When Sebastian Vettel won the 2010 Drivers title and Red Bull Renault the Constructors Championship it had come down to a final race with four drivers in with a change of winning the title. Ultimately Vettel won his first title, as Alonso was unable to finish fourth in the final race of the season. Since then the title has been largely decided by intra-team battles and single team dominance, whether this be Red Bull or the Silver Arrows. With the reliability of the Mercedes now looking solid and much improved on last season the 2015 season will continue the trend of a title challenge formed from a fierce teammate battle, with the occasional surprising result thrown into the mix. That surprise result will probably come in the shape of a Vettel victory and reignite the ‘are Ferrari back’ media furor between that victory and the next race. The answer is simple – Ferrari hasn’t gone anywhere, Mercedes are just at the front of a leading technology driven sport. The same was for Ferrari when Michael Schumacher dominated the sport for the better part of a decade. So with Mercedes having dominated the sport last year and this, after having ruled themselves out of the 2012 and 2013 seasons to develop for 2014 and the huge rule changes that were to ensue – lets hope the same can be said for McLaren – should fans, the media, other teams, the FIA and Mr. Ecclestone be looking for reasons to want to change the sport? Is F1 in the bad way it is being portrayed?

F1 has always been a controversial sport with both a technological race and racing drivers trying to prove they are number one. There are two fronts on which a team is fighting and it has to be said that these two fronts do not always align. With teams complaining about technological advantages and drivers talking of the sport as ‘not for racers’ Toto Wolff has called into question influential people within the sport, be it those working in the sport, watching it, or reporting on it. ‘The spirit of negative controversy’ is what Wolff has called it and I think its a fair and accurate assessment of how the sport is viewed by fans and journalists – who themselves are some of the sports most influential fans.  It is the view of these influencers that has resonated with the fans and the snowball effect begins.

The sport is receiving plenty of headlines, mostly negative, which in turn brings its rewards. The profile of the sport continues to grow, the sponsors continue to come, the fans continue to watch, although the attendance at the Austrian Grand Prix was down from 90,000 to 55,000 last week, and importantly the journalists continue to write and drive the sport into the minds of consumers. Wolff calls the negative headlines a ‘good sales campaign’ from the journalists. The spectacle of F1 has not changed, even if the cars have. When the sport was too dangerous the were calls for safety and less death associated with F1, thanks to the work of Professor Sid Watkins the sport hasn’t seen a death since that of Ayrton Senna. Now drivers and fans alike are calling the sport too safe, however, the sport has done what it always had to do and that is to evolve. Safety has been improved in such a way that drivers like Robert Kubica, who suffered a horror crash at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, are walking around today as a result. The ability to now listen to team radio means that we are privy to conversations which possibly divulge slightly too much to those who don’t fully understand the implications of the messages, or what it leverages on the skills of the driver. Lift and coast, tyre saving, fuel saving and DRS are all terms that strike at the heart of ‘true’ F1 fans. Yet these are all a result of the sports evolution and rule changes, they should not detract away, for example, from Mercedes ability to dominate a sport in which all teams operate under the same regulations. They have simply evolved and worked their way to the front of the grid. Wolff discusses a duty to ‘not talk the sport down’. I tend to agree to an extent. It is always healthy to question a sports development or what could make the sport better. It is also important however, to acknowledge the positives in a sport, the safety, the speed, the technological developments and the youth on the grid. The speed has been questioned yet the cars, on heavier fuel loads, on only their second year with Pirelli and again just two years into the new regulations are only between two seconds to two tenths of a second slower per lap than the very end of the V10 or V8 engine eras. This is a huge achievement and one that should not be undermined. These cars are quick and it’s easy to forget that there is more to come from the hybrid era and from the Pirelli tyres.

The next big round of changes to make the sport ‘more thrilling’ are due in 2017 and I think it will be safe to assume that whatever the changes, louder engines, refueling, larger tyres or all of them, the sport will still have fans as its naysayers and detractors. They will call for more changes and faster racing and I will be one of them, but sometimes it is nice to just sit back and watch a sport at the head of technological evolution, with teams fighting for development and drivers fighting to go faster. The ‘sprit of negative controversy’ will always surround the sport in an era of high safety and hybrid engines, but you know what, I still enjoy its mastery and beauty.