For a long time, I have believed that F1 should be run by the teams rather than a bunch of failed lawyers and stuffed shirts calling themselves the FIA. Now it seems that I was wrong. The FIA has asked the newly-formed association of team owners called FOTA for their suggestions regarding the future of F1 and Martin Whitmarsh, the head of FOTA's sporting working group, has spoken about one of their ideas. In brief, this amounts to turning the Friday practice sessions into a primitive time trial with the cars running on hard tires and a million bucks as the prize.
Martin's gang
Words fail me. If this is the best FOTA can come up with when looking to the future, the last thing we want is to have them running the sport. Ignoring the question of why the sporting group should concern itself with matters of entertainment, what on earth makes Whitmarsh think his silly time trial (yes, Luca, it seems F1 is a circus after all) will draw any more viewers than does the present practice session? A better idea would be to have the pit girls put on a show of cheerleading while the drivers compete in sack races and apple dunking.
Over at BlogF1, Ollie has asked the question What Would You Do With Grand Prix Fridays? and I have given a suggestion in the comments. But, in fact, Keith Collantine makes the most telling observation:
I can’t think of anything particularly good, perhaps because "change Friday practice" is a long way down the list of "stuff that needs fixing in F1"?.
Consistent stewarding? Clear rules? Better engagement with the fans? Improved racing? More teams? All far more important matters.
If FOTA is going to duck the more important issues and prioritise unimportant stuff like this then they aren’t going to be much use.
It is time that F1 realized that the GP is the show and that is what the viewers come for. Never mind the sport adapting itself to suit the demands of entertainment; it is exciting and spectacular enough to have captured the attention of millions worldwide and changing things merely to "spice it up" only detracts from the main event. Let the media work out fresh ways to present it - that is their job (and my suggestion concentrates on that rather than calling for change in the sport).
What concerns me more than all this is Whitmarsh's reasoning behind his suggestion. Let us have a close look at what he says:
We are looking at the whole format of a race weekend. At the moment we formulated a Friday testing format, but in reality no one is doing the normal disciplined testing. We are preparing for the race (instead).
If you give a race team the chance to go on the race track where they are going to race at on the Sunday on the Friday before, then we must have been nuts to think that we will be doing engineering testing. So we are all as bad as one another.
So we say, is this good value? Does it help the show?
The first assumption, that Friday is for testing, is obviously incorrect. The sessions are called "practice", this surely indicating that the idea is for teams to prepare for the GP. Naturally the teams are going to be focused upon the upcoming race and will need time to set their cars up for the circuit - even Whitmarsh admits that this is what happens.
Where he gets the notion that practice sessions are for testing, I do not know. There are several testing sessions in between GPs each year and it seems to me that this would be the appropriate place to do such things. Any team that has left testing until the Friday before a GP is running late and likely to be in deep trouble as a result.
It is not as if the teams do not need the practice sessions either. Older teams may have a mountain of data on previous races at each circuit but differences in weather and surfaces can render that useless. Perhaps he feels that McLaren could cope if forced to rely on previous data alone, but I think their funding advantage over many other teams is such that they should not be given yet another benefit over the minnows.
Contrary to what Whitmarsh seems to be implying, the Friday practice sessions are an important part of the GP. Apart from the fact that they allow teams time to find their ideal set up, they also pinpoint aspects of the circuit that may cause problems in the race (the pit entry and exit at Singapore is an example) and they let rookie drivers begin to learn the track.
If we must consider the entertainment side of things (and I do not believe that should be the concern of F1), let the TV broadcasters work on it. It is their show after all and they are supposed to be the experts in the field. If there is a problem, it is in how things are presented, not in the practice session itself. Were the media allowed greater freedom and access, I am quite sure that they would produce something that would draw in the viewers. That might require that Mr Whitmarsh be much more open about what really happens within McLaren but, judging by events over the last couple of years, secrecy has brought the team nothing but trouble.
Never mind the wacky races, Mr Whitmarsh; let the show come to F1 rather than F1 go to the show!