In order to add more audience appeal to Formula 1 events, the FIA decided to make driving the race cars more challenging.
As technical progress has advanced quite a lot, Formula 1 races have become too easy for the drivers. They don’t have to put extreme effort in piloting the cars anymore, which has reportedly lowered the interest of the audience.
In the next couple of months, representatives of Formula teams and FIA officials will be busy inventing various methods how to make life of the drivers more difficult. Particularly, it refers to a change in tyre grip level, size of race cars and their aerodynamic characteristics. One of the variants under consideration involves reduction of power steering performance.
The new rules will be introduced before 2016. However, to start with, it’s necessary to study drivers’ resources and determine the fine line between the increase in physical activity and the possible degree of driver abuse.
By the way, the drivers support this initiative as all of them wish to be heroes like Ayrton Senna and all those drivers who never spared themselves back in the day. Alain Prost, four-time World Drivers' Champion, also shared his opinion during the discussion of the “innovations”: “Every year we were testing in Portugal, we were stopping sometimes for a month testing. But the first time we went to Portugal it was not possible to make a complete day of testing at all, no way! It was physically really difficult, which is not the case today. That doesn't mean you absolutely want to go back to the way it was, but I think the speed of the cars during the races and the grip is not very good. It's quite slow, so you need to have a proper Formula 1."
