Comunicato stampa

My Letter to the Commissioner

17.01.2021 - Dear Commissioner,

Too many changes at once can be as bad as no change at all, so I will keep my list short.


1) Fix overtaking/blocking and drafting so that we have a more balanced game. Now you have tracks with 400 overtakes or more. There a group of cars can be over a second faster than the fastest driver on his own. On the other hand, you have tracks with less than 40 overtakes. There you can’t overtake even if you are some 2 seconds faster.

2) Fix qualifications. In this season 4 fastest teams have ended their qualification 8 times in Q1 and 10 times in Q2. Even a mistake in Q3 can put you out of contention for the podiums. This is because it is almost impossible to make ground in the race if you qualify further than 6th. Qualifications are the most decisive aspect of Formula 1. The problem is that qualifications are a lottery and there is little to no strategy involved. As a result, championships can be and are decided by their luck in qualifications. I have also made a season-to-season comparison from season 30 onward.



So, what can we do to keep things interesting and also make it less random?

In my opinion drivers should have an option to run for a second time in each round. If it can be coded teams should pick their tyre compounds. In that case the number of dry sets could even remain at 8. If not, another set of soft tyres should be added, so that we have 3 sets of each compound (3x Soft, 3x Medium and 3x Hard). This qualification format would make the game a lot more strategic. Drivers and teams would have to balance many things. Managers that can get their setup perfect with fewer laps would be rewarded as they would have more tyres for qualifications and race. In qualifications managers would have to decide how many times to run in each round and what tyre to use. You would be able to play it safe and then use slightly worn tyres in the race. On the other hand, you could gamble in qualification and save your tyres for the race. 3 sets of soft tyres would also bring up a new strategic choice. Do you use one set of Softs in each round, risk it with Mediums in Q3 and then use 2 sets in Q2 or Q3? Basically, you would have a lot more strategic choices to make. At the moment, if you are in a top team, you have none. Furthermore, even mid-table or teams at the bottom would profit from this as they would have more fresh tyres for a race, and they would be able to be really aggressive in Q1 or Q2 with their tyre choice.

To sum up, it would be a lot harder for a manager to blame random for poor performance in qualifications. Instead, they would have to blame themselves.


3) Tyre wear change from season to season should also be more drastic as now it really makes no real difference. This should be fairly easy to implement.


4) Adding car specific tyre wear that is determined by car characteristics would be great, but that is just a bonus. I would make it a combination of chassis focus + random, so each team would have a different tyre wear. As a result, some cars would be faster for a lap and the others would preserve tyres more, so they would have a better pace in the race.


Porsche Racing