Having read this thread I don't really understand most of the arguments being made except one, that people seem disappointed that a large % of the fuel burnt by an F1 engine is now no longer lost down the exhaust pipe! In order to make such an ungodly racket the old engines were going into very high rpms where efficiency was lost and lots of noise was produced, so much so that at close quarters in a confined space it was necessary to wear ear defenders to drown out the noise... Now it seems that ear defenders are not necessary, you can actually hear yourself think and the noise the engines make is different with lots more going on other than energy being wasted and converted into a noise so loud that you need to take measures to protect yourself from it! I have to say that it appears i'm in the minority currently in that I like the sound of the new cars, you can hear much more going on, you can hear the turbo whine, you can actually hear the tyres working too when the drivers are pushing them to the limits of adhesion. Also I cannot figure out the logic in thinking that traction control would improve the situation, surely if the cars are more torquey and the fuel supply is limited this encourages the teams and drivers to upshift early in the more efficient lower rev band to prevent wheelspin and save fuel, I don't think TC would help as they would still do this and it would do nothing but diminish the skill required to extract the maximum performance from the car whilst making the cars sound worse with the mis-firing sound you gets from the cylinders cutting in and out.

The fact of the matter is that the original proposal for the revolution in F1's rule book was only semi-implemented, if it had been fully implemented it would have seen the cars freed up for more design freedom, particularly in respect to utilising the underfloor for aerodynamic effect. This wasn't implemented due to the F1 teams being callow when it comes to anything that might differ from the approach to aerodynamics that has essentially been in place in F1 since 1983 when the flat bottom rules were introduced. Had the rule changes been fully implemented there would be a greater onus on efficiency as there would be an even smaller fuel ration (probably a 50% cut on V8 levels) as the cars would be massively more aero-efficient. Its a fact that because of the framing of the rules over the years the current crop of F1 cars have a much lower level of aero efficiency than that which is possible, ie. they could make the same amount of downforce for a much lower level of drag if the rules allowed them to. Also creating more downforce from the underfloor would make the cars less sensitive to running in turbulent air and improve the racing as wings lose much more than the underfloor does in such a situation. This would probably eliminate the need for DRS as well as the wings would be much smaller (wings create a massive amount of drag as well as downforce and with a much tighter fuel limit the cars would need to reduce drag) and woiuld have a much smaller influence on the overall performance of the car, indeed, it has even been suggested that wings would be used more as an aid to balancing the car than overall downforce creation as it was in the early 80s.

And finally, I really dont understand why a street race like Singapore would complain about a lack of noise, surely when your running in a urban setting not everyone in the area will want to be inflicted with a massive amount of noise, indeed, in the past noise levels have been a barrier for street races and the fact that they ran turbo engines in Champ Car in the past (and indeed since 2012 in Indycar) has opened up such championshipa to running more street races as people not involved with the races were much less likely to complain about noise levels.

The only constant in change and F1's new regs have been a step in the right direction, encouraging the development of high performance hybrid drive train technology which should trickle down to the products driven on the road by you and I meaning we can all drive further on less fuel and limit the environmental impact of motoring whilst reducing the rate of depletion of a finite source of energy. Thats right, this is about a much bigger picture, in this context moaning about a reduced level of noise is pretty pathetic!