Things that should be banned from Formula One – Part III
In the last section of our must-ban list, we take a look at a few more things that are a major concern for fans and drivers alike in Formula One racing.
New Teams
Either improve the new teams or ban them. FIA should not distribute Formula One licenses to whoever wants to be on a Formula One track. All it does is that it adds more cars to the track, turns races into a traffic jams, causes safety cars to come in to ruin many races and in the end, the new cars are only fighting it out amongst themselves. After a passage of 10 races this season, not one of the 6 new cars has yet scored a single point.
All the new teams talk about is regarding their performance in defeating their opponents. Meanwhile, some of the drivers take pride in the fact that they managed to finish the race ahead of the remaining newbies. Introduction of a new race type would help Formula One’s cause in a better manner where they are the only runners and can actually win races.
New Rear Wings
Another attempt to make the sport even more ‘interesting’ and inducing overtaking brought new rear wings that were shorter and extremely ugly. All they did was deprived the fans of the beauty of Formula One cars. The new wings did not aid in overtaking in any way. Why not bring back the old ones?
Excessive Interference of Stewards
It looks as if race stewards enjoy by turning some great races into a big mess. The presence and supervision of the race stewards is very important to keep illegal incidents on the race track under strict check and surveillance. But it is when they perform beyond requirements that races are turned ugly.
Fairly recently, Alonso was penalized for cutting the track and was sent by the stewards at the very last position for overtaking Kubica. The penalty was meaningless as Kubica had already retired before Alonso was given the penalty. Stewards snatched away a very likely podium position from the Spaniard. In 2008, the stewards deprived Hamilton of an extremely impressive and hard earned victory in Spa Francorchamps and instead gifted it to Massa who ran his entire race in the third position and not even for a second looked like winning the race.
Ban Blue Flags
Blue flags are waved at cars that are about to be lapped and they must give way to faster cars almost immediately. Blue flags not only ruin the race for back markers at times but also give undue advantage to fast runners.
If instead the fast cars were required to overtake the back markers the sport would be much more interesting and would see much more overtaking which is currently non-existent. The prospect of overtaking back markers will also change their pit strategies. Whenever a faster car is approaching a pack of back markers, it will prefer to stop and come out on a clear track instead of wasting its time in overtaking attempts.
Besides, while a faster car tries to lap a car, another car pursuing the front runner can take advantage and overtake both the cars. Having to defend themselves against such overtaking instead of simply giving the front runners some space to pass will also enable slower and smaller teams to improve when they can actually compete against the big guns. Today, it’s the Red Bull Racing versus McLaren versus Ferrari and Lotus versus Virgin versus Hispania. The big teams share nothing more than the track with the back runners.
Enough of Safety
We applaud FIA’s concern for safety and cost cutting but the sports body should not be obsessed with it to the point of lunacy. Gone are the days when drivers used to die on the tracks as the cars of today are safe enough for them to escape even the smallest of scratches. Do not downgrade the cars to make them slower; people love to see fast cars and tumbling records. Do not add unnecessary chicanes to turn tracks longer and slower and boring. Do not bring rules that save a few million dollars at the cost of hundreds of spectators.
FIA is wise enough to know these things as many of them have been raised time and again. The sport will stand to gain a lot more if all these spectator and driver friendly changes are introduced. Most of the motorsport competitions around the globe do not have such stringent rules and are doing very well. There is absolutely no reason for Formula One to carry all this dead weight on its back.
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