Three rule changes I would make in Formula 1
I’ve only been following Formula 1 for a couple of years — like many newer fans, largely thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive — but that doesn’t stop me from having a few thoughts on how to make the racing better and fairer.
Red flag
When a red flag occurs during the race, drivers and teams currently have the opportunity to repair the car and change tyres. This can drastically change the race — especially if a driver has just pitted and lost places — while others benefit from a free pit stop.
As a result, this is often seen as a huge advantage in certain situations. Personally, I’d say: Tough luck — that’s sport for you. From a safety perspective, it might actually be a bad idea to ban tyre changes altogether.
If a (virtual) safety car is deployed and some drivers pit, only for a red flag to be issued later for the same incident, it can unfairly penalise those who made the early stop1.
In these cases — especially when the delay is due to indecision from the stewards — the race order should be reset to what it was at the beginning of the safety car period. That way, drivers who pitted aren’t punished simply for being near the pit lane at the wrong time.
During qualifying
When a red flag occurs during qualifying, some changes to the current rules are needed.
Any driver who causes a red flag should have their fastest lap time up to that point deleted. This prevents a driver from causing a red flag (or even yellows) on purpose, and deny their competitors the chance to set a faster lap time. Famously, this has happened in Monaco a couple of times.
Obviously, if it’s not the driver’s fault — for example a technical issue with the car — this rule wouldn’t apply.
Also, the driver who caused the red flag isn’t necessarily the one that crashed, it could also be a driver causing the collision but still able to continue qualifying — though such incidents are rare.
Currently during qualifying if there is a red flag, the clock stops and everyone returns to the pits. Depending on when this happens there might not be enough time left to set another lap.
My original idea was to reset the clock back to the time the first driver who wasn’t able to finish a lap left the pits. The idea being that another driver crashing out does not exclude you from setting another lap time. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s unnecessary.
First of all, it’s quite complex bookkeeping, and also the logic might break down completely if someone is on multiple warm-up laps — or worse multiple push laps.
More importantly though, once we rule out crashing on purpose, the need for this rule decreases, and I go back to the earlier Tough luck — that’s sport for you.
Cost cap
The Formula 1 cost cap was introduced in 2021 to control spending and not give a huge advantage to big (and rich) teams. I’m not the biggest fan of the cost cap, but I don’t have a major issue with it either2. If we already have a cost cap, why do we still need strict limits on engine components? I always understood this was to prevent the bigger, richer teams to throw in a brand-new, high-performance engine for every race, which could give them a huge advantage.
So to me it looks like we have two rules that try to accomplish the same thing. Simplify it for everyone: get rid of the component limits. If a team wants to spend its money on a new engine every race, instead of focusing on building engines with less degradation, let them do it. I doubt any decent team would actually choose that route, but let them dig their own grave if they really want.
Impeding during qualifying
Often during qualifying a driver on a push lap gets impeded by a driver on a slow lap (in- or out lap). Generally the penalty for the impeding driver is just 3 or 5 grid places. But the result for the driver being impeded can be a lot bigger if they fail to get through to the next session.
Since generally the results of impeding are only discussed after the session has ended, there is no possibility for the impeded driver to be automatically promoted to the next session (say, they are 16th in Q1). But even if it were discussed between sessions, and promotion could happen (by already applying the 3-place penalty) that still wouldn’t guarantee a promotion.
For this to work, the impeded driver would need to qualify 16th — already a big ‘if’ — and the impeding driver would need to qualify 13th or worse.
One simple solution: if a driver who was impeded fails to make it through, they should automatically swap places with the driver who caused the block — assuming that driver did progress.
This could mean that the impeding driver, instead of starting 6th, would start 16th. This also means that a driver who might not have gotten through to Q2 or let alone Q3 might suddenly find themselves in the top 10.
It’s a harsh penalty, yes — but it would quickly teach drivers and teams not to get in the way. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be mad if they didn’t learn from it — at least it would lead to more interesting grids, and a chance to upset the big teams, and give smaller teams a better shot at scoring points.
I do see a few problems with my approach — one being that the impeding driver might deliberately put in zero effort in later sessions. I’m not sure how to solve it, but it would still be better for the driver being impeded to be P15 than P17 for example.
Final thoughts
These definitely aren’t the only changes F1 and the FIA need to make to have better and fairer racing — but it’s a starting point.
I might talk about other improvements — more consistent and transparent stewarding springs to mind — in a future post!