The tightening of the grid

I was recently looking back at some of the data from formula 1 back in the 90s, and it made me realize that Yuki's current problems in the Red Bull are being made worse by how tight the grid currently is.

Back in the 90s, you would sometimes see 4 or 5 seconds between the front of the grid and the back of the grid in qualifying. Now it's closer to a second and a half, so even if you're half a second behind your team-mate, that can translate to ten places on the grid, or more.

The anti-MBS agenda in formula 1

It should be obvious to even the casual F1 fan that there has been a media agenda to get rid of MBS from his position as the President of the FIA. Whether you think that agenda is justified or not, is a different discussion, but the agenda definitely exists.

Personally, I'm not as convinced by the media's anti-MBS agenda as most people are. In fact there are a few examples, that I agree with MBS on:

1) I completely agree with the swearing ban (now that there's a team radio exception). You rarely hear swearing in other sports (and if an athlete does swear during a TV interview, they immediately apologize). It only seems to be F1 where the drivers want to swear in interviews. Swearing over the radio in the heat of the moment is totally understandable, so it makes sense that team radio discussion should be excluded from the swearing ban (they can bleep it out anyway), but I can't understand why the drivers are so passionately in favour of swearing during TV interviews. Just don't swear! Simple!

2) I also agree with MBS's push for an 11th team. I can understand the other teams putting self-interest first and wanting to protect their own share of the financial pie, but the FIA have to consider the sport as a whole and the fans, so the 11th team made sense.

3) One example where I kind of agree with MBS, but it nevertheless could have been handled a lot better, is that I agree that Toto and Susie absolutely should have been reviewed. There absolutely was a potential conflict of interest, so there had to be checks in place to ensure there was no transfer of information.

That said, the FIA should have made it more clear that this was a review, not a trial. There should have been a statement right from the start stating that this was not a suggestion of guilt, merely a review to ensure all parties were happy that things were being done correctly (which was ultimately determined to be the case). So the optics could have been done a lot better, especially given that the media blatantly used it as an excuse to try to get rid of MBS (which MBS should have anticipated).

So I guess I'm not as convinced by the media's anti-MBS agenda as most people are. He still wouldn't be my first choice obviously, but given that I can remember the dark days of Max Mosley, MBS doesn't upset me the way he upsets most people.

Injury time outs

I've seen a few tennis fans throughout Wimbledon complaining about injury time outs and claiming that not all injury time outs are genuine.

To address that concern, what the powers that be could do is introduce a point penalty every time a player takes an injury time out.

That would reduce the appeal of taking a 'strategic' injury time out, and help ensure that only genuine injury time outs were called.

Arsene Wenger states the obvious

When discussing the Club World Cup, Arsene Wenger was recently quoted as saying, "If you make enquiries to all the clubs who were here then 100% of answers would be that they would want to do it again."

Yes, obviously. Because FIFA paid them millions of pounds for taking part! The winners will get around £90 million!

Take away the money, and I think you'll find that clubs' interest in the tournament will drop dramatically.

FIFA: "Would you like millions of pounds to take part in a series of glorified friendlies?"
Clubs: "Yes, please!"

Free to air football

As most English football fans will know, there's currently a proposal to make ten Premier League matches available on free to air TV each season.

Sky and TNT will presumably push back against the idea, but I think ten free games per season could potentially increase revenue for the TV rights holders.

Think of it like a single back in the days when people still bought music. You hear the single for free on the radio, you like it, then you buy the album. Singles were used to increase album sales.

If handled correctly, a small sample of free Premier League games per season could work the same, and potentially encourage people to subscribe to more games.

The norm from the BBC

From a recent football report on the BBC website:

"Rohl, however, did not reported back for the start of pre-season."

Nowadays, it seems that 'must be illiterate' is an essential job requirement for anyone wanting to work for the BBC.

Inconsistent application of the rules

Unsurprisingly, Oscar Piastri was obviously angry about his ten second penalty today in the British Grand Prix for sudden braking behind the safety car.

I think a penalty of some sort was deserved - although maybe five seconds would have been fairer - but I can understand why Oscar was angry, given that George Russell did the same thing in Canada and got away with it.

The difference today presumably was that the rain made the sudden braking more dangerous. That and also the fact that there was time today to apply a penalty in-race, whereas George's sudden braking move at Canada came very late in the race. They would therefore have had to amend the Canada result post-race, and that's something which the FIA don't like to do, presumably for the optics of it.

Optics shouldn't come into sport, though, so again, I can understand why Oscar feels hard done by, even if ultimately, the penalty is his own fault.

Tyre testing

Once criticism of formula 1 that pops up from time to time is that the current tyres don't allow drivers to push to the limit for the entire race. This leads to drivers driving conservatively to save their tyres, which in turn deprives fans of great racing.

However, what the tyre critics fail to acknowledge is that in-season tyre testing isn't allowed these days (or at least, is severely limited), so non-perfect tyres are inevitable. Basically, the teams needs to come together and come up with a solution that allows more tyre testing.

Here are a couple of quick ideas:

1) Give each team a couple of tyre tests during the season (with no new bodywork testing allowed - all test cars must use only parts that have previously been raced).

2) Give the back runners a couple of tyre tests. Maybe the back three teams on the grid at a specific point in the season are allowed two tyre tests each. The teams from seventh to fifth are allowed one tyre test. This would serve two purposes; it would allow tyre development to take place, and it would also help the field to close up.

I doubt things will ever change, but if they stick with the testing limitations we have now, then we're never going to have perfect tyres.

The ten year test

When it comes to formula 1, there's inevitably a lot of debate among fans as to who are the best drivers. In fact right throughout the grid, there is discussion as to whether driver A would beat driver B if they were team-mates. As an example, I heard one fan recently claim that there isn't a single driver on the grid who would ever beat Max in the same car.

Nobody can give a definite answer to that, but when comparing two drivers, I like to use the 'ten year test'. To explain what I mean by that, imagine two drivers in the same car for ten years. What do you think the final score between the two would be?

For most drivers on the grid, as this fan kind of implied, if they were paired with Max then the score after ten years would be ten nil to Max. However, I don't think that applies to every driver on the grid. There are possibly two or three who, if they were Max's team-mate for ten years, would avoid a whitewash.

Lewis Vs Charles

If you were to believe the headlines, Lewis Hamilton's underwhelming performance during his first season as a Ferrari driver has come as a massive surprise that nobody expected.

However if you ignore the hype, the truth is somewhat different. The bookies' pre-season odds suggested they regarded Leclerc as slightly faster than Hamilton. They were proved correct.

Charles being a couple of tenths faster than Lewis is not the big surprise that some pro-Lewis fanboy reporters are making it out to be. Neither is the gap as massive as some anti-Lewis fanboys are making it out to be.

Ignore the headline writers, and the truth is somewhere in between.