Why Brawn wanted F1’s 2021 revolution to be even more radical

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Just one man has led an eponymous Formula 1 team to championship victory this millennium: Ross James Brawn OBE, in 2009.

Thereafter Brawn sold the team to Mercedes, then set about restructuring it for F1’s hybrid era, in the process laying the foundations for its six straight double championship successes since 2014.

Having departed the three-pointed star at the end of 2013 early retirement beckoned at last after years of toil. Brawn was 59 and comfortably sorted – or so he thought. But that reckoned without a late-2016 call from Liberty Media, the new owners of Formula 1’s commercial rights.

The company needed a managing director able to advise an executive team of broadcast professionals, few of which had seen a grand prix at close quarters prior to bidding for the rights, who suddenly found themselves in charge of a global, multi-billion dollar sporting spectacular.

Fireplaces and slippers went on hold, and in 2017 Brawn was announced as Formula 1’s managing director of motorsport, charged with restructuring an activity that had patently lost its pizzazz under the ownership of venture fund CVC Capital Partners. His first problem was that the sport’s convoluted governance process, compounded by an inequitable revenue structure, meant meaningful change could not be effected until covenants expired at the end of 2020.

Brawn GP, Yas Marina, 2009
Brawn steered his own team to improbable 2009 triumph
Thus, Brawn returned to the paddock, having been granted the free hand he had demanded, determined to turn the effective four-year rules ‘freeze’ to his advantage. For seldom, if ever before, had this most scientific of all sports sport enjoyed a four-year period to devise regulations scientifically. Plus, Liberty was prepared to invest in the process, rather than squeeze every last brass coin out of the sport, as he explained.

“I came back into Formula 1 because I always felt there was this need and opportunity to put a comparative amount of effort into the type of car and the type of racing we had,” he told RaceFans in an exclusive interview.

“I [had] spent decades in trying to improve the performance of the cars, but felt that the attempts to change the regulations were always done in a very short timescale, certainly without any research or preparation. Which, in proportion to what the teams were doing in terms of making the cars perform, was embarrassing, really.

“So, I rejoined Formula 1 because I could see that there was a very interesting opportunity to put some effort into where we take the rules and where we take the cars, and how we improve the quality of racing.”

He unquestionably had the necessary gravitas to win the teams over. Besides guiding Brawn GP to one of F1’s most improbable championship triumphs, he enjoyed a career of successes with Jaguar’s sports car team, Benetton in F1, and eventually overseeing Ferrari’s technical domination during their halcyon Michael Schumacher years.

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His belief, widely shared through the pit lane, is the complexity of F1 aerodynamics had made for cars that were “hostile” to drive when racing in close proximity to each other.

[icon2019autocoursempu]”That seems to be contrary to what you want out of a racing car,” he says, explaining the aero-centric philosophy behind the 2021-onwards technical regulations. To this end a technical department was formed, headed by seasoned engineer Pat Symonds, with the data fed to the FIA, who framed the regulations under the leadership of Nikolas Tombazis, who worked under Brawn at both Benetton and Ferrari.

“That was the first element. And then in doing that, cost control was another major fundamental, because the lack of certainty over how much it costs to be reasonably successful in Formula 1 was another massive hurdle for anyone to overcome, particularly manufacturers.”

Having been involved in the framing of the sport’s ineffective Resource Restriction Agreement – the much-vaunted alternative to a cost cap introduced in 2010, which fell apart even before signatures had dried – Brawn was conscious of the need for a set of regulations that had teeth.

“In terms of cost control I’ve seen the flaws in our system,” he explains. I saw why it didn’t work and what the weaknesses were. So cost control was the other cornerstone of this initiative.

Ross Brawn, Nikolas Tombazis, Circuit of the Americas, 2019
Brawn and Tombazis collaborated on F1’s rules overhaul
“You look at cost control and you look at how you can reduce some of the pressure on the teams who have to achieve those limits, and some of it is then to try and constrain the technology in areas which are particularly non-relevant.

“You may argue all of it is relevant because it’s a technical competition, but I think there are areas which don’t promote enthusiasm and interest in the sport, because nobody knows anything about them.

“It’s really a competition between engineers deep down in the systems and nobody knows about them, although you get large disparities on the track between those that have the funding to go to such extreme lengths and those that don’t.”

The $175 million budget cap which will come into force in 2021 effectively pans out at $250m – or more – once all exceptions are factored into the equation. These include marketing costs, salaries for drivers and other top staff and costs relating to travel and accommodation.

“It’s a start,” says Brawn, “a compromise in what the large teams felt they could achieve without. It’s fairly draconian but without destroying them. The large teams are going to have to take between 50 and 100 million dollars out of their budgets to achieve the cost cap. That’s going to have quite an impact.”

He argues that major teams spend vast amounts on complex items such as suspension systems that “have no relevance for anything to do with the automotive world or the real world. And only the really well-funded teams could exploit those to the maximum. So I think it will take a lot out of the variables that these teams have.”

Equally, on the level of budget cap he says F1 now has “a dial we can turn up or we can turn down. The system is there now, and I think that’s very important. I think it’s at the right level to introduce the system.”

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But road relevance is not necessarily a trait which creates good racing. Is it something F1 truly needs?

Daniel Abt, Gary Paffett, Nelson Piquet Jnr, Formula E, Doroyah, 2019
Formula E’s racing is ‘not F1-calibre’ yet
“We’re entering an era where the environmental and sustainability issue is paramount,” Brawn says after a pause for thought.

“We’re seeing the success of Formula E, the relative success of Formula E, and that’s because it has quite a strong message. I don’t think anyone will pretend the racing is at the calibre of Formula 1, but it has an appeal because of the message it can present. We recognise that the relevance of Formula 1 can be to present the right message going forward.

“I don’t think any one of us feel that electric cars are the only solution; there must be and will need to be parallel solutions. Electric cars are great for getting the pollution out of the city centre, but where the electricity is generated can be causing just as big, if not bigger problems. If you drive an electric car in China, there’s a good chance that the electricity has been generated by a coal power station.”

Brawn believes that F1’s relevance lies in directing its “competitive spirit and resource and effort into things which can be relevant.”

We’ve made that commitment to carbon zero,” he adds, “and we’re now putting the resource into that that we were putting into finding a better set of aerodynamic regulations.”

Using the example of the current hybrid engines – which he describes as “fantastic piece of engineering, but undersold and under-promoted” – he believes F1 needs to identify technologies “that can really make an impact, [so] we can continue to go racing and we can continue having fantastic battles and the contest that we have, making it a win-win situation.”

Mercedes F1 power units
F1 power units will remain largely unchanged
Such technologies, though, require a strong manufacturer presence. This means striking a balance between manufacturer entries and independent teams particularly when, as Brawn knows from experience, car makers are prone to scrapping their racing teams at very short notice.

“I think it’s great to have manufacturers,” he says. “What we’ve been focused on is having sustainability for the mid-range teams. We don’t want to carry teams that have no place in Formula 1. I think to set the bar that low is wrong. So we need to have good, competent, sensible racing teams who are able to wash their face and make a profit.

“If you go to your board as a manufacturer and say ‘We’d like to compete in Formula 1′, today they say ‘Well, how much is it going to cost?’ You can’t tell them because you keep spending until you’re successful, and that’s almost an infinite number.

“Now we’re saying: ‘You can’t spend more than this, that is controlled, that’s the maximum you’re going to be allowed to spend and therefore you’ve got a fixed level’.

“I think it’s much more appealing. If we marry that with the right message that Formula 1 can send, then I think we’re far more appealing to manufacturers, and we would welcome them. But, I think first of all we’ve got to make a sustainable model for at least the majority of teams in Formula 1.”

I point out that F1’s vicious cost spiral does not only extend to teams budgets, but also to the costs of getting a worthy driver from karting to F1. After all, what good are profitable F1 teams without talented drivers?

Start, F2, Yas Marina, 2019
Hamilton is concerned by the cost of junior motorsport
“It’s a concern, to be honest,” he agrees. “We’re looking at how we can support that; we’re looking at grassroots level. We’re carrying out work at the moment to understand where we could best support motor racing and where are the areas where you would have the most impact on investment if you want to put money into feeder formulae.”

Lewis Hamilton has been particularly vocal on the subject of the costs young drivers must face if they have any hope of reaching Formula 1. But Brawn believes the talent can still rise to the top.

“When you get to a certain level, your ability really shines through and therefore you get the support you need,” says Brawn.” But it’s getting to that level.

“Where is the gap between talent and funding that doesn’t allow that talent to really demonstrate how good it is? So we are looking at the moment where we would get the best bang for our buck if we wanted to support motor racing at different levels.

“I think there’s a number of examples of drivers who had to make a lot of commitment and sacrifices, but they still came through. George Russell and I think even [Alexander] Albon were not supported by incredibly wealthy benefactors. These guys all made their way through, they showed their talent.”

Brawn adds he hopes the same proves true for girls as well, so does that philosophy extend to W Series as well? “We’re looking at that,” he says. “I think the question is whether there should be such an exclusive series, or whether it should be a more open series.”

His final 2021 regulations package has deviated in some areas from the wish list he had when he took the Liberty deal. It is no secret he urged louder, cheaper power units as part of F1’s regulatory revamp.

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“[On] the engine regulations I would have preferred to have been more dramatic,” he admits. “[But] as it turned out, I think we can use that situation to our advantage.”

Start, Paul Ricard, 2019
A plan for reverse-grid qualifying races failed
Dropping plans to alter the engine rules has given them more time to react to changing priorities, says Brawn. “In the three years I’ve been here the importance of sustainability and environmental relevance has become much stronger.” he explains.

“In a way, not pushing the resource of the teams in a direction to simplify the engine should enable us to push that resource into directions which make these engines and these technologies more relevant.

“So we’re putting a big push on fuels, for instance, on what type of fuels should be relevant for the future. That will mean engine modifications and that will mean developments that can be carried out now.

“I’ll openly say that our picture of where we thought the engine should or could be three years ago is different to where it is now. So that’s one area of change but I think as fortune would have it I think we can benefit from that.”

Equally, a shake-up of the sporting regulations was on the cards. “On the sporting side I still feel a little frustrated that we don’t have an open mind about some of the changes. A very small victory was a point for fastest lap, which had a lot of people up in arms when it started but I think generally we view it as a success now.”

Another plan, to introduce reverse-grid sprint races on Saturday to set the starting line-up for Sunday, was nixed by teams.

2021 F1 car graphic
F1 cars will look very different in 2021
“[That] format was a proposal we made which was a taster for 2020,” he explains. “We didn’t plan that necessarily to be the final version. But we wanted to have a few races this year where we could try different formats and different approaches, and see how they worked.

“We’d be the first to put our hand up if it didn’t work. But the teams have been a bit too conservative in that respect and I think it’s a bit of a frustration. But let’s see in the future.”

Then, as has been a constant thread throughout our fascinating 38-minute interview (and, by all accounts, throughout his life), Brawn finds positives to counter-act team opposition: “With the change in the cars and the change with the cost cap and the revenue model we’re hopeful we’ll have a much stronger competition anyway.

“That’s been the comeback we’ve had from a lot of stakeholders, [who said], ‘With everything you’re doing, rather you let that settle in before you think about sporting changes…'”

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23 comments on “Why Brawn wanted F1’s 2021 revolution to be even more radical”

  1. There is a bit to unpack in what Brawn is saying but I will just focus on this little bit.

    If you go to your board as a manufacturer and say ‘We’d like to compete in Formula 1′, today they say ‘Well, how much is it going to cost?’ You can’t tell them because you keep spending until you’re successful, and that’s almost an infinite number.

    F1 and prior to F1 has on the whole been reliant on the major car manufacturers to have their own teams or sponsor a team or supply engines at least and R&D. Ferrari, Maserati maybe a couple of others I can’t think of at the moment being exceptions.
    My point is the question the car manufacturers will ask is what is the return for their investment. Limiting the cost of competing is fine but as we’ve seen with Porsche’ there needs to be a reason to invest in the first place, they did not see a long term financial benefit in F1.
    Merc, Renault, Honda, VW, BMW, Toyota, Fiat, Ford, GM (they don’t race directly) are all throwing billions into alternate fuels/engines .
    Also who is F1s audience, who are they trying to target? Whether they want to or not they need to align themselves with the motor industry. Who is at the moment also struggling to get a handle on the what the market wants.
    That’s my opinion anyway.

    1. @johnrkh – good comment, and the quoted snippet is something that caught my attention as well.

      My take on it is that Liberty want to target non-automotive companies, and companies that have big coffers and want additional marketing/branding exposure to specific niches. Think Apple (billions of dollars of cash reserves), SpaceX (high tech, although it would go against Tesla’s ethos), Chinese car companies seeing to build a brand. It’d be more a case of bringing their name and a cheque, and buying a team outfit to build and race the car. With a ringfenced budget, Brawn’s point is very valid, and appeals to many other companies.

      Naturally, these cars can’t run on promises, so – in hindsight – it makes me wonder if that was also part of the motivation to simplify the engines, and make them more of a commodity to be plugged into a car, than the crown jewel of a car. That would also make it easier to transition away from ICE engines to alternate sources of power.

      As you say, the auto industry have challenges of their own, even in the last two decades we’ve seen the exit (and in some cases re-entry) of automotive marques from F1. So Liberty would like to work towards a future that doesn’t have F1 hitched tightly to the automotive bandwagon.

    2. I found that rather an odd comment by Brawn. Sure, if you demand a world title it’s very hard to predict, but otherwise it’s fairly easy to judge the approximate costs of being a front runner, or mid table, or whatever.

      It’s worth pointing out that while Mercedes will be allowed to spend $250 million, they’ll get $175million from F1 revenue distribution as well as whatever sponsorship money comes in. Even without the budget cap, it’s not like Mercedes need to pump in a lot of cash. Arguably, it has never been cheaper for a manufacturer to enter F1.

    3. While the cost of competition now has a budget gap the engine side is still wide open. Nobody is going to come into f1 after 2021 because the engine is still insanely expensive and all the current engine manufacturers have 8 or so years head start in 2021. Just for porsche to enter f1 they’d need to spend more than the budget gap amount already before their first season just build infrastructure for their race team just to build their car. The engine would take another budget gap. So all in all porsche would be looking almost a billion dollar bill for their first season where they’d most likely finished 8th or 9th. After that it is most likely half a billion a year. And with the engine headstart it is unlikely porsche could ever catch mercedes and ferrari. That is the most literal definition of insanity. Pay insane money to be guaranteed to not be competitive. It took honda 5 years just to match renault. How much does 5 years of f1 cost?

      Budget gap helps only the existing teams but no one who has an iq above a carrot would enter f1 as a full blown constructor as long as these expensive engines stay. The period from 2014 to 2020 will be by far the most expensive season in f1 by huge margin. These engines have and keep doing harm to f1.

      1. @socksolid, with regards to the assertion that the engines are so expensive, from the historical splits in spending, and the information from Dieter about the composition of Mercedes AMG HPP, where most of their recent growth has come from non-F1 activities, Mercedes was spending more, inflation adjusted, on development of their V10 engines back in the early to mid 2000s than they are spending now on their engines.

        In fact, you have previously acknowledged that those V10 engines were extremely expensive – when it was pointed out how much some teams were having to spend on their customer V10 engines, including instances where those engines cost more than the current engines do now, you dismissed it by saying “they had tobacco sponsorship and that paid for it all, so it didn’t matter that they were more expensive”.

        You talk about start up costs, but that was a problem that remained in the past – for example, when BMW entered F1 in 2000, they’d already had to hire over 200 people and spent three years developing their engine before they even entered F1, as well as building a bespoke factory and a bespoke foundry. It took them about five years to catch up with everybody else as well, much as Honda did – the only real difference is that most of BMW’s initial development happened in private, whilst Honda’s development mostly happened in public.

        Heavy spending and high engine prices was just as frequently complained about during the V10 and V8 days – you create a competitive environment for engine development and you are going to push spending up, whatever the engine format, and there’s nothing in your proposals to go back to older engine formats that even tries to address that issue.

  2. I think everybody understands that the new set of regs are a starting point that would be evolving. But, historically, Formula 1 has never really done a good job at promoting itself to masses and still relies primarily on (admittedly sizable groups of) core enthusiasts to keep the passion alive…which is rather remarkable for a sport that seemingly has it all, the glory, the drama and the tragedies. Also, Liberty Media sometimes exhibit curious tendencies to promote the show overt the sport…as one would expect from an American media company, really. So…the time will tell, but at least something is going on and for the time being, the intentions seem good.

  3. Yeah, that final line is a very good thought to finish on. Make the changes, give it a year or two to settle in before rushing in new changes. I think the success will be if they can ditch DRS, for example.

    If teams get at least a bit closer together and overtaking becomes more viable, that could make for better races where qualifying is not as much a part of the success anymore, since you can overtake to get ahead if you manage a faster race day car.

  4. just confirms to me that there goal is to turn f1 into gp1.

    a spec budget series aiming for equality & show over actual sport.

    f1 is dead i guess, shame but at least we have 60 years of the real f1 to look back on and hopefully the gp1 concept fails and we are able to get the real f1 as a pure sport back in a few years. in the meantime i think i’ll stay on the sidelines remembering how amazing the true f1 really was.

    1. Does seem that is Liberty’s plan – Formula Indy GP

      Brawn says:
      “With the change in the cars and the change with the cost cap and the revenue model we’re hopeful we’ll have a much stronger competition anyway.”

      Which ties into the spec series goal. Near as I can tell, there’s only 2 ‘independent’ teams left in F1, McLaren and Williams. The others are either tied to the top 3 teams or owned by them.

      With the Fiat Chrysler PSA deal seemingly done, expect it doesn’t bode well for Sauber Romeo. Or maybe we’ll see the legendary Peugeot engine back in F1. ;-)

      Interesting times ahead… not for F1 purists, but we’re no longer Liberty’s target demographic. The new F1 – filled with showy graphics, reverse grids, restrictive rules, predictive overtakes, fastest lap points, slowest lap points and 18 (street) races a year.

      1. predictive overtakes

        @jimmi-cynic – That phrase is the copyright of Amazon AWS. Appropriate use is “predictive overtakes© – powered by Amazon AWS™®”. Don’t let Bezos sic his lawyers on you. ;)

      2. @jimmi-cynic

        Interesting times ahead… not for F1 purists, but we’re no longer Liberty’s target demographic. The new F1 – filled with showy graphics, reverse grids, restrictive rules, predictive overtakes, fastest lap points, slowest lap points and 18 (street) races a year.

        Yeah when you put it like that with all of the gimmicks and tricks it looks bad. 2020 looks like on paper at least to be a good yr with teams finally starting to close the gap to the top 2 or 3. Then 2021 new rules it starts over again.
        I know I’m not the first or only person to say this but what if the rules were not changed for a time like a decade or so except for minor tweeks, how close would the racing get?

        1. The racing wouldn’t get closer, but drivers (and probably stewards and fans) would die every weekend.

          It has been possible to build insane cars that no humans can handle for at least 50-60 years now, and maybe quite a bit longer. It is not hard to come up with regs for undriveable cars, it’s hard to limit things to a relatively safe level.

          The purpose of the periodic rules-resets in F1 is to keep speeds down.

    2. You are overlooking that currently F1 has terminal cancer. How can you have a racing series where the podium places will only come from one of three teams? Either F1 brings in handicapping type rules, which I hope they don’t, or they bring in rules that controls how much those teams spend, which is what they’re doing.

  5. If you drive an electric car in China, there’s a good chance that the electricity has been generated by a coal power station.

    I recently saw a report where there was concern in Germany over what to do with the nuclear reactor cores that were being retired. I don’t know why these cores needed to be replaced, maybe they aren’t producing enough heat to produce the power that nuclear power station is rated for, so out it comes and a new expensively refined reactor core is installed. Instead of shipping this old core to a lower rated power station it is sent off to a “retirement home for old nuclear cores”. These old cores still have to be kept cool, they are still is so highly reactive they are instant-death lethal, so it needs to be kept in the same sort of environment as it had in the power station. Unlike a nuclear power station, where the cost to keep the core is paid for by the electricity consumers, the cost of keeping these retired cores falls upon taxpayers, and the cores will be like this for several thousand years (or at least until we’ve discovered the technology to turn off the radioactivity). This is going to be very expensive for a very long time.
    The point being that electricity from nuclear power station has a pollution problem too.

    1. Bill Gates (and other investors) were all set to build the first ever industrial-size traveling wave reactor in China until Trump got in the way and flushed the whole plan down his gold plated loo through restrictions and a tariff war.

      The new design of reactor would have been fuelled by spent/depleted uranium – the exact stuff that has to be managed as “nuclear power station waste”.

      The wrong people are running the world sadly.

    2. @drycrust, I believe most German nuclear power plants are pressurised water reactors that use UOX (uranium oxide), with some making limited use of MOX (mixed fuel oxide, which is generally a plutonium-uranium mixture).

      I believe that most of the rods used in the thermal core of a nuclear reactor are only designed to have a short lifespan – 18-36 months – partially because the most useful material will have mostly decayed to less useful daughter products or the build up of less fissile isotopes (e.g. plutonium-240), and partially because you start to have problems with neutron embrittlement of the casings for the rods.

      The problem is that, due to the presence of the decay products, you still have material which is extremely hazardous to human health (not just in terms of radiation, but also quite a few of the materials themselves can be toxic in their own right), so there is indeed the long term storage issue.

      Long term deep geological storage is a major issue that no nation has really been able to satisfactorily answer yet – Sweden and Finland are, I believe, close to finding repositories, but the technical and financial challenges associated with finding a site which has to remain safe for tens of thousands of years – a period which is greater than the entire length of modern civilisations have existed on earth – is enormous.

      That said, depending on how it is used, coal by-products can be pretty toxic or carcinogenic in their own right, so they’re not exactly great either – not to mention the problems with certain types of coal having a propensity for self-ignition or exploding.

    3. Uranium used to form part of the counterweight in the tail of jumbo jets. I have no idea if it still does. The other well known use is as a dense mass in military projectiles of several sorts. But having said that we in the UK have a huge amount of used uranium held at Windscale. ( A fascinating story of a fire wrongly tackled, like that of the Five mile Island. As in racing incidents are often an accumulation of small factors and sometimes one wrong decision) Though in the motor industry and others the use of FMEA for both design and manufacturing has eliminated many of the possible failure modes.

      However I was disappointed that the second energy storage method, the flywheel was dropped from the regs. Had the energy storage method remained open we may have had another type of storage available by now. Williams probable made the most of the flywheel tech and finally sold it off as a separate company.
      While Lithium we know is a very nasty and wasteful metal to produce, so now we is Cobalt, another major battery component. With some high profile users in the electronics and EV industry being targeted with lawsuits. Alphabet, Tesla, Microsoft, Apple, Dell over the use of child labour in the mining process in the DRC. (Otherwise I understand it lies about in lumps on the seabed.)

      So the electric revolution is not all cleanliness and light! (Apart from Jeff Lynne and ELO of course)

      1. Uranium used to form part of the counterweight in the tail of jumbo jets. I have no idea if it still does.

        Boeing stopped using it. It should be noted, however, that the Uranium used was depleted Uranium; the U-235 isotope, which is about 0.71% by mass, is the isotope that can be fissioned by neutrons and has been removed for enrichment of feedstock. The U-238, which is most of the remainder except for very tiny bits of U-234, won’t undergo fission by simply forming a critical mass although it will fission when compressed and exposed to neutron densities from a fusion reaction; the tamper around the fusion material in a hydrogen bomb is in fact depleted Uranium and contributes a large proportion of the energy release from a hydrogen explosion. The Russian 50 megaton Tsar Bomba would have had a yield of 100 megatons if the tamper on the fission package had been U-238. The half-life of U-238 is 4.51 billion years and it is an alpha emitter; it is not very intensely radioactive as the half-life is pretty much an indicator or intensity. Having said all that, it’s very reactive to oxidation and will burn quite well, so it probably isn’t the best material to use as counter-weights in aircraft; I certainly wouldn’t want to breath Uranium smoke.

        Yeah, not about F1, but still interesting stuff for us science people.

        1. tamper on the fission package had been

          Man, I wish there was an edit function on this site. ‘fission package’ should of course be ‘fusion package’.

  6. Why do so many of your articles’ titles start with a superfluous ‘Why…’? Is it some algorithm to get more clicks? Cause I’ve seen this practice on other motorsport sites.

  7. Push the envelope Mr. Brawn! Push it as far as you can. And when they push back, you will have made progress. “They” will feel like winners for not conceding and you will have made PROGRESS.
    Status quo has got to evolve. Pull back on the ridiculous current Teams agreement. Ferrari will threaten (again) but you cannot concede. They cannot be guaranteed money just to be there. OPEN UP TESTING for teams with less than “x” percentage of the leaders in points. Why can Racing Point get a chance to develop some stuff? If for no other reason than to be out of the way in the final half of the race. Wasn’t it more fun when you never knew who might surprise? Let’s see HAAS compete for a podium once in a while. Sauber/Alpha Romeo and Williams have long paid their dues.
    We want more FUN in the game!!!

  8. While I do like some of the exclusive RaceFans interviews, I feel the editor really needs to edit the piece and focus on the key part of the interviews instead of the including every word. I find them unnecessarily tedious and lacking focus. In today’s day and age no one has time to go through such a lengthy article and try and find some useful insights.

    1. I respectfully disagree. I find full context refreshing in the modern obsession with over distillation. Not all information channels need to be slaves to social media induced ADD. Sometimes what one person deems to not be key can be key from another point of view.

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