It’s funny looking back at the first (and only) post on this site, where I shared my views on “that” incident at Silverstone, there’s been a lot that has happened since then, including far more dramatic happennings in the world of F1 which ultimately had an influence on the outcome of that season.
But now it’s a few years down the track, Verstappen is a multiple world champion and we’re into the third year of new regulations that were designed to make racing more interesting and where do we find ourselves, pretty much in the completely opposite position.
Red Bull are dominant, the first two races of the 2024 season have been a snore fest if you’re interested in who’s likely to win the race, although if you ignore that team then other parts of the races could be called interesting, if not for the racing itself but for the drama off the track.
It’s funny to look back at the “Mercedes years”, which lasted for a long time mind you, and consider all the whinging that was going on at the time about how the sport was getting boring and it wasn’t good for the spectators and blah, blah, blah, with some going so far as to ask for the rules to be changed, yet it doesn’t seem that we’re getting quite the same amount of posturing now that we had back then.
Of course, that’s probably down to who was doing the main complaining then and who is winning now… I’m looking at you Red Bull (and in particular Christian Horner and Helmut Marko). And it’s this in particular that has genuinely frustrated me about this team and their whole attitude when it comes to how they approach the sport.
They seem to be complete oblivious to their own hypocrisy…
And I thought 2021 was going to be the height of it, yet here we are a couple of years later and after the most dreadfully boring season that was 2023, where one team won all but one race of the season, the same team that was complaining the loudest in 2021 and beforehand, are happy to dismiss any suggestion that what is currently happening is bad for the sport.
I mean, look at this…
While it’s commendable that Red Bull have done a stella job getting their car right and have an incredibly talented driver in Max Verstappen, if this is what the next couple of years is going to look like, then what’s the point in taking the time to sit through each race weekend?
Granted, if Sergio Perez was any match for Verstappen, then that’d at least make it more interesting as who can forget the epic battles that Hamilton and Rosberg had while Mercedes was dominant? While the rest of the field largely didn’t get a look in, those two going hard at one another, and sometimes into one another made it bloody entertaining in my opinion.
Meanwhile, 2024 has started with Max cantering away to easy wins, and while the overall margin to his teammate may not seem like that much, you can be sure that at some point in the race Max was probably Max-ing (haha, get it) things out at about 80% of the cars ability and/or his talent, knowing full well that he didn’t have to push the engine or car to it’s fullest to stay well ahead of Sergio.
I’m not suggesting that the rules get changed or Red Bull are in some way penalised for their position, after all we’ve seen how ineffective that has been in the past, they’ve done a hell of a job taking a car that was so dominant last year and moving it forward (kudos to Adrian Newey) and I don’t believe they should be penalised for that.
But please, for the love of god, don’t sit there in all of your smugness and suggest that it’s anything other than a snooze fest while there is no real competition when it comes to who is likely to win each race weekend. Take a minute to recognise that while you’re doing great, the sport is suffering and if it doesn’t change until 2026 when the next lot of regulation changes come along, you’ll have lost a huge portion of the audience who actually want to see some racing.
Even once you take Red Bull out of the picture, the rest of the race hasn’t been that interesting either. DRS trains and tyre management from pretty much lap one, isn’t exactly inspiring and while I can understand some of the “sustainability” and “climate impact” philosophies that are bandied about, I really wish there was a little less strategy involved and a lot more “balls to the wall” racing going on.
Wouldn’t it be nice if qualifying didn’t generally dictate the race result and anyone in the Top 10 (or even beyond) had a genuine chance of winning based on driver skill and who can go the fastest for the longest and the tires didn’t crap out on them 2 laps into the race? Surely there is a way to give the drivers what they want in this regard so they can go out there and do what they do best (and are getting paid millions for), instead of tootling around on a glorified Sunday drive for fear of running out of grip!
Bring back multiple tyre manufacturers I say… I believe it’s the only bit of equipment where all the teams have to use the same stuff, whereas everything else can be developed by each team as they see fit, so why not add tyres into the mix. Not that it’d likely cause RB any concerns at the moment, you could practically bolt on some road tyres to that thing and it’d probably outperform half of the field.
Let’s hope for the sake of the sport the other teams can make a leap forward, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen. If the season is going to be of any interest it has to happen sooner rather than later, otherwise 2025 will be much of the same with RB starting to develop that car halfway through this season having built up a largely unassailable lead in 2024.
Even if Perez could find it in himself to be a genuine threat, that would be good, but for now it’s looking like the Max Verstappen show continues from 2023 and my entire commitment to watching the sport will be limited to about 15mins of highlights on YouTube each race weekend, as there’s not much point in watching anything live when the outcome is pretty much known in advance.
I wish I had an answer to the problem, but beyond some sort of rule change to influence the outcome, Red Bull have just done too good of a job for me to currently believe they’ll be threatened at any point this season, and as I said above, I don’t believe in changing the rules just because someone has made the most of them… so I’ll just have to watch and see who can make a race of it.
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