In reply to alfadriver :
I was thinking about why I feel the annual need to complain about F1; to "yuck others' yum" as some would say, though I kinda hate that phrase. I don't like to just complain for the sake of complaining. I think it's because the crux is that I care about motorsport whether I want to or not, GRM is the place where I talk to people whose opinions I respect, *especially* about motorsport (obvs.), and I feel let down by F1.
I disagree with the implicit assertion that there needs to be some other obvious pinnacle right now in order to say F1 shouldn't be regarded as such, or at least is badly flawed. F1 is regarded as the current pinnacle because "history," FIA, and rolled into that the attention, advertising dollars, and subsequent ability to do whatever they're going to do with the most resources. And that means they do have the best people working on the fastest cars. Is that the pinnacle by definition? Reasonable people may disagree, I think.
DRS is, IMHO, *very* much different and very much contrived compared to other BOP measures. It doesn't say "we need an improvement in parity between these two cars." It says "whoever's behind at X location under Y conditions gets a leg up." That has nothing to do with balancing the performance of two specific cars based on their performances, it's just a substitute for cars that can actually race head to head, though I am aware that the relatively recent big rule changes did improve the passing substantially, though that improvement appears to be eroding and it never was very good, it just got markedly less terrible.
MotoGP does have aero (it even has ground effect in the last year or so, with fairings that actively pull the bike into the ground at full lean), and it's causing a lot of problems, from front tires that overheat, gain pressure, and stop working if you're trying to chase someone down to (look for the ring of familiarity) difficulty passing because when you get close your braking goes away as your wings run into dirty air. I don't think it's viable to ban aero, but in both cases (and so many other classes) you've got vehicles whose capabilities are more heavily defined by how they move through the air than over the ground. The suspensions are more about keeping the aero package at the right orientation than keeping the tires oriented in relation to and in contact with the pavement. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle, but I suspect as long as there are front wings, passing is going to be a problem.
I compare F1 to WWE because they prioritize the entertainment over the actual racing, though to be clear I don't think it's scripted (though I do think the FIA is not as neutral as should obviously be the case). In a terrible circular tangle, the entertainment pays for the amazing levels of talent that go into engineering and driving these things. Because being the pinnacle of motorsport is so resource-intensive, nothing can compete with F1 in terms of talent and depth without F1's budget. WRC is a great combo of engineering and driving, but there's no passing; similar for Pikes Peak. GTP/LMP or even the pinnacle of DTM I think could be better racing with more interesting cars than F1, but you have to imagine having the resources of current F1 working on those platforms.
Curious to see how the 2026 rule changes impact things. Lower drag == less downforce? Smaller cars == more room to get around? I still suspect that front wings == cars that don't work when they're close to other cars. It wasn't always as much the case in the early aero days of course; I suspect decades of getting much better at aero have simply moved the emphasis further and further that direction, and unless someone can come up with a clever way of "un-dirtying" the air you're arriving into or making downforce out of turbulence, the only way to allow cars to get close without losing capability is to reduce the emphasis on wings.
