Mercedes F1

Mercedes F1

Ferrari

This week, the people that control Formula 1 racing got together in Geneva, Switzerland, to come up with some ideas to fix the sport. At first glance, it appears they might instead have broken the one bit of the show—qualifying on Saturday afternoons—that still holds any real excitement for fans. Changes to 2017's technical rules are also coming. The introduction of better head protection for drivers is welcome, but the rest of the tweaks appear—to almost everyone outside of the F1 Strategy Group and the F1 Commission—to be exactly what the doctor didn't order.

Silly season is a name often given to that time of year in sports calendars when news is slow and so, to fill pages or screens, the media reports on stories that wouldn't otherwise merit the attention. In the racing world that normally coincides with late summer, there are gaps in the schedules, people take vacations, and the media is left to speculate on rumors about who's changing teams and the like. You normally wouldn't think of F1's preseason ramp-up in this way. After all, the new-for-2016 cars are currently being unveiled, and some of the teams are testing in Barcelona this week—that stuff actually matters.

However, "silly" accurately describes the proposed changes to the qualifying process this year.

Qualification quality

F1 races traditionally take place over three days; on Friday there are two 90-minute practice sessions, on Saturday there's a final one-hour practice followed by an hour for qualifying, which determines how the cars line up for the final race on Sunday. In the olden days, when your author started watching F1, there were qualifying sessions on Friday and Saturday, and each driver would be allowed 12 laps in each session. This setup meant you had four bites at the cherry, since each flying lap is bookended by one that starts or finishes in pit lane.

People complained about that kind of show because there could be long stretches when no one took to the track. Every car would set a time early on (one in the bank, so to speak) and then wait in the garage to see if their rivals could top it, venturing out on track in the final few minutes only if needed. As such, the people in charge of the rules started monkeying with the format.

First, Friday qualifying went away in 1996. Then it got complicated. For a few years we went back to two sessions, but every driver only got a single flying lap each. Friday's lap times determined the running order for Saturday, which in turn set the grid for Sunday. This meant there was always something happening on track for the paying public to watch, but this format didn't last either.

Next, the Friday qualifying session moved to Saturday. Then in 2005, the sport tried using aggregate times from two sessions (one on Saturday, one on Sunday morning before the race) to set the grid before dropping the idea halfway through the season. Thus, 2006 introduced a new format—three elimination sessions. Slower cars would be eliminated in Q1 and Q2, leaving just 10 to compete for pole position in Q3.

For a while, we did get to see lots of cars on track all the time, as the rules dictated cars couldn't refuel before the race. But the cars on track were mainly out there to burn off excess fuel—and therefore weight—something that was neither exciting to watch nor in keeping with nascent ideas about making motorsport appear more environmentally aware. After a couple of years of complaints, the rules were changed again. This time, only the cars going into Q3 needed to do so with full tanks. That meant the lap time that set pole position in Q3 would invariably be slower than Q1 or Q2 when the cars could run with just enough gas to get back after a flying lap.

Qualifying fuel restrictions were done away with eventually, and as the Grand Prix on Sundays became more and more predictable, Saturday's sessions became the high point of the weekend. We all knew that the race would be dominated by Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull or more recently Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes-AMG, but during that qualifying hour it was possible someone else might get in a faster single lap. The final few minutes of each session usually delivered some exciting moments as racers scrambled to find more speed to avoid elimination.

Now we can forget all that. There's a new show in town, and it sounds like it's going to do away with the scourge of bitten nails. All 22 cars will start Q1, which lasts 16 minutes. After seven minutes the slowest driver is eliminated, something that repeats every 90 seconds until the end of the session. The remaining 15 cars all start Q2, which lasts 15 minutes. Q2 eliminations start after six minutes, until there are just eight racers left. Those eight go into the 14-minute-long Q3. Knockouts start happening after five minutes, until the final two shoot it out for the final minute and a half.

Part of the impetus of the new format (and many of the formats before) is a desire to mix up the grid on Sunday in an effort to make races less predictable. And we ought not to be surprised that they're predictable; if you start the race with the fastest car and driver at the front and the slowest at the back, don't be surprised if the guy in the lead runs off into the distance. Even still, did qualifying really need this band-aid when so many other aspects of the show (and the sport) could use the attention instead?

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All the wrong technical changes

Things are worse when it comes to the technical regulations for 2017. It's good that those inside the F1 bubble recognize that the sport is in trouble. TV ratings are dropping around the world, fans are growing older, the races are too expensive to attend unless you're a guest of someone's corporate hospitality. F1 seems too elitist compared to just about every other racing series out there. On top of all that, most of the teams are close to bankruptcy even though the sport brings in billions of dollars a year because the venture capitalists who own it suck 50 percent off the top straight away.

These problems are exacerbated by the on-track action, more specifically the lack thereof. A misguided notion took hold that F1 cars should be road-relevant—something that has never really been true of the sport since it began in 1950—and noisy high-revving engines were dropped in favor of small turbocharged hybrids. Pirelli was intentionally contracted to supply tires that frankly aren't any good, again under the false assumption that unpredictable tires would spice up the show. So the cars are slower than a decade ago, and now they're quiet to boot. And even if the tires could sustain a driver pushing them hard lap after lap, the complex hybrid powertrains wouldn't allow it on fuel consumption grounds.

Ask just about any race car designer how to make F1 races more exciting and you'll get similar answers: get rid of the wings, bring back sticky tires, and give the cars more power than grip. It really is that simple. Downforce—the use of wings and aerodynamic body components to push a car to the ground—increases cornering speeds each year, but big wings and diffusers need clean air to work efficiently.

Following in someone's wake means running in dirty, turbulent air; your front wing doesn't have as much air to bite into, so you won't corner as quickly as the opponent you're chasing. Worse, it means chewing up your tires so they degrade even quicker; is it any wonder that the race becomes a procession of cars running just far enough behind the one in front to avoid that happening?

With that in mind, what have F1's top minds agreed to for next year's technical rules? More front wing, more rear wing, and bigger diffusers. That's right, lots more downforce, chasing lap times by increasing speed through the corners—you know, those bits of the race track where it's hardest to follow someone.

At this level of the sport, overtaking happens because a driver makes a mistake that another driver can capitalize on. Taking away downforce—ideally even abolishing wings—would let cars follow each other through corners, but it would also make them faster in a straight line. That means longer braking distances at the ends of straights and therefore more overtaking opportunities, particularly since the tracks that F1 runs most often feature plenty of long straights going into slow 90-degree turns.

Reducing the importance of aerodynamic performance would go a long way to solving the teams' budget problems, too. Server farms, wind tunnels, and buildings full of engineers aren't cheap.

There's a halo to this story

The news from Geneva wasn't all bad, though. Open-cockpit race cars have an inherent safety issue, namely that the driver's head is exposed to potential impacts with debris. Although it's a relatively rare occurrence, when it does happen the consequences can be tragic.

Henry Surtees—the son of F1 and motorbike world champion John Surtees—was killed in 2009 after being hit in the head by an errant wheel at Brands Hatch. In the same year, Felipe Massa made contact with a 700g (1.5lb) spring that fell off a car in front of him at 175mph. It knocked him out instantly, fracturing his skull and sending his now-uncontrolled car into a tire wall at speed (Massa recovered). Just last year, Justin Wilson—one of racing's truly nice guys—died at Pocono when a large piece of carbon fiber debris from another car found his helmet.

Arguments have raged about closed cockpit cars for F1 and IndyCar for decades without much real progress—until now. One proposed solution has been to use fighter canopies, and the FIA (international motorsport's governing body) tested their suitability in 2011. Opponents of canopies often cited egress times as a concern, particularly in cases where a car had rolled over. Critics also cried about the possibility of visual distortion.

The proposed system for F1 next year should avoid both of these issues. Although the cars won't get canopies or full screens, a carbon fiber "halo" will extend around the front of the cockpit, with a central spar holding it up and helping deflect things away from the driver's head. So even if most of the changes don't sit well with Cars Technica, every cloud has a silver lining (or in this case, a halo).

Listing image by Ferrari