Have you been turned off Formula 1 by the ‘Max Factor’? If so, it’s understandable. Red Bull’s flying Dutchman Max Verstappen set a raft of new records in 2023 on his way to a third consecutive world title. There’s the mark of most wins in a season , most consecutive wins and a mammoth points haul that would have won his Red Bull-Honda squad the constructors’ title even without team-mate Sergio Pérez’s contribution .
CAR headed direct to the source and spoke to the man behind the regulations, F1’s chief technical officer Pat Symonds. He offered us a snapshot analysis from the figures he and his small team of engineers use after every grand prix to measure how well they have done their job. Make no mistake, F1 takes this subject seriously.
CAR puts it to Symonds that increasing familiarity with the new regulations and the teams’ natural inclination to fight against the rule makers’ intentions have weakened the closer-racing case. ‘Up to a point,’ he concedes. But before we get into that, Symonds is keen to point out something no regulator can combat: that infernal ‘Max Factor’ that has made the ultimate results so predictable. It sure didn’t feel ‘better’.
Factor in that for the first time ever an identical grid of the same drivers in the same cars that finished the previous season will line up when the new campaign starts – and it’s currently a tough sell. More of the same is the fear. Still… F1 is ‘boring’. Isn’t it? ‘It’s definitely not boring from my perspective,’ said Lewis Hamilton ahead of the Miami GP last year. ‘But as a racing fan, I can understand because there’s not as much competition as they’re used to.
‘Also we regularly saw seven different makes of car in the top 10 results of races last year,’ Symonds points out. That’s true: it happened 10 times out of 22, and at the US GP there were eight crammed in. ‘It must be terribly frustrating if you are in the midfield,’ says Symonds. ‘You can go from hero to zero in three-tenths of a second.’
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