The Difficult Lives Of F1 Racing Fans

I wish that I were alive back when racing has seriously hardcore. I mean back in the day when it was glamorous to be a race driver. When there was no television coverage and advertising nonsense to intervene and be a major part of why rules are constantly changed and reviewed. It was pure then. I suppose even then though, that the winners were dictated by which teams had the most amount of money to splash out on materials, engineers and drivers. Some things never change it seems.

Perhaps then, one of the more adventurous changes that the FIA can introduce is some sort of upper limit on all teams' budgets. That should pave the way for a more competitive sport in the future in my view. It would be very interesting to see how competitive teams like Ferrari would then be against say a team like Jordan. I don't think that Ferrari would stop being a top team but I do believe that any gaps that currently exist between teams would be drastically narrowed allowing for more exciting racing. Forget handicaps and such. Rather head towards a plan that makes all teams more equal.

We all know that Michael Schumacher loves winning. Who doesn't? Something caught my attention at the last race in Germany though. The commentators at ITV were talking about the new confidence that Kimi Raikkonen had due to how much better the McLaren was now performing. They then went on to say that it has even had an effect on Michael. I was expecting them to say that he was anxious or a little tense at the new competition. Instead they said that Michael himself had a spring in his step. He was motivated due to this competition. He relished the challenge. Again this is something we've all experienced. Its that much greater a feeling to win when you really worked hard for it. When you were pushed all the way to the end.

You can see from this that absolutely everyone will be better off in F1 if there was more competition. Maybe some of the suits in the major teams will start getting nervous but I think that with a greater viewer interest in the sport, they'll get more coverage anyway and that can only be a good thing. At the moment, I think that even Ferrari and Schumacher fans are getting a bit bored. Who, apart from die hard fans, is going to watch races if they already know the outcome?

Having said all that, there is one other thing that needs to happen to make F1 more exciting. The teams competing against Ferrari need to stop sabotaging themselves. Every time it looks like we have a promising race on our hands, engines blow up, suspensions fail, wings come flying off and pit-stops and strategies go pear-shaped.

As race fans, we can't seem to win can we?