Gary Anderson: F1 can focus on real problems

Anyone who thinks Formula 1 is boring after the Bahrain Grand Prix has their head inserted in a very deep and very dark hole. I have been around this sport for a long time and I can't remember a race that had so much genuine action-packed racing throughout the field.

It wasn't just about artificial DRS passes. It was about overtaking manoeuvres based on pressure-driven mistakes with side-by-side racing that, in some cases, went on for corner after corner. It was Formula 1 at its best.

Even the setting made it special, with Bahrain running a night race to celebrate its 10th anniversary on the F1 calendar. So compliments to the track and to Bernie Ecclestone for pushing this through as it looked fantastic. More races like this please, because they really add to the spectacle.

Yes, Mercedes utterly dominated, with both cars on the front row, about one second faster than anyone else, Nico Rosberg setting fastest lap and a one-two finish in Lewis Hamilton's favour. But while it would have been easy for both to throttle back and take the points, they went at it hammer and tongs. It was pure racing theatre.

My only complaint with how Mercedes handled the situation was the timing of Rosberg's first stop. With the pair locked in battle, Hamilton was called in.

By this time, the Mercedes pitwall knew that any driver making an earlier stop than whoever they were racing against was much faster on fresh rubber, but Rosberg was left out for another two laps.

Mercedes was happy for its drivers to attack each other © XPB

So when that pitstop sequence was over, he was over five seconds behind rather than all over his team-mate's gearbox challenging for the lead.

If I was Rosberg, I would feel a little bit aggrieved by this.

What really stood out is the sheer professionalism of the teams and drivers at the front. There were team-mates fighting hard, which the teams allowed to happen, but the respect they all showed each other demonstrated F1 as it should be.

But on the back of those teams fighting like cats and dogs comes the performance of Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo. He has been very vocal about the state of F1 and what is wrong with it. Apparently, it's like taxi driving.

Personally, I love Ferrari and like most fans of F1 want to see it fighting at the front, but I'm afraid to say that there were only two taxis out there on Sunday. And they were both red.

Ferrari has a lot of work to do to become competitive and it's time to get on with it rather than moaning about it. Otherwise Fernando Alonso will be on his way to another team.

It's not that there is nothing that F1 needs to address, because there is. But in the grand scheme of things, it's more about dotting the Is and crossing the Ts than trying to reinvent the wheel.

There was frantic action throughout the field in Bahrain © XPB

The first thing that needs addressing, which has had so many column inches and web pages dedicated to it, is the noise. We all want these cars to burst our eardrums, but I'm afraid that is never going to happen.

So my plea to the FIA and the various working groups is please do not put an artificial bandage on this. If it can't be fixed properly, just leave it alone and let us get used to it over time. Instead, focus on the things that make the fantastic racing we saw in Bahrain.

Item two on the agenda is the penalty system, which really needs to be overhauled. Can anyone tell me that it is fair that Daniel Ricciardo, as a driver doing what his team has instructed him to do in Malaysia and pulling away from a pitstop that hasn't gone right, gets a 10-place grid penalty for the next race when he had nothing to do with the situation?

Then you have Pastor Maldonado, who does have a bit of previous. He leaves the pits and T-bones Esteban Gutierrez, who was quite happily minding his own business turning into Turn 1.

The result is that Gutierrez's Sauber flips, a fairly serious accident that incurs a huge amount of expense to Sauber, which is not a big-budget team. And for all that, he gets a five-place grid penalty for the next race.

Maldonado's move left Gutierrez upside down © XPB

Yes, he got a 10-second stop/go and three points on his superlicence, but let's be sensible. These two penalties do not reflect the severity of the two crimes.

The third thing is that the implementation of the safety car after the Maldonado/Gutierrez accident was far too slow.

It was a long time before it was called into action and the car was sat there with damage to all four corners with the driver wondering what had happened and not quite sure which way was up. It was inevitable the safety car would be needed.

And to compound the delay, it was then left out far too long. This business of letting backmarker cars through to make up their lost lap takes forever and robs us of what we want to watch: real racing. There was more of that available if they had just got on with it.

My suggestion would be that instead of letting the lapped cars take a lap back, anyone that has been lapped has to drop back behind the top 10 positions. This would be fastest and it would allow the points contenders to battle it out from the restart.

Actions speak louder than words, but let's hope any changes that are made to F1 don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

To all those involved, please look very carefully at the problems and address them directly. Don't just change things for the sake of change, otherwise you risk creating other problems that might be even more difficult to solve.

Races like Bahrain won't happen every weekend. But that type of racing as often as possible would make a whole lot of people, including me, very happy.