One of the reasons many of us love Formula 1, is how it always moves forward. Yet whilst we celebrate one of the most competitive seasons in a long time, the way it is over-regulated from a sporting perspective is inconsistent and even unnecessarily complicated.
Before I start my rant for today let me preface it with an empirical comparison. In a dusty corner of my bookshelf (remember those things called books), was a small yet quite thick yellow covered book, the 1992 FIA Handbook. Sure, as I mentioned it was thick, but the thing is, it included the technical and sporting regulations for F1, F3000, Group C, the World Rally Championship, Group A Touring Cars, and the list goes on, along with all the usual appendices that included the International Sporting Code.
I know, books were needed back then because we didn’t have the internet like now, but that’s not my point. The most remarkable observation that became obvious was how less descriptive things were back then. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, one of the attractions of F1 is that it keeps developing, especially from a technical perspective, and so it is understandable that the 1992 F1 Tech Regs might have less passages and pages in comparison to those of today.
However, what really did confuse me was how much smaller the International Sporting Code was in 1992, specifically Appendix L which relates to things like driving conduct, but I guess I wasn’t too surprised.
To me, whilst it seems rational that as technology and design evolve, there is a need to regulate certain technical aspects more rigorously, I simply am unable to reason how the manner with which the competitive driving of the modern evolved F1 has changed so much, that it needs such a more complicated regulative matrix.
It makes me wonder whether the rationale is simply to regulate it for the sake of it.
In recent times F1 Race Director Michael Masi and his constantly changing team of Race Stewards have applied the Sporting Regulations in a manner that for me is confusingly inconsistent and not limited to the following:
- Fernando Alonso using the loophole in the regulations to use the run-off chicane at Turn 2 at the start of the Russian Grand Prix. After the race, Masi admitted that because Alonso had followed the letter of the law, he was entitled to do what he did. This is an example of a regulation so poorly worded that a loophole exists that allows a blatant action contradicting its intent to be completely acceptable.
- Nikita Mazepin’s extremely dangerous blocking of Yuki Tsunoda at Sochi resulting in a warning, but being passed off by Masi, once again, as simply Mazepin’s driving style.
- The consistent near misses in qualifying as drivers slow to make a gap for their fast lap as those already on their own fast lap unwittingly approach.
- It being acceptable for Mercedes to add another power unit to Valtteri Bottas’s available pool and openly admitting that it was for tactical reasons, even though the intent of the regulation is operational and financial.
- The continual debate about track limits and how they are only applied at specific sites at each circuit and not just the circuit in total.
- How a driver knocking over a crew member in the pit lane does not even need reviewing by the Stewards.
- That drivers are apportioned blame for causing a collision in seemingly 50-50 situations even though the regulations do not mandate that blame necessarily needs to be apportioned at all.
- The indecisive way wet races are conducted, such as at Spa.
Of course, lamenting on days gone by and pretending that everything was perfect back then is naïve at best and often annoying, but the reality is that exciting, fair, and ultra-competitive championships have been contested in those same days, with far less prescriptive sporting regulations.
As the 2021 F1 season is turning into one for the history books, and the intent of the new technical era beyond is to manicure closer competition between the contestants. Don’t we want to remember them for their skills and close battles rather than the rules and who was rightly or wrongly pinged for this or that?