Seeing Red? - You May Be!

It has long been the opinion of this enthusiast that Motor Racing should be a simple affair. X amount of cars have to cover Y miles, the first to do so, let's call em "Z", gets a nice Cup and serenaded by his/her national anthem. In general that concept has applied to most forms of Road Racing since the early days of the Gordon Bennett Trophy Races.

What always riles me are the small tweaks series keep making to “Make it Interesting for the Fans” I still cannot understand why at the end of a GP Qualifying session, for example, Cars tootle round for 10 or twenty laps just burning fuel. What’s wrong with putting a smaller amount of fuel in the car, and letting the driver get straight down to doing the zippy stuff.

Today Autosport’s website reports that Bridgestone, slightly concerned at the major drop in public interest after they become the sport’s lone tyre supplier, want’s to introduce a Champcar style double compound system.

This means that a team will, at some point during a race, have to switch from a Hard Compound Tyre to a Soft Compound tyre, these softer compound tyres will be indicated to the Joe Spectator by the presence of a red walled tyre.

The argument is that it forces teams to think of strategy; do they run the faster, softer tyres early, or save them for a late race surge.

I dislike that word strategy, it’s useful if you are chess grand master, but I don’t choose to spend my Sundays watching chess. If you look at my XYZ Formula I set out at the beginning, strategy doesn’t even feature.

Surely the 2005 season, one of the most exciting for many years, owed everything to the rule change that stated Tyres must last an entire race distance. In other words 2005 proved that tyres should remain a condiment to the main course meal that is the sport. I don’t want them fried up and offered to me as a garnish.

I apologise my mind is wondering, it’s nearly lunchtime!

So here’s a suggestion to spice up racing, stop adding silly rule changes and go back to XYZ. Cars can go 200 miles on one set of tyres, in fact it helps separate the good drivers from the great drivers, as they will be able to conserve the ones they have. Fuel stops may make great telly with the constant threat of a Pit Lane BBQ, but it is an unnecessary risk. Cars should be able to go 200 Miles on one tank of go-go juice. In fact they did so quite happily for years.

There doesn’t need to always be an overcomplicated and expensive solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s can all be as simple as XYZ!