Why looming chaos is just what F1 needs

Formula 1 has gone time-zone mad during the flyaway late races - from plus eight hours in Japan and South Korea to minus six in Austin, with India and Abu Dhabi somewhere in between.

In Brazil last weekend the time zones veered much more dramatically - from hours to months and years - as the paddock became distracted by events from long in the past and those rapidly appearing on the horizon.

On the one side, there were reflections as the end of an era loomed for many.

Mark Webber got a pretty emotional send-off from his Red Bull Racing team, but openly said that if he'd been forced to get the Kleenex out himself then he'd made the wrong decision to quit F1.

There were send-offs for Felipe Massa as his Ferrari career came to an end, and for Cosworth as the category's only remaining independent engine supplier bowed out.

But the most insanely intense goodbye came on Sunday evening, when it was the turn of Sebastian Vettel, Webber and Red Bull to explode everyone's ear drums with a last hurrah for Formula 1's V8 engines.

With the season done and dusted, and the Renault V8s in the back of the RB9s never to be raced again, an attempt was made to give the engines the perfect send-off by blowing them up.

With the engines wired up to hand controls, and the rev limiters taken off, Vettel and Webber did their best to cause maximum damage, but in this era of ultra-reliability it didn't happen.

Vettel helped say goodbye to V8s © LAT

They revved the hell out of the units - so much so that the exhausts glowed white hot, blue flames shot out backwards and the heat inside the garages became like a sauna - but they just would not blow, even as they neared the point were they would become too hot and risked setting the cars on fire.

Instead, the biggest cloud over the paddock was the looming uncertainty surrounding 2014.

Even though much of the front of the grid has sorted its line-up, the battle for the midfield seats was as intense as I've ever known it.

Everywhere you looked in the paddock, there were discussions going on as managers popped in and out of motorhomes trying to work out where the ground lay. Did their man have a chance? How serious was the team? What terms were on offer?

One minute you'd see Lotus boss Eric Boullier speaking to Nico Hulkenberg's manager Werner Heinz; moments later Pastor Maldonado's father would be locked deep in a conversation with team chiefs inside the Lotus office unit.

Then, ahead of a Mercedes press conference, Nicolas Todt was spotted coming out of a meeting with Toto Wolff and Ross Brawn. Was this to do with Maldonado, Massa or James Calado?

There was plenty of desire from all involved in this craziest of silly seasons to find out who was really close to what, who was bluffing in their negotiations, and who really had seats available.

And it wasn't just a matter of drivers working out where to go. For some, such as Paul di Resta, it was a case of working out if there would be a vacancy at all in F1.

For the teams, the thoughts were focused more on the next days and weeks as efforts ramp up to get the new cars ready.

What once was a long-term excitement and planning project for the new 2014 regulations has turned into a flat-out effort to get cars ready for the first pre-season test, which takes place in less than two months' time.

The calm assurances of months ago that everything was in hand for an end-of-January deadline have been replaced, not by panic but a biting reality about the scale of the task ahead.

Speak to engineers and team bosses with the tape machines off and the notebooks firmly closed, and they're under no illusions about how tough things are going to be.

The silly season is still going strong © LAT

The Jerez test is going to be chaotic, and many are predicting that the days of 100 laps being put on a new car on the opening day are long gone.

Now there are fears that the opening test will be a time of multiple red flags, some teams not getting more than a handful of laps in, and problem after problem mounting up.

The talk too is of the first few races of 2014 being a bit messy, as reliability issues strike in the heat of competition.

Maybe we'll get only a handful of cars finishing, and perhaps the quickest guys will be left struggling for points early in the campaign, as a midfield team that perhaps is not the quickest makes the early charge.

Such circumstances may not make the drivers and engineers happy, and maybe some hardcore fans will not like the muddled start to the year.

But on the back of Vettel's run of nine consecutive victories, perhaps a bit of bedlam is just what F1 needs to build up the excitement again. F1 needs to get its mojo back.

That's why Vettel has been urging his crew to live for the moment and enjoy these days of supreme dominance.

In a sport as fast-paced as F1, time moves on and it rarely lives in the present.

Everyone's focus is no longer on today - it's on those far-apart time zones of Jerez on January 28 and Melbourne on March 16.

Bring on the chaos.