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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

I agree completely with all points, though it's nowhere nearly as entertaining as it was up until ~2007. I mean there have been only a handful of GPs that were interesting over the last few years. Coincidentally yesterday's GP was definitely one of them. I mean it's not often you see almost half the cars break down.

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Are you sure it's not a case of selective memory? I remember old F1 races to be quite boring compared to today, if you don't care about who is going to win the constructer championship.

It's perhaps not the best metric, but the number of overtakes over the year may remind you that before 2007, most GPs did look like Monaco. https://old.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/2charb/the_number...

It's not just about overtaking through - previously, strategy relating to fuel and tyre changes was a big part of a race, now this strategic element is all but gone.

Refuelling actually hinders the importance of team strategies as once the car is fuelled, there's a fixed point at which a pitstop has to happen by. Without that, and with the degradation of tyres offering a similar performance hindrance as higher fuel levels, there's far more freedom in strategy, with similar consequences for the wrong call costing a race (or the right one sealing it).

Here's a current strategist's thoughts on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/go6c9m/im_an_f1_e... (TL;DR fuel restricted racing is more deterministic)

Tyre changes are still absolutely critical. Case in point: yesterday Albon's last stint on softs would have likely pipped an otherwise-dominant Mercedes to P2 and possibly even P1, had Hamilton not "touched" him out of contention.

I personally didn't like fuel changes, probably because I started watching F1 before they were introduced and it made me mad that a less efficient, less-reliable engine could now win over more solid ones. They are also spectacularly dangerous for drivers and crew - as Jos Verstappen can attest.

Overtakes shot up because of DRS, which was introduced because reliability had gone up so massively that races had become too predictable. Before DRS, the 2000-2010 decade was ending up producing "Monacos" on most weekends.

Pre-2000, reliability was more on par to what we saw this weekend (45% of cars not finishing), which made it much more exciting on average.

Early/mid 2000s were still pretty unreliable; it was only with the introduction of parc fermé and the car not being allowed to be touched between qualifying and the race that we started seeing the vast majority of cars finishing. It was definitely processional, but that wasn't really down to the reliability.

There have been some boring seasons, but you probably haven’t watched much recently if you think this weekend was one of the best in recent years.

Hockenheim 2019 for the lols.

I have watched almost all of them actually. And while I was ~10 in the late 90's and not interested, I have recently watched GPs from that era and none of the recent GPs can stand up to the Schumacher vs Hakkinen races. Many of the drivers these days lack character if you ask me, with very few exceptions. And some shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a race car imo. The Austrian GP was interesting simply because of all the mechanical retirements which is relatively rare these days. The only race with similar record in recent years was Hockenheim last year(also incredibly interesting) but it was mostly due to crashes.

Fair points. I enjoyed the Schumacher era. But Hakkinen gave us just 2 years as double champion. Where as up until 2018 we had 3 multi champions racing against a new generation of highly talented drivers. 4 championships wasn’t enough to save Vettel a seat at Ferrari with the depth of talent we currently have on the grid.

It’s also getting tighter at the front. Knock Mercedes down a peg or two and 2021 could be a 4-way fight, with Maclaren joining Ferrari and Red Bull to challenge the Mercs.

Like many other drivers, Hakkinen was a bit short on luck. Similar to Raikkonen for that matter who missed out at least on a second championship because of an unreliable car. Don't get me wrong, I agree that today's cars are much faster, safer, yada-yada.

But I did mention Hakkinen-Schumacher for a reason - though they were direct competitors and had very different driving manners, you could see how they had immense respect for each other and acted like true sportsmen off the track. Whereas now you have a ton of spoiled brats (some multiple world champions at that) who cry like babies every time the wind isn't blowing their way, others who have seats only because they have rich daddies, while people like Hulkenberg are sitting in front of the TV at home... I mean look at teams alone - there are only two teams with solid relationships between drivers inside of them - Norris-Sainz and Raikkonen-Giovinazzi(I suspect because Raikkonen simply does not care and is only there because he enjoys driving).

And I don't see how this will improve in the future. What I'm trying to say is that I'd much rather watch a real race as opposed to a soap opera, which is what today's F1 resembles more. Not just from drivers' prospective but from teams themselves.

Try to go a bit earlier in the Senna, Prost, Mansell, Piquet era. Character was much more present and some funny stories from the backstage. [0]

[0] https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/december-...

Part of why I find F1 boring when I've tried to watch it in the past is that the camerawork is so technically orientated. They pan with the cars so perfectly that there's little sensation of speed. You could be watching RC cars on an indoor track.

With the ubiquity of drones nowadays there would seem to be a lot of options for more exciting viewing.

This comment doesn't make sense. F1 uses onboard cameras extensively- look up the Halo HUDs which overlay speed, throtte, brake and g-force on the Halo device in the cockpit camera view.

Although the speeds those cars move at isn't possible to convey on camera- what looks like 60mph is usually a three-digit speed. Drones wouldn't be able to keep pace, which is why they're used as static cameras rather than chase cameras.

I agree with your general sentiment. I have stopped watching lately but the last great season I remember was the one when Lewis Hamilton won the championship in the last corner of the last race over Felipe Massa due to some other driver not finishing. I think it was in the late 00s.

IS THAT GLOCK!?

EDIT: for reference https://youtu.be/XHSeGou-pCI

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