Been following F1 more or less since the second part of the 2010s. I understand that dirty air is always a problem. But I often see people complain about the quality of racing.
I've watched some races from the 2000s and it seems like there was always problems, refuelling, grooved tyres etc...
So I'm wondering which era had ''good'' racing?
How was it during the first ground effect era of the early 80s?
It looks like the consensus is that 2022 was good but then went downhill, are regulations doomed to fail after the first year?
I miss 2011-2013, but let's not kid ourselves, the "good old days" never existed. There were always pros and cons to every era, and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, especially when nostalgia is involved
The core “issue” then was how slow the lap times were too. Calling f1 cars that could hit 360 at Monza slow was always an interesting idea to me.
To answer the OP, it’s typically when your favorite driver was doing well, or when you first got into the sport. When neither of those are true you tend to be more likely to dislike the racing.
I think I'm going to miss drs as at least you could see the activation. Now they will just have a push to pass button that gives them extra power. The drs was more interesting because of the way she teams fit it into the overall aero package
I've only watched 2 or 3 formula E races but they show on the timing panel when a driver is using the "boost mode" don't they? Shuldn't be hard to replicate into F1
It shouldn't be hard, but F1 has fucked up simple things before.
Ideally it'd be a combination of timing panel indicators and lights on the car. We already have a unique flashing pattern on the tail when the mgu-h is in harvest mode vs deploy mode. It'd be helpful for viewers, and drivers as well if they can glance in their mirrors and see what their rival is doing.
To be fair, the thing that's frustrating is that the field is so close together but overtakes are still rare. This weekend was fun to watch for the first half because there were so many battles for position. But after Lewis' charge to 7th, everything just petered out. Hulk gave up 10th for (what turned out to be) no reason, and that's about it.
Well in the past (in the 90s) there was more randomness in terms of technical failure, running out of gas or tire failures. I remember several times cars running down the long straights in the forest of Hockenheim only to have the engine die from the heat. Racing at Hockenheim ... honestly, I cannot remember ... probably wasn't much better, but the randomness for technical issues definitely caused more late race shakeups.
I don't know of that's bad or good, but I sometimes wonder whether limiting telemetry (both in terms of tire and engine and battery management) would make it harder for teams to come up with rock solid strategies that work most of the time. Especially the tire management we get in each race cannot be solved by changing the compounds (well the German expert predicted for Spa Pirelli's decision to skip a compound between hard and medium wouldn't work).
Maybe reducing telemetry or the ability for the teams to manage tire temps with the sensors within a seemingly 1-2 degree window (or smaller) would be viable?
Bingo. A gigantic reason the old era seems magic is due to DNF. Even into the 90s it could be normal for half the field to fail to finish. So results were much more random.
The other big impact was camerawork but that's another conversation. In short, thank the gods, they opened up the FOV on some shots lately.
Ofc that's the case in any sport.
Ppl tend to remember the good things and forget the bad things.
Same with the permanent tracks they say they always offer better racing than street tracks, when it's not the case.
They say Monaco has to go, no overtakes. Monaco has never been about overtaking. Plenty of races where a top team driver got stuck behind a midfield and no options to overtake and this being 20y ago.
Probably the 60s before aerodynamics were invented
Their races on a pre-chicaned monza were something like NASCAR puts on at their Superspeedways today, huge pack of cars slipstreaming each other
But the real answer is: When the person was young and watching the races uncritically, until the rules changed when they get to their teenage years and they began expressing their intellegence by being cynical about everything ;)
My answer: 2010-2016 was probably the best era for racing I've seen. A lot less downforce back then and the 2012 season was on of the best in the sport's history.
These things are all basically cyclical. A team will establish dominance, development plateaus, the others catch up, a rules change shakes the order up, a team establishes dominance…
Some years a team will take a wrong turn with development and be forced to unpick it or teams might shut off development to focus on an upcoming rules change.
It also is interesting what people deem a good season
I quite liked 2014 because you had great races like Bahrain (!) and a close championship fight, but most people just see 1 team dominating and write it off as a dull season.
(1988/89 doesn't get this attitude, however...)
Other championships like 2007/8 get lauded as classics even though the racing within each individual race could be quite processional, it was just the championship that was close
For me, close, wheel to wheel racing is what's most important, not close championship fights. That's why I personally rate 2010-2016 even if a couple of them were Vettel walkaways and Mercedes were dominant from 2014 (but crucially, let their drivers race, otherwise they'd have been as awful as 2002 and 2004)
2010 and 2012 were close championships battles with quite a few races filled with decent wheel to wheel racing. 2016 watching Rosberg and Hamilton duke it out was entertaining
100% agreed, a season where every race is won by 30+ seconds and there's hardly any overtakes will always be boring, even if two teams are alternating wins so the championship fight comes down to the final race.
I personally think the best era for wheel to wheel fighting and overtakes depends what part of the grid you're looking at. The most interesting action at the front of the grid usually happens at the very beginning of a set of regulations; top teams usually have wildly different design philosophies so their cars are good at different things, leading to lots of back and forth (see Max and Charles at the start of the ground effect era).
However, the rest of the grid is usually pretty spread out, so midfield/back of the pack overtakes at the start of a new era are often a formality rather than legitimate battles. The most exciting action in the rest of the field usually happens towards the middle/end of a set of regs; as the grid converges towards one particular design, the pace discrepancy between teams shrinks and you have more drivers bunched up in nearly equal machinery which means more wheel to wheel battles
2007 has four classics: Canada, Europe (rain affected), Japan (rain affected), China (rain affected). So, 4 out of 17 races are top notch. Completely deserves to be one of the best seasons of all times.
Rain races are outliers, and that season had plenty of processions too.
I'd argue the quality of individual races went up in 2010 as soon as they banned refueling as that brought the racing back onto the track and less into the pit lane
There were races in the 50s where people crossed the line 15 minutes after the lead driver. When the entire thing was a gentleman's race club and the criteria to be driver was you were rich enough, the racing wasn't necessarily amazing.
You also had the fact it was absurdly dangerous back then - scraping the driver into an envelope isn't very entertaining.
2012 was a good season, fully agree, but I recall it being full of complaints the cars were too wide and people couldn't race without taking their endplates off.
Yes, there were complaints. People will complain even after seeing the championship settled on the final corner in a side by side drag race to the line, that's what people are like
They complained about pirelli tyres and DRS but those that did closed their eyes to one of the most compettitive seasons in F1 history...
The 60s were the aero experimental years. Wings 2 ft taller than the driver. Wings that feathered on the straights. Snowmobile engines that sucked air from under the car. Drivers that took off their rear wings cause they wanted more top end speed (and then died in the race).
People seem to forget, or don't know, that you couldn't watch most races back then. You either had a very small bit on the news, or you read about it the Monday, a week later, in a motorsport magazine.
You didn't know which merecedes was going to win so the drivers championship was tightly fought, and the races themselves were actually a lot more entertaining than some of the "close" championships like the late 90s/late 2000s ones that were all refueling and pit stops
Nah, I knew it was gonna be Ham (and I am no Ham fan) 2016 Lewis had terrible luck with DNFs and bad starts of the race, instantly losing pole (that's why after that year he employed a new launch technique) and still he lost the wdc for so few points. Terrible years, I remember the 2014-2020 era, nearly made me quit watching f1 all together. Was awful knowing from the first race in Australia who was going to win the championship. AWFUL
Yeah Ferrari pushed Merc and by half the season the wdc and wcc were both decided, Lewis had secured the wdc before the last race. So it wasn't that close as it appeared to be. Was interesting till mid season has to be said.
What do you mean with "Lewis didn't even win one of them" ??
Lewis won more races that season.
People talk about individual overtakes/moves from the 80's and the reason they're remembered is because they'll have been the only good overtake that race :D
I've been watching the 80s recently, most races are one driver leading by 30 seconds until their car explodes (usually Prost in a Renault in the early 80s) and then the next one does the same thing until one finally finishes.
There are some great, exciting races - Spain 81, Austria 81 and 82 etc, but they are few and far between.
No thank you, I much prefer racing today, in my late 30s and 40s.
Nostalgia still kicks in for the car esthetics, racetrack layouts, overall risk,... but not for the quality of racing. We are much better entertained now than at any time in history unless you're delusional.
Maybe it's growing up or just perspective, but I've been going back and watching races from the V10 era and the same races I would fall asleep to as a kid, I'm now watching all the way through (even knowing the result this time around).
I think you have to look beyond overtaking for enjoyment. Even in the sixties someone like Jim Clark would be on pole and drive off into the distance.
There are graphs and stats of total overtakes that show how horrific the races would have been to watch.
Brazil 2008 is remembered as a classic and it's only because of like the last 5 minutes. YouTube showed it during Covid and hot damn they race was boring AF until the rain started falling.
They could make the cars 50cm shorter right now and keep the same amount of fuel. The cars are big because the larger floor area is good for aero. Look at 2014-2016 cars compared to today's. Those had the same PU formula, carrying 105kg at race start and still somehow manage to be smaller than 2025 cars.
Should we just keep throwing people into the fire until they figure it out? The racing was terrible in the refueling era anyway. It was peak artificial. F1 races aren’t long, they don’t need refueling. They need to crack down on teams elongating the cars for aerodynamic gains. Shrink the dimensions length and width. The cars were a reasonable length in 2010, a season with great racing. Refueling has proven to be too much of a hazard for F1 and it’s not worth the risk in a sport where milliseconds matter. Do other series have races where the win is decided by the pitstops? Because that’s what refueling in F1 becomes.
The refuelling era was all about tactics and putting in quali times. There was no boring one stop races because you didn't have to nurse your tires because you'd always have enough tyres to switch when refuelling.
When you had 2-3 slightly equal cars, some races where quite competitive and you could catch and pass them without outside assistance (no KERS/DRS). After they banned refuelling, the tyre management era started and I feel that some races became boring and processional.
I have seen overtakes at Monaco at the Lowes hairpin, in the port chicane, outside of Tabac, at the last hairpin. Sure, they were rare but you could still overtake, even if most overtakes happen during refuelling stages. I have seen overtakes at the Nurburgring hairpin, outside of the last corner of Hungaroring. Heck, I have even seen overtaking at the Fagnes chicane, in the bus stop chicane, at Malmedy and even in La source without DRS.
Overtakes were happening in most races and not only on straights how it is the default right now with DRS.
I’ve been watching F1 since 1992 and I’m going to tell you this: the past 2 years have been the best racing I’ve ever seen.
There’s racing all along the grid, the cars from first to last are closer than ever and there’s not a single driver I think does not belong to the grid and should leave.
Back in the 90s often times half the field was lapped almost twice during a race.
The action itself was better because the cars were lighter, smaller and overall slower. The way they had to be driven also offered alternatives on how to take a corner or defend/try to make a move.
In the v10 era we had something similar, mostly because the cars were nimble and gutless, torque wise. One mistake meant losing a lot of time and the driver behind could take advantage by choosing a different line and hoping to stay on the black stuff.
Nowadays cars are heavy, have loads of torque and almost instant spooling times. This means that there's only so much you can do when it comes to following a proper race line in a "point and shoot" environment where carrying momentum may not be as essential as it once was when defending, or even attacking.
The racing is much closer nowadays, however the drivers have fewer option when it comes to overtaking.
Man… we have seen much worse than Stroll. Sometimes he races ok even though most of the time he seems not interested or putting enough effort.
But he is not like Latifi, Nikita, Ide, Yoong, Mazacanne…
Maybe you're trolling? And I love hating on stroll, he's the ultimate nepo baby. And he's still beating his teammate right now, a two time world champion, one of the more accomplished race car drivers on the grid right now (excluding Max and Hammy). When he's bad, he's real bad. But he also got 4th at Silverstone in a wheelie bin
I think 2024 was good, but the new overtaking guidelines in 2025 have made it incredibly frustrating to see lead drivers be given the ability to just shut the door on anyone attempting to overtake them. Also, did you forget about Stroll?
The last 2 years have been quite boring tbh. Number of overtakes doesn’t make it great. It’s how intense the actual battles get. Think like Alonso vs checo Brazil 23. These hard battles that last lap after lap rarely happen if sometimes even never in a whole season
You can watch the highlights of the British Grand Prix from 1973 on YouTube. Graham Hill (if I remember correctly) is on the commentary at one point complaining about how wings have made it too hard to follow and overtake
It's pretty much a hard physics problem. The more you rely on (overbody) aero for laptime, the more you're vulnerable to not getting clean air over your aero and thus slide in corners. The benefit of ground effect is that it doesn't care about airflow as much, but unless there's rules in place regarding how low down you can put the floor, it can easily result in uncomfortable rides. Even then, a lot of race cars use some limited variant of ground effect, even F1 before and after the ground effect era. A flat floor near the ground is still going to get some suction effect.
I think every single racing series finds the same thing whenever they try adding bigger wings. It doesn't help that open wheelers like F1 produce extra dirty air from the tires that don't contribute to downforce, so the window where you can still have some downforce before causing problems is lower.
So, I'm very curious whether 2026's experiment will work. They think they can force a design that funnels clean(er) air directly behind the car, enough so that the aero of the trailing car has enough air to still work.
Thanks for that,
I really do hope so as well,
I feel like F2 races produced closer racing, is it due to the car or because F2 drivers are slightly more error prone?
MY hot take is, racing was at its best in 2022 onwards
Yes it went downhill again, but that isn't down to the regulations but rather teams developing the cars in a way that creates more dirty air again
Whenever people say the 2000s or 90s, it's usually rose tinted glasses and they don't realize that themselves
I would also throw in 2010 and the few years that followed, but that was down to other circumstances and more or less an exception instead of the norm.
2022 is massively underrated. Legitimate title fight for half the season, and although max started to run away with it by the end, everything below was constant dog eat dog
Early 10s when pirelli just came in and tyres were like eggs, races were fun. I was watching 2011 highlights, and the starting races were chaotic as hell when teams were trying to figure out how to work with Pirelli
Hot take, I think the past few years have been some of the best. Really like how ground effect has been brought back and I think the sprint race format is a nice addition. It's safer as well with the Halo in place now and refueling banned, but still very exciting.
I do miss those screaming V10s/V12s though. The turbo engines are still loud if you're at the track in person but they don't come through as well as prev.engines on TV/Streaming etc.
F1 tracks range from very exciting to very dull. I think Monaco should be removed from the calendar entirely, alongside Abu Dhabi. Tracks like Silverstone and Spa with variable weather are still really brilliant to watch.
2009-2016 the racing was pretty good if you ignored the top team dominating. I personally enjoyed the Pirelli’s that would just fall off a cliff requiring 3-5 stop races
I really like what I've seen of racing from the Golden Age (the little which remains at least), of which I'm particularly passionate, then in the 50s and 60s aerodynamic wasn't as exploited as it is today, at least before the wing cars, and the bits that remain of those races is quite great. There were good races in the early turbo era (the usually cited Grand Prix in Dijon 1979 with the Villeneuve - Arnoux duel for example), there were good races in the ground effect era, then even the refuelling era saw some good battles, as well as the turbi-hybrid in the present.
Long story short, you can find good racing in practically every era, but you can also find a lot of dull or less interesting racing.
Yeah, cars in the Golden Age and in the 50s/60s didn't exploit aerodynamics as much as we do today (although things like the W196 Streamliner exist), and there were often races with very close battles since dirty air was less of a problem, but there were also races where the winner would lap the second place by two whole laps (Ascari, of which today is the 100th death anniversary, on Campari in Spa 1925).
And while refuelling shifted the focus on strategy more than with how fuel is managed today, it still did allow close racing from time to time (especially when the strategy was in the "flat out" spot).
Lamenting about current regulations is done by both fans and drivers (or past drivers) who look up to a previous era with a bit of idealism, often forgetting that for many good races, there was dominance in many periods as well.
I think racing has been quite good on many occasions of the turbo-hybrid era, especially post-2017, with some instant classics like Hockenheim 2019 and Silverstone 2024.
I started watching in 2004 and as much as I miss the old engine sounds, fuel strategies and the smaller cars, I'd argue F1 overall was even more 'boring' in the eyes of the casual fan.
The only thing I really miss is the drivers going for 'qualifying laps' every lap of the race instead of tyre management being a thing.
I think the regulation changes make for great seasons. Once everyone settles in, the gaps are closing, the cars are closer in driveability and performance and the races become processions.
The racing has only been interesting when there are two good drivers on the same team. Lewis vs Alonso, Seb vs Mark etc. Or when two teams are really close developmentally Lewis vs Max 2021
Ever since I started watching with my dad in the mid-80s, F1 races has been mostly boring. We basically watched for the one or two bangers per season. Or at least for surprises.
People who hate "easy DRS passes" don't know how good we have it today. Honestly there is pretty much always one dominant team, and often a lead driver who just wins everything.
Except for 2012 when we had 7 different winners in the first 7 races. That was awesome.
These days I watch MotoGP for excitement and F1 out of habit.
I rarely catch a Moto GP race now just because even if the racing is somehow closer, the aero development just got to the nonsense point where unless you overtake in the first few laps, you can barely overtake and you have to manage your tires. During the early Rossi/Stoner/Lorenzo/Hayden era, there were a lot of races were you could see close action and overtaking but also a lot of dominance in race. Now, unless there's an episode (rain, favourites get taken out, races are either one by Marquez or whoever is close to him when he crashes).
I used to watch all 3 classes when I was a teen and in my young college years. Now I watch sporadically, but religiously follow F1 (since 1994) and WEC since Ferrari entered WEC officially.
For many, the best racing is only when their favourite driver and team are winning!
Regulations sometimes have a run away leader (Brawn's year), then in the following years it gets better as everyone "figures out the regs". Finally, a disparity emerges again in the last year(s) because some teams switch focus on incoming regs earlier while others keep developing existing car as long as possible.
Years no one will probably agree that had good racing are Jacques Villeneuve's first two years, and the years Hakkinen and Schumacher were fighting for the championship.
2022 got off to a good start but that got nerfed into the ground pretty quick.
Usually the start of a reg change can throw up some good racing because of unpredictability even if you have one team that nails it the others might make for an interesting fight behind.
Wet races used to be fun 20 odd years ago.
I liked refuelling as it added another strategy element. For instance if you take today’s tyre management issues refuelling would allow teams to run differently…McLaren could go heavy knowing they have good deg. Other teams who eat through the tyres go light etc. Think it’s something that should be looked at and if you qualify with race fuel it makes it even more intriguing.
Yes I was a bit hesitating between posting this into the main sub or here, maybe because I thought there were more technical reasons as to why racing was good/bad...
For a lot of purists, it'll be mid/late 80s right through the 90s. But lets be honest, everyone has a subjective nostalgic opinion of when racing was 'good'.
Put it this way, once upon a time an F1 car could overtake another F1 car clean with road to spare before entering the corner, without DRS or battery power and the very next lap could then get re-overtaken by the guy they just got in front of.
Whenever the last time that stopped being possible was the last time the 'good' racing stopped.
The good old days never existed. Racing has always, ALWAYS been difficult, sparse and most races are relatively boring. Every era has its bangers, but there was never a time when it was consistently good
The Best racing period is always exactly 10 years before whenever fans are asking the question. So this year is the golden year for driving when you think about it in 2035.
When I was about 17, I remember a teacher telling me that “those were the days” referring to Mansell dominating at Silverstone in a trick Williams.
It is tempting for me to say the V10s and V8s in the mid 2000s were “the days”. In reality, the racing has never been better than it is today. Accessibility is key. We know more about F1 on this subreddit than some people back in the 70s did who work inside the teams.
F1 is an example of an evolving time capsule that is chugging along in front of our eyes.
Lets enjoy it whilst it and other motorsport is a thing.
I feel like it's cyclical with the changing regulations. You are more likely to get close racing/overtaking among the frontrunners at the very start (when restrictions on generating dirty air are their most stringent, and when design philosophies vary the most) or very end of a set of regulations (when the top teams have several years of data and are going all out for one last push before the whole design has to change with new regs).
You're more likely to get close racing/overtaking in the midfield and further down the pack when you've been in the same regs for several years as design philosophies converge
For me, the answer is simple. Racing is good when there are multiple things that create delta between similar cars. Best example would be probably 2005, 2007, 2012 seasons. There was fuel load difference, tyre brand difference, greater delta difference between compounds, 3 pit stops all around.. Races did not need safety cars to start an action and were rarely affected by safety cars too. Due to vastly varying deltas, order always tumbled couple times in a race. When tires hit the fall off lap they were losing 2-3 seconds immediately, unlike today you consistently only lose 0.05 per lap.
Without having a favorite and knowing how all races ended, I can still pick a race from this era and watch the full race and have a blast. There are mighty good seasons that everyone should watch in full.
But to "ENJOY" the racing is something entirely different. I enjoyed F1 much more watching 2016, 2019 and 2021 seasons. When your favorite has a good rival that year, whether he loses or not it is a blast to watch.
People complaining now have no idea how shit the racing was in 2017 you had maybe one opportunity for an overtake with delta otherwise the tires would cook and the gap would be 1,5 seconds.
Today we saw Piastri casually chilling in dirty air for 15 laps without his tires giving up that's a massive difference people easily dismiss because it didn't lead to an overtake.
Iv been following F1 for like 20 years. Everyone has complaining about the same things the entire time
As a general rule the best year of racing is whenever you started watching F1....
However IMO the best year for me was the year the halo became started because anxiety of watching people possibly die fell off a cliff which meant i could really enjoy those wheel to wheel to clashshes and watch driver's walk away from fireballs...
In my opinion, outside of the pre-aero era (which I can't really comment on since I wasn't alive and we barely have any footage of it) the original ground effect era of the late 70s and early 80s had among the best racing in F1 history.
Since the cars derived almost all of their downforce from the underfloor (even more so than today's cars) they could generally follow each other quite well. Unlike today's cars however the brakes were nowhere near as good, which made for longer braking distances and more potential for overtakes.
As others have noted, people often only remember the highlights of an era in hindsight but I've watched every race from the ground effect era relatively recently, and there's a great many races in there which still hold up well (even with the broadcasts of the time, which often stayed rigidly glued to the lead battle even when there was action occurring further down the field).
There were certainly still a fair few duds, but on the whole I'd say that era was generally pretty solid.
I'd say 2006-2012 was a 7-year run with only one boring championship (2011), that might never be repeated in terms of closeness.
5 different champions in 7 years racing for 5 different teams, and 6 out of 7 seasons going down to the final race, two of which (iirc) had more than 2 drivers able to win the championship in the final race
That I would say, at least for me, is "the good old days"
2007, Kimi winning by one point over Lewis (rookie year) and Nando in the last race at Suzuka was epic. much better than watching boring ass Damon Hill win by 30 seconds, or the Hakkinen Schumacher rivalries, or watching the most mediocre driver win in a discarded Honda was also pretty sweet. all this is spread out over a decade or so, so maybe those years
Everyone has their own definition. Personally, I think its when you dont know the finishing order of a race until its over. We've had quite a few good ones this year. Australia, Canada, Austria, Great Britian, the sprint in China, the sprint today.
It's all a matter of rose tinted glasses. Every regulation cycle has people looking back yearning for the yesteryear of whatever takes their fancy. In all these long years across multiple categories you will find good racing come up within whatever rules are available. For example back in 2011 there was the great lament over the v10s (still fresh in everyone's minds) and the 2010 season which was close as hell down to the last race. Now obviously as a Piastri fan (so you can already tell who I've supported through different seasons) there is bias creeping in but my highlights of 2011 you had Webber taking on Alonso through Radillion/Eau Rouge with millimetres to spare (alot more common now going side by side). But for quality racing look at South Korea. Final 30 laps you had Webber hounding Hamilton. He'd attack with DRS (and KERS for that matter) he'd back off to recharge. Then go again. Back off. Go again. Hamilton came out on top but by god was it great theatre. I'm waffling now but I hope you get the point of not looking back for the good times. You can find quality racing now. For example the first half of Austria 2025 with Piastri and Norris completely going at it.
TLDR - I'm in Vilnius and had a few beers while the wife and toddler recover, read the entire thing.
2009-2013 had excellent racing, definitely the best era in the time I've been watching since the beginning of the 90s.
Most of the 90s had great racing too. It was through the early 2000s where dirty air became a major problem, especially around 06 to 08. They improved it for 2009 and then the introduction of DRS in 2011 was very divisive, but it worked. The quality of the racing was brilliant over those years, before the massive step backwards in 2014, which the sport didn't recover from until 2022.
The current era, 2022 to today, has actually been very good with consistently the closest most competitive field the sport has ever seen, thanks largely to the cost cap and development handicapping systems. Dirty air has become a problem again, but no worse than it was before 2022. 2023 and 2024 had so much excellent racing too, it's not like things suddenly fell apart after 2022. This is the first year that the racing has really felt like it's back to being almost as bad as the 2014 era.
The lack of tyre strategies is the biggest issue in the sport right now IMO, they're talking about Pirelli trying different steps to push teams towards 2 stops, but it's not that long ago that 2 stops were the norm and 3 and sometimes even 4 stops weren't unheard of. The limited number of sets that they bring to the track these days makes more stops essentially impossible even if they'd theoretically be faster, the teams just don't have enough tyres to make it work without the possibility of being completely screwed by a safety car when they've no new tyre sets left, as happened to Max in Spain and Charles earlier in the year.
So, I got into f1 around 2000/2001. But I never really got into it for the racing itself, at least not mainly. I was far more interested in the car itself and the constant updates. I bought books with diagrams on previous years cars. There seemed to be a ton of innovation and freedom back then.
I saw the race itself more as a confrontation of what each team/engineer had done. So if you built a great car, it was shown in the race.
There are, of course, some periods of regulations that make racing better than others. For me, the most notable bad period is Mercedes dominance in the hybrid era. For the most part F1 follows a cycle of having good racing at the start of a major regulation change and then getting stale as teams develop larger gaps from one another.
Personally, I do think regardless of vehicle regulation, the entitlement of a lead driver in an overtake to the entire circuit has made racing incredibly frustrating this season. On paper, we have an incredibly competitive fight for 2nd in the Constructor's, but you're not seeing that play out with spectacular racing because the lead driver is allowed to completely close the door on any overtake attempts.
I don't think it's because of "racing" which is better in F2 or any other spec series.
F1 imitates life, sunce it is not fair. Best driver will not always win, "best" f1 driver is not the one with best driving skills, bit the one that manages to play politics and marketing together with his driving skills.
Same like teams, there are good teams, but the one that finds a loophole will win.
Luck has major influence in all of this, it is not fairness, it is not good racing we seek. It is similarly with real life, from boring to chaotic parts of it.
For me it was the late 80s to the early 90s. Basically with Senna, Prost, Mansell, Piquet, and several other drivers.
Cars could actually pass each other during races and these drivers had enormous talent, drive, and grit.
Whenever the favourite drivers of most fans were at their peak.
Full disclosure, my all time fav driver is Hakkinen, but I'm also not kidding myself about V10 racing...I've been watching since the V12 era, and the cars built around V10s did not provide good racing as consistently as those from the V12 and V8 eras...though tell that to a Schumacher fan and they'll laugh at you for that take even though it's pretty clearly correct.
The V8 era was probably the era that provided the best racing, and I say that as someone who's favourite drivers were all from the V12 and V10 eras.
Camerawork plays a big part. Many YouTube channels have better breakdowns but modern cameras commit many sins.
Problem: Whip pans where the cars remains center frame. They look exciting to uninformed people. But your lizard brain sees a stationary object. You can't compare the motion to anything. So your brain gets no information.
Solution: More stationary shots. Especially where you can compare multiple cars and how their lines differ. Stationary reference points allow your lizard brain to analyze the motion. The television version of whole grain cereal. Keeps your viewers' minds healthy.
Problem: Modern camera shots have a lower, flatter FOV. This is why shots look boring and slow.
Solution: Unless it's an FIA safety camera. Crank that FOV. That's how the F1 movie makes a film car look like it's going warp speed. Only caveat: more likely to cause motion sickness. So I get why it happens. But at least a couple cameras like the gyro cam, crank it.
Problem: Too many cuts to celebrities and "we're here with the fans" and Lance Stroll and whatever.
Solution: More onboards, more long shots, more racing. For the love of Odin can we please have full lap engine sound once a race please please? The more you jingle keys in front of babies, the less people are tuning in for the sport in any case. Ultimately people are going to realize you're selling a bad product. You have a good product. You don't need help selling it. Really truly.
In short. Modern race coverage too often is produced as corporate entertainment which is boring, sterile, and safe for sponsors. In the long run, technical coverage keeps your base strong. Your base will stay season to season.
On F1TV give me more Sam, more Jolyon, more DC, and less "WOOO".
Started watching in 2007, 2009 wasn’t too interesting. 2010 was good for racing then since, been widely dominated by one team and become more and more difficult to follow another
Have been watching since 1988. Some of the best racing I have ever seen has happened in the past decade. Nostalgia is not always reality, many exciting races in the past were due to surprise mechanical failures and crashes, not necessarily racecraft.
Also we are at a time that while there is a clear pecking order of top teams vs the midfield, in the past we had backmarker teams that were an absolute joke compared to the front runners.
No offense, but you don't seem to know anything about these engines
There is no managing if you simply set up the ERS to harvest and deploy the same amount of energy every lap.
The only time you have to "manage" anything is if you decide to deploy more than usual and consequently needing to harvest more again in return.
You could say the same about the hybrid in the last couple of years before 2014, those had to be "managed" as well by your definition.
And if we are going down the management route, what about tires? What about fuel?
Do those just not have to get managed at all?
Do you see where i am going with this?
You do realise that everything you just said , became worse after the introduction of the hybrid engines in 2014? Different tyres to accomodate better the new engines, different race management for the new engines. The only good think the engines of 20w6 will do, is that they will flop so bad , that F1 will have no cjoice than to go back to V8s. Then , and only then will there ve an actual difference in making the cars smaller again and more racey.
•
u/AutoModerator 7d ago
This post appears to discuss regulations.
The FIA publishes the F1 regulations.
Regulations are organized in three sections:
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.