F1 Fanatic

@motorstv Splendid – will be watching.

The Formula 1 crowd is doing themselves proud – Sebastien Bourdais is running away with it, Mika Salo is currently second (but has to take a ten-second penalty during his pit for jumping the start), Jan Magnussen is living up to his reputation for aggression having already bent the car and Tonio Liuzzi is holding on very well.

Well, that was a ridiculous race. Why do we even bother with those pesky “corners”?

The problem was the new sensor-and-bollards system, which was okay in theory, but poor in execution. Race control made the right call yesterday when the bollard was removed for the first time, since there was about two inches of bollard showing through, which would have caused a puncture for anyone who hit it. The second safety car was a bit unnecessary, but I suppose they had to make sure the first replacement was secured properly; if the bollard could remain in place, then it should have been kept there. Evidently, it didn’t work.

The problem today was the bollards across the back of the circuit. They weren’t an issue yesterday; everyone was respecting them. But they got ripped out during the support races, and they weren’t replaced. Then for some bizarre reason, the sensors were turned off. As soon as that happened, the drivers started abusing the kerbs. A couple of them were legitimate screw-ups as drivers came in too hard and too fast – Craig Lowndes kept doing it at the first chicane – but like you said, a lot of the Kelly drivers (surprise, surprise) ignored them completely.

No doubt it will.

Anyway, some interesting developments for next year: a lot of the drivers aren’t available – most notably Patrick Long – because of conflicting race schedules. Roland Dane (Team Vodafone’s Christian Horner) is up in arms because the Powers That Be are attempting to amend the rules for 2012, limiting the frequency at which a guest driver can race for a team.

But I honestly think some more format changes are needed, especially if this kind of model is to be applied in Texas in 2013. Right now, the international drivers do 34 laps on Saturday and 34 laps on Sunday, but otherwise they might as well go to the beach. What they really need is an aggregate qualifying session, where the regular driver does a lap, then hands the car over to the international driver in a separate session, who then does a lap of their own. The times then get added together to decide the grid. The international driver needs to actually do something than preserve the car for 30-odd laps.

No driver can do more than (for example) 55 laps in a row.

That rule is already in place, @ed24f1 – a driver must do at least 34 laps in the car, or one-third race distance. By virtue of that, the other driver can only do a maximum 68 laps, because to do 69 would mean the first driver (usually the international) would only do 33, and thus miss out on the minimum lap count.