The hidden agenda behind the return of F1 sparks

Houdini used it to make elephants disappear in front of packed theatre houses. It's what professional pickpockets employ to fleece the unsuspecting of their wallets on crowded city streets. And now some Formula 1 teams could even be using it to wipe out potential advantages they think their rivals may have.

Misdirection is a powerful tool. If you can manipulate support for something, while at the same time knowing it will achieve a second benefit only you know about, then the world is yours.

According to paddock insiders, that could well be the reason why what once seemed like a crazy bit of blue-sky thinking - bringing sparking cars back to F1 - has gone from random idea to regulation within a matter of weeks.

This is not simply a story about teams agreeing to make changes to the cars just to please the fans. Double points showed us how much they are willing to listen to those who follow the sport.

Instead, the fight by some teams to bring sparks back to F1 has been about seizing an opportunity to cut off a potential advantage they think some of their rivals have with clever underfloor aerodynamics.

It's widely accepted that Red Bull, thanks to its design genius Adrian Newey, has set the benchmark for downforce brilliance in recent years, with the team's concept based around running a lot of rake on the car.

It means its cars have traditionally run low at the front and high at the rear, which was been particularly beneficial in sealing the airflow under the car to improve downforce.

Red Bull has benefitted from being able to run the front of its cars low © LAT

But Red Bull is not alone in running the front of its car as low to the ground as possible. Even the presence of an underfloor plank to try to force teams to raise ride height has failed to provide much of a hindrance. That's because they can fit skidblocks made of a metal that's so dense it's very difficult to rub away enough to erode the plank as well.

Ride height has therefore become dictated by just how low you can get the plank to run before the car starts sitting on the ground.

Furthermore, there were even wild suspicions last year (denied by the team and never proved despite FIA inspections) that Red Bull may have been cleverly using the heat generated in the dense metal skidblocks to warm the floor in such a way that it flexed up at speed, giving a bigger aerodynamic benefit.

Whether or not such flexi-floor concepts were reality or fantasy, one way to guarantee that no team could play funny games with the floor would be for the metals used in the skidblocks to be replaced with something much lighter that will wear away much quicker. Something like titanium.

So when talk of the need for a more spectacular F1 started, and the idea of sparks being generated by the return of titanium skidblocks was first mentioned, there might have been some hidden agendas at play in it getting such swift support. If you felt you had been losing out on underfloor performance because rivals were running much lower at the front, then stopping them doing it would be a great help to your team.

No wonder the push to introduce sparking cars was so big. And no wonder some teams were willing to test with them during a grand prix weekend.

The implications of titanium skidblocks are threefold. There will be a safety benefit, because the lighter blocks won't pose as much of a risk if they fly off (they weigh one third of the existing items); and there will be plenty of sparks when the skids hit the ground. But above these feel-good factors, teams are also going to have to run with higher ground clearance to avoid the new titanium blocks wearing away.

Having to raise ride heights may then hinder those teams that have mastered better the benefits of running as low to the track as possible. And that, rather than spectacular images, may well be the real motivation behind the appeal of sparking cars.

Houdini would have been proud.