An F1 genius on why tech is a turn-off

The rapturous applause that Lewis Hamilton received as he descended the Grosvenor House ballroom stairs to enter the AUTOSPORT Awards told you everything you needed to know about the identity of the 'real' heroes of Formula 1.

In a year when technology has been moved to the forefront, and manufacturers have been in raptures over hybrid relevance and fuel efficiency regulations, there is a simple truth that even they have to accept. The cars are not the stars. The drivers are.

The complex relationship between people and technology came into focus again later in the evening when legendary Formula 1 designer (and John Bolster Award winner) Gordon Murray offered a few of his thoughts on modern grand prix racing.

Forty years on from his Brabham BT44 taking its maiden victories, Murray is still fired by the same passions that drove him to F1 in the first place: engineering excellence, innovation and utterly cool technology.

Now, though, his focus is not on designs to find a few tenths of a second over a lap. Instead it's his potentially world-changing iStream - a manufacturing process that could redefine the passenger car market.

Gordon Murray receives his John Bolster Award from David Brabham © LAT

"In essence I did [miss F1] when I first stopped, but what we are doing now is much more exciting," he says of his low-weight, low-energy project.

"For the first time ever we are using F1 technology in a mechanism that will benefit the everyday motorist, and that is bringing F1 to a completely new level.

"It should go on to change all our lives - which is even more exciting than winning the first grand prix or first championships."

Murray has not lost his love of Formula 1 ("I am still a racer at heart: I still want to go racing them one day!") but there are some aspects of it now that are not so attractive to him.

"This is me being old fashioned - but F1 has always been about the drivers' championship really," he says. "It is nice to win the constructors' title but it is a championship for drivers. I don't think we should forget that.

"Punters root for the drivers, and the teams to a lesser degree - and I think as soon as you start introducing any false rules, or artificial rules, and particularly something based on fuel consumption or fuel usage, I think you start losing a little bit of that.

"I think we have to be a bit careful that we don't lose the whole reason for having Formula 1 racing."

But it is not just specific rules that Murray doesn't like. Some technology and engineering directions that are accepted as normal should be questioned.

"The first thing I would ban is telemetry. It is ridiculous," he explains. "When I was growing up, I used to race myself, you had to think about the motor, the gearbox, tyres, and now you get told what to do."

He sees frustration on the engineering front too - which is a legacy of teams having simply become too big.

Carlos Reutemann wasn't getting driving advice from Murray back in the Brabham pits in 1975 © LAT

"F1 has got to be such a big business that you get pigeonholed as an engineer.

"I know youngsters who have been in the front suspension department for eight years, and they will probably never understand the reason for the whole car design.

"That is the way the world is going, and you cannot turn the clock back. But it is not as satisfying as when, for example, I had seven people at Brabham. And everybody knew everything.

"We were a real team and a real family and it has lost that a little bit."

Sure the world moves on, and it is not realistic to have fewer than a dozen staff members designing and running a contemporary F1 car.

But equally, we're at a tipping point where technology has started encroaching a lot on areas that should be seat-of-the-pants stuff for drivers. That's why the radio ban rumblings came up.

Yes, technology is attractive and F1 has been, and should always be, about fielding the fastest and most technologically advanced racing cars out there.

But this technical achievement should never come at the expense of letting the best drivers go out there and show us why they are so brilliant.

I'm sure both Gordon Murray and Lewis Hamilton would agree on that.