F1 teams' latest veto proves a will to spite their own faces

Formula 1 teams were never going to vote through the proposal for a trio of reversed-grid qualifying races in 2020. That would require a depth of imagination and an appetite for change far beyond them given the need for unanimity.

Regardless of your position on the divisive topic of any kind of reversed-grid race - and the opposition is understandably significant - the proposal wasn't scotched through respect for tradition or any objection to it as a gimmick.

Instead, it was pragmatism pure and simple. Particularly for a frontrunning team like Mercedes, the key is to keep things as stable - and predictable - as possible.

The meek offering of an irrelevant mini-grand prix to decide the Sunday grid, which was suggested as a half-baked alternative, wilfully missed the point of the idea. The reversed-grid qualifying race would have injected significant uncertainty and made the path to victory more difficult.

The objective of a race is, at its heart, to sort the cars and drivers into an overall order of quality. The primary determinant in this is car pace, although there are myriad factors that contribute to the overall result.

Given that one of the most consistent and strongest criticisms of F1 is that it is predictable and too many races are controlled from the front, it's logical to question whether pre-selecting the race-starting order based on car pace is the right recipe for drama.

What F1 teams had the opportunity to do here was to conduct a low-risk experiment. Running three case studies in 2020 at Paul Ricard, Spa and Sochi would have created a huge amount of interest and on-track drama. Some fans have claimed they would boycott such a race, but that is hard to believe.

As for the objections that it would make it more difficult to get to the front - well, obviously. But this is because leading teams were looking at it purely as an exercise in getting to the front on Saturday in a 100km race.

What the qualifying race would have done is created a mixed-up grid for Sunday. And mixed-up grids are the only thing to consistently guarantee dramatic races in the history of F1.

That F1 strategists, who gathered at Suzuka recently to discuss the proposal, didn't universally embrace the idea is hardly a surprise. Their job is to create order amid predictive chaos, to find a safe path to the ideal result.

This format would have added an enormous number of variables to the equation and made their task far tougher. Again, isn't that the point? F1 teams today will not, and indeed cannot, accept proposals that could disadvantage them without them being forced to.

Fortunately, there is a mechanism that will allow these experimental Saturday races to go ahead in 2021, given the lead time. But what F1 needs now is a spirit of collective strengthening, something the corporate nature of teams militates against.

There was a time when F1 teams were largely controlled by individuals answerable only to their own intellect and ego. It wasn't unheard of for team patrons to vote for measures that actually went against their teams because they saw the big-picture benefit. But with many teams no longer working to that model, there's less room for manoeuvre.

While not approving experimental Saturday races in 2020 is but a footnote to the bigger picture, it does represent a missed opportunity

The teams are not the only problem. Liberty Media came into F1 touted as the perfect, audience-driven American media company ready to drag grand prix racing into the 21st century. While there have been some significant steps forward, the debate surrounding the 2021 regulations shows it hasn't had the courage to take on the biggest teams and address F1's most deep-rooted problems.

Critics who say F1 should focus on other problems rather than the grid formation superficially have a point, but it's a false dichotomy. The division of the revenues paid to the teams will remain inequitable regardless of what happens on Saturday afternoons, and the problems of the aerodynamic regulations and tyres would not be impacted by such an initiative.

What's more, two high-profile critics of the reversed-grid idea (in general terms rather than the specific proposal) in the forms of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have said F1 should focus on bigger problems rather than such a Band-Aid. Yet they are employed by two organisations that stand in the way, for understandable reasons of self-interest, of such changes.

The intriguing element of the reversed-grid qualifying races is the one that has least been discussed. It's not a question of slow cars being able to win come Sunday's race, and it's not even primarily about the drivers in the fastest cars clearing slower ones. Instead, it's about creating a much more varied racing environment.

For example, in the last race at Suzuka we had Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc starting ahead of the Mercedes drivers. Were that to have been a Saturday race, it would have been the same situation. Now, assuming one of the Ferraris managed to stay ahead at the start, which didn't happen in reality, you'd have two contenders for the race win in traffic from the off.

So the question there is do you work together to clear the traffic then fight it out? Or if the driver ahead attempts a move that doesn't come off, can you attempt to make a decisive pass then and there. It will create races within races that can challenge the drivers and teams significantly.

For example, in Singapore Leclerc was the faster Ferrari driver and you could say he deserved to win. But what about the phase where both he and Vettel had stopped and had to clear slower cars that had yet to stop? During that phase, Vettel pulled 5.3s on Leclerc. So in creating that extra challenge, it allowed Vettel's advantage in clearing traffic to help him.

In normal circumstances, that doesn't happen. But in F1 terms, anything that shifts the dial slightly more to the driver and creates differentiation in performances is a very good thing.

Then there's the impact on the cars. For all the attempts to make the cars less critical in turbulent air - something that can never be eliminated entirely - the best way to do it is by creating an environment where you can't afford to have such a weakness.

If you know that your car is going to be in traffic more often, rather than leading from the front, you might have to dial it back a bit. The design parameters will shift slightly. Again, a good thing.

For all the talk about change in 2021, F1 as a whole has never become fully aligned with the objectives

There are, of course, downsides. Losing the purity of the qualifying lap would be a blow and the current qualifying format works well. That's perhaps why only having limited events to this format is a good thing. But let's not pretend starting in car-pace order is, fundamentally, any more sensible than any other order. It's a physical reality that 20 cars cannot start on equal footing and they have to be arranged somehow.

But F1 needs to be increasing the variables, and teams should be in favour of that. Instead, at every turn at least some of them will fight such things.

Today's grand prix teams understandably attempt to control everything, they don't like curveballs or surprises - yet this is what creates unpredictable, action-packed races. If F1 can deliver that, it's a win for everyone. More fans will enjoy it and watch, which means more revenue, more broadcasters paying for rights and more venues wanting to stage races.

The problem is that, even if you eliminate the specific reversed-grid qualifying race example, this is the kind of ostensibly extreme initiative that the teams will never wave through unopposed.

For all the talk about change in 2021, F1 as a whole has never become fully aligned with the objectives.

By all accounts, there are some positive steps that should upset the status quo a little, so it's not been a complete failure.

But while not approving experimental Saturday races in 2020 is but a footnote to that bigger picture, it does represent a missed opportunity to create not only some real-world data but also proof of concept for an extra race on the weekend that could do much to promote F1.

But at least we can be thankful that the purity of the French Grand Prix will be preserved. The question is, given how such a processional race was pilloried by fans earlier this year, why that's considered to be so important.