sense new wings, kers, DDD and BS we have today. Even the WDC is gonna be mediocre, he is not even able to score in some races or get into Q3. And he's so lucky the others are totally incapable of cutting the points gap even if they are having chances every race (except for this win by Vettel, but he's too far now).

Maybe expectations were too high after seasons like 2006, 2007 or especially 2008, but this season is dull, dull dull. Let's hope 2010 brings an overdose of overtaking, rivalry and equality in the standings rather than politics, investigations and dull races.

Suzuka was built in the 1960's, what did that produce yesterday? Fast corners never produce good racing.

Yes they do if there's drafting and if they're wide enough relative to the cars.
Look at Indy in the 80 to early 90s, or at the Monza races until 71.

I'd say (fast corners + downforce) never produce good racing.

And it's a helluva lot easier to change the cars than the tracks.

Look at it another way: If everyone qualified and drove the race to their potential with no mistakes there would be 0 overtaking. The teams and drivers on average are much more consistent and reliable than even 10 years ago nevermind 20 or 30.

And without the fuel it will get worse.

With this generation of cars, they don't, no.

The racing is woeful. Every aspect of it. Obviously there's no overtaking but even the pit startegy is dull. Everyone of significance does the same strategy and it's all known before hand with the weights published. The end result is a very predictable race with little or no action. The tracks for the most part are good so really it's the cars that need to be re thought. This year regs have been a major disappointment and i think the high expectation at the start of the year makes the current processions all the more harder to take.

Inadvertently, bridgestone solved all f1's problems in Australia by giving the teams a tyre that fell apart after 5 laps. The end result was good mixture of tactics, overtaking ad general chaos. It really was a good show. Since they've ditched the 'two step' tyre rule it's been downhill from there.

I hope F1 get's back on track soon. I hope they aren't so arrogent as to think people are happy to watch a parade every two weeks (and indeed pay to go it). I've been a hardcore fan for several years but my patience is running thin. I'm sure i'm not the only one.

That is certainly part of it. The smaller variability in the driver, car and team performance between and during races as everyone performs at their true potential at all times.

Stephen Jay Gould, years ago, wrote a about a similar thing happening in baseball.

Q: In your book you examine the inability of baseball players to hit .400 anymore and argue that it's because hitting has improved.

A: The overall batting average has been about .260 throughout the history of baseball. But the variation around that average has shrunk. It's at least plausible that variation declines because play improves. A batting average is a comparison between hitting and pitching. So if everybody's improving, as long as they improve at the same rate, the batting average will remain constant. But it gets to the point where everyone is so good that there's just not much variation anymore. Hitting .400 in baseball is a good example because there's a "right wall," if you will, of human limits. Given how our muscles work, there's just so much that the human body can do. There will always be a few individuals who, by dint of genetic gifts and obsessive commitment and training, will stand close to that right wall. That's where Ty Cobb was in 1911 and where Tony Gwynn is today. But there is this limiting wall. What has happened in baseball is that all aspects of play have improved enormously.

The '2-step' rule was enforced at Suzuka again I think? And it did nothing for the show.

Can`t be that difficult can it?
Common (small) wings back and front, ban any type of diffuser, flat bottoms, that would surely massively reduce downforce allowing them to follow closely, steel brakes or less capable ones to lengthen the braking area, no tyre warmers, no pit to car, no driver adjustable stuff (maybe brake balence)
Bloody shame they did`nt ban tyre warmers this year apparently it was considered.
Like so many others I`m slowly but surely turning against F1 after 33yrs since my first GP, why bother with it when you`ve MotoGp

Its so unbelievably dull dull dull and the massive coverage is just spreading shit thinner.

And less plastic drivers would help, there`s not one who speaks his mind bring back Eddie (Jordan)

Ah I feel better now

Except that, as I mentioned Speedcar would be you dream come true, but the racing still sucked a** for most part.
Unless the tracks had some longer straights and/or multiple lines, the racing was boring as hell.

The worst part was to seeing F1 drivers passing easily the lesser driver then getting stuck-ed with each other, and none of them braking anytime but in the very last moment.
Equal cars and equal drivers that are very well prepared equals incredibly shitty/boring racing regardless of how the cars are build, that's unless the track offers a lot of slip-streaming.

Speedcar was way too far in the opposite direction. What I want is a lightweight car with low downforce levels, not a tank.

Explain GP2 then.

Drivers are not equal and they're not well prepared (by F1 standards) and most are very mistake prone.

If it were easier to overtake, then banning refuelling would make sense.

But in a situation where overtaking is almost impossible on many tracks, to ban refuelling is to ban overtaking. There will be no point in watching the race, quali will be where it's all decided.

I just hope that FIA and FOTA will stop messing around and sort this out, or there will be no more F1.

They must have become a hell of a lot more prepared in 2008 then.

If they're not willing to strip the wings off the cars, what chance ditching massed starts and doing an Isle of Man style time trial event? Send them off at 10-15 second intervals, all racing is done on the stopwatch. Fighting through traffic is still all-important for one's overall time, but the final result is far less dependent on individual track position.

The most interesting races of the last few years have been when leading drivers are on different pit strategies and out of position on each other, anyway. Kubica and Hamilton's wins in Canada and Germany last year spring to mind.

I agree the new car is a piece of crap that made things worse, but most of those GP2 drivers simply aren't any good by F1 standards.

Explain the spectacular difference in GP2 between 2007 and 2008 ;)

Most of the tracks have had dismal passing this year and it has to change. I've ranted before on the diffuser ruling at the beginning of the year, they have to undo this clarification and go back to the "spirit" of the design as per the FOTA working group on overtaking. The refueling ban may or may not help but are they not also changing the front tire width next year? This will help somewhat with the car balance but will it help overtaking, time will tell. Things do have to change, I don't want it to become NASCAR, but it's f***ing upsetting to watch a clearly faster car stuck behind a slower one because of the aerodynamics being compromised because of the turbulent air.

Good you agree. The old narrow tracks with high speed corners before the straights must go.

The corners must be medium speed. Remember A1 ring in Austria with several straights connected by medium corners?

Lot's of great overtaking and close racing. Just a shame it was dropped by Bernie as part of his vendetta against EU in the tobacco war.

check this out if you think it's all so dull
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYyAA90drw0&feature=fvw

The poll is yet more proof that something has gone awry in F1. Clearly something has to change.

I'd start with FIA, FOM and FOTA.