24/10/2018
NEWS STORY
As entertaining as Sunday's cat and mouse battle for the lead was, compared to similar battles witnessed in the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s, the hunted now has an added advantage, for the aero rules that mean that whenever the pursuer gets too close, the dirty air from the car ahead causes the car following to lose front grip.
As a result, rather than a sustained attack aimed at forcing the car ahead into a mistake, or hanging on to the exhaust pipes waiting for that perfect moment to pounce, drivers now have to maintain a gap in order that they are not affected by the turbulence.
While the sport's powers-that-be continue to tinker with the issue rather than actually grabbing hold of it and dealing with it once and for all, Lewis Hamilton admits that as a result the racing will always be compromised.
"I really enjoyed the race, Kimi drove great, Max drove great," said the Briton, according to Motorsport.com. "Seeing that there was three of us, at one point there was me and Kimi wheel-to-wheel, I thought it was awesome. I wish it went for longer in that first stint, and the next time that it happened. And then at the end with us three in that train I wished the race could continue, because it was awesome, and I was hoping that we might get to manoeuvre.
"But still fundamental issues in F1 being that you can't follow, so there's so big gaps between us all. So I really, really hope that whatever the guys are doing I hope they are making some good decisions for 2021, so that there's not a second and a half that you need to get close to a car. I hope it's a lot less than that. If you get it a lot less then we're gonna have the best racing series ever."
Reflecting on the fact that once again, the 'best of the rest' finished around ninety second behind the winner, the four - soon to be five - time world champion also believes the speed differential needs to be addressed.
"That's a fundamental issue of the sport," he said. "There shouldn't be such a big difference between first and last, there shouldn't be such a massive difference between cars.
"How can a Williams or a McLaren be three seconds off a lap? That's a huge amount of performance. So I think they've got to change the rules to allow that gap to go so we can have more awesome racing. It's got the potential to be the greatest racing series there is, but you look at MotoGP and they are wheel to wheel, fighting from corner to corner."
The Mercedes star was also critical of the issues he encountered when lapping back-markers at the weekend.
"I don't feel like it's entirely the backmarkers' fault," he said. "Tyre pressures have gone up, it's very hard to follow, so as soon as you get within five seconds you feel the wake from the car ahead. The car starts sliding more. So the advantage you have starts to disappear the closer you get.
"They've got a race to do, they shouldn't have to let off massively to give several seconds to you. So it's a bit of a difficult scenario. For example I was stuck behind two Toro Rossos, but I couldn't get close enough, and my tyres were getting worse and worse, and I wasn't getting close enough for them to have to lift off. So it is a difficult one, but it was nowhere near as bad as somewhere like Singapore, for example."
Of course, one could argue that reducing the speed differentials would only add to the problem of dealing with traffic.