Drivers agree with Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo's call for the sport to take a good look at what it really has to offer.
While Montezemolo's exact motives for seeking a summit meeting to discuss the direction the sort is taking might be in doubt, when asked at today's press conference several drivers conceded that there is room for improvement.
"I think there is a big room for improvement, to improve the show," said Sergio Perez. "There is one team dominating, normally every year. I mean in Formula One there is always one team winning pretty much every race, so that's a bit boring for the fans and also for the drivers if you're not in that car.
"I think there's not much you can do," he continued. "Reduce the cost to give an opportunity to the smaller teams to try and be competitive. I come from a big team to a smaller team and I see the reduced amount of budget and with this limited budget it is very difficult to compete against big teams. I think that would help a bit, to reduce a bit the cost to be able to have more equal chances of fighting big teams."
"I think everything is more related to the cost cutting, which is probably the most important topic at the moment," added fellow Mexican Esteban Gutierrez. "In terms of the show, it was been very mixed in the last years which more regulation on the tyres, more pit stops, everything has been probably more interesting but at the same time in some way a little bit more confusing.
"I think the more information is given to the fans about what's really happening in the race," he added, a comment which those still incensed at the stripping down to the bare bones of the timing information provided by the official website this year, "this can improve the understanding and it can directly improve the entertainment as well."
"Obviously there is room for improvement," said Marcus Ericsson, "but I think overall it's good fun to drive, the cars are quite tricky to drive but we've seen this year in many races that there is good racing, good battles, it's just... yeah, there are always things to improve, I don't know exactly what, but I think still, the racing has been good this year - and we saw in Canada how good the racing can be."
"I think cost-cutting has a huge part to do with it," said Max Chilton. "I think it has to be slightly more efficient or the winnings have to be spread more fairly so the smaller teams have more to play with so then the cars are closer in comparison so then the racing will increase. I think that's one that will definitely help the spectators. Instead of having two seconds between some cars if there's only half a second it's going to make the racing better to watch.
"Formula One is cutting edge technology and we all know everyone spends their lives on their phones and iPads now," he continued, "so I think we can try to put it out there slightly more. I've seen some pretty cool apps where you can select whatever camera you want, pause it when you want, rewind. I think getting it out to the younger population as well would really help."
"As we've all said, the cost is the biggest thing here," added Fernando Alonso, whose boss has called for the summit. "All the ideas you have are closely related to the cost as well. So that's not an easy thing.
"In my opinion the KERS should come back to our cars. We have now the electric helping us on the straight but we cannot decide, or we don't have the extra boost we had last year to help with overtaking because you can use it in different places compared to other cars. Now we all use more or less the same energy in the same places, so that's impossible to overtake. And then tyres are a big thing. Bringing in a tyre competition or whatever will mix the teams. We could help the small teams like they do in MotoGP, giving them a different spec of tyres or different fuel quantity or whatever to use in the race. So there are some ideas we could take from other sports - but as I said, all needs to take care of the cost as well and that's the main priority."
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Chris Balfe
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