Quote:
Originally Posted by Born Racer
The irony is that DRS does not provide much entertainment, so easy are some of the passes. We have seemingly got to the stage that overtaking is easy enough in F1 cars (i.e. hard but viable) to not need DRS. The upshot of no DRS is a cocktail of genuine overtakes, more wheel-to-wheel battles, and fast cars not automatically moving up to the front.
I'm not a fan of P2P either, as much as I love Indycars. It seems more like a strategic tool in any case, like a more extreme version of fuel saving. As you can use it to defend, it somewhat negates the point of if in a battle, other than as a strategic element to distribute throughout the race however you like. Either way, neither DRS nor P2P should be necessary.
|
I highlighted what I thought was the most important part of your post.
Entertainment or sport should be in the gladiatorial battle between the contestants.
Karting can be hugely entertaining without any DRS or P2P.
DRS only exists because the regulators have created monster cars that in most places are too long and large to be effectively raced at traditional road circuits while wheel to wheel.
Track designers have increasing moved to longer straights and tighter corners to provide braking tests to enable overtaking while brake manufacturers provide ever increasingly effective brakes to shorten the braking distance.
Aerodynamic assistance has hugely increased cornering speeds to the place where corners taken at 120kph two decades ago can be negotiated at 160-180kph.
Of course there is less overtaking.
It is harder than ever to overtake unless you have some unnatural artificial assistance.
But that doesn't make it a better spectacle, nor does it make it more entertaining, because the gladiatorial aspect of what does make the sport entertaining is about what happens between the combatants, not in the technical effectiveness of their chariots.
The technology that has overtaken the sport has dulled the combativeness of the combat between the gladiators and no amount of fiddling by regulators or commercial managers will change that until there is a willingness to sit down and look at what will make the chariots effective yet return the drivers to being the more important than the technology they are wielding.