I don't agree with all the items on the OP's list. Taking them in turn
1. DRS instead of making Aero simpler.
There's a tendency among a lot of armchair experts on the internet to say that there is an easy way to free up the aero rules, achieve closer racing by making the cars less dependent on clean air, and keep cornering speeds at down at a reasonably safe level given the limitations of the tracks. The actual experts appear to differ.
2. Cheese Tires to improve 'show'. Going 'green' anyone?
The tyres this year are fine.
3. Ban on track testing.
It's never been a total ban, but I agree the limitations were too severe last year, and having improved the situation a bit for this year, I can't understand why we're going in the other direction again for next year. But I don't think it's an issue that goes to the credibility of the sport or helps render it a "joke" formula. Most other championships have similar testing restrictions, or even if not, similarly low amounts of actual testing, because their competitors can't afford to test all the time the way F1 used to in the 90s and early 2000s.
4. Limited Fuel.
If you don't limit fuel and allow in-race refuelling the way F1 did until relatively recently, what tends to happen is the car that uses the most fuel, wins the race. Because although there's a penalty for using more fuel in the form of increased in-race refuelling time (since the refuelling flow rate is restricted), it's not a significant enough penalty. So it ends up as a race to put more and more downforce on the cars, and the ones with the most downforce and drag gain more in the corners than they lose on the straights, and burn more fuel because they're quite draggy and can get on the brakes later and the power earlier. So if you want your key performance differentiator to be aero, and if you want the regs to favour higher drag and downforce solutions, and if you want to give little incentive to make either engines or aero packages more efficient when you can just pump more and more fuel in, that's fine, but you'll be doing it without most of the manufacturers, because that's not their agenda. And you'll also risk creating boring, processional races of the kind we used to have under those rules, because the types of car you'll get are going to be heavily aero dependant. Personally I wish they would decrease the race fuel limit while keeping the instantaneous fuel flow limit the same. Pre-season comments from the FIA demonstrate that they thought teams would need to strategise to keep within the 100KG per race limit, but at most tracks it appears that that limit has been pretty much redundant. Red Bull didn't run into the race fuel limit even when they were failing to stick to the instantaneous limit. So they've got their numbers wrong, and they should make the way a car uses its fuel during the race more of a strateigic element. If you had the ability to pump fuel into the engine at 100KG/h but, if you did it all the time, you'd run out of fuel 5 laps before the end, immediately the race becomes more interesting in strategic terms. It's not against the ethos of F1. It's exactly what we had the last time we had turbo engines - there was a boost switch, but you had to be careful about using it too much.
5. Ban everything innovative.
I think that's less true of F1 than it is of any other road racing category. In F1, if the rules are silent on something, it's allowed. In ACO-rules racing, if the rules are silent on something, it's banned by implication. I accept that the F1 rulebook is extremely thick, and there are an awful lot of prescriptions and prohibitions, but if you can think of something that isn't covered and that nobody else thinks of, you can run it. And it happens all the time. The cars are replete with innovative designs.
6. Proposal to introduce sprinklers. WTF!
Agreed - a joke proposal. Even having it proposed by the commercial rights holder's representative impacts on the sport's credibility in my view, even if it isn't actually adopted, which one hopes it won't be.
7. Parc Ferme applied to FP3.
Not sure how this goes to the credibilty of the sport, tbh. It's the same for everyone. There isn't going to be so little practice that it becomes random. The best teams will still win.
8. Standing Restarts.
Agreed. If you proposed to meddle in the competition, to penalise whoever's ahead and hopefully get an exciting finish, in any other sport, they would laugh at you. If, that is, it's a sport that takes itself seriously. Creating jeopardy over the result will only increase excitment and tension if people still have respect for the competition and care about the outcome. If nobody cares who wins, it's no good manufacturing a close finish, is it?
9. No in season engine development.
Most racing categories don't have in-season engine development, either by regulation, or simply because nobody can afford it. In most racing categories, the same engines are used year after year. What's the problem? Quite recently, F1 went year after year after year with a development freeze on engines that included the winter as well, but very few people complained about that.
10. Abu Double.
Agreed. F1 is becoming a laughing stock because of precisely this sort of thing.
So in short, I agree that F1's reputation for being the pinnacle of motorsport, and for being a serious competition run on principles of sporting equity and fairness, has taken a battering over the past few years. But I think you're complaining about a lot of things that have nothing to do with the problem, and at the same time ignoring issues that are a large part of the problem, like excessive SC use, failure to consider and adopt fairer alternatives to the SC when competitor championships like WEC are doing so, and the adoption of SC wave-bys, all of which strike at the very heart of the Grand Prix primarily as a sporting contest, worthy of respect, rather than primarily a bit of contrived TV entertainment.
Okay, Hamilton, Raikkonen and drivers with big fanbases can be happy with that one to get constant boosts! Though I believe whoever is leading the race, will be having a tough time, because fans would be voting for a close race and the drivers behind to close up. Sort of like "catch up" setting in a racing game. Who thought we might see this in real racing.
