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Motor Racing Needs to Wake Up and Smell the Petrol

There are some bizarre regulations in motor racing and the recently run Australian Grand Prix brought some of those to the fore.

F1 races have certain zones on the track where drivers can engage a system known as the Drag Reduction System (DRS). During a Formula 1 race, if a trailing driver is in a designated DRS zone and within one second of a car ahead of the trailing driver, the trailing driver can alter the aerodynamics of the car to give it a temporary speed advantage over the car ahead.



It rather makes one long for the days when the fastest car with the best driver was the winner of a race.

Imagine a similar system in thoroughbred racing and free bets. Any horse within a length of Winx in the final 200 metres of a race could shed five kilograms or so, in order to make the finish closer.

As the Australian Grand Prix demonstrated, it is devilishly hard for one car to pass another. This is true for most of the circuits on which the series is contested.

The answer would seem obvious. Make the tracks wider or make the cars narrower. Most tracks are not wide enough for two cars to run abreast of each other the entire length of the circuit. All the leading driver needs to do is take up enough space to prevent a faster car from passing.

No fancy aerodynamic modification system is going to alter that fact and that is before you throw in all the bickering over whether a trailing car was within the one-second margin or is actually 1.1 seconds back.

How is that racing? Neds Bookmaker can answer that question.

Ludicrous regulations are not the sole province of F1, either.

NASCAR racing in the U.S. has something known as restrictor plate racing. It is used on the big circuits, known as super-speedways.

Restrictor plates are installed on the car engines to reduce the flow of air and fuel into the car’s combustion chamber. This also has an impact on the Charge Air Cooler which is a special type of cooler used to cool engine air after it has passed through a turbocharger and before it enters the engine.

The result is a reduction in horsepower and speed!

Watching a restrictor plate race is like watching a traffic jam. Cars are tightly bunched into a huge pack and none has any real advantage over another.

So far as the Australian Grand Prix, fourth place finisher Daniel Ricciardo of Team Red Bull told reporters after the race, “It’s a fun track but it is tough for overtaking.”

In 19 F1 races in 2017, 10 of those races, about 53 percent, were won by the car that held the number one position on the starting grid.

It was 13 from 21, or 62 percent, in 2016 and 12 of 19 (63 percent) in 2015.

It is past the point where qualifying actually is more important than the race itself.

If motor racing is going to retain relevance, there has to be true competition on the track, during the race.

For F1, let the teams figure out how to make the cars go faster and take the corners more quickly. If racing teams discover that a competitor has devised a method for doing just that, the others will quickly find a way to negate that advantage.

Adding additional DRS zones to F1 tracks is not the solution F1 needs to retain fan interest.




There are some bizarre regulations in motor racing and the recently run Australian Grand Prix brought some of those to the fore.

F1 races have certain zones on the track where drivers can engage a system known as the Drag Reduction System (DRS). During a Formula 1 race, if a trailing driver is in a designated DRS zone and within one second of a car ahead of the trailing driver, the trailing driver can alter the aerodynamics of the car to give it a temporary speed advantage over the car ahead.

It rather makes one long for the days when the fastest car with the best driver was the winner of a race.

Imagine a similar system in thoroughbred racing and free bets. Any horse within a length of Winx in the final 200 metres of a race could shed five kilograms or so, in order to make the finish closer.

As the Australian Grand Prix demonstrated, it is devilishly hard for one car to pass another. This is true for most of the circuits on which the series is contested.

The answer would seem obvious. Make the tracks wider or make the cars narrower. Most tracks are not wide enough for two cars to run abreast of each other the entire length of the circuit. All the leading driver needs to do is take up enough space to prevent a faster car from passing.

No fancy aerodynamic modification system is going to alter that fact and that is before you throw in all the bickering over whether a trailing car was within the one-second margin or is actually 1.1 seconds back.

How is that racing? Neds Bookmaker can answer that question.

Ludicrous regulations are not the sole province of F1, either.

NASCAR racing in the U.S. has something known as restrictor plate racing. It is used on the big circuits, known as super-speedways.

Restrictor plates are installed on the car engines to reduce the flow of air and fuel into the car’s combustion chamber.

The result is a reduction in horsepower and speed!

Watching a restrictor plate race is like watching a traffic jam. Cars are tightly bunched into a huge pack and none has any real advantage over another.

So far as the Australian Grand Prix, fourth place finisher Daniel Ricciardo of Team Red Bull told reporters after the race, “It’s a fun track but it is tough for overtaking.”

In 19 F1 races in 2017, 10 of those races, about 53 percent, were won by the car that held the number one position on the starting grid.

It was 13 from 21, or 62 percent, in 2016 and 12 of 19 (63 percent) in 2015.

It is past the point where qualifying actually is more important than the race itself.

If motor racing is going to retain relevance, there has to be true competition on the track, during the race.

For F1, let the teams figure out how to make the cars go faster and take the corners more quickly. If racing teams discover that a competitor has devised a method for doing just that, the others will quickly find a way to negate that advantage.

Adding additional DRS zones to F1 tracks is not the solution F1 needs to retain fan interest.

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