Formula One: Where Is The Challenge?

Medals? Slicks? Lack of wing? Are those things really moving the sport forward or is it making the sport more entertaining?

We're often told to be careful what we wish for, and the way it is seen today, it seems like we got what we wished for, but not in the way we wanted.

Fans have long complained that Formula One is just a procession of really cool and souped up sports cars, and that passing is a thing of the past. That is true to a certain extent but as seen with this previous season, anything can happen!

With a standard ECU and no traction control, drivers were showing their human side and you could see some unbelievable things happen, like Robert Kubica and BMW winning its first Grand Prix.

Eliminating or regulating where wings can be, freezing engine developments, and just taking a sort of nanny-state approach to the way that racing is done takes away from the challenge that is F1.

Formula One is considered as the most challenging racing series in the world and the hardest to get into in terms of costs for the team and challenge for the driver. It has to be challenging for the engineers as well and reverting to the old ways just takes away from that.

However, the entire challenge has not been taken away. With a new kinetic energy recovery system (KERS), overtaking can be done by pressing a turbo button, but can also be more challenging at the same time for both drivers, the one that's overtaking and the one being overtaken.

Overall, Formula One is a sport that relies on appearances. You want to see and be seen. By making these cars as something from the 1990s, you take away a challenge that the designers and drivers face. The designers cannot exhibit their creativity in making a few adjustments here and there in order to gain tenths of a second.

To add to appearances, the cars are just plain ugly!

By taking away traction control, we witnessed the drivers being more human and more errors happening on their part. Why must wings be taken away?

These new rule changes seem to be more about the entertainment factor rather than cost cutting...