- 05 Nov 07, 01:47#22452I see where the argument is coming from, but I totally disagree.
When everyone talks about the lack of overtaking they hark back to some time, usually the mid 70s or earlier, where overtaking was much more common. I think there are three reasons for this decline:
A) less racing for drivers
B) more testing
C) introduction of telemetry data
A) Back in the old days, racing drivers did F1, sure, but they also did the Indy 500, Le Mans, F2, F3, touring cars, all sorts. Sometimes they appeared in every race in a weekend, like horse jockeys still do, and as a result they raced a hell of a lot more. As such, each individual race was seen much less in the context of a championship, because there was so much else to think about when drivers did 50+ races a year in several different championships, and often raced in one-off non-championship races where winning really was everything, and were much more "match fit" in terms of passing techniques.
B) Drivers these days spend about half their driving time in testing, where overtaking - and I mean proper, eyeball-to-eyeball-I'm-gonna-brake-later-than-you-if-it's-the-last-thing-I-do-on-this-earth overtaking - just doesn't happen. You can see this everytime a team's regular test driver is asked to fill in, their racecraft is just pathetic, because they're out of practice.
C) this one's a little bit more debatable, because in the end lap times never lie, but I think in the old days spectacular, gutsy drivers who impressed every weekend were more noticable than others who were just as quick without the "banzai" element, and were more likely to be hired. Now, the data tells teams pretty much exactly how fast a driver is in absolute terms, but doesn't factor in the holy-****-did-you-see-that element at all.
Thoughts?