This entry has taken me some time to figure out how to write. Something's been bugging me about recent F1, primarily since the Turkish Grand Prix. However, it was only when Duncan Stephen wrote his item on why he was finding 2011-spec F1 not to his taste that I figured out how to write my own objections to what's been going on. My first reaction to the piece was:

Hurrah! Somebody doesn't think that the current F1 is a) the bee's knees or b) only ruined by excess overtaking.

For me the proximate problem (i.e. the one that's directly causing me dissatisfaction with F1) is meaningless overtaking. In Turkey in particular, the method of generation of overtaking caused lots of zero-sum exchanges - lots of passes but most of them were never going to affect anything in a month of Sundays. They were just going to get re-passed later in the corner sequence or else in the DRS zone the following lap.

DRS foreshortens the process of passing even when it's producing a reasonable net increase of overtaking. This makes it less skilful and also less significant in the context of a race. Those comparing Turkey 2011 to Japan 2005 have forgotten, among other things, that many of the overtaking moves in the latter took laps to set up. Yes, it was normal for cars to be innately 1-2 seconds faster or slower than each other that year, making things difficult enough for complaints, but that still shows planning and skill were important.

If pressing buttons is the new hot skill for F1, why aren't all the F1 drivers being sent on evening typing courses? Why aren't fit typists with clean driving licences being considered for F1 testing roles over the heads of those who have toiled in F3 and GP2?

Besides all that, DRS should never have been experimented with in a race weekend. It should have been tested properly prior to use, and then implemented equally and effectively in all races.

Despite the emphasis on changes to the racing, qualifying has now become the be- and end-all of F1. The only reason it's not become the only non-accidental deciding factor is because many teams haven't worked out it's merely a question of getting your single lap per session faster than those around you. It's no longer possible to waste tyres doing two runs. If you're first into the first corner, DRS means you'll be able to pull out a big lead and protect your tyres as you will while everyone battles behind you. I felt like kicking Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button when they did their little duel at the start; by focusing on each other they lost time to Sebastian Vettel and wore out their tyres, which made it impossible for either to do anything about the race leader.

That's right, to get exciting racing for the lead in this system you need a team to qualify both its drivers right behind the lead one (without the pole-sitter's team-mate or any other team being in between) and then execute firm team orders on lap 1 to stop them from attempting to race each other. The "no. 2" would be tasked with staying 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place and then keeping a consistent pace to remain 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place, preserving the invisible barrier. "Good" thing systematic team orders are permitted this year, else every race win would be unsalvageable.

If you're not a potential race winner, qualifying is still vital and still has to be done as a single-lap run for each of the three sessions. This would be one set of tyres for Q1 and Q2 and then a second set for whichever session is believed to be the final one. If you get through to Q3 when it wasn't expected, simply sit out the session to preserve your strategy. This is because if you can't look after your tyres, the best strategy is to have as many new ones as possible. If you can do that, it's irrelevant whether you can pass the people around you (with gimmicks or not) because you'll probably gain a pit stop on them - especially if your car is relatively kind to tyres like the Sauber is). Even if you don't, you'll gain considerable amounts of time and flexibility.

It's bizarre that the strategies dictated by fragile tyres and ease of DRS-based tactics mean that the act of passing - DRS-based or otherwise - is almost irrelevant to the results.

The trick is to evenly space out all tyre changes according to when your car will need them, which should be quite straightforward to determine based upon performance in the first stint. It doesn't even need anyone to bother doing a pre-race equation - it's simply a question of chucking tyres at a car when it needs them. Pit strategy outside the options a car may deny has now got so little relevance that the discretionary laps can be deployed whenever the team wishes. All the strategy divergence is down to two factors: a) due to the tyre philosophy being new, different cars treat them very differently and b) many teams do not appear to have figured out what's going on yet, so haven't even taken the obvious step of going single-lap each session up to this point.

So we now have the single-lap qualifying some people have called for. It's not improving the racing - it's taken it away. Duncan Stephen has called it "one step away from fixing the result". I wish I could be so reserved on the matter. As far as I can see, it is fixing the result to whoever happens to be the fastest one-run driver/car combination in qualifying, and for most of the top 10, stupidity and extreme tyre wear permitting, they are fixed in the positions in which they qualified.

KERS doesn't seem to do anything to help the sport - it just seems to be something tagged on to keep the stupider elements of the environmental movement a little more content. It's in F1 in a form that will never be utilised on the road (road KERS will be a very gentle addition for all accelerations, not a big boost done occasionally), delivering power in a way that makes overtaking more difficult (which may be protecting us from even worse problems with DRS) and with a lack of freedom which places it firmly in "gimmick" rather than the "feature" it is about to become in sportscar racing. That it's not facing a campaign for removal at this time shows just how much of a problem DRS presents.

One of the things which worries me - and I think it's one of the things that's made it difficult for me to blog - is that so many people don't seem to see the medium-sized picture let alone the big one. They see lots of passing, lots of energy, lots of confusion - and start cheering. They do not see that it's causing very predictable strategies, very predictable results and a very samey feel to races. Energy and confusion might have got many into the sport but if it had kept being those things at the expense of everything else - especially the surprise element - they'd have stopped watching within a season because there'd be nothing to grip them with. If I wanted to know the winner 24 hours before the race and the result of a race for most of the field on lap 15, I'd put on a season review DVD. At least then there'd be decent camera direction...

Sport is a form of entertainment. If done properly, it will be entertaining whether or not the "show" is considered (the "show" only affects how many people get entertained and the length of the entertaining). The decade-long trend towards considering "show" over "sport" is nearly complete. But F1 is not reality TV. Reality TV tropes do not necessarily work for sports such as F1, even with extreme tweaking. The cost is that F1 will soon be unable to be called the pinnacle of motor sport, on the grounds that it will not be a sport at all. The sport needs urgent attention in order to save it, to take away the worst of the gimmicks. That way it might be possible to see how to get the enjoyment of racing to run clear again.

Though I'll let the powers-that-be tweak the "show" enough to get a competent TV direction system and crew. The current one hasn't worked since FOM took over the job and 2011 is exposing their weaknesses so much. It's even more frustrating to be watching a predictable race when perfectly competent commentators, used to having at least vaguely usable images to commentate from, find themselves clueless to things you figured out 30 laps before because you, unlike them, could see the little ticker-tape running across the bottom of the screen...

Warning! Long entry alert!

I spent quite a lot of the weekend attempting to find out information about Giancarlo Fisichella's latest adventure. Considering that it was an international sportscar race (link in Italian), this proved surprisingly difficult.

The race was the 6 Ore di Vallelunga (link in Italian), an endurance race slightly longer than a typical Le Mans Series race (because there is no maximum distance) for GT2 and lower. GT2 is the level Giancarlo races at in sportscars and the race is an independent one, so initially my reaction to him being on the entry list was excitement. Especially since, at fewer than 80 miles from Fisico's home district, it would definitely be his home race.

Then I spotted a slight problem. Coverage.

Sportscar racing is challenging to follow at the best of times. Pit stop counts that sometimes enter double figures, safety cars that pick up whoever happens to be convenient, high entry counts leading to multiple simultaneous incidents... At least the multiple classes would be a minimal complication this time. Usually Giancarlo races in ACO-sanctioned events these days, where GT2 is the slowest class, but in Vallelunga GT2 is the fastest permitted class. So winning the class would surely require a race win.*

Usually the way round all this confusion is to load up a live timing screen. By necessity more complex than any single-seater enthusiasts use for F1, the versions supplied by LMS, ALMS and the 24H Le Mans official websites all offer reasonable means to follow what's happening (when they load and update correctly). The Vallelunga organisers... ...didn't.

There was some news available on the official site, but as far as I could tell (with admittedly limited Italian language skills) there was no live timing. Or broadcasting. Which brought me to the second problem.

To a certain extent, it's possible to follow a sportscar race even without live timing if you have a decent commentary team. Having established there was no official version, my next port of call was Radio Le Mans. Having a commentary team I'd grown to enjoy in the past season (covering four different rulesets and three different continents) explain the complexities of this race (under a fifth ruleset) in my native language would be helpful. Alas, they appear to have gone on a well-deserved off-season break from commentating.

Bereft of alternative ideas, I asked my friends for help.  At the Fisichella Forum suggested half-a-dozen possible sites that could be used. One of them worked, and I looked forward to attempting to understand the race using the likely-sounding Italia-Racing.it (and secretly hoping everyone stopped for ice creams mid-race, since I'd just covered that topic in class!).

On Sunday morning, I duly tuned in... ...and heard "although no-one understood, we-were-holding-back-the-flood..." While I usually like that particular Take That song, I didn't think it was a good sign that I was hearing it 3 minutes before the start. Ah well, maybe it's one of those stations that thinks starting and ending 30 seconds the show either side of the flags is slick and efficient use of time.

The Shakira song that followed made me worried.

The Elvis song that started as the race was due to start made me very worried. "Suspicious Mind(s)", even...

By the end of the next song, I was ready to panic. I'd been checking my social networking services while listening to the radio and seen a photo proving the race had started during the song. It was some Italian pop track, but I was past caring who'd sung it as it was now at least 5 minutes into the race. The way the presenter was talking made it clear I shouldn't expect the station to be covering any racing today. Even if a station called Italia-Racing might be expected to do so.

I'd previously checked through the other 5 links I'd been offered and found that they didn't work or were Internet TV sites requiring registration. Checking against the official site, I noticed something buried deep in the qualifying report (link in Italian) - official broadcast rights were with Sky and they were showing it next week (or possibly the week after - by that stage I couldn't be bothered to get the calender out).

The next hour was spent rambling through every Italian internet radio station I could remember or research in case anyone was unofficially broadcasting the race. Highlights included a lovely club cover of Queen's "You Don't Fool Me". But all the synths in the world weren't going to tell me how Giancarlo was doing in his home race...

After scanning through my social networking, blog and fora contacts (and finding a few photos of practise), I concluded that nobody else I knew had any further information on the race. By this point, I elected to take out my frustration in a game of Worms.

An hour later, logging back in hope more than expectation, I searched on Twitter and found Laura Bonetti tweeting about the race in progress! I knew she was at the track, but I'd assumed that her lack of tweets since the start meant that she was concentrating 100% on what was in front of her. I was pleased to be wrong and even more pleased when I read Giancarlo's car was in the lead. That must have been an exciting couple of hours...

So that, eventually, proved to be my one source of live information - a spectator who was generous enough to spend a little time not looking at the cars in order to post little updates. There's a certain excited tension about following a race via short occasional messages - you start imagining everything that could have happened, refresh, decide nothing's happened, refresh a few minutes later... ...and find that everyone's lined up behind a safety car because of someone else going off.

I probably should have seen an omen in that particular tweet. Just over hour prior to the chequered flag, it started raining. Nearly everyone stayed on slicks. It was on this awkward combination that Giancarlo went off-track. Vallelunga doesn't feature the acres of tarmac run-off that adorn the average Tilke-drome, so it ended Giancarlo's race. The classified position of 7th does not show that he and his team-mates  Perrazzini and Cioci had led the majority of the way without much trouble from opponents.

AF Corse still won the race with a different car (the #10 - they'd sent 4 to the race), followed by the pole-sitting #7 Kessell Racing and the #26 Porsche, which was a GT3.

The race was an interesting and sounded quite exciting, but would have been better with a little more... ...something. A bit like my viewing experience of it, really. Hopefully when the organisers turn this event into a 4-race series the coverage will improve.

* - Just don't tell the LMP1 teams at the LMS at Hungary this year that. The fastest of them was beaten by 5 ostensibly slower LMP2s...