Formula One, Version 2.005

At five races in, one can confidently say that this year's Formula One season already presents a refreshing change to "the Schumey Show" depicted in recent Ferrari domination. As a matter of fact, the qualifying in early March for the 2005 inaugural event in Australia alone offered nearly as much excitement as the previous two seasons combined.

This is not to say, however, that I am not a fan of the Ferrari team. Rather, I am much more interested in watching an exciting race regardless of Driver or Constructor Championship standings. Whether or not this year's rule changes were designed to level the playing field for all teams or simply to handicap Ferrari (as the Tifosi would have you believe) really depends on whom you ask. The simple fact of the matter is that more people are tuning in to F1 now, which is a good thing -- and it's not just because CBS is offering it on tape delay so the people on this side of the pond don't have to get up at dawn on their days off.

So why do we need rules at all and what exactly did they do to change things, you ask? Well, the current "Rulebook" for the pinnacle of auto racing is no doubt more loaded than the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The very nature of competition means that there will always be a Microsoft with seemingly endless resources that if left unabated will leave the competition in the dust. And that, quite frankly, isn't fun to watch.

Whether the infraction is large (Enron) or small (current BAR team), sports, like the world of accounting disclosure, need guidelines to maintain the integrity of the contest. Golf needs to limit advances in technology to keep the ball from going a county mile hence making most current course designs obsolete, the same way baseball needs to curb doping to keep the long-ball in check.

Additional complexity within Formula One in particular, however, is provided by the astronomical costs associated with running a competitive team and the necessity of both commercial success and sponsorship funds to make the whole thing float. The constructors, let us not forget, are here to showcase their technical superiority (presumably in the interest of selling more commercial cars), which is difficult to do when a team whose annual budget is $350 million dollars needs to compete with one whose budget is about one tenth of that amount.

Finally, the convoluted relationship between the FIA governing body and Formula One ownership only makes matters worse. Even in the best of times, when the controlling parties of an organization are also the financial beneficiaries of increased viewership (or stock price), constant meddling in operations are a recipe for disaster. Sound familiar? The current setup would be roughly like having Fed Chair Alan Greenspan sitting on the boards of all of the Dow Jones Industrials.

Race Season 2005

Some of the rule-tweaking this year centers on engines (known as the one-unit, two- weekend rule), revised qualifying, and the radical change from unlimited tires to one set per race. Tires, incidentally, are a crucial component of grip, which allows the cars to perform in the blatantly physics-defying way that they do.

The aerodynamic aspect of grip is a truly fascinating phenomenon (as if a 3.0 liter 10 cylinder engine that revs to 18 and 19 thousand rpm and produces 900 horsepower wasn't amazing enough), and is a consistent topic in the continual revision of the rules. A Formula One car by nature needs to be as light as possible in the interest of acceleration. Lightweights, however, have an obvious inverse relationship with grip, requiring the use of enough modified aerodynamics to make an F22 Raptor envious. The increased down force allows the cars to make use of their massive tires and, in turn, achieve acceleration and deceleration speeds otherwise found only in a particle separator.

To say these cars "suck" to the road with the same force that clean white socks or the cream cheese-side of a bagel are attracted to a dirty laundry room or kitchen floor just doesn’t quite capture it. As a matter of fact, they generate so much ground-hugging pressure that they can achieve lateral forces between 4 and 5 Gs in corners, which is enough, theoretically, to drive quite easily upside-down at speed. At up to several millions bucks per copy (not including development costs), don't count on this as being tested by Mythbusters any time soon.

If you are expecting to see a rivalry as fierce and as exciting as a Senna/Prost duel, you may be disappointed. While we simply don't have the personalities of a Juan Manuel Fangio or Gilles Villeneuve, should you ask any F1 fan who is going to win the Driver's Championship after nearly a third of the year they won't honestly be able to tell you. And that should be enough to give even the guys at Linux hope.

Comments

[Robin Capper]

Formula One 2.005 sp1

See they've decided to change qualifying to a single session and hope to introduce the new system in time for next weekend's European Grand Prix. Yeah!