I remember reading about these scenarios from Jackie Stewart’s book almost forty years ago… He was always amazed when he could pass the better drivers that way. But for the lesser drivers, often businessmen or inheritors of wealth who were spending money to look cool in front of women, missing a gear change was not so unusual. Nowadays the sport is full of professionals assisted by excellent technology, so it doesn’t happen.

(Excepting Bourdais, the entire field in Germany this year is well within two seconds of Webber.)

Phillips said “Nobody remembers more than about ten favorite passes across the history of the sport.” This strikes me as true, and all the aerodynamic shenanigans in the world aren’t going to help.

You want overtaking in Formula One? Here’s what you do: Just before the outlap, you make Tamara Ecclestone go out to the start line wearing a short skirt, and make Flavio Briatore give her a dime. She tosses the dime four times. If it comes up heads all four times (6.25% probability), you flip the field… Maybe once per season. Or have her do it three times, and Sutil leads the pack twice per season.

No fewer tosses than that, though. That’s plenty likely enough that a few races will have tremendous mixes of talent across the grid through the race, but it won’t make people less likely to try and qualify well.

Dare to innovate! KERS is for weenies! Blue flags are for wimps!

———

Meanwhile, be glad you’re not a NASCAR fan. I saw a NASCAR race on TV in a bar last weekend. I hadn’t realized all those guys are on the same lap in the same corner all the time. It’s not racing, it’s turtles in a herd.

- Front/Rear Wings to be standardised but length/width to remain the same as 2008-spec & exhaust ports to be modified.

- Slicked tyres

- Top-Six pointing (10-6-4-3-2-1) with constructors eligible for prize money for the top 11 finishers.

The top-six (10-6-4-3-2-1) was the fairest & best way for F1 racers to compete. Coming in third is one thing, but that extra two points are worth fighting for, & from second to first those four points are worth the risks. Even today I don’t look at the finishers bellow the top-six.

Of course, F1 is a battle of the constructors & naturally some cars do better on this or that circuit than others & drivers also have their own circuits & so on. Incidents also come to play.

Yes, there is ‘dirty air’ & yes it is difficult to over-take but it’s always been the case. Over-taking was not meant to be easy & is always dangerous, but it’s up to drivers to find a way past. Massa (after his fatal start from Pole in Malaysia’s Sepang in 2007) tried everything to get past Hamilton while Alonso (who slipped past him on the first turn) was already building a healthy lead.

Massa frantically fighting Hamilton very nearly made it past. I think had they had grooveless (slicked) tyres the battle would have been even more exciting, & no doubt we can see more exciting races with some passes more often only if the drivers had something worth fighting for, that is, the victory.

I cannot believe that so many people have bought Max’s line that too much overtaking can be boring. People go and watch Formula Fords and the like and rave about them for one reason. There is a lot of overtaking. People rave about F1 in the 60s and 70s because there was a lot of overtaking. Look at Monza 71 when there were five drivers going into the last corner with a chance of winning the race and the guy who did win I think was fourth. How boring does that sound?

To me if a driver is in fourth position the only way he should be allowed to get third position unless the guy ahead has a problem is to go and take it off him. Gaining positions in the pits through strategy is pathetic. At Imola one year Schumacher went from 12th to second and made one overtaking move. What has that got to do with motor racing.

DOF_power, I suspect you have missed my point. Your statistics about the amount of overtaking in the past say nothing about how exciting people found them. My post was designed to ask whether quantity of overtaking is really worth sacrificing the quality. You have told me that quantity above all is what is important, and have failed to engage in the question I actually asked.

Steven Roy says that F1 had more overtaking in the 1960s, and you say it had more overtaking in the 1980s. I don’t dispute this. But given that F1 as a sport is multiple times more popular, and as a business is infinitely more successful, than it was in the 1960s, I think it’s quite a valid question to ask if people really want just sheer numbers from their overtaking or if they want to see quality moves.

I really do have to disagree with you about quantity being so important. The Villeneuve-vs-Arnoux battle is a fine case in point. It is a thrilling battle to watch, but they only pass each other a few times. It wasn’t the amount of overtaking that made that battle exciting — it was the quality of the racing that captivated.

To clarify, my problem with the adjustable front wing flaps is that they are arbitrarily limited to six adjustments per lap — an A1GP-style push-to-pass system. Now I don’t think I’m unusual in thinking that this is a bad idea because I think an overtaking manoeuvre should not be something that a driver can do literally at the touch of a button or the flick of a switch as though he were playing a video game.

Old-style adjustable aero, where there is no limit to the amount of times a driver can use it, I have no problem with because then all drivers will always have the option rather than having this odd limit, so using it will become another part of the skill of driving.

The same goes for adjusting particular engine settings because that is about balancing speed against the need not to put too much strain on the engine, and I think it’s fine that the drivers should be able to find the right balance there. But for drivers to be told where the limit is? No way, not for me.

And was there really such need for you to be so rude about me on Total F1?

1] 270 passes is incredibly pi** poor when in 1983 there were 666 passes

The worst races of 2007 being:
he 2007 overtaking figures for the road course/type tracks:

Australia 8
France 6
Spain 5
Hungary 3
Monaco 2

Lucky for those wet/partial wet races.

2] GP2 has ground-effects channels and slicks witch F1 doesn’t have. It had once when there where over 600 passes but not now.

3] The FIA was basically forced to admit that the problem with ‘dirty air’ ever since they begun reducing the size of the wings in the early 1990s in the hope to reduce downforce the wake turbulence it caused.

4] A1GP trickery ?!

Movable aero comes from the awesome CAN-AM Chaparrals of the great Jim Hall witch F1 borrowed on the 1968 and early 1969 cars.
But these adjustable wings where high mounted to get them out of the slipstream, and when they where banned the problem really begun.

This is the problem with modern “media”.
Everyone with a keybord and internet access becomes an expert.

Something I forgot to mention in my last comment was that you don’t even need drivers to be trading blows lap after lap for the outcome to be uncertain. The 2006 San Marino Grand Prix was thrilling, and you just didn’t know who was going to win — but there was no overtaking. On the other hand, you could argue that that grand prix perfectly demonstrated the problem F1 has, which is that Alonso was clearly the fastest driver but couldn’t get past Schumacher.