Mercedes chief Toto Wolff has likened Formula 1 to football where there are good games and bad games, pointing to the Chinese Grand Prix which was a race of two halves, the latter half exploding into an action-packed spectacle.
This season, and indeed in past years, there have been calls to ‘spice up the F1 show’ while the designs and nuances of the current era cars apparently do little to allow for close racing.
But this all went out the window as the race in Shanghai evolved from an early first-half procession of sorts to a riveting contest with a thrilling climax.
Wolff told Motorsport Network, “This is how Formula 1 always was. [In Shanghai] we had a first stint that you could have judged as being boring. And we had a second half of the race, a second 60 percent of the race, that was unbelievable motor racing.”
“And we just have to accept it. There are good football games, and there are bad football games. [In China] the first half was not good, the second half of the match was great excitement. And the penalties were fantastic!”
“It shows that we are a little bit erratic with our decisions, and one race makes people try to do things that maybe are sometimes not necessary.”
“I think we should let it roll a little bit longer, and see where we go. I think there are other things that we could look at and start introducing leading towards the 2021 programme.”
“Fundamentally we’re very close to it being there. The focus should be on how we can start to bring in the 2021 programme and start getting the benefits of that rather than fixing something that’s not really broken,” added Wolff whose drivers Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton finished second and fourth on the day.