Formula 1: After the reform is before the reform

WIf you want to understand the difference between the old and the new Formula 1, if you want to understand why four-time world champion Max Verstappen has fantasies of escaping, as if someone had given him an electric shock, you had to look at the “130R” on the Suzuka race track. 130R is a calm name for a fast left-hand bend. It was named after its radius of exactly 130 meters. It became legendary when Fernando Alonso carried out an overtaking maneuver there in 2005, after which many observers wondered whether the Spaniard still had all the seals on his cylinder head. At 340 km/h Alonso swerved and flew past Michael Schumacher; the scene is so iconic that it gave birth to legends. Alonso’s saying about Schumacher is still circulating on the Internet today, which he probably never actually said: “I knew he would put on the brakes because he has a wife and two children at home.”

At the end of March, another world champion raced past another on the 130R: Lando Norris overtook Lewis Hamilton. 21 years later, the pictures are even more spectacular! Norris is so much faster that it looks like Hamilton is looking for a parking space. And again there is a famous saying. Only this time it’s unfortunately true: “I didn’t want to overtake Lewis at all,” said Norris about his overtaking maneuver: “It’s just that my battery is giving off energy, which I don’t actually want, but I can’t control it.”

Poor Norris. And poor Formula 1! When world champions become co-drivers and fail because of the HI (secret intelligence) of battery management, then they are no longer reminiscent of heroes like Senna, Schumacher and Fangio. But to Bowman, the sad astronaut from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”, who has to let the laconic on-board computer HAL 9000 tell him: “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

Norris wanted to slow down. But unfortunately his McLaren couldn’t do that. After pressing the boost button for extra acceleration, Norris even took his foot off the accelerator in the 130R, but there was too much electrical propulsion in the system. After overtaking, the overtaking driver, who never wanted to overtake, was overtaken himself: Hamilton easily rolled past on the straight. Norris’ battery was dead! You could find that consistent and fair. Or opaque and stupid.

In qualifying, drivers will again be allowed to spend more time at the so-called limit than at the imaginary charging station

This scene, comparing then and now, contains the essence of what makes Max Verstappen angry. When the Formula 1 entourage gathers in Miami next week, the bet is daring, the Dutchman will no longer smoke any less. Only because the team bosses agreed on a small reform during a racing break due to Donald Trump’s private skirmish in the Strait of Hormuz.

The new regulations will be worked on “with a scalpel, not a baseball bat,” exulted Toto Wolff, the Mercedes boss. One can assume that Wolff has a certain weakness for the new cars and therefore the scalpel. Its drivers have won the three races so far. Verstappen, on the other hand, is in 9th place in the World Cup standings. But anyone who thinks that his complaining is solely due to his own lack of chances is ignoring the fact that Verstappen warned in the summer of 2023 against the development of semi-electric racing cars that do what they want. Verstappen now announced that a reform would bring nothing. Only “small adjustments to a regulation that is fundamentally wrong” are possible.

Toto Wolff’s scalpel will shave off a few major discrepancies: In qualifying, for example, the drivers will be allowed to spend more time at the so-called limit than at the imaginary charging station. The enormous differences in speed, which, see above, were due to the large differences in battery levels and were a safety risk, should also be eliminated by reducing the accelerating power of the boost button from 350 kW to 150 kW. But is that enough to appease the purists who still remember the purity of Alonso’s overtaking maneuvers in the 130R? It can be no consolation to them that the number of drives past has demonstrably increased this season – they criticize their quality.

The manufacturers want, no, have to, exhibit the technology in Formula 1 that they also sell in their car dealerships. Audi and Honda joined this year to promote the battery and electric motor. Because the racing series is a slave to money, not even Verstappen will be able to change the basic engine formula. The sporting question must be: How do you get recuperation, the recovery of energy when braking or coasting, to be halfway sexy? Anyone who brakes late is considered a racer in racing. Anyone who recuperates there looks like an idiot. If even the drivers don’t understand what their car is doing, how is the viewer supposed to understand it?