19/05/2013
FEATURE BY TONY PURNELL
Step Three: Entertainment
This article was set to be about cost controls, but given the topical nature I thought I'd skip ahead and join in the discussion on tyres. My concern here is that the press and some major figures are getting into a stew about something that for the 99% of folks who enjoy watching a race on Sunday afternoons really want, to be entertained. Now people can be rather easily led, and I'm worried that the hysteria that seems to be being whipped up about tyres is leading Formula One back to somewhere the fans don't want it to go.
The central issue is that having to look after one's tyres as a key performance parameter is a bad thing. Folks are crying out ‘bring back the real racing'; well, be carefully what you wish for.
Today I work in cycling. It's a very popular TV sport. In a big tour race, like the Giro or the Tour de France, there are two distinct disciplines. One is 'the race of truth' known as a time trial, where riders go off one by one and must not interfere with each other. The best rider over the distance wins. It's intellectually interesting to watch occasionally, but frankly as dull as can be as a TV spectacle. The other discipline is the road race. Here the interaction with the other riders, team tactics and the fact that each rider has only so many matches to burn before exhaustion make it fascinating and sometimes riveting to watch. The latter is perhaps the key issue, riders must save their energy as much as possible and only let rip when a race-winning move is afoot.
As long ago as 2006 I remember a head of steam building among the press, the fans, and within the FIA that something had to be done about the processional races being presented. In essence they were tedious affairs. To rub salt into the wounds it seemed that every time it looked like a race was on the cards because someone quick had lost position and needed to charge up the field, instead they got stuck behind someone a little slower, unable to overtake. It was like a time trial but with the serious deficiency that if you caught behind a rider who went off in front you had to go at their pace. Let's not forget Formula One races back then were seriously tedious.
The negative press that Formula One was receiving in terms of being boring led to various meetings within the FIA and subsequently convened with the teams to try to figure out ways to make the racing more exciting. Various attitudes became apparent; some couldn't figure out how anyone could think that a procession was not exciting, the way the times varied provided enough interest for any fan. Fortunately this was very much the minority view and nearly everyone agreed that something needed to be done. The Technical Directors on the whole didn't think changing the car technical regulations was the way to go; instead the way forward was to change the tracks. This served their purpose as Technical Directors build long term plans around the regulations, and are loath to restructure their thinking in the event of anything radical with the regulations, an understandable position.
Much effort and thought went into using driver simulators to find how to change the tracks to improve the racing. Bernie Ecclestone went a step further with a left field idea that suggested tracks should split into two, so that drivers could take a left or right fork, speed along that section (both would be equal in length aiming to be similar in split time) and then merge together again. I took the view that changing the tracks was impractical, unlikely to work, and the wrong approach. It was like going into a store for a shirt, one you really liked and finding that they only had it two sizes bigger than you wanted. The solution - fatten up for a couple of months and go back to the store. Best change the dimensions of the shirt I think, or in this case the car.
The FIA maintained the position that the root cause of the lack of overtaking was aerodynamic, in that the car behind suffered a marked reduction in downforce by being in the wake and was thereby slowed down a good deal. On this there was no disagreement. In addition overtaking occurred when there was a marked difference in speed for a small section of the circuit, obvious, but it did mean that the cars which were separated on the grid by small time differences gained more or less gradually over the lap would struggle to overtake one another.
The FIA suggested that a rule should be considered that gave a technical advantage to the car behind in order to compensate for the loss of aerodynamic performance. My suggestion was to allow active ride (platform control) to cars in the wake of another, using some sort of a car-now-in-front turbulence sensor. At first this gained few friends, but it did plant the idea of advantage to the car behind. This grew to the point that a suggestion from Steve Clark, then at Honda/Brawn, to use the timing loops in some way gathered support.
At this point Jean Todt arrived on the scene and put improving the racing as a top priority, although in reality this had been the case for some time previous. Todt's concern should be remembered as the disquiet with processions was reaching fever pitch by then (i.e. Formula One races really were in a 'state'). Out of all this came the idea of the DRS system, taken into being by Charlie Whiting who realized that this should work and give the local difference in speed required. It was really rather revolutionary to essentially disadvantage the leading car in order to jazz up the racing and is a great addition to the sport.
Now during the long gestation of the DRS system something remarkable happened. It was at Montreal in 2010 when Bridgestone made a mistake with its tyres, producing something that degraded very badly after a number of laps. The result was the best and most entertaining race seen in years; everyone loved it. The commentators were nearly hoarse with excitement, so much was happening.
Peter Wright, then at the FIA and always full of ideas and thoughtful comment, came up with the observation that perhaps tyres designed for entertainment rather than speed was the way to go. A great observation. Peter had contributed to the overtaking debate by suggesting that other sports, notably cycling and MotoGP, were contests where preservation of a resource was the name of the game; releasing the stored up energy (or whatever) right at the end to take the win. This had certainly been the tradition in both motor and motorbike racing. Old timers will remember Senna (who had preserved his tyres) all over the back of Mansell at Monaco (who hadn't). In MotoGP Rossi was the master of carefully paced smooth riding, taking care of his tyres in order to charge through at the end. And boy did the fans like that!
It is rather ironic that Pirelli say that non-degrading tyres will return at Montreal, and that the distracters of today's exciting and rather unpredictable races are the self-same people who will look back on the days when tyre preservation by the driver was part and parcel of winning with a sentiment of 'those were the days'.
So come the change of tyre manufacturer here was an opportunity. The outgoing supplier Bridgestone thought it damaging to its image to produce tyres that were anything less than the highest performers it could engineer. Pirelli, whether intentionally or somewhat because it was all it could do, started making 'Montreal 2010' spec tyres. The result? Well, over the last three seasons the racing for the fan has been much better. Indeed last year when we had really unexpected results, like Williams winning, I seem to remember a number of comments in the press that it was turning into the best season in memory. Better still was that the cream still rose to the top and so the outcome of the championship still went to the best car/driver combination.
The races were (and have been) exactly what everyone had been clamouring for five years ago, closer, unpredictable, lots of overtakes, and yet with the best coming to the fore as the season progressed. Nicer still is that the better drivers, sympathetic to the tyres, come out smiling. This is what we have today. It's great.
There has been a further benefit to just providing entertainment however, and this is in an engineering understanding of how to deliver such races. The first and rather surprising observation is that the DRS system has not been the major contributor to the way the races have unfolded over the last three years, it is the tyres. It is all down to the fact that 'cliff edge' degrading tyres can produce large local differences in car speed, enabling overtakes, coupled to the fact that car design and the way the car is driven makes the length of time the tyres last before hitting the cliff edge markedly differ from car to car and driver to driver. A real driver skill here and no buttons or gadgets in sight.
One of my Cambridge students (Ruth Buscombe now at Ferrari) produced a compelling study showing that although the number of overtakes and 'battles' had risen considerably with the coming of DRS, in fact 85% of this increase was due to the characteristics of the tyres. At the time this was a striking result and great credit goes to Ruth for mining the available data to reach this conclusion.
What this all means is that the FIA now has a much better idea of how to make good entertaining races. If the tyres were replaced by non-degrading solutions, then there would be ways (fuel conservation comes to mind) to replicate the cliff-edge tyres. In addition the better understanding of how DRS works - and perhaps fails to work - gives opportunity to tweak the system again with entertainment firmly in mind.
Once again it is the regulators, the FIA, who should decide on policy and act upon it. Pirelli shouldn't be the arbitrators of how races entertain, it must be the FIA.
Now very importantly there is the need for balance. It's clear one can go too far with any intervention. The FIA now has a very good understanding of how to get DRS right, and tweak it circuit to circuit. Surely the FIA should steer the tyre characteristics, not hysterical and often self-serving statements in the media.
The rather amazing thing to me is to read that Formula One is in a 'state' in regards to the races and the effect of tyres. The racing seems in rather a good state to me. I think the way the viewing figures are holding up backs this up. I'm sure if you have bought your way to the front of the grid and are not winning every pole and race because of the challenge of the tyres you are likely to moan a bit. Formula One would be nothing without its outraged moaners. Ignore them; I've not come across many plain ordinary fans who say 'please bring back the processions'. Come to think of it, not one.
To learn more about Tony and check out his previous features, click here