Gary Anderson's 12-point plan for F1

Formula 1's success or failure is measured by the number of people who bother to turn on their televisions to watch a grand prix (the viewers) and, to a smaller degree, the number who pass through the circuit gates to watch a race (the spectators).

Broadcasting any sport on free-to-air TV, whether live or delayed, will bring in more viewers than any pay channel. Yes, the hardened enthusiast will find ways to watch - but, unfortunately, they do not exist in the numbers or represent the actual demographic that F1 needs.

To drag in the sponsors, the F1 teams' marketing bosses need a large headcount of people watching. There are a small number of sponsors that would be in grand prix racing anyway, but there are not enough to go around in what has become a seriously expensive - and I use the following word loosely - 'sport'. In reality, it is a cut-throat business.

Everyone involved in F1, including Bernie Ecclestone, keeps banging on about it being boring and requiring a major adrenalin injection. But nobody seems to want to identify what the problems are and what the fixes should be. That's what needs to be done to add the spice we so dearly want.

Bernie Ecclestone wants F1 to change, but so far little has happened © LAT

If this was done successfully, the number of people watching worldwide would rise and more companies would want to be involved. This includes car manufacturers and firms involved directly with the technology that can drive F1 forward.

So why do the people who would directly benefit from making the show better continually stand in the way of progress?

I believe it is because those that are tasked with making the decisions on what needs to be done (usually the team principals) have no real idea on how to achieve this.

They sit in a meeting and are all so self-centred that they won't buy into anything that is suggested just in case it means someone else would get the credit, or because they don't understand something enough so they think they might just be being had over.

If I were chairing one of these meetings, I would ask for them all to define the problems requiring attention and then I would go off with a technical representative from each team, a representative from the tyre manufacturer, a representative from an engine maker, and anyone else with the specialist knowledge required.

The key is to keep the number of people involved to a minimum while ensuring you have the necessary expertise.

Below are my 12 problems to be solved:

1 Lack of competitive car-to-car racing
2 Lack of overtaking
3 Penalties far too complicated
4 Penalty decisions not consistent
5 Post-race penalties confusing for spectator and viewer
6 Difficult for fans to engage with F1
7 Cars look too similar
8 Too much focus on off-track politics
9 Far too expensive, as well as inadequate sharing of prize fund
10 No opportunity for young drivers to show their true talents
11 Too difficult for fans to appreciate the skills of the drivers
12 Qualifying position usually determines the race result

So, having identified those problems here are my proposed solutions:

1) Lack of competitive car-to-car racing

This problem is inherent within the current regulations.

When a car travels through the air at speed it creates downforce and drag. These two forces create turbulence that means it is impossible for an F1 car to follow another around a medium-to-high-speed corner - if it is within approximately 100 metres - without losing performance.

The following car loses around about 20 per cent of its aerodynamic grip. To the driver this feels like you are sitting in an aeroplane going through the worst storm you have ever experienced.

Until the regulations are changed to reduce the aerodynamic forces that these cars can produce, this problem will not be rectified.

Based on what I have heard about the aerodynamic changes planned for 2017, I'm afraid I don't hold out much hope for closer racing. Producing more downforce from the underfloor will help a little, but until the front wings are simplified the problem will remain.

With the regulations allowing relatively little room for development, it also means that it's difficult for teams to make big steps through the season and the competitive order won't change much.

If you look at the 2015 season, Ferrari made big gains on Mercedes but this was all done over the winter. In fact, Mercedes was fractionally further ahead on pace at the end of the season than it was at the start.

2) Lack of overtaking

This stems from the same aerodynamic problem as above. The wider tyres for 2017 will help to improve mechanical trip, so there will be some improvement. But to pull off an overtaking manoeuvre when the circuit has one racing line means that it will require a block pass.

This means the overtaking car will have to dive down the inside, leaving the other car with nowhere to go. If they get it wrong, they will be at the mercy of the stewards.

3) Penalties far too complicated

Drivers being hit with 50-place grid-position penalties is fairly difficult for anyone, never mind the very important casual viewer, to get their heads around.

We want the cars and drivers to be racing on a Sunday afternoon and most of these penalties do nothing but destroy the show.

Of course, some sort of penalty has to exist for various infringements, but if I had anything to do with it they would be both driver and team points penalties. Points are what everyone is driving for, and what they get prize money for, so I don't think it would be too difficult come up with a set of punishments that would deter most infringements.

4) Penalty decisions not consistent

Consistency is vitally important. For example, why should a driver get penalised for exceeding track limits at one corner but not at another? It just doesn't make sense to anyone. The track is the black bit and the car needs to stay within the white lines.

In the past, kerbs didn't exist and when a car ran a little wide it would dig up the earth, creating a hole. When another car ran into that it could damage the suspension, so some bright spark decided that filling these holes in with concrete would reduce the risk of suspension damage.

Over the years, this reasoning has been lost and has now become the norm. Drivers are given the opportunity to widen the racing line, and do so.

It isn't always faster, but it can reduce the loading on the tyre and extend tyre life as well.

5) Post-race penalties confusing for spectator and viewer

The chequered flag, and the running order at the chequered flag, should always be the race result. The spectator and viewer needs to be able to go home knowing that result - this is something NASCAR has always adhered to and it makes a lot of sense.

Take Felipe Massa in last year's Brazilian Grand Prix as an example. He was thrown out after the race for an infringement that happened before the race even started. This is crazy.

His 'infringement' was a higher-than-allowed tyre temperature. This pressure and temperature control was introduced on safety grounds, and to allow a car to start the race knowing it had contravened this directive is similar to allowing a driver to start the race without his seat belts fitted.

Massa should have been made to pit at the end of the warm-up lap and change to tyres of the same compound that complied with the temperature directive. If this had been done, the problem would have been dealt with immediately.

6) Difficult for fans to engage with F1

Even on its best day F1 is pretty confusing, and the on-screen data is out of date compared with the broadcasts of other major sports.

When I worked with FOM in 2014, I pushed to get them to make more data available on screen - especially the tyre compounds. That data is all in existence, but there is a reluctance to change.

They must understand that the viewer will get more involved if it is easier to follow what is happening. Can you image how much confusion there will be in the coming season with three different tyre compounds available?

Unless they sort out a graphic explaining why one driver is faster than another in an understandable manner, then I am afraid more people will just turn off, baffled.

7) Cars look too similar

When the regulations stand still for to long, everyone homes in on the same solutions. But change is expensive, so I'm afraid there is not much that can be done about this.

But it is something that can be kept in mind for the long term. A way to make the regulations more open, without increasing costs, is necessary to create greater variety and allow more scope for the competitive order to shift during the season.

8) Too much focus on off-track politics

For the viewer and spectator, it is the on track action that they want to see and enjoy.

Politics within F1 seems to dominate the column inches. Yes, any major international sport has plenty to talk about outside the competitive element - just look at what has been going on with FIFA in football for an example - but when the racing is poor, the off-track stuff seems to take its place.

To solve this, not only should F1 get its house in order and spend less time indulging in paddock politics in public, but greater effort should be made to ensure that the on-track product is better.

If you've just witnessed a great race between two legendary drivers you aren't going to want to read about next year's engine deal, you are going to want to read about the contest.

Teams should also allow drivers to be more honest in what they say publicly. I've interviewed plenty of drivers and often you could predict what they were going to say in advance. Make those in the car the stars, not the team bosses.

9) Far too expensive, as well as inadequate sharing of prize fund

F1 is horrendously expensive and, over the years, very little has been done to reduce costs.

One example that works very well is the regulation forcing a gearbox to be used for five consecutive races with a limited number of ratios. This has saved each team millions.

I propose that the same should be done with bodywork and wings. It would require all these components to be very well defined, but the nose, front and rear wings, underfloor, sidepods and front and rear brake ducts could all come under the same consecutive five-race minimum regulation.

This would eliminate the production of a huge number of wasted components that just didn't work because they were conceived without the required research.

It is much easier for Bernie Ecclestone to sell Ferrari or one of the other top teams to a potential new host country or promoter than it is to sell Manor or Sauber, so the fact that the frontrunning teams get that bit more share of the prize fund doesn't surprise me, but if the distribution I explain in my next point was adopted it just might swing things to be that little bit more equal.

10) No opportunity for young drivers to show their true talents

F1 has become a closed shop and really only Red Bull (via Toro Rosso) has a young driver programme that actually functions.

If the weekend schedule was to be redefined, I would be pushing for the first Friday session to only allow drivers that have not competed in more than, say, three GPs.

If you don't have a young driver signed up to your programme, then you just don't compete in that session.

To fund this, I would take a percentage of each team's prize fund, say 10 per cent, and split it into equal amounts of approximately 10 million per team. Doing it this way would mean that the bigger, more successful teams, would contribute more to the young driver fund.

This money would have to be used by each team to run a young driver programme. It would also eliminate teams only using drivers that can bring money.

I would also bring in a football-style transfer window. During the August break, a team could make an offer to another team to buy their young driver and move them to their own programme for the rest of the season. This would also automatically give the driver a race contract for the following year.

If this were done, the smaller teams could actually make money from training up young drivers and the overall quality of the grid would improve.

11) Too difficult for fans to appreciate the skills of the drivers

This can be tackled in two different ways. Firstly, continue to improve the way that F1 is filmed so that the fans can see what is really going on.

Secondly, too often it looks like they are out for a Sunday afternoon drive. That isn't the case, but you can't expect people to know that if it looks too easy.

To address that, ways need to be found to ensure that the cars move around more. Contrary to a lot of claims, the new-for-2014 engines have made the cars harder to drive, but it's still hard to see from the outside.

This can be tied to attempts to reduce the aerodynamic loading so we see the cars moving around more. Then the skills of the drivers will be better appreciated.

12) Qualifying position usually determines the race result

Too often we see the race finishing position is more or less the same as the grid position. It's only when someone has a bad qualifying that we see a driver coming through from the back.

Such charges always make for a great race, and any time I have ever spoken to a driver about his greatest drive it is always these races that they remember.

Edd Straw's article a couple of weeks ago on reverse grids should not be discarded without fair consideration. Everyone says 'but it's not F1', but I beg to differ. I want the best driver to be the most complete driver and reverse grids would give us that, because it will force the quickest to show off their full range of skills in coming through the pack.

One thing you will notice I haven't talked about is the noise level. For the spectator at the track, that is a big part of what makes a racing car aggressive.

It's less important for the TV viewer because the onboard microphones do a reasonably good job of picking up the noise available.

I have also covered this kind of thing in my suggestions for cost savings, but it's not often you can save money and get a product.

My suggestions above are not a series of instant-fix solutions. But they do offer a framework for addressing the problems F1 is facing.

Unfortunately, last year was a story of nobody really taking the problems seriously and coming up with workable solutions. No doubt the same will happen in 2016.