As we pass even further into yet another Formula One season where Max Verstappen and his Oranje Army rolls onwards to victory again and again and again and again, even Team Principals like Christian Horner are beginning to ask whether or not the sheer complete dominance of Verstappen and his Red Bull is bad for the sport. Presumably this is because the bosses at the various Formula One teams have begun to notice that expected TV revenues are starting to wane as advertisers either can't afford or can't be bothered to throw megadollarpounds at the sport.
It does not help that the shop remains closed to newcomers, that prospective teams like Porsche/Audi and Andretti Motorsport with the might of General Motors behind it are actively denied entry. It does not help that Liberty Media have decided that watching Formula One is actively a Veblen Good and that they want to extract more from the wallets of would be spectators and viewers on television. It does not help that Formula One has abandoned its traditional homes of motorsport and can no longer get a French or German Grand Prix to be held any more, or that Formula One's treatment of nations like Korea, China, India, or even Britain and Belgium has been shocking.
Perhaps most worrying of all is that the cars themselves while being technical miracles, with arguably the best pilots in the world at the wheel, are just not particularly exciting to watch. They all stick to the road like they are on rails and even lap records look somewhat effortless. Partly the reason for that is that they probably do require less effort to drive than cars in the past and that they are all amazingly stable.
Stability in a motor car is usually a highly desirable trait. Stability through the three axes of motion (pitch, roll, yaw), means that you have a predictable motor car. That is exactly what you are looking for if the purpose is to transport people in safety and comfort but ironically if you want a maneuverable machine, then what you want is a thing which is more dynamic through those three axes of motion. The most excellent example that I can think of to demonstrate this, is the difference between a World War I fighter plane like the Fokker Dr.1 and the Airbus A380. The Fokker is highly maneuverable in all three axes whereas the Airbus is designed to give passengers a nice smooth ride.
A Formula One car, left purely to the whims of the engineers, is designed to go as fast as possible on a lap of a circuit, repeatedly. Given that this means sticking a Formula One car to the road as hard as possible so that the most power can be translated into raw speed, then this is the outcome which every team has chosen to pursue. Modern Formula One cars are also so aero dependent that in order to provide any kind of contest at all, they have had to hand back speed boosts to cars via the Drag Reduction System and 'push to pass' buttons which use the harvested hybrid power from the MGU-K. From a fan's perspective, who wants to watch a fun contest, the fastest and best cars at their job are boring to watch. If you are an engineer, boring is beautiful.
What the fans want to see, is ironically not the fastest and most technologically advanced cars in the world any more. The technical bound box has been so refined that exciting and fast are almost mutually exclusive concepts. This is why Max Verstappen and his Red Bull is bad for the sport. Together, they are arguably the second most complete driver to have ever existed, combined with the highest and best example of a Formula One car yet devised. That is boring.
If we turn back time to when I was ten years old, we again saw an amazing driver, combined with the highest and best example of a Formula One car yet devised. The difference back then though was that the cars were physically smaller and arguably harder to drive. If we place a McLaren MP4/4 from 1988 next to a McLaren MCL36 from 2022, we can see stark differences in philosophy. To wit:
On the left is the McLaren MP4/4 of 1988. It had the following critical geometry dimensions:
Wheelbase: 111.3"
Width: 72.0"
W/W Ratio: 1.5458
On the right is the McLaren MCL36 of 2022. It had the following critical geometry dimensions:
Wheelbase: 141.7"
Width: 78.7"
W/W Ratio: 1.8005
As regular readers may remember I have theory that the absolute best ratio for Wheelbase to width is the Golden Ratio (1+√5)/2, about 1.618033. I have no way to prove if this is right but it seems intuitively correct to me.
The McLaren MP4/4 of 1988 is I think undersquare by 4.47% whereas the McLaren MCL36 of 2022 is I think oversquare by 11.27%; relative to what I think is the perfect W/W Ratio. What this means in real terms is that the MP4/4 would have been easier to turn through the yaw axis and helped by throttle induced power sliding, whereas the MCL36 as a longer car, is harder to turn through the yaw axis and likely not helped at all by throttle induced power sliding, as power being transmitted through the rear wheels acts longitudinally down the axis of yaw. Add together the various vectored forces and this is why a modern Formula One car of Verstappen's looks so very sedate compared to the wild animals that Senna had to drive.
What this means for the cars of two year's ago as opposed to three decades ago is that they have gone from being slightly stubby to being very long. I have no doubt that drivers like Aryton Senna or Alain Prost would very easily adapt to a modern car, as would Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton very easily adapt to a older car, but the fact remains that a modern Formula One car is hideously stable in a straight line; to the point where due to things like anti-stall and flappy paddle gearboxes, I could jump into one and drive it. That simply should not be. A Formula One car should be the kind of thing that drivers should be able to finesse through corners but as it stands, they're all point and click affairs. Whilst it is not quite as stark as the difference between dancing in ballet flats and dancing in Doc Martens boots, modern Formula One drivers are not asked to dance like Nureyev, nor do they have the moves like Jagger.
The elephant in the room though, is that a modern Formula One car is an elephant in the room. They are wide, they are long, they are big.
Obviously narrower cars would be better because of packaging constraints at places like Monte-Carlo. You can not make steel lined racetracks in hilariously small city-states wider. My wee ickle Mazda 2 DJ is 66.7" wide, which if the Golden Ratio is applied, produces a wheelbase of 108". Ironically this is shorter than the cars of 1988. What's more important is that it is a whole foot narrower for each and every car. When you've suddenly gained two feet of space, then that's pretty impressive.
If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, I'd also remove the big rear wings on the back entirely. I'd still want something to surround the wheels as the idea of jumped wheels is awful but I think that aerodynamic enhancement while good for lap times, is bad for motor racing. The older Formula Ford ruleset which had no wings at all, made for some really furious competition and a typical Formula Ford race was usually far more exciting than any Formula One race. The F4 regulations which have mostly replaced it, are just not inspiring. In that respect, Formula E looks way way cooler.
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