#F1 - racing is about winning, not looking good

While watching the Spanish Grand Prix earlier today, I saw this Tweet from former BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, in response to a team radio message sent to Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo from his team's garage:

Radio-"If you can't overtake Daniel just drop back - 2 second gap". Yeah, great idea, don't worry about the millions of viewers... #F1
— Jake Humphrey (@mrjakehumphrey) May 11, 2014

I'm a big fan of Jake, and usually have a lot of time for him, and for what he has to say about sports…  But this post irritated me - and, frankly, made me quite cross.

It is no secret that a Formula 1 car goes quickest when it is in clear air, not when there are other cars close around, disrupting the airflow.  Racing is about going as fast as you possibly can - so why would you expect Ricciardo and Red Bull to do something which they know for a fact is going to make them slower, purely for your entertainment?

The teams and drivers are there to do a job - and that job is to drive their cars as fast as they possibly can, finish as high up the order as they can, and score as many points as they can.  If the way to do that is to 'drop back and maintain a two second gap', why wouldn't they do that?!

Sport is great entertainment - but it is, first-and-foremost, a high-stakes competition (after all, that is what makes it so exciting).  So, to expect anyone competing actually to harm their chances of a strong finish is crass and foolish in the extreme.

The drivers are not there to make your Sunday afternoon a little bit more exciting, they are there to win races and score points - and they will never stop seeking the best and most efficient method of doing so.  That is as it should be.

#F1: good unpredictable, or bad unpredictable?

I remain unconvinced by this idea that Formula 1 needs to be made unpredictable.  Of course, I'd hate it to be too predictable - but the idea of trying to force unpredictability is something with which I still struggle to come to terms.

I wrote about the issue of tyre wear in the new Pirelli tyres over a year ago, and explained how I didn't feel it was right to try and "plan" the so-called "excitement" of high tyre-degradation.

I love to see smaller teams taking the fight to the big boys as much as the next fan, and I'm always keen to see new, young driving talent coming through the field, challenging the old order - but this excitement and competition should be a result of huge driver skill, and inspired engineering vision, not because of dodgy tyres which have been made specifically to be dodgy to give these kinds of results.

When I saw Jake Humphrey and Eddie Jordan ask "is F1 becoming too unpredictable?" at the beginning of the BBC's coverage of yesterday's Belgian Grand Prix, I surprised myself by answering "yes".  Eddie Jordan went on to say he believes racing "can never be too unpredictable", but I disagree.  Or rather, I disagree if that unpredictability is for the wrong reasons.

So, what are the "wrong" reasons?

Well, the "right" reasons would be lots of closely-matched, highly competitive racing drivers, fighting wheel-to-wheel to win races.  But, as I've mentioned, tyre wear is now a big factor - in my opinion, too big a factor.  So are recent developments like KERS and DRS.

However, I don't believe it is right when these other factors have a bigger influence on race results than the skills and commitment of drivers, team engineers and mechanics.  When a top driver wins one race, and then finishes outside the points in the next race - and similar things are happening to other top-level drivers - that can't be good; it's consistency which wins races, and by forcing this type of inconsistency on the racers you take the results out of the remit of driver skill, and leave the races down to the luck of whose equipment will fare best on the day.

We often praise the design of modern-day F1 cars for their hugely improved reliability (many fans will, I am sure, still remember the days when it was not uncommon for engines to blow up, gearboxes to fail, and so on, during races, and several retirements a race due to mechanical issues was not an abnormal sight) but that praise can seem slightly hollow, when the regulations practically institutionalise unreliability, in the form of tyre wear, etc.

Just my opinions, of course - but I worry that we may get a stage (if we haven't already!) where we are not allowing the true skill of these drivers (the best drivers in the world!) to shine through, because we insist on giving them sub-standard equipment, in order to "make races more exciting".