Understanding F1
Strangest Dichotomies and Unexpected Facts
To the casual observer F1 racing might seem like another frivolous expenditure of resources: hundreds of people working in a garage developing a single-use car, millions poured into racing machinery, tracks laid out and set up for one weekend, drivers’ and pit crews’ lives at stake at every race.
The Live F1 Experience
Having been to an F1 race live once before, I know that as a spectator, things can get monotonous from your spot on the grandstand. After all, you have a view of a 350m stretch of track and see 20 or so cars whizzing by so fast you couldn’t identify them if your life depended on it. But that’s me at all live events. I’ve been to a baseball match, a water polo match, a football match, a swimming meet — all of which I would have preferred to view on live TV where the item in play (if there was) was less small and I could see well-timed close-ups of the various players.
That’s if I were there to watch the game. People go to sporting events for a variety of reasons: to cheer on their team, to have a night out, to see and be seen (for something like horse-racing, perhaps). At the Singapore Grand Prix, there’s no lack of festivities throughout the weekend, with a post-race, often star-studded concert line-up. You’d be thrilled to see familiar spots in town transformed into a racing circuit, with crash barriers and track safety crew dotting the way. One might even catch a glimpse of a favourite driver or crew decked out in team gear wandering Raffles City.
And during the race, what you can do is admire the speeds they are traveling at. And the sounds the engines generate. You are handed a set of earbuds to protect your ears — that’s how unquestionably loud these cars get.
The Rules
Ironically, in spite of the rambunctious reputation of motorsport and racing in general — they probably have the thickest set of rulebooks compared to any other sport. Or perhaps, it is because of. The number of times the stewards have been asked to review reported rule-flouting by rival teams make the off-track drama a sizeable story in and of itself. So granted, the teams regularly contest these like rebellious schoolchildren, and the stewards are regularly seen in equal parts schoolmasterly and draconian, depending on which side of the rulebook you are standing.
There are a couple ways to understand this proliferation of rules.
Firstly, in F1, whilst we generally only see the drivers’ names in competition — there is in actuality, two championships running in parallel. The first is the Drivers’ Championship, where drivers on the grid compete to amass points. The driver with the most number of points at the end of the season wins the Driver’s Championship. Points are given based on your finishing position at each Grand Prix.
The second is the Constructors’ Championship, which is where the teams compete to end the season with the most number of points. Each team fields two cars per race, which translates to two driver seats. Points that each of the two drivers score will count towards the team’s Constructor’s bid. Or you could see it as points being allocated based on the team cars’ finishing position.
In the 2021 season, there are 23 Grand Prix (GP) currently scheduled. Points allocation per GP is as follows: 25 (1st place), 18 (2nd place), 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 (10th place). No points are allocated for anyone coming in 11th position or later. So that’s a total of 25 + 18 + 15 + 12 + 10 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 101 points per race up for grabs. Not forgetting an extra point for the driver who gets Fastest Lap — which as the name suggests, is anyone who finishes a single lap in a circuit with the fastest time. The caveat: the Fastest Lap driver must also finish within the top ten, or no point will be allocated. Any driver who finishes outside of the top ten is not eligible for the Fastest Lap point, and no Fastest Lap point will be awarded if the fastest lap driver does not finish in the top ten.
That’s a total of 25*23 = 575 points, or 598 if including Fastest Lap, maximum for any one Driver, and (25+18+1)*23 = 1012 points for any Constructor. Remember each constructor has two cars, and thus two long-term drivers on the team.
Knowing this, we might deduce that the majority of the rules in the FIA rulebook are actually technical directives on the car itself: specifications over the numerous and complex car parts that make up a Formula One car. I haven’t read the handbook myself, but suffice to say the majority of off-track back-and-forth with the FIA stewards usually involve scrutinising the car construction of a competing team, than say, something an opposing driver did during the race. Inevitably, the latter does happen but that investigation is hardly as long-drawn out as the former, and usually incurs less penalty.
A stop-and-go time penalty or grid-placement penalty might be issued to a driver for dangerous driving or blocking the exit of another driver which may affect the track position of a driver for one race, but teams may be slapped with tire restrictions, engines bans or hefty fines for cheating in construction that have far wider implications to the team’s races for a larger part of the season, or even in future seasons.
You may also see drivers asked to “give back track position” for over-taking outside of track limits, as well as being given a time penalty on their finish for doing any of the above.
So whilst Formula One is a non-spec race in the sense that everyone competes on different machinery, at least between teams, the FIA use the rules to try to limit the amount of variance between the teams — to varying degrees of success.
The Dilemma
It’s a dilemma. On the one hand, you want to build cars that go fast, and you want to encourage innovation. On the other hand, you don’t want any particular car to have an unfair advantage because of a staggering loophole they found in the rulebooks. Personally, I would err on the side of innovation and if a team has found a way to build a car around the existing set of rules, good for them. Either other teams can attempt to emulate their competitor’s design during the season, which they are free to do so as teams are allowed to make upgrades and changes to their car throughout the season, or they live with that disadvantage for the rest of the season and make sure they scrutinise the rulebooks more carefully next time. Be more creative in their approach and with their interpretation :P.
Most of the time, the FIA corrects things by becoming more explicit in their rules the next year, if they wish to eliminate a particularly off-putting design. I’m not always aligned with this response — although I can see how it would be the natural, knee-jerk one. Finding loopholes and maximising every element; that’s the spirit of racing, in my opinion. Squeeze every last bit of juice from every line. If it makes the car go faster whilst still keeping safety as a priority, why not?
A component ban in F1 reads differently to me as a FINA ban on full-body suits or the Nike Vaporfly ban by World Athletics. In the former it is inherently a part of the game — one cannot drive without a car, whilst in the latter we are trying to measure pure human achievement. Even so, I would argue that there is a place for inventive attire in traditional sports — but perhaps as a separate category. Who wouldn’t be interested to see how far we could go with the best shoes a shoe manufacturer can offer, or the best suits a swimwear company could make?
Motorsport differs from other traditional sports in that we are not merely trying to measure the specific athletic ability of a human, but the overall ability of man and machine — where the machine component has endless possibilities. I would argue that if we wanted to see progress in the machine, we would have to be less closed to random innovation. I might even go so far as to say that mounting FIA rules may simply constitute arbitrary limits that might have the good intentions of wanting to arbitrate fair play, but may end up stifling the sport.
The Problem
The problem that the FIA are ostensibly trying to solve, apart from appeasing unhappily noisy constructors, is to narrow the gap that currently exists between the top of the field and the bottom of the field. Today as it stands, we have several outfits that have significantly more money and funding than other teams. The better funded a team is, the more they can invest in hiring engineers who can then go on to make significant technological innovations and improvements to the car. Technological advancement doesn’t come for free, it turns out. Talent, people, and raw materials — all cost something.
So the worser funded teams languish at the bottom of the grid because they don’t have the cash to invest in making key components better, whilst the same few teams lap up the prizes with their well-oiled machinery. It’s not that the FIA cares about the teams at the bottom; but the feeling in the paddock is that the sport would become boring if one team or driver was unassailably dominant.
I don’t know how I feel about this. Whilst I know for a fact that people who watch sport often root for the underdog, and that it’s usually good to have tough competition and rivalries — handicapping top teams by cutting their spending as is currently being done, is, I don’t feel the right way to go about it.
Money attracts money. If you cut what goes into building a car, what you might find is sub-standard cars that come out in the next couple of years that are just underwhelming in terms of performance when compared to other race series or to your road automobile in general. Someone who watches F1 for the technological advancement might be less than impressed.
F1 has its cachet because of the extremes that are attached with this environment: extreme speeds, extreme personalities — it’s just good drama all round. Take away either of those elements by trying to gentrify weaker teams or artificially handicap stronger ones, and you lose some part of the story.
Perhaps a reverse grid set-up would have been preferable, compared to a spending cap. I selfishly still want to see the best car possible, on the grid, unhindered by budget. And I also feel for those who have had to lose their jobs because of the new rules.
My prediction is that if the growth of the cars, year on year are stunted by budget, the F1 community will see a drop, rather than an increase in interest — even if the field was much narrower. We don’t need 20 middling cars of average performance. We just need two or three great cars to make a great rivalry come alive.
Or perhaps marketing will get a bigger budget.
I’ve gotten comfortable with the current set-up where we have essentially three tiers on the grid: the teams fighting for the championship, the very good mid-field battle that sometimes throws out podiums, and the stragglers. I’m the sort of person who wants to see records being broken, who wants to see different set-ups from different teams, who wants to see the spectacle when all these different engineering, design and cultural philosophies collide.
Maybe I’ll be proven wrong about having a tighter battle and budget all-round the paddock. I hope so.
