Ross Brawn and his team of technical experts have begun work into investigating how to increase the quality of racing in Formula 1 in the future.
So far in 2017 season, we have seen two teams battle it out at the top of the championship with a large gap to the teams behind, this has alarmed the executive director of motorsport to the problems that the sport currently faces.
“If I am honest, we have been very fortunate this year that we’ve had two teams that are battling it out so strongly at the front, and I wouldn’t like to claim any credit for that,” said Brawn.
“But I think with the real recognition that there has to be some work done to consolidate that for the future. There is a slightly worrying gap between the front and the middle of the field that we need to pay attention to.
“We are still starting to understand the behaviour of these cars with regard to how well they can race each other.”
Drivers have recently expressed their frustrations at how difficult it is to follow their rivals due to the immense levels of downforce the cars produce, but also how difficult the tyres are also to work with.
In recent years fans have also berated the sport for its lack of overtaking, this has led to calls to greatly reduce aerodynamics in order to allow cars to race much closer, however, Brawn does not agree with this concept and is keen to explore the area much further with his team.
“I don’t want to call it an overtaking working group because that is not what we are looking to do,” he added.
“We are looking to create a group that can look at the design of cars presently and in the future to make sure they are raceable, because the feedback from the drivers is it is difficult.
“We know that we rely on the aerodynamics for the performance of the car. There is a slightly naive view that we should get rid of the aerodynamics and then everything will be wonderful.
“The fact is it won’t be as spectacular and they won’t go as fast as they are if we get rid of the aerodynamics. There is no way of just putting on bigger tyres and hoping you will go as fast as they will.
“So we need to retain the aerodynamics but we need to do it in a way that makes the cars more raceable. You cannot guess that, you have to do work to establish it.
“But I don’t think we are taking anything for granted. We are fortunate that we have got some great racing going on, and we need to make sure we can do that more consistently in the future.”
