The sport could really need a bit of competition for Mercedes.
I agree entirely, from the perspective of a really casual viewer, however I tend to view it given the history of the sport - in fifteen years time we will look back on this era of Mercedes total dominance in a mostly positive light, they have developed a car which from 2015 until this season has been almost perfect and untouchable throughout that duration and have maintained a rate of development that even with the resources everyone else is pissing into the wind hoping to catch them they've stayed ahead. Yes, Mercedes winning every time doesn't make headlines now, but I don't believe they should be penalised for running the perfect operation in a sport which demands everything you can give thrice over and given that again.
I think they are all driving in a way that maxes the tire life to fit their pit stop strategy.Drive to a delta for first 1/3 of race then pit and do same for last 2/3 of race is way it seems to always be lately.
That is unfortunately what the FIA demanded of Pirelli to produce which is known to be the reason Michelin refused to even feign interest to being the supplier for the sport, and I suspect the reason why Pirelli got the contract over Hankook.
I don’t know if any of you watch the F2 and F3 races but they have much more excitement and of course not really one dominant team winning 90% of the races.
Because I'm sad I've made an effort to watch all the motorsport I can this year, I've been watching domestic French GT4 racing on circuits I thought got turned into amusement parks in 1652, and F1 is desperately unique from all other series, even its feeder series of F2 and 3. What makes almost every other open wheel series completely separate from F1 is the use of spec cars, same noisy parts, same wind moving parts, the difference is entirely the driver and teams operating them, which inherently promotes a better spectacle as it relies wholly upon the better driver proving it and having no real use of the excuse "he was stealing my air" (I'm sounding like Alan Jones).
Bernie wanted artificial sprinklers turned on at random during a race. Which while livening things up,it is way to artificial. Even maybe giving weight penalties, the amount depending on where they finished previous race, or something.
Artificial sprinklers were an off-hand joke, and whilst they would provide some entertainment I'm still too cautious about safety following Bianchi's incident to want to actively send people out in the rain - I will freely admit however that's to a point which is irrational almost entirely.
The FIA should not introduce weight penalties to the sport, it creates different results as we see in touring car racing but those are explicitly branded as entertainment racing, not a world championship - what do we care more about, do we want the sport to become a huge spectacle but lose any tenuous grasp on relevance to road car technology where the best and bravest produce the best cars and drive them much too fast respectively.
Something like BoP/EoT which we have seen in the WEC during the last few years has been excellent especially within the GTE class, however that requires months and months of development on the equation of the cars and no development of the cars themselves, which would lead to it being a series where the teams bring a car in Melbourne and provide an identical car in Abu Dhabi which in my opinion goes against everything about the nature of Formula 1.
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