What we'd change about F1

Formula 1 has been more willing to embrace change in the 21st century than ever before, with a series of format tweaks in recent years designed primarily to spice up the show or improve the sport's image.

Double-points finales now follow hot on the heels of DRS and tyres designed to degrade. And they arrive amid the switch to 'green' engines and a fan backlash against what some saw as a tedious end to the 2013 season.

So, with F1 increasingly open to moves that would have once been unthinkable, the AUTOSPORT team was invited to consider the one change we would each make to the sport - whether sporting, technical or organisational - if granted 'Bernie powers' for a day.

ANDREW VAN DE BURGT: Reverse-championship order grids
@AvdaB

Would you give Usain Bolt a 10m head start in the 100m? No, of course you wouldn't, yet in motorsport - and in F1 in particular - we insist upon lining the cars up in the order of who's fastest and then complaining when there's no overtaking!

Qualifying is the ultimate artifice in F1.

Adrian Newey builds cars to qualify on pole and race away in clean air. If the cars lined up in reverse-championship order, he'd be forced to design cars that operated in dirty air and could pass. In a stroke F1 would be improved. DRS could disappear and all the races would be like Suzuka 2005.

KEVIN TURNER: Ban fossil fuels
@KRT917

Many believe F1's current regulations are too restrictive, but that's largely because we know too much about how to make combustion-engined cars move quickly.

So, how about saying you can turn up with anything you like so long as it doesn't run on a fossil fuel? Apart from some aero rules - to stop the cars cornering too rapidly - you could open things up.

The racing would suffer, because there would be a greater difference between those who got it right and those who didn't, but it would create variety and make F1 more relevant when it comes to the future of our planet.

F1 has some of the cleverest people in the world working in it, so let's use them in a way that means motorsport isn't such an easy target for environmentalists.

JONATHAN NOBLE: Give the FIA complete rule-making power
@NobleF1

Formula 1's shift towards a sport ruled by committee and influenced so much by the teams is now hampering its ability to change with the times and has left it out of touch with the fans.

The baffling recent introduction of a double-points season finale is proof of that.

F1 should change its rule-making process immediately. Rather than the laborious need for team approval to change technical and sporting regulations, they instead should be decided upon unilaterally by the FIA each year.

Publish them on December 1 for the following season, and teams then have three months to get cars ready for the first race. There can be no limit to the extent of the changes year-on-year - but each change must have a justifiable reason.

There would be no more griping about the limits of testing, tyres, costs or aerodynamic rules that have become enshrined over the years.

Fast-changing regulations would also mix things up each year - and ensure F1 moves in ways that are good for everyone rather than what just suits the teams.

EDD STRAW: Make revenue shares fair
@eddstrawF1

The most effective way to transform Formula 1 for the better is not a regulation change, but simply ensuring a more equitable share of revenues for all teams.

The business model of grand prix racing is creaking. Sponsorship is difficult to find meaning that the majority of teams exist on a hand-to-mouth basis.

Combined with an effective cost cap (great in principle but incredibly difficult to implement), this would allow teams to stop taking pay drivers, work on long-term strategies and allow upwardly-mobile midfield teams to invest in climbing to the upper echelons of the sport without committing financial suicide.

BEN ANDERSON: Halve the calendar
@benandersonauto

There are too many grands prix these days. Formula 1 fans are over-saturated, like plants that have been watered too often by the sport's desire for money.

I propose cutting the calendar in half to 10 rounds. Only the 'best' (judged by raceday attendance) would qualify.

This has several benefits:

1. Reduced costs; a white elephant that looms large in F1's peripheral vision.

2. Better events: competition will raise standards.

3. Increased prestige: each event would matter more.

A leaner calendar would also close up the title fight (without the need for ridiculous double-points finales) and help maintain enthusiasm for a sport that, for too long, has put greed before sporting excellence.

MARCUS SIMMONS: Open up entry rules
@marcussimmons54

I can see no reason for F1's OCD-ish obsession with two-car teams of full-season entries, so my change would be to allow teams to enter as many - or as few - cars as they like in whichever races they choose.

When I was a kid, there was always intrigue over whether McLaren might stick out a third car this weekend for Bruno Giacomelli, or whether the BRM might turn up. Don't forget, Gilles Villeneuve got his break in a third McLaren, and James Hunt his in a solo Hesketh entry...

Let's stop being so anal, and enjoy a bit of variety.

CHARLES BRADLEY: Ban semi-automatic gearboxes
@AUTOSPORT_Ed

Go and search for Ayrton Senna's 1990 Monaco qualifying lap on YouTube. Kids, that's what you call changing gear, none of this flappy-paddles nonsense.

That mesmerising, bullet-like gearchange precision has become a lost art in F1; the way Senna pings up and down the 'box, utterly ragging his sonorous Honda V10 on the downchanges - driving for some of the time with only his left hand on the wheel.

It's now impossible to miss a gear, unless your software glitches. Semi-auto 'boxes should have been banned from the start in F1; I'm no Luddite, but we're being robbed of a fundamental driving skill.

DAN CROSS: Understudies for qualifying
@dank_ross

The 2005 Japanese Grand Prix was one of the greatest races of recent years. Why? Because some of the top cars started from the back of the grid.

So, in an effort to regularly spice things up and get around the lack of track time available to aspiring F1 drivers, I propose every team have a rookie assigned to a regular driver. The young racers would then qualify on behalf of their mentors.

In doing so, they will gain invaluable experience while under pressure and provide us with a mixed-up grid, thus increasing the chances of a more entertaining afternoon's worth of racing.

PABLO ELIZALDE: Slash costs hugely
@EliGP

Formula 1's dependency on huge amounts of cash to survive is the root of most of its problems. Struggling teams, races in places with empty grandstands, a grid with average drivers... the list goes on.

The sport needs a radical change that reduces its costs drastically, and it needs it desperately. Sadly there are too many interests and complications for the FIA's budget-cap idea to work (or to even be implemented properly), but the ruling body needs to find a way to make sure a change happens quickly.

If it manages it, Formula 1 and motorsport in general will be much healthier.

SAM TREMAYNE: Restrict in-season upgrades
@SamTremayneAS

There are times when Formula 1's focus on the scientific undermines the human, unpredictable element of the sport.

I propose a radical idea: restricting how many races teams can bring upgrades too, in inverse relation to last year's constructors' championship order.

For 2014, Caterham could therefore bring parts to every race if it chose, while Red Bull, 10 places above, would not be permitted updates at 10 events.

This would allow smaller teams the chance to shine on sporadic occasions, and decrease the hegemony of the bigger teams' financial muscle, shuffling the order on a race-by-race and year-by-year basis.

SCOTT MITCHELL: Create an 'F1 draft'
@ScottMitchell89

F1 needs to do more for younger drivers. That's universally accepted. So I'd adopt an American football-style draft system.

A shortlist of 11 drivers can be drawn up post-season and then, from worst to best, teams can pick these drivers to become their test and reserve driver. Throw in a minimum requirement of six Friday practice sessions and that's not an awful way to bed in the best youngsters.

You'd fund it by implementing a sensible financial model in which half of F1's revenue is shared evenly among teams and half distributed on a meritocratic basis. This negates the need for a big money sponsor or well-backed driver, thus killing two of F1's peskiest birds with one stone.

GLENN FREEMAN: Ban in-session data
@glenn_autosport

One of the big criticisms of the current era of F1 is the way races are managed from the pitwall. Edd Straw's recent suggestion to combat this by getting rid of pit-to-car radios is a fine one, and an alternative way to tackle it would be to ban live telemetry during sessions.

F1 is not going back to the stone age any time soon, so banning data logging altogether would over-simplify.

But only enabling access to that data after a session would highly reduce the chance of teams instructing drivers to manage their pace or several other factors on their cars that detract from the simple notion of on-track competition.

HENRY HOPE-FROST: End back-to-back races
@henryhopefrost

I'd almost certainly have bigger fish to fry were I running F1, but one thing about it that really rankles is back-to-back races.

The practice has existed since the very beginning of the world championship - indeed, Silverstone and Monaco were eight days apart in 1950 - but I don't like it.

I want the excitement to build up a bit more between races; I want to be able to really look forward to the next race. I don't want to read a race report and a preview to the next one in the same issue of AUTOSPORT! You really can have too much of a good thing.

DIETER RENCKEN: Give teams more control

Bernie's powers would empower me to change precisely what made him powerful: full control over F1's 100-year, billion-dollar commercial rights, which in turn permits the rights holder to buy the power it wields over the FIA, teams and circuits owners. Fix that, and you fix 90 per cent of F1's issues.

Bernie is unlikely to cede control, so it is over to the teams. I would create a strong, cohesive FOTA, one able to wrest back control of what the teams once owned. All it needs is common sense - a commodity in short supply in a paddock filled with extremely clever folk.

PETER MILLS: Keep young driver tests - and add mini-races

While I welcome the return of in-season testing, I can't help feel it's a shame to lose designated young-driver tests altogether.

That's not to say the 2013 system was perfect, as you still had the age-old problem of attaching value to times achieved on potentially different fuel loads or track conditions.

So why not assign a couple of tests specifically for young drivers, and give them a short race at the end of the test?

To avoid potential start mayhem, go for a rolling start. Forgo pitstops, and to counter potential driver neck strain keep the race distances short.

Perhaps if Fernando Alonso's Ferrari can't beat Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull this year, a Raffaele Marciello-driven model could have more luck against a Pierre Gasly-piloted RB10?

MATT BEER: Random/reverse grids
@mattbeertweets

As much as I love a tense pole shootout, it's no substitute for a last-lap lead fight, so I'm with those who think that lining up a grid in pace order immediately invites the fastest man to run away with the grand prix.

And if you're going to contrive a qualifying format to ensure it's anti-meritocratic, what's the point in qualifying at all?

Random grids run the risk of unfairly penalising anyone who draws 22nd on the grid on a day their title rival picks pole. So let's have two races, with the random grid order of race one reversed for race two. Make them about an hour long each and split them across Saturday and Sunday.

Then if you want to ramp up tension for the championship denouement or fear the crucial stages of a title battle being skewed by random-draw vagaries, add a third race at the final three grands prix, in which the grid is set by aggregating the race one/two results.