Quote:
Originally Posted by Casper
Do you want the leaders slowed down or the midfield to come up to their level. Its a pretty simple question really.
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It might be a simple question, but it doesn't really warrant an answer as simple as yes or no.
For the record, my leanings would be towards "no".
Team #1 (who happen to be Mercedes) are, as I've posted previously, running things just about perfectly right now. Their car is spot on, engine is spot on, drivers are spot on, strategists are rarely making mistakes, their marginal decision making almost always comes out on the beneficial side, aerodynamicists & designers & manufacturing staff are churning out splendidly engineered pieces of kit and they just go marching on and on.
Time was Team #1 was Ferrari; Red Bull had four years up there, McLaren and Williams between them dominated for the best part of 15 years only punctuated by Benetton. Domination is not a new phenomenon.
The common theme to all those periods of domination, including the current one? Money. McLaren, Williams and Ferrari all had masses of tobacco money. Red Bull are still largely funded by one of the world's richest single-product companies (although to a lesser extent than during their dominant period).
People still trot out the "we want overtaking" line and "the racing is crap", but the racing is actually closer now than it was when Williams and McLaren were out and out dominant - the "little" teams used to finish literally minutes down on the leaders having been lapped three, four or more times.
Did they moan? Maybe. Did "the fans" moan? I don't think they did.
I stand by what I've said many times: we collectively should be relishing the fact that there's one team who are currently getting everything right, at every level. Forcing them to get things wrong in the interests of some biased view that F1 is now less interesting than it used to be* is likely to make the money behind the team to leave, and others will follow them, and then F1 won't be F1 any more...
*perhaps media saturation is to blame for that, but that's a whole different subject.