Here’s an interesting conundrum. What if the 2021 regulations actually work too well and have a slowing impact reducing the speeds of the cars? That’s the fear of Racing Point’s Otmar Szafnauer.
“I should. But my fear is we’re dumbing down the sport too much for a fallacy of anybody can win on any Sunday.
“If we go six seconds a lap slower, it’s not Formula 1 any more.
“And before you know it, we’re going to have to slow F2 down.
“In F2, $2million will buy a ride, but if we’re not careful in 2021, those F2 cars that you spend $2m on it will be faster than we are with what we’re spending $200m on.
“There’s something wrong about that.”
I may call foul on some of his assertions here as the 2014 season found the end-all, be-all hybrid engine reducing speeds at similar levels compared to previous seasons with the V8, V10 et. al.
When that happened, only the fans were crying foul about the lack of sound and serious pace deficit. In fact, after 7 years of development, only now are the cars beating times that were set decades ago by V8-powered cars.
This also assumes that the lack of pace, 5-6 seconds per lap off previous seasons, would equal boring or bad racing but if the cars were all capable of passing and creating exciting racing, I am not sure that time difference would be as important.
At least that’s what everyone said back in 2014-15. Unfortunately, they struggled to find that exciting wheel-to-wheel racing with the current set of regulations and we all endured a slow, oppressive progress toward reaching speeds we’d orphaned back in 2013. It took seven years.
Hat Tip: Autosport
