Formula One is in its biggest bind of the modern era. The engines they have are a joke, as well as woke, half-electric to save the planet, if you will, in a series that flies all around the world with a carbon footprint bigger than Jupiter.
As Max Verstappen said, rightly, racing is reduced to Mario Kart, the computer game from Nintendo. The four-time world champion gave his verdict at the start of the season, realising that the DNA of the sport is being stripped away by the random deployment of power as the battery part of the engine charge comes and goes.
These engines provide overtaking moves, many of them, but none of significant merit. A charade. ‘I’ll pass you, and you’ll pass me when your power goes up.’ It is ostensibly good to watch but is not what Formula One should be about.
This was not a self-serving comment from Verstappen because he was not driving a Red Bull that is contesting the title. He was genuinely aggrieved by the erosion of the sport he loves down to his bones. He knew it was hocus-pocus.
It came to roost this past weekend in Malaysia, staging the Bahrain Grand Prix away from home owing to the conflict in the Middle East, when the race was delayed and delayed again for over an hour and a half because the engines could not run in the wet due to software issues.
Think about that. Software issues! What does that mean?
As the winner of the Bahrain Grand Prix Max Verstappen said about the new F1 engines, rightly, racing is reduced to Mario Kart, namely the computer game on Nintendo
The race was delayed and delayed again for over an hour and a half because the engines could not run in the wet due to software issues
These engines are unpredictable and need to be jettisoned way earlier than 2030, when V8s are due to be back. This reality confronts the FIA and the sport’s owners right now.
The fact is that, despite all the years of development of the combustion engine, which has had a role in revolutionising the world, the globe’s most advanced sport was restricted to stupefying non-movement in Malaysia. This at a point, incidentally, when engine manufacturers are pulling out of the electronic urge, Audi among them, officially abandoning their move to all-electric road cars. There is not a big enough market for it.
Hamilton, whose Ferrari stopped because of the software malfunction, said it was like a Lego race, a stunt concocted ahead of the British Grand Prix in July.
Mercedes’ George Russell said: ‘It didn’t feel very F1. I would have been disappointed if I was in the stands and watching that unfold.’
And Carlos Sainz – like Russell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association – went further. The Spaniard contended: ‘F1 needs to have a hard look at themselves and see how we ended up in this situation.
‘It is clear the regulations are extremely complicated for the drivers, for the teams, for the power units and for the manufacturers. Who decided five years ago that this was the direction to go?
‘We are doing the best with what we are given as a sport and as regulations. The FIA and F1 are doing the best they can, but clearly what was decided four or five years ago was wrong. We need to learn as a sport not to make those mistakes again.’
The FIA are conducting a full review. What is clear is that they need to rip up these engines now. It will take a year or so, perhaps. But they need to bang heads together and do it for 2028. Otherwise, it is a case of sticking plasters over the sore.
George Russell climbs out of his car after engine failure brings his race to a premature end
VOWLES RUES ‘COST-CAP TRAP’
I was mixed about comments James Vowles, the Williams boss, made over the cost cap of fractionally over £160million this year.
His argument went: ‘What I didn’t realise when I moved from Mercedes to Williams is just how little facilities there are. When you make a cost cap, I’m not spending money on the car. I’m spending tens of millions on basic systems so you know where a part is in the factory. It’s not going on an upgrade. We’re caught in a cost-cap trap.’
By which he means the bigger and traditionally better financed teams already have an infrastructure to get the job done. They already have the essentials in place.
The cost cap was meant to level the playing field rather than, say, Ferrari spending gazillions of Marlboro money on this and that when the strugglers couldn’t. The cap has worked up to a point, and, to be honest, Williams would not be as financially secure as they are without it.
In fact, Dorilton Capital, a US-based private investment firm, would never have bought the team in 2020 without the cost cap due to be introduced and the security it promised to provide. Nor would Vowles, therefore, have landed the job he is doing.
Dorilton took over from the Williams family for some £150m in 2020 and the team is worth literally 10 times as much today. So, for them, it was not all bad, was it?
Perhaps a compromise – in a season that is poor for Williams under new regulations that offered them the chance of revival – is that they and other teams should be granted freedom to develop in certain areas outside the cap that, as Vowles protested, sets them in aspic.
Williams boss James Vowles (right) with Carlos Sainz in Kuala Lumpur. Vowles says his team are struggling to keep up with the leading team
McLAREN’S SECRET POTION REVEALED
On to a very serious topic. And without wishing to give away state secrets, I have been served the vital ingredient of McLaren’s recent success, and it has nothing to do with engineering prowess.
A colleague, Philip Duncan of the Press Association, felt a bit croaky-voiced and a kind hospitality lady brought out their magic potion, which we should have downed in one. They routinely serve it up in the garage to their boys as a lifter.
It is a ginger-based concoction with celery and apple added. It’s pungent. Though I am a jetlag-denier, I thirstily got it down my throat fast in the name of rehabilitation.
LEWIS MAY HAVE SAVED VASSEUR’S JOB
Lewis Hamilton drove brilliantly well to come from more than a minute down to finish third in Malaysia. It probably saved his boss Fred Vasseur’s job, at least for now.
It was a terrible strategy call to put Hamilton on slick tyres on a drying but wet circuit. At moments he was nine seconds off the pace – 2min 1sec a lap compared to Kimi Antonelli’s 1min 52sec. Hamilton drove superbly well to clamber up the field, albeit helped by conditions improving.
Vasseur is under pressure and last week Ferrari gave him the ‘dreaded’ vote of confidence. What if Hamilton had not performed his escape act? The implications for Vasseur?
Lewis Hamilton’s superb drive in Malaysia in his Ferrari has taken the heat off his boss Fred Vasseur
THE MASSES DESCEND ON SEPANG
Driving into the Sepang circuit has never been easy and some of those who had not been here before complained about disorganisation.
I don’t buy that. It’s simply a busy place of more than two million people and everyone seems to drive. Queues happen. And, in the early years of the Malaysian Grand Prix, masses of people abandoned their cars at the roadside and walked to the track.
To an extent they did so again on Sunday, so you had the dangerous spectacle of fans ambling along the side of four-lane highways back to their parked-up vehicles. It was like strolling on the hard shoulder of the M25.
There were also lawless motorbikes assailing you from every angle. Thankfully, my driver had eyes in the back of his head and we managed to get in and out for four days – sometimes two-hour journeys each way from Kuala Lumpur – without incurring a manslaughter charge.
