F1 is making an easy thing difficult

One of the fundamentals of a great sporting spectacle is making it as easy as possible for your fans to follow what's happening. So why does Formula 1 consistently fail to grasp this?

That opening statement could be used as a launchpad for a critique of any number of facets of grand prix racing, but the topic at hand is arguably one of the most straightforward to solve, one that doesn't involve complicated technical implications and expensive changes to the car.

Simply make it easier to differentiate between team-mates while watching either at the circuit or on television. It's not difficult; it's not expensive. All it requires is the will to make some minor cosmetic changes.

Having watched trackside at every pre-season test and all five race weekends so far this year, I find there are still too many times when it's difficult to know which of a team's cars has just gone past.

Obviously, put two cars side by side and it's easy enough, but when you're watching a car on track you want to enjoy it and digest a little of what it's doing dynamically. The act of identifying which driver it is should not occupy any of your mental capacity. It should be effortless, less so for any journalists watching than for those who have paid to watch.

The ease with which you can identify the drivers varies from team to team. In the case of Williams, for example, you have a predominantly white car that allows the very different colours of Felipe Massa's and Valtteri Bottas's helmets to show without having to look for them. But when it's a Toro Rosso going past, you have to think about it.

Raised cockpit sides, combined with the tendency of some drivers to change their lid paintwork on an almost daily basis and the often over-cluttered designs, mean that using helmet colours to differentiate between drivers is not always the easiest method.

Numbers are still not clearly visible © LAT

So why does F1 not do something about the car numbers? The change to the rules to allow drivers to compete throughout their grand prix career with the same number, allowing it to be incorporated into their brand, shows that there is recognition of the power of this.

Yet despite the rule demanding numbers be incorporated into the helmet design, nothing has been done about the cars themselves. It's self-defeating: without having a clear, identifiable number central to the look of the car, how exactly will a driver be indelibly associated with it?

Glance at a photograph of Gilles Villeneuve and the number 27 is immediately obvious (well, it is from 1981 and '82, the only years he actually carried it). It's the same with Valentino Rossi's number 46.

F1 has tried to make a virtue of numbers and then allowed them to be completely hidden. Perhaps this is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of how most consume the sport. Very few spend their time staring at timing screens on a pitwall. The car's number stands for much more than just a digit or two on a timesheet.

A cynic could, with some justification, say that teams would much rather it was their own brand that was presented by the look of the car rather than that of a single employee. Any team subscribing to that opinion underestimates the fact that, for most people, the drivers are the stars.

If this were not the case, the constructors' championship would be considered the biggest prize by the outside world.

There are obstacles. The nose designs of many cars make it difficult for a number to be easily visible from head-on. The Ferrari's is probably the easiest to see thanks to its unique nose design. But there's no such excuse on the sides of the cars.

There have been occasional discussions about improving this. The most obvious way is to set number locations and sizes, but inevitably that raises objections that it interferes with liveries.

But there's no reason why there can't be some better size guidelines, along with a stipulation that the number must be easily visible from side-on at a certain range.

So what do the regulations actually say? Article 21 of the sporting regulations deals with this. Here is the regulation in full:

F1 numbers done right © LAT

21.1 The provisions of the Code relating to national colours shall not apply to the Championship.

Both cars entered by a competitor must be presented in substantially the same livery at each Event, any change to this livery during a Championship season may only be made with the agreement of the Formula One Commission.

In order that the cars of each team may be easily distinguished from one another whilst they are on the track, the on board cameras located above the principal roll structure of the first car must remain as it is supplied to the team and the second car must be predominantly fluorescent yellow.

21.2 Each car will carry the race number of its driver (or his replacement) as published by the FIA at the beginning of the season. This number must be clearly visible from the front of the car.

21.3 The name or the emblem of the make of the car must appear on the front of the nose of the car and in either case be at least 25mm in its largest dimension. The name of the driver must appear on the external bodywork and be clearly legible.

Considering how important the identification of cars should be, this regulation is too vague. The camera above the roll structure relies on everyone memorising which driver in each team carries the higher number. Far from intuitive.

As for the rule dictating that the number must be clearly legible from the front of the car, that is so vague as to be meaningless. It's clearly visible from an elevated angle, perhaps, but unless you make more precise stipulations - for example from a non-elevated position and a set range - the rule is of limited use. Add in a catch-all allowing the FIA to make enforced changes if it's not to satisfaction, and the problem can be solved.

There are other potential measures that can be considered. In 2012 Mercedes tested with an elongated engine cover to allow driver identification. This is the kind of thinking that could lead to the best solution, with drivers' names - or fragments of names at least - easily visible.

But there is the danger of it making the cars look worse, which should be avoided. This is an area where further analysis needs to be done, but the ideal would be for clearly-visible driver names to appear on the car.

Touring car racing has made identifying drivers a key objective in recent decades. The World Touring Car Championship took a big step this year by mandating huge numbers on the windscreens, along with very clear names.

No doubts over who is driving here © XPB

Single-seaters don't lend themselves to such obvious identification marks, which make the sport far more accessible.

As usual, this is an area where F1 has fallen behind other sports.

In football, names on the backs of shirts have become ubiquitous, making it easier to identify players on the pitch and bolstering a market in replica shirts.

Even cricket, a sport usually seen as the last bastion of tradition, has embraced names, numbers and colours for limited-overs forms of the game.

If anything, grand prix racing has gone backwards, with numbers in particular going from a necessity to an increasingly marginalised nuisance in the way they're treated.

It's not about dumbing down the sport, it's about making something fundamental to the enjoyment of it second nature.

Most of all, it's an easy win.