To Overtake or Not to Overtake, that is the Question!

One of the biggest developments in the history of the racing car has to be in the area of aerodynamics.

From the early wings stuck way up in the air in the late 60's, to the Lotus ground effects cars of the late 70's, to the first high nose car Tyrell of the 90's, to today's aero wonders, the art of aerodynamics has come a long way!

Unfortunately as cars have become more aero-dependant (this is becoming one of my most common topics) the racing has suffered. Today the cars create so much "dirty air" behind them that the drivers find it very hard to race closely together.

The following is the opening paragraph from an Autosport.com article dated 25-1-11...

"Formula 1 teams and its bosses should get together and invest serious time and resource into understanding better how much overtaking the sport really needs, in a bid to improve grand prix racing."

The article centres around the views of Former Renault Technical Director Pat Symonds...

"I've said it many times before, but overtaking should be like a goal in football and not a basket in basketball. That is the sort of level you want."

Autosport says...

"In particular, he thinks technical chiefs would be better able to come up with rules that did improve the racing - if they were told exactly how much overtaking the sport's chiefs felt was needed."

The brains and I use the word loosely, behind F1 need to sit down to work out what exactly they are sitting down to discuss; have a meeting to arrange when to have a meeting, if you will.

How much overtaking is needed in F1??

Well "any or some" would be a start!! They have even set up an "OWG" or "Overtaking Working Group" to research the issue!?!?!

F1 doesn't need gimmicks to ensure the drivers can overtake, it simply needs to start looking at its rule book in the same way as NASCAR.

Before you throw things at the computer screen let me explain. NASCAR has concentrated on creating a grid of cars that can race together, run closely together, pass, or / and OVERTAKE!! With the latest Nationwide cars, NASCAR has worked out how to have different designs of cars with very even down force and drag levels. Obviously a NASCAR stock car and an F1 single seater are very different cars, so I am not saying this is an easy fix for F1.

I simply think F1 should spend more time solving the issue of getting the cars to drive nose to tail, than discussing what the issue is in the frst place, and how much overtaking F1 needs. If they can't answer that question maybe they should ask the TV audience, as they have know the answer for a while now!!

Cars that can drive inches apart will then be able to race and overtake each other on the right piece of tarmac. But that's another topic altogether... Now F1, stop talking and...

Get on with it!!