Gary Anderson: F1 has a big visual problem

Watching Formula 1 free practice at Silverstone from the balcony of the BRDC Clubhouse, overlooking Brooklands corner, on Friday was a rare chance to get the feeling of the 'fan in the grandstand'.

What struck me is that, while these guys behind the wheel - Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg, Daniel Ricciardo and the rest - should be heroes, F1 today doesn't allow them to be in the minds of those watching.

Brooklands is a spectacular, sweeping left-hand corner that requires you to brake and turn at the same time. It's a very fast approach and the cars are braking at 5-5.5g, which loads up the front tyres.

Mid-corner, when the car is on fresh tyres with lower fuel and the driver is pushing hard, it's all about the car that's best on front-end grip because that's the limiting factor. Once you are loaded up and turned in, you are stuck with it.

The difference from the front to the back is dictated by that, with the very good cars needing that touch of understeer - but no matter how good the drivers are much of the performance is dictated by the parameters of the car.

These cars are fantastic feats of engineering. There's been a lot of talk about the engine noise, and I think it's now an acceptable level where it's loud enough to be able to listen to and enjoy.

These cars are also incredible in terms of the power-to-weight ratio, the power they get from the fuel, the efficiency - everything. But while that's very impressive F1 has a big visual problem.

I was looking at the fans in the grandstands watching at Luffield and questioned how much they got out of it, especially with the tyre rules meaning you only get to see a couple of proper fast laps per driver.

The cars are now so technically advanced that there's not a great deal left for the driver, and that's a bit sad. During practice, much as you'd expect, the Mercedes looked quickest, then Red Bull and Ferrari and the rest - and you could have predicted that easily before anybody turned up to Silverstone.

The days of the driver having a moan and making big changes are done. Today, it's just small changes to the balance while ensuring the systems are optimised. So the driver just dictates performance within a very small window.

Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are a good example. Although we didn't see Rosberg in the afternoon because of the water leak, you could see during the first session their differing driving styles.

Hamilton brakes deeper into the corner, whereas Rosberg tends towards getting his braking done and then turning in. That means they load the front tyres a little differently and that can influence the balance of power between the two of them from circuit to circuit.

But the big problem is that it's difficult to see such differences, even when they are significant ones in terms of deciding who gets pole position and who is second. Is that what the public wants?

I'd argue not. You want to see the hero driver, hanging on by the skin of their teeth and trying to go quicker just by chucking it in there and sorting it out. You want to see the quickest driver looking quick.

These drivers are fantastically skilled, really. There's probably a dozen drivers out there who are definitely in the best 22 in the world, and the other half of the grid are also very good. They are just not able to show that to the fans.

Another reminder that the drivers are humans, not machines, is the current furore over the Mercedes rivalry. We love Rosberg and Hamilton racing against each other and we all hate them crashing into each other (well, at the beginning of the race at least).

Then you look at the management level and you wonder what they expect. These two drivers have been fighting for the championship for two-and-a-half years now and there will inevitably be collisions.

You need them to have respect for each other but Rosberg needs to be willing to stretch his muscles as well. The Mercedes management believing they might withdraw one from a race isn't good for the public.

It's just absolute rubbish - compounded by the fact that Niki Lauda made some comments about Hamilton supposedly wrecking a room, that the team then released a statement clarifying. It's madness that the management does that stuff. To many fans, it's a good thing if Lewis went and kicked something and threw his helmet down - that's the emotion you want. But we never get to see it.

After the race in Austria, the management said they'd talk it over and speak to the drivers a few days later. Well, when Hamilton and Rosberg arrived at Turn 2 in Austria, they were on the brakes for just over a second. You don't have the chance to think, watch some replays, have a cup of tea and analyse it - you go through it all there and then.

So we can't hold the drivers to ransom for being what they are - racing drivers. That's what the fans want them to be and sometimes it will go wrong. I can understand Mercedes thinking that three collisions in five races (counting the one at the start in Canada as well as Spain and Austria) is too often, but the public just wants to see them race.

You want the drivers to be heroes and to show that they are heroes. The drivers want to do the same thing as well, but there is only so much they can do in these cars because you need to drive them in a way that makes the aero work. You can't be sideways through a corner, which the fans love, and be fast anymore.

Then we have the changes for next year. The wider tyres will mean more mechanical grip, which is a positive. But hand-in-hand with that you need a massive downforce reduction. Instead, we have an increase in downforce, all of which should add up to a lap time improvement of a few seconds. Is that going to make it look more spectacular? No.

Again, it comes back to the cars looking spectacular on track. During Friday practice, they looked pretty good when on fresh rubber. But the difference between a car on a normal run and one three seconds slower isn't that obvious to the eye. The cars only look spectacular when things go wrong - and the only thing I really saw go wrong at Brooklands in the afternoon session was the odd Toro Rosso running wide.

The fans want to see the car looking fast - that means moving round, with a bit of magic behind the wheel to get the laptime. What they don't want to see is the fastest times in qualifying coming because of special engine programmes or one-lap settings that just allow the driver just to optimise the pace of the package. You just can't see the heroes in there.

At Silverstone, it was clear that in the morning, on a greener track with less time to work on finetuning the car, it was more interesting. There was more happening, more to watch the cars doing. By the afternoon, every team had made a step and made it less dramatic to watch.

So what can you do about that? Well, the data systems can't be uninvented and you need to have safety warnings and the like. But there is technology that exists allowing a time lock on the performance data. So maybe you can't look at it until after practice, or at the end of the day. Then it's down to the driver during the day.

Today, you can check where the centre of pressure is on the car at a given time and adjust it by a fraction with a set-up change based on data, which is just too much. So maybe there is a way to limit this while still allowing teams to do it and learn.

That will also create greater variables within teams. It will take longer and be harder to get the absolute maximum out of the car and therefore mix the order up a bit. All we want to see is, ideally, a race with five cars still in contention for victory with five laps to go. OK, that's asking for a lot, but at the very least you don't want to know who is going to win, all things being equal, the night before.

If you watch a football match and there's a lot going on - a few shots, some scrapping, some nice passing - you will keep watching. If the ball is just being passed around the defence and midfield without going anywhere, many will switch off. Same with tennis, if it's 11-10 in the final set, you are going to watch, but turn off if it's 5-0. It's the same in F1 - you want things to happen, spectacular things to watch, some uncertainty.

There is a very good reason why, when the race broadcast cuts to a replay, it's usually of a driver making a pass, a lock-up, a spin or an incident. The director goes to where the action is, and we need more of it. You want double, treble, quadruple the action and there are ways to try to increase it.

F1 can be spectacular and I still enjoyed watching, but I just could not help but think of all these possible ways to make it more appealing to the fans, casual and hardcore.

Silverstone attracts great crowds, and rightly so, but I want F1 to give them the best possible spectacle and for everyone to get the same thrill watching these drivers as they did 20, 30, 40, years ago.

It wouldn't take much to make that happen, with just a few changes in the right direction.