Addressing the overtaking issue in F1

BAR Honda technical director Geoff Willis said at Silverstone: "The easiest way to increase overtaking is actually the most expensive way, which is to look at the circuit layout. A lot of them do not lend themselves to overtaking."

Willis's opposite number at Williams, Sam Michael, agreed. "The two examples I always quote are Hockenheim, from Turn 2 down to Turn 3, where you've got a 60-70kph corner into a 1.1km straight, into another 60kph corner which has a load of tarmac on the outside of it. You always get overtaking there because the guy knows he can have a go without ending up in the gravel trap. And you've got a slow speed-corner you can accelerate out of and get a tow on the straight.

"The opposite of that is Barcelona where you've got the same length straight but with a 230kph corner onto it and a 130kph at the other end. Occasionally there is some overtaking there but only when someone has made a mistake out of the last corner.

"You could say that any new circuit built should have one section that's similar to that Hockenheim section somewhere around its lap. You still need the fast stuff, like at Silverstone and Suzuka, but somewhere on the circuit there needs to be an (overtaking-friendly) section like that."

Renault's engineering director Pat Symonds, meanwhile, argued that you could have too much overtaking and that improving the spectacle, per se, is what's needed.

A tongue-in-cheek Symonds joked that the closing stages of the French Grand Prix actually had one too many overtaking moves for his liking (Barrichello's last lap pass of Renault's Jarno Trulli...).

"It's not easy," Symonds said. "What will improve the spectacle? Is overtaking everything? If we get to the point of NASCAR, with lead changes all the time, is that necessarily what we want? On the other hand, we are starting to see a big increase in the TV spectators for the World Rally Championship, where, by definition, there's no overtaking. What we can see there is guys really taking a car to the limit in a way that's very obvious. And that's not something we are seeing in Formula 1.

"Overtaking is important but it's also a very difficult aspect to understand. It is too difficult in F1 at the moment. A number of studies have been done and are being studied at the moment."

Toyota's Mike Gascoyne cautioned that some of the proposed new directions for Formula 1 could actually decrease overtaking if not carefully thought through.

"As long as you have a qualifying format that puts the fastest at the front, then they are not going to overtake each other," Gascoyne said. "Efforts have been made to mix the grids up with different fuel loads and different strategies. But you have to be careful of any changes because, for example, if you have hard tyres and no tyre changes, there may be even less overtaking. It's a very difficult thing to work out and ultimately you've got 10 professional teams producing high tech cars and 20 drivers who don't make mistakes, so it's a very difficult thing to address. It's not an easy technical solution."

Willis added: "The other issue to consider is how the cars are differentiated. If we all end up with roughly the same engines and aero characteristics, there is very little to differentiate the performance of the cars to give an advantage to one car on a particular type of circuit and another on a different track. As well as a viable circuit layout, we need a set of technical regulations that mean we don't end up with a single type of car indistinguishable apart from their colour schemes."