Quote Originally Posted by Nitrodaze View Post
People say things like there are no crashes anymore, cars don't brakedown any more. The absence of these things are due to the maturity of the sport. Drivers have got better at avoiding crashes but it still happens. Manufacturers have got better at building highly resilient engines and parts. This essentially is progress.

Where l mostly agree with you is that, there is no proper fight for the lead and podium places in F1. Close quarter racing is still impossible. And Mercedes has taken team efficiency to another level. Even with a car that appeared to be down on straight line speed compared to the Ferrari, they have produced a car that is faster over a whole lap than the Ferrari. So the one team domination continues.

Paul Ricard circuit is probably one of the few tracks that do not punish drivers for going off track. This is not the norm.

I would say that the 2021 season may offer the answer to many of your disillusions. As close quarter racing will be the norm. Winning would be harder. One hopes the Honda engine would be on par with the Ferrari engine by then. This would put Verstapenn squarely in the fight at the front. What can be more exciting than that.
I just want to address the parts I've high lighted. I have to disagree with you here. The absence of breakdowns has nothing to do with the 'maturity of the sport' as you say. It has to do with the FIA's attempt at parity and cost savings. Progress? The teams have been restricted from progress. Ten years ago or so, engine rev's were increasing every other year. That was progress. Now they are restricted to an upper limit. Without that limit, they'd be revving at over 20,000rpm these days. That would be the cutting edge - progress. Sure, they would blow more often, but that's exactly because they'd be at the edge. Now, everybody runs at 80% so they can make the engines last 5 or 6 races. Party mode takes us to 85%. The engineers must be extremely frustrated. Someone once said something like 'The perfectly engineered race car is the fastest one that breaks down right after the finish line and anything more is over engineered." Well today's F1 cars are closer to passenger car reliability than F1 cars of the past because they are so far from the edge.
Here's an analogy for you: (all hypothetical - I don't do long distance) A few friends and I are marathon runners. We train quite a bit and some of us can finish under three hours on occasion. When we push this hard, sometimes we set new personal bests, but sometimes we may pass out or collapse and not finish the race. Our wives say this is too costly and dangerous for us. They've said that if we want to continue running, we need to keep our heartbeat below 120 bpm. So now we all finish very closely to one another at about the five hour mark. We finish virtually every race - no one is collapsing and some aren't even breathing very hard. Some of us say that we have matured in our sport and that this is essentially progress. To those I say 'We are no longer racing, but merely going for a leisurely run.'