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An idea to close the gap

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Other responses

The weight handicapping system is just not fair. At least, not in the form proposed right now. I mean, why hang weights in Schumacher's car - and not in Rubens's as well?! After all, they have the same car, right? 
The problem in Formula 1, in my perspective, is not the difference in performance of the cars, but more like the actual SIZE of this difference. Actually, everyone wants a little difference there - otherwise how would one draw Ferrari / McLaren / Williams to invest in the development of a good car? Just to get an ultra-high performance aerodynamic design and an extra-wide angled 19000 RPM v10 engine - and 15 kgs of ballast hung to the package to make it level with the Arrows's (in case they make it back on track, of course)?
Let's not forget that first of all the team bosses are businessmen - and that really doesn't sound much like a good business. Instead of slowing down Schumacher, one would really want to see a more level field as a whole. We want to see who is the better driver, and that's really hard given that he's got the better car to steer around the tracks. But the constructors really want to show they've got the better car, right? Mercedes wants to show they're better than BMW (poor job doing it this year), Ferrari wants to show they're a lot better than Jaguar, and so on. In a word, winning teams want to keep their image, and good drivers want to show what they're made of. So, what if Ferrari would have had a car capable of going only 0.3 seconds a lap faster than the rest of the field, instead of the typical 1-second-and-something shown this year? What if the difference between Williams BMW and McLaren Mercedes would have been of 0.1 seconds a lap? I for one think that we would have seen a lot more overtaking, and probably plenty of pole positions clinched by hundredths of seconds instead of more than half a second now and then. However, during the race one could still see who has the better car - but the drivers would count a lot more. 
My idea is: LET'S HAVE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CARS LOWERED BY A GIVEN FACTOR. For instance, let's have the difference of 1 second a lap between Ferrari and McLaren shot down to a mere 0.2 seconds a lap (a scaling-down factor of 5). 
And how would we do this? Easy. Organize 2-3 times a year an event at which every driver gets to drive all the other cars - except his own (because he might want to drive it pretty slowly, just to show the world what a dog of a car he's got, right?); and, at the end of it, make an average of all the clocked times for each team's car - and see the ACTUAL differences (driver skills differences not being measurable any more). 
NOW, knowing the differences, weights would be applied to each car (except the slowest, of course) so that the time difference to the next-best car would be reduced by, say, 75%. Wouldn't that be an EXCEPTIONALLY interesting event? Let's suppose that during a week every driver gets an hour's running in every car in the field (they run a lot more than that when testing, don't they?), during which he sets the car up and gets a couple of fast laps. Every driver would try to run the other cars as fast as he can, to get the smallest possible weight added to his own car - and that would be a great show, and would LEAD to a great show! Carmakers would remain happy that they've shown the world how much better their car REALLY is, and drivers could really get to fight each other during the season and kill the boredom of nowadays F1 show... 
Plus, I don't really think it would be too complicated to design a car such that it can accommodate all sizes of pilots - from tallest to shortest. For instance, a standard seat-fitting design could be imposed (by FIA), and at those events each driver would come at a new car with his own seat (just an idea, like all the rest here). - Adrian - Romania (Reference Heretic 4-27 - It is all over)

The Heretic replies:

Thanks for your lengthy and obviously well thought out contribution.

I do not understand what they are trying to achieve by treating f1 racing like horses. At the end of the day this is not a drivers only competition like we see in sailing where theoretically all the boats are identical and teams get a different boat for each heat.

Yes. The dominance of a particular team does affect the spectator value of the sport. Yes one must wonder why Minardi are in it at all. But if they artificially manipulate the outcome of races to make the sport more acceptable to television, which is where the motivation is coming from, I cannot see that the big money will stay with the sport and the whole thing will change again.

The only way that I believe the sport should be “controlled” is by changing the rules well before the start of a season but not so long that everyone has a car that complies six months before it is needed. These rule changes should be focussed on making the sport cheaper as well as more competitive and exciting.

Areas where I think a lot more can be done is in aerodynamics (don’t limit downforce just limit wing sizes and positions and keep on moving it from season to season), tyres (make them race on commercially available road running tyres of which there were more than say 10,000 sold in the preceding year), allow each team three engines and one set of spares per race meet for both cars – much better than saying that they should do the entire weekend on only one engine per car. Have more than one qualifying session and influence grid position by overall performance during practice sessions.

Making the engine smaller will drop them too close to other formulas but limiting the fuel so that they can't afford to maximise power may help.

The formula does not need to be overhauled in one revolutionary change followed by a period of stabilisation. That is where these dominant periods come from. It should constantly change in easy to police areas.

The Heretic

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