Does anyone else feel as though the 2016 Formula One season is lasting a lifetime?
Maybe it’s the clearing championship picture, or perhaps it’s that the races in the Americas are held at unsociable hours for (Australian) viewers.
Either way this writer for one is feeling the effects of the F1’s record-breaking 21-race season.
The vibe inside the paddock is telling. The sheer length of the calendar is taking its toll on all permanent member of the travelling circus, and the final flyaway portion of the year, featuring seven long-haul races between South-East Asia, Japan, the Americas and the Middle East is gruelling.
It all takes place in the context of incoming F1 commercial rights holder Liberty Media confirming it’s looking at ways to increase the number of races to boost revenue. It may make financial sense, but it threatens to stretch the sport and all its comprising components to breaking point – and that’s before considering the more pertinent question regarding calendar expansion.
Does Formula One really need more races?
Since 2010 the sport has lost five grands prix – races in Turkey, Valencia, Nürburgring, South Korea, and India.
Others have signed contracts but failed to materialise, and a number of classic events are in a state of permanent danger.
Indeed just this week the implications of a burgeoning calendar are threatening to derail another race, with Malaysian authorities reportedly seriously questioning the future of Formula One at the Sepang International Circuit.
With ink barely dry on the three-year contract signed last year, organisers are preparing to abandon F1 at the end of 2018, drawing to a close what will be a 20-year affiliation with the sport.
Malaysia’s Minister for Youth and Sports, Khairy Jamaluddin, said in a series of tweets that F1 no longer offers the advantages it boasted when the country began hosting its race in 1999, a year featuring a not-unusual 16 races.
“When we first hosted the F1 it was a big deal,” he tweeted. “First [race] in Asia outside Japan. Now so many venues. No first mover advantage. Not a novelty.
“F1 ticket sales declining, TV viewership down. Foreign visitors down [because they] can choose Singapore, China, Middle East. Returns are not as big.”
Hosting more races, at very least under the sport’s current uber-expensive business model and haphazard scheduling that has direct competitors Singapore and Malaysia hosting races within a fortnight of each other, is an obviously unsustainable game.
And the argument about calendar length has an interesting parallel, as raised by Jenson Button in the week before the United States Grand Prix.
“People have a short attention span,” he said. “Short races, short sports, are on the up.”
The 2009 world champion believes a briefer sport would be better suited to the modern world and help to arrest F1’s sliding engagement.
“There will always be the diehard fans that have watched Formula One for 10, 20 years and will watch a whole grand prix, but that’s not who we’re after – it’s the younger fans we need to appeal to.
“It’s a tough one because Formula One is Formula One, and changing that is a shame because that’s the way it has always been, but we need to move with the times if we want the sport to be relevant.”
Running shorter races, perhaps in a weekend format featuring multiple sprints in the style of GP2, is a vexed and deeply polarising issue, but it is one under consideration for adoption.
But if the rationale behind such a change is to refresh Formula One, to keep it spritely and easy to engage with, can a similar argument not be made for shorter calendars?
In the same way elite tennis is defined by its four annual grand slams, in the same way the football World Cup or the Olympic Games are hosted once every four years, there is merit to the argument that having fewer races enriches the value of each of them and benefits the season, and therefore the sport, as a whole.
For a sport that rewards competitors for efficiency – for extracting maximum performance from the minimum resource – it would not be out of place for Formula One to similarly consider how it could conclude upon a higher quality calendar comprising fewer events.
At least then everyone could get some sleep on the weekend.
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Michael Lamonato
Expert
Turkey was easily amongst the best TIlke tracks, with Malaysia, conveniently enough, being one of the others! It would be a shame to lose both, then the Tilke component of the calendar really would be most disappointing, with the exception of Austin (which is an amalgamation of corners from other race tracks, really). Imagine a world where F1 is a support event on a longer Formula E season! I'm not sure how Bernie would feel about that...
Michael Lamonato
Expert
The midfield is particularly punchy this season, so I don't blame you. A bit of a levelling of the playing field would go some way to moving that action towards the front again.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
Yeah, I'm likewise against shortening races. I don't even really like there being a maximum race time given it potentially robs a strategy fully playing out (Although realistically it's only ever really activated once a year in Singapore). And I agree likewise — improving the product should be Formula One's primary focus at the moment, ahead of all the other questions currently being posed. US viability, for example, would come far more easily if the on-track product was improved, for example.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
Definitely agree about the morning races! The US and Mexican GPs are amongst the easiest ones, I think — although I do tend to miss the pre-race coverage. I wouldn't go so hard on Pirelli — it was the sport, after all, that asked for high degradation tyres, and given the teams have almost always refused to give Pirelli a representative car to test the tyres on, it's pretty impressive how consistently in the ball park the compounds are at pretty much every race. Next year they're tweaking the approach, but they still won't be able to test with a representative car until February and March, so we'll see. I'm glad there are people who still appreciate the details of Formula One. It's such a detail-oriented sport, which can sometimes be a turn-off, but if you're willing to engage, there are very few races, if any, in which there's nothing happening. Thanks for the comment!
Michael Lamonato
Expert
It can be a bit like that, but often in the lulls in the middle part of the race is where the strategy is set up before execution in the final part. There's almost always something going on in a grand prix — providing there's more than one pit stop required.
Brad
Guest
After getting into MotoGP in the last few years the races to drag on when the whole middle period of the race nothing really happens so its maybe the first 5-8 and the last 5 that are interesting and the rest of it im playing on the Ipad
Matthew H
Guest
I a loving the F1 since it came to Fox Sports, and I don't have any problem with season or race length. Free-to-air TV was ok, but buggerised around with times etc. To be able to watch the practice and qualifying every race makes it way better for me. Add to that the advances made in broadcasting the races with so many onboard cameras and radio feeds etc. Plus the live timing boards available by 'pressing red' mean you can see for yourself how the race is unfolding and analyse tyre strategy without having to rely on commentary. I am also a morning person, so the night slots for races sees me having an afternoon nap to see them but at least they are always live, I thought I would be in trouble with the American races but 5am is when I get up so no problem there either. Of course F1 always has a dominant team which will put some off, but as a guy who loves a true underdog (as opposed to an 'underdog' like the Western Bulldogs who were seriously favoured by rulings) I really get a kick out of the non-dominant guys having great performances against steep odds. The only thing I will say is that Pirelli have let everyone down with tyres by not fulfilling their promises to make races more exciting. As we saw on the weekend the tyre difference is so marginal that safety cars still way more important than tyre strategy. This is possibly due to the governing bodies ruling on tyre width and size though. Can't wait for next year when the tyres will be way bigger, the cars will be a lot faster and we should see more manouvering. This year with cars not being able to run close to others without cooking tyres is a bit of a joke.
Rodney Gordon
Expert
I'm 100% against making the races shorter. Maybe they could lower the maximum race time from 2 hours to 1:45 or something, but honestly... when people are paying top dollar giving them something like a 30 min or 1 hour race is ludicrous. As to shortening the season? I'm sure that part of the reason it feels so long is the sameness of most race weekends. As a fan I want more racing, more action. I'd push for something to be done to overhaul that actual racing and let cars follow each other and overtake - THEN we might have less monotony and a more memorable season overall.
Wayne
Roar Guru
Still watch the F1s when I can, but I find myself wanting to watch P4 - P12 as they are "racing" each other. Its probably why I love Sprintcar racing; Within 4 laps the leaders will catch the rear of field and back markers Vs Lead cars becomes a race within the race. Only the Race leader gets Blue flag assistance, and even then, its only a warning to say "you are being overtaken by the race leader, don't defend the spot"
Bill
Guest
Agreed. I loved the Malaysian and Turkish gps. But something's got to give. The FIA should get the e series onboard and make that like 25 rounds with f1 run as the premier events at say 17 of those.