Nothing important here, just thinking and ruminating.
I’ve been watching F1 for nearly 20 years, I love it. I’ve made it through reg changes many times. but something about this season is not clicking for me. I constantly feel like a fish out of water - why is this car losing out, where did that car find its pace, I guess they’re harvesting energy? Couldn’t tell ya.
I used to be able to watch practice, see a driver’s form and pace, and make a fairly comfortable prediction how they might run, malfunctions aside. It was observable that cars had strong tracks, others they’d struggle. But this season is like a total crapshoot even in the best of times there’s very little consistency.
I suspect the lack of on screen battery info is mostly contributing to these feelings, and the different stretches they are choosing for aero zones. I don’t even feel motivated to discuss the races much because there’s so many obfuscated variables it’s near impossible to have an educated opinion. As if I’m watching a baseball game but I don’t know the score, or who’s on base.
I’m trying to push through it and still tune in but it’s sort of killing my enthusiasm for the sport, and just wondering if anyone else is feeling this way?
One of the most frustrating parts to me is how the Sky commentators (while generally better) fail to understand how to explain how the regs work routinely. These cars are filling and emptying their batteries regularly because they’re limited on their deployment per lap, but they continuously talk about how someone might be low on energy because of something that happened a couple laps ago when that would have no effect anymore.
I’m generally a fan of the close racing that these regs have produced at the beginning of races, even if it is somewhat artificial (but so is DRS, so…). What I’m not a fan of is what other people have mentioned: the lack of data on screen. The sport evolved immensely in what matters in battles this year, but we never actually get to see that. Like, when is someone boosting? Maybe we can tell or maybe that was just their regular deployment, or they changed a deployment strat for this lap? Showing how much energy someone has consumed during a lap would also help us understand if they are about to make a move at the end of a lap because they’ve saved slightly more energy than the car in front.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m not as much of a doomer as most people from the ideas that these regs attempted to introduce, but I think they missed the mark in execution.
I think the commentary point is why a lot of people are down on the regs.
Because what they’re complaining about, are the same things that were around last year. The energy deployment being the biggest example.