How to fix F1?

[proteus]

I think we should, the excitement would be unreal.

There is no excitement in falsefying starting grids. Its even faker than DRS overtakes are. And in the current state, you would not prevent Max from winning the race.

And how will you prevent someone to go intentionally slower to claim the pole?

This should be a pinnacle of motosport and not a fake circus. More restrictions there are, worse it gets.

Quite easy, offer substantial points for qualifying, job done. And yes it's a gimmick, but, it would create great racing, you will still get rewarded for having a good car.

Still a big no for me. There is nothing great to see "slow frontrunners" being obliterated on DRS straights and back at their deserved positions after 20 laps.

Last year we had one proper race though. The one where drivers had prescribed number of laps for each tyre, forcing them to push the whole race. Not to be confused, i dont want that with tyres, but i want races with full speed from start to finish. No tyre managment, no fuel saving, and no looking after the engine and gearbox. Just pedal to the metal for whole race distance. Not the budget formula with reverse grids....

[Il Leone]

There is no excitement in falsefying starting grids. Its even faker than DRS overtakes are. And in the current state, you would not prevent Max from winning the race.

And how will you prevent someone to go intentionally slower to claim the pole?

This should be a pinnacle of motosport and not a fake circus. More restrictions there are, worse it gets.

Quite easy, offer substantial points for qualifying, job done. And yes it's a gimmick, but, it would create great racing, you will still get rewarded for having a good car.

Still a big no for me. There is nothing great to see "slow frontrunners" being obliterated on DRS straights and back at their deserved positions after 20 laps.

Last year we had one proper race though. The one where drivers had prescribed number of laps for each tyre, forcing them to push the whole race. Not to be confused, i dont want that with tyres, but i want races with full speed from start to finish. No tyre managment, no fuel saving, and no looking after the engine and gearbox. Just pedal to the metal for whole race distance. Not the budget formula with reverse grids....

It wouldn't be like that though because you would have to work your way through the field with cars more closely matched to yours.

[Chuckjr]

I think we should, the excitement would be unreal.

There is no excitement in falsefying starting grids. Its even faker than DRS overtakes are. And in the current state, you would not prevent Max from winning the race.

And how will you prevent someone to go intentionally slower to claim the pole?

This should be a pinnacle of motosport and not a fake circus. More restrictions there are, worse it gets.

Quite easy, offer substantial points for qualifying, job done. And yes it's a gimmick, but, it would create great racing, you will still get rewarded for having a good car.

Come on man. Think about what you are saying.

It’s not the pinnacle of motorsport when teams get penalized for doing a good job—which is what you are essentially suggesting. Should something hideous like reversed grids be implemented, it would not have the effect you claim. It would become who can go the slowest fastest in quali. The nonsense, fakery, and shenanigans would become even more pronounced as teams fight to be last in quali.

The answer is not found in more synthetic means and ways to force a result. That just leads to more inauthentic racing and meaningless championships. We already are struggling with that now since they changed engine regs in 2014–which was an attempt to level the field, and we all saw what happened. More synthetic championships. More uncontested wins. They tried so hard to equalize everything that they regulated out the competition and made it a one team affair. The changes to Bernoulli based aero systems a couple years ago has only augmented the domination problem and we are stuck here till 2026.

The FIA is unintentionally, intentionally regulating inauthenticity into F1, and turning it into the WWF while claiming they are helping. It’s like the boy who loved his new bunny so much, he squeezed it to death on the way home from the pet store. That’s the picture of what the FIA is doing…loving F1 straight into hell.

In the same way, the WWF took a great sport, wrestling, and turned it into a circus of lies, acting, and pre-scripted events. It’s why the WWF is not respected. It’s not a sport, it’s an entertainment company. Winners are just who they scripted in. That is exactly what F1 is becoming (if not already has become), and your suggestion would only make it more ridiculous, contrived, and irreverent.

DRS systems, overly-complex power units, basically no track testing, and too restricting of budgets has corroded the purity right out of the sport. With Liberty in charge, they seem hell bent to force the sport further into something that it is not, and should they take things any further, the sport will be lost forever.

[Il Leone]

There is no excitement in falsefying starting grids. Its even faker than DRS overtakes are. And in the current state, you would not prevent Max from winning the race.

And how will you prevent someone to go intentionally slower to claim the pole?

This should be a pinnacle of motosport and not a fake circus. More restrictions there are, worse it gets.

Quite easy, offer substantial points for qualifying, job done. And yes it's a gimmick, but, it would create great racing, you will still get rewarded for having a good car.

Come on man. Think about what you are saying.

It’s not the pinnacle of motorsport when teams get penalized for doing a good job—which is what you are essentially suggesting. Should something hideous like reversed grids be implemented, it would not have the effect you claim. It would become who can go the slowest fastest in quali. The nonsense, fakery, and shenanigans would become even more pronounced as teams fight to be last in quali.

The answer is not found in more synthetic means and ways to force a result. That just leads to more inauthentic racing and meaningless championships. We already are struggling with that now since they changed engine regs in 2014–which was an attempt to level the field, and we all saw what happened. More synthetic championships. More uncontested wins. They tried so hard to equalize everything that they regulated out the competition and made it a one team affair. The changes to Bernoulli based aero systems a couple years ago has only augmented the domination problem and we are stuck here till 2026.

The FIA is unintentionally, intentionally regulating inauthenticity into F1, and turning it into the WWF while claiming they are helping. It’s like the boy who loved his new bunny so much, he squeezed it to death on the way home from the pet store. That’s the picture of what the FIA is doing…loving F1 straight into hell.

In the same way, the WWF took a great sport, wrestling, and turned it into a circus of lies, acting, and pre-scripted events. It’s why the WWF is not respected. It’s not a sport, it’s an entertainment company. Winners are just who they scripted in. That is exactly what F1 is becoming (if not already has become), and your suggestion would only make it more ridiculous, contrived, and irreverent.

DRS systems, overly-complex power units, basically no track testing, and too restricting of budgets has corroded the purity right out of the sport. With Liberty in charge, they seem hell bent to force the sport further into something that it is not, and should they take things any further, the sport will be lost forever.

You didn't read what I suggested, it would not be a case of who can go slowest in qualifying because I would offer full points for qualifying as well.

[SiLo]

More frequent and significant rule changes would spice things up.

The problem with budget cap, wind tunnel restrictions, and no testing it is really hard if not impossible for a team to catch up. Red Bull got an advantage just like Mercedes with the engines and will maintain that advantage due to restrictions.

Why does this myth keep coming back. There is absolutely no evidence that the budget cap makes catch-up impossible. We saw a similar lack of catch up without the budget cap between teams on more or less equal spending, with the main difference that they were spending 3x more than they are now - and the other teams that were not spending that amount had no chance of even competing. The fact that for 3 years RB is reasonably ahead of the rest (and only so after a TD in 2022 ruined the competition) is by far not enough to support the premise that the budget cap is to blame. On the other hand, decades of prior F1 data have clearly shown that there is a strong correlation between spending and points scored, and that prior to the budget cap, F1 was pay-to-win.

What F1 needs to 'be fixed' in my opinion is not more frequent rule changes; at best that scrambles the field and makes a new team dominant every 2 years.

What F1 needs is a long term vision on how it develops: gradual, predictable developments that teams can anticipate, and where they do keep building on prior years. In that way, you can maintain changes instead of a fully frozen ruleset, but you do have chance of convergence - because what we saw in the MB-dominated era was basically that convergence can happen if the regulations are stable (and I think also if they gradually, predictably develop), but that it takes around 5 years.

For the rest, IMO, F1 needs the following:
- A better budget cap. Include everything, including salaries of the top team personnel and drivers (of course, the limit will need to be higher then, perhaps 180-200 million). That introduces a new trade-off: spend more on top drivers leaving less development budget? Or take chances with cheaper, unproven drivers and have more development budget?

- A decision on whether F1 wants to be a (team)sport, entertainment venue, or an avenue of technology development relevant for road cars. If it's the latter, we need to face the reality of other energy carriers than fossil fuels (it would be quite interesting to set a max. CO2/km target which reduces every year, and let teams figure out how to achieve that... if you want some diversity on the grid). If it's pure sports or entertainment, you can keep the fossil fuels - as long as we acknowledge that F1 is using outdated tech for entertainment purposes, like archery. If you want to be pure entertainment? Further restrictions to the car design - maybe standardization even, such that it really is a driver competition. A team (engineering/design) sport? Provide more less restrictive design rules, such that we have more variety on the grid. But a likely result is that one team will dominate for some time - and then we need to accept that.

- Vastly reduce the influence of the teams on decisions. We can use a few more teams, and having existing teams essentially block that is not a good situation. Also get rid of all legacy payments and such. All teams are equal, and should be treated as such.

The most well thought out answer in the thread so far. I agree on the stability of regulations and small adjustments to them. We tend to get convergence after a few years, as we are seeing already with the current grid in terms of the field bar Red Bull being a lot closer. The Cost Cap currently won't see convergence just because all the teams can spend the same, some of them have baked in infrastructure advantages that will take years to level.

In terms of the sport deciding on being entertainment or a sport, it feels like that has been made already. It feels far less like a sport each year to me. It's setup towards casual fans, not us die-hards.

[proteus]

Quite easy, offer substantial points for qualifying, job done. And yes it's a gimmick, but, it would create great racing, you will still get rewarded for having a good car.

Still a big no for me. There is nothing great to see "slow frontrunners" being obliterated on DRS straights and back at their deserved positions after 20 laps.

Last year we had one proper race though. The one where drivers had prescribed number of laps for each tyre, forcing them to push the whole race. Not to be confused, i dont want that with tyres, but i want races with full speed from start to finish. No tyre managment, no fuel saving, and no looking after the engine and gearbox. Just pedal to the metal for whole race distance. Not the budget formula with reverse grids....

It wouldn't be like that though because you would have to work your way through the field with cars more closely matched to yours.

RedBull is on their own planet right now. Your plan would allow them to extend their lead even more, because others might "struggle" with progressing over the field. So you basically manage to end the championship before the middle of the season, just to see few overtakes. Watch people getting lapped and convince yourself you are looking hardcore racing, because what you are suggesting is more or less the same.

Not to mention punishing those who did overall better job with their car than their closest rivals or drove better in quali, just to be penalized with lower starting position and a possible finishing position as well, losing valuable points against their nearest rivals in the process of this fakery. Lower end of the midfield is closely matched together, so a fraction slower car can easily hold up the one that is a bit better.

Especially when you factor in tyre saving during the race.

[cplchanb]

why not implement some form of BoP or success ballast like WEC? the amount of ballast depending on performance and results every 3 races. with stable prescriptive regs and budget caps there is no chance for any team to catch up to RB. all they have to do is keep 1 step ahead meanwhile other teams need a gargantuan leap in performance to catch up AND overhaul RB.

[Radley]

More frequent and significant rule changes would spice things up.

The problem with budget cap, wind tunnel restrictions, and no testing it is really hard if not impossible for a team to catch up. Red Bull got an advantage just like Mercedes with the engines and will maintain that advantage due to restrictions.

Why does this myth keep coming back. There is absolutely no evidence that the budget cap makes catch-up impossible. We saw a similar lack of catch up without the budget cap between teams on more or less equal spending, with the main difference that they were spending 3x more than they are now - and the other teams that were not spending that amount had no chance of even competing. The fact that for 3 years RB is reasonably ahead of the rest (and only so after a TD in 2022 ruined the competition) is by far not enough to support the premise that the budget cap is to blame. On the other hand, decades of prior F1 data have clearly shown that there is a strong correlation between spending and points scored, and that prior to the budget cap, F1 was pay-to-win.

Like Brawn?

I'd like to see a more open, run-what-you-brung.
Get rid of fuel flow meters.
Every race is now about tire management. Who can save their tires the best. F*** that!
Cost cap rules are total BS. What the teams spend on motorhomes is a joke.
You have the pinnacle of engineers and tell them they can't use their wind tunnels? Even Haas can't use their tunnel?
Dave Despain had the idea for the Indy 500, you can run anything you want just everyone gets 100 liters of fuel.
Remember the 80's when you had a lot of cars showing up? They called it pre-qualifying.
BMW pulled out when they found out the engines were going to be frozen. They said what's up with that?
The teams now have 4 engines to do 24 races plus 6 sprints? That's BS.

[DChemTech]

More frequent and significant rule changes would spice things up.

The problem with budget cap, wind tunnel restrictions, and no testing it is really hard if not impossible for a team to catch up. Red Bull got an advantage just like Mercedes with the engines and will maintain that advantage due to restrictions.

Why does this myth keep coming back. There is absolutely no evidence that the budget cap makes catch-up impossible. We saw a similar lack of catch up without the budget cap between teams on more or less equal spending, with the main difference that they were spending 3x more than they are now - and the other teams that were not spending that amount had no chance of even competing. The fact that for 3 years RB is reasonably ahead of the rest (and only so after a TD in 2022 ruined the competition) is by far not enough to support the premise that the budget cap is to blame. On the other hand, decades of prior F1 data have clearly shown that there is a strong correlation between spending and points scored, and that prior to the budget cap, F1 was pay-to-win.

Like Brawn?

I'd like to see a more open, run-what-you-brung.
Get rid of fuel flow meters.
Every race is now about tire management. Who can save their tires the best. F*** that!
Cost cap rules are total BS. What the teams spend on motorhomes is a joke.
You have the pinnacle of engineers and tell them they can't use their wind tunnels? Even Haas can't use their tunnel?
Dave Despain had the idea for the Indy 500, you can run anything you want just everyone gets 100 liters of fuel.
Remember the 80's when you had a lot of cars showing up? They called it pre-qualifying.
BMW pulled out when they found out the engines were going to be frozen. They said what's up with that?
The teams now have 4 engines to do 24 races plus 6 sprints? That's BS.

Brawn was an outlier. Which can happen after a reg change, but they were also quickly caught up by the big spenders (in contrast to MB in 2014, which was a big spender itself).
There has been plenty of investigation to the relation between points and spending. F1 metrics in 2015 showed the correlation between percentage of points scored and spending is strong. Other outlets showed that the order of spending and the order of scoring in the MB dominance area was nearly equal. It was not the cost cap that locked this in place, it was the lack of one. It was mainly a competition of how much on le could spend and that had very little to do with a sports.

The point that Silo makes is fair though, differences in infrastructure (which predate the cost cap) do take time to equalise.

[izzy]

F1 is an engineering design competition, in large part, and they design once then compete 24 times with that design. So, obviously, we tend to get the same result 24 times!

This is what they have to change, this logic. But actually all the attempts at levelling up just make it worse, by making it harder for the initial designs to evolve and having a million miniscule rules about the car. So the cars might be only 2s apart now but the order is almost the same all year.

Now there's the budget cap, and they haven't really exploited it, there are still a lot of rules aimed at saving money when the budget cap can take care of all that.

So they should be binning all the rules about the number of engines and gearboxes, all that, wind tunnel time, teraflops, and the design of them too. They could change the design rules every month. Announce them scarily close to the first race with them, and set the engineers free. The cars would be very different from now of course, but different from each other too.

[leblanc]

If we want tens of laps with wheel-to-wheel racing then ban all the over body aero

[f1isgood]

F1 doesn't need fixing. Someone will get it right in 2026 and they will win and it is unlikely it'll be RB, given the internal turmoil and likely change of leadership that'll come in place in the future. 2026 is only 2 years away and it is likely 2025 will see many teams win races because RB will have moved onto 2026 as early as possible.

If RB make a good engine and aero in 2026, I think big name manufacturers need to have a serious inward look at themselves.

[izzy]

If we want tens of laps with wheel-to-wheel racing then ban all the over body aero

The cars would qualify in efficiency order and race 50 laps in efficiency order.

[discojesus100]

I wonder how the idea of 2 formula Championship would fly. a couple different options come to mind:

Option A. Two sets of regulations that have subtle differences and can be raced against each other for example regulation 1 allows slightly more space allowed for aero and regulation 2 has slightly extra allowance of battery power(just an example.) A team can enter either in a race and don't have to pick just one for the season, this could allow more variety in designs and more variety in teams performance from race to race, but the 2 regs would be overall very similar.

Option B. Two sets of regulations that have massive differences that are not raced against each other and to be used at certain races, maybe 12 races each reg or have one car race most races and the other race maybe 8 or 6, you could design a low cost regulation using small cars nippy with small engines, limit use on expensive materials and have a simple engine along with the current regulation cars, race them at monaco, certain regulations may suite certain drivers and we would have taste of different styles of racing throughout the season as well as having the same effect as the first idea(a) of creating a variety of performance between each teams cars (Ferrari having a great car for reg 1 but not 2 etc)

[JordanMugen]

Could we entertain the idea of reverse grids?

In Sprint Races that would be fun, just use the reverse of qualifying positions for the Grand Prix.

As for the title question, "How to fix F1?" It's not broken. There is nothing to fix.

It would be nice if there was no DRS, wailing NA engines, less reliance on dodgy Middle Eastern events, less night & street races, but these are mere niceties.

BOP would be the worst possible decision for F1, it would make it a farcical show like WEC and IMSA -- instead of the competition to build the best car or bike as Grand Prix car and bike racing should be (and sportscar prototype racing should be too).

Brawn was an outlier. Which can happen after a reg change, but they were also quickly caught up by the big spenders (in contrast to MB in 2014, which was a big spender itself).

The Brawn (Honda) was the single most expensive Grand Prix car of all time, it itself was the big spender, no?

It was designed with three wind tunnels in England and Japan, and almost unlimited development budget. There were even developments like an ultra compact differential designed by Honda in Japan that did not go on the car in the end.

Other teams like Toyota and Williams had the outwash front wing + double diffuser too, but they hadn't developed it to the same level as the big spender Honda car. Dernie suggested the outwash front wing to Toyota as a Toyota consultant, but it only ended up in the development program there relatively late so Toyota's outwash front wing wasn't as advanced as Honda's one.

Obviously with no development budget in 2009, it did not stay in front, but as the Honda team instead of the Brawn team in 2009 it potentially could have.

There is absolutely no evidence that the budget cap makes catch-up impossible.

Precisely. Aston Martin improved by 3s/lap from 2022 to 2023. McLaren improved by 3s/lap from mid-2022 to mid-2023.

Making huge gains of lap time is absolutely possible under the budget cap.

Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes GP were and are on the "backfoot" (comparatively) only because they made almost no improvement at all from their late 2022 car to their 2023 launch cars. This is borne out in how they both won less races in 2023 than 2022, instead of the same or more number of races as you would expect with usual improvements.

After all, the Ferrari was THE fastest car at the start of the 2022 regulations for crying out loud. Instead of extending that lead as you would expect, they now find themselves in a position of needing to "catch up", but that's NOT the sporting regulations fault!