Quote Originally Posted by RaikkonenRules
I wish I had been around for the 30 plus entry lists of the early 90s.
To be honest F1 is better off with having smaller grid of better quality, its one area where I completely agree with Bernie, some of the non pre-qualifying teams were worse than bad, most of them werent good enough to compete in lower formulas, let alone F1. 1989 was the year when F1 had the most cars trying to qualify, with 39 cars going for 26 spots, and with 26 cars automatically pre-qualifying it was left to the remaining 13 cars to compete for the remaining 4 spots in qualifying proper, hence you got utterly hopeless teams that would be packing up and going home by mid morning on the Friday of each GP weekend, it's just not sustainable or desirable to have such a situation. By the mid 90s non-qualifiers were a thing of the past and general standards were increasing in F1, it's true that Minardi were a victim of this as other teams either quit or got better, leaving them to fill the back row most of the time.

btw. Things I hate about F1:

James "cock" Allen - he just talks rubbish whilst calling anything on track a long time after i've already worked out what has happened, Murray Walker had the odd gaffe but 95% of the time he was well ahead of the game, Allen is just plain cr@p

Ad Breaks in coverage - I don't see why its acceptable to interupt the race when it seems that sports like football can be shown by the same broadcaster without interuption during play. Why the hell it isnt on the beeb anymore I don't know (and it's not rose tinted specs talking, I have a large collection of old races from the BBC years and the races are so much more coherant without breaks)

Aero sensitivity - the cause of F1's lack of overtaking, I say free up the underbody as this reduces this problem quite dramatically and restrict wing sizes drastically (tricky though from an advertising space point of view!)

more grip than power - F1 cars should have masses of power, so much that the cars havnt got sufficent grip to really cope with it, this was the case in the mid 80s and it was a golden era for some great driving talent which shone as a result, my fear is that a future F1 with 450BHP and the sort of downforce that the cars generate now will result in slightly upscaled F3 cars which also have more grip than power.