Another year, another season of Formula One, and, it seems, more of the controversy that seems to dog the world’s most prestigious motorsport at every turn.
Six races in, and we have already seen debates over loopholes in the technical regulations, the “Liargate” scandal involving the McLaren and Toyota teams, and the proposal of a budget cap for the 2010 season that has brought nine of the ten teams to the brink of withdrawal from the sport as a whole, even as new teams are lining up their entries.
Though the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) has now confirmed its constituents’ entries for 2010, many questions still linger about the future and governance of Formula One.
Naturally, teams, drivers, pundits, and fans alike all have their own ideas on how to improve F1...
Here are five ideas that I believe will help F1 survive and prosper in the coming years.
1. Consistent & Clear Technical Regulations
Understanding the technical regulations to which each car on the F1 grid must conform to is a black art in and of itself, but in recent years, even the teams have run into confusion over the regulations.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at the 2009 season-opening Australian Grand Prix, where several protests were lodged against the “double-decker” rear diffusers of the Williams, Toyota, and Brawn GP teams, which exploited a grey area in the regulations to gain significantly more downforce than their competitors.
Though designers from these teams had supposedly pointed out the ambiguity in the regulations to the other teams, little notice was taken until the three diffuser teams had shown much greater speed than their rivals, particularly the Brawn team.
Though protests were lodged at both the Australian and Malaysian GPs, it took the FIA until April to rule the double diffusers legal.
Had this ambiguity in the regulations been cleared up prior to the season start, it would have saved huge amounts of money for the other seven teams who have been forced to redesign parts of their cars in order to incorporate the double diffuser and gain back lost time.
Hand-in-hand with regulatory clarity comes year-to-year consistency in the technical regulations.
2009 marked the single biggest set of technical changes in the history of F1, but even before the season started, there was discussion of a new set of regulations for 2010 as incentive for an optional budget cap.
Regulatory consistency is necessary for two reasons: first, to allow for closer competition. With only minor changes to the cars for the past five to six years, teams have come closer together in terms of performance—a result of settling in and adapting to consistent regulations.
2009 has seen none of this, with the Brawn GP team winning five out of six races, including three 1-2 finishes, and all but eliminating real competition at the front; the only way that anyone will catch them in the coming years is for other teams to be allowed to adapt to the regulations.
Second, the supposed goal of cost-cutting championed by FIA president Max Mosley may as well be thrown out the window if regulations are to continually change.
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