5 reasons Formula 1 in 2014 will be rubbish
Pinnacle of motorsports? Pinnacle of boredom more like!
By Shahzad Sheikh
Damon Hill, the underdog champion
Frankly I haven’t really followed Formula 1 since the days of Damon Hill and Mika Hakkinen and when Michael Schumacher reigned supreme – here’s wishing him a speedy and full recovery to health, by the way. We’re all pulling for you champ!
Back to contemporary F1 though. Smaller cars, greater safety, slower speeds and PR/marketing-cloned lightweight robotic jokeys – sorry drivers – have all left me rather uninterested.
Where are the gladiators slugging it out on frighteningly treacherous tarmac, through wits, skill, bravery and bloody-mindedness, whilst manhandling monstrous machines that were not much more tame than raving rabid bulls?
Watching historic Grand Prix is watching real Grand Prix cars
By contrast today we have boy-geeks pushing buttons in precision slot-racers linked to a load of lab-coat technicians with not a spec of grease under their fingernails, monitoring and guiding their remote-controlled contenders’ every move. If the drivers emerge from the cars with so much as a bruised thumb there’s furore in the pitlane and outrage in the tabloids: ‘is motor racing too dangerous?’
It’s supposed to be bloody dangerous! Remember it was started by so-called ‘gentlemen’ racers who were really just bored adrenaline-junkie WWII fighter pilots with no Nazis to kill anymore. Their derring-do found an outlet on airfields hastily converted to race-tracks.
But aside from my lamenting the lost days of true grit, guts and glory, why do I think F1 this year will be the dullest yet?
It’s obscene, no really, avert your eyes young lady!
1. The cars are hideous.
Some of them even have penises on the front! I mean come on – how are you NOT going to snigger each time the commentator says: ‘and he’s coming up behind him really fast,’ or ‘he’s going to rear-end him – this could be messy’?!
And it’s not just the dicks, some look like Dyson vacuum cleaners, whilst others have so many protrusions and winglets that you daren’t touch it lest you get a carbon-cut – there goes health and safety then. And at the end of the day, how can you be enthralled by a race car you barely bring yourself to look at.
Well I suppose at least the engines are small enough to fit into your brief case
2. Powered by 1.6-litre hybrid engines.
Formula 1 – the pinnacle of motor racing hey? These are meant to be the fastest racing machines on the planet. So what are they? V8s no more. Whopping great V10s of yesteryear? No way. Okay, they have turbos, I’ll give you that – electrically assisted turbos though. Yep, these are hybrids. 1.6-litre six-pots. 1.6-LITRES?!!! How do you even make a V6 that small?
Why not just stick three-cylinder units in them and be done with it. Heck just put pedals in them – you can’t get much cleaner than that if it’s the environment you’re worried about. Instead of Formula 1 we can have Flinstones 1!
Yeah but, where do you stick the Duracells?
3.Complicated technology.
So they are hybrids and no longer have the Knight Rider style boost button KERs system from last year. Instead you have KERs plus electrified Turbos which equals ERS. Seriously? Ers… Stands for Energy Recovery System apparently, and is tied to an MGU-K, which sounds a little more lethal – like a Russian rifle or something. But that stands for Motor Generator Unit – Kinetic.
This will give the drivers 160bhp extra for 33 seconds per lap, but not when they choose, it’s automatic. So does that mean it won’t be them, but the car deciding when they can overtake?
This year you’ll get to see F1 drivers behaving like Basil Fawlty
4. They’re all going to break down. A lot.
It’s inevitable. It’s all-new engineering and despite computer simulations and test-bed running, the limitations of real-world testing for F1 cars means their behaviour in a Grand Prix is extremely unpredictable. So they will go pop, frequently.
And here’s more good news. This year the drivers can only use five engines over the season instead of eight. Blow all five and with the sixth they’ll have to start in the pit lane. What happens after that? Will they all just run around the paddocks on foot – could be interesting since there will be double points up for grabs in the last race. Could get vicious you know.
A real-life Dick Dastardly’s exploits might keep me engaged
5. It sends me to sleep.
Every time I try to watch an F1 race these days I doze off. After all it’s just a bunch of cars monotonously convoying around the same piece of tarmac, not actually racing because the rules and tech won’t let them. Nor will it help that these cars are not going to sound anywhere near as maniacal and menacing as before – well what do you think a damn Prius sounds like anyway?
F1 is as much about the personalities doing the racing, and politics and shenanigans behind the scenes than the action on the track. Yes we all decry Ferrari or McLaren for resorting to espionage or underhand gamesmanship to get their way, but hey that’s all part of the fun as a spectator isn’t it? Yet there even seems to be less of that sort of conniving skulduggery these days.
‘Aiight ya bitches, wot iz it ya is sa’n bout da penalties?
Then again…
With all these changes and reshuffles, I could be completely wrong and it might end up being the most entertaining and surprising year for a long time. In fact my prediction is that Germany will again dominate F1, but it won’t be driver Sebastian Vettel. In fact due to vastly different cars and the loss of their trick rear exhaust-blown diffuser set-up, I think Red Bull will be back amongst the crowd.
When I say Germans, I mean Mercedes. There are only three engine suppliers – Renault, Ferrari and Mercedes and it already seems that the three-pointed star has come up with the best power units so far, which will shake things up immensely.
In fact I want to see Lewis Hamilton out in front, then we’ll see Ferrari pull some strings with the stewards to get him a string of those new penalty points which gets him banned for a race, and when he’s interviewed about why he’s being picked on, I want to hear him say ‘it’s cause I is black innit’ and this time really mean it! Now THAT will really be interesting.
