Should F1 bring back the 'Senna wobble'?

While the Monaco Grand Prix may have left many fans pretty underwhelmed, there was something that did raise excitement levels in the days after the race.

This came via some onboard 'visor cam' footage released by Formula 1, which featured Pierre Gasly completing an installation lap for Toro Rosso. It was created using a camera mounted on special glasses designed to capture the true intensity of driving around the streets of Monaco.

It may have only been an exploratory lap - where the focus was more on system checks and ensuring the radio worked - but the two-minute clip offered as great an insight as possible into what things are really like from inside the cockpit.

That's the claustrophobia of the garage and the narrow pitlane, the speed up the hill, the marshals' flags, that big bump on the way down from Casino Square (which Gasly didn't drive around), the distractions caused by the Williams car ahead and that impression of a never-ending sequence of corners. There was a sense of something special about what had been shown.

It wasn't perfect (at times the camera would focus on the halo rather than the track), but, in some ways, its rawness - that it shook, had a restricted view and that it was far from clinical - actually made it more appealing. There was very much a sense, just as fans have got from the brilliant visor cam used in IndyCar, that the job of driving a racing car at speed is much harder than it often appears from the now traditional camera angles.

General fan approval of the IndyCar visor cam prompted demands to bring the technology across to F1 as quickly as possible.

The in-your-face brilliance of cars darting around street circuits, or the blurring whizz of oval track walls blasting past at 200mph - all from the perspective of the driver's eye - offered something very different from the 'above airbox' view that is so commonly used on single-seaters.

But what works in one motor racing category doesn't necessarily suit all of them - for example, IndyCar's single-seater no longer has an airbox - and the fact that the visor cam is actually a thumb-sized camera attached to the top of the helmet means it's not particularly well suited for F1.

F1 has been working on a helmet cam since as far back as 1994

While IndyCar chiefs' safety concerns have been alleviated by extensive impact testing, the piece of plastic fixed above a driver's head would lead F1 aerodynamicists to have plenty of sleepless nights.

Which is why F1's attempts to offer the driver's eye view so far have focused more on the inside of the helmet rather than attaching something onto it.

As far back as 1994, when Mark Blundell tested a helmet cam at the Belgian Grand Prix, F1 has been trying to work out how best to offer a taste of what things are really like inside the cockpit.

The helmet cam from David Coulthard's final race in Brazil in 2008 was a step forward in technological terms, but the view was too low down to offer a realistic driver's perspective.

So, the glasses that Gasly tested appear to be the best solution for the short term, but there is still a way to go before the technology is ready for a live broadcast - or for a driver to be happy wearing them during a session that matters.

There are other issues at stake here. For while the visor cam was brilliant around Monaco - where barriers, buildings and tyre walls flash past to provide a proper appreciation of speed - the effect is watered down when tried at venues such as Silverstone and Barcelona where there are acres of run-off.

Pre-season visor-cam laps by Valtteri Bottas and Nico Hulkenberg were good, but they were no match for Gasly's lap of Monaco.

The growing interest around visor cams has had another effect. It's served to ignite fresh debate about the paradox of onboard cameras - for while the better it has become thanks to clearer and smoother pictures, the less dramatic the footage appears.

Some of the most memorable onboard F1 footage comes from the early 1990s - and it is magical because of its rawness. Ayrton Senna's lap of Monaco in '90 is a perfect example.

The camera (mounted at shoulder level) is shaking so much that the image cuts out at times, and the steering wheel and Senna's helmet move around to extremes. That, combined with a screaming normally aspirated backdrop, elevated its classic status.

Current onboard shots have not only been invaded by the halo and have a less dramatic mechanical soundtrack, but the footage is so crystal-clear, and the cars so much smoother and better behaved than they were 30 years ago, that it make things appear much more serene and clinical.

It could also be argued that attempts to counter the halo's prominence by incorporating TV graphics gives the impression of the onboards being more like something from a computer game, rather than a shot of brutally heroic real-life action.

Check out any footage from the Isle of Man TT over the past week or so to see what good onboard video should do: leave the viewer in no doubt that what they're witnessing is something they could never do themselves.

But how much of that is down to the camera technology, and how much is it about what it's like racing a superbike around the TT course?

When you're sitting at home watching an onboard from a grand prix, you should be thinking 'this is something out-of-this-world', not that you can switch on your console and repeat the feat quite easily.

There were suggestions a few years ago, as F1 looked to counter the unease that the quieter turbo hybrid engines had instilled among fans, that there should be a philosophical rethink about onboard cameras.

Some work was done by teams to evaluate changing the camera position, to bring back the over-the-shoulder view, and there were even discussions about reviving the 'Senna wobble', where the camera would cut out to make things look more extreme.

The question was, would it be better to move away from years of technological development for some 'fake' cinematic effects to try to recapture a little magic from the past?

HELMET CAM ?

Feel the bumps. Hear the revs. See things from a new perspective.

Jump aboard @PierreGASLY's @ToroRosso for a very special #MonacoGP lap ? pic.twitter.com/Ic2xsIYOQv

— Formula 1 (@F1) June 1, 2018

F1 head of onboard cameras Steve Smith knows full well how technology has improved. He says the feedback from fans shows that the 'Senna wobble' is well loved as 'better-back-then' nostalgia, but there is a greater appreciation for the way things are done now.

"I did that Senna footage - and I've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds stopping that view," explains Smith. "Two years ago I worked with Paddy [Lowe] and Toto [Wolff]. They wanted to reintroduce the wobble, and we couldn't.

"There are quite a big number of fans that we speak to around the world, and we asked them what they think. They said they liked the Senna footage, but they like the new stuff more."

Trying to make something artificially substandard for effect would probably have led to a backlash. The world and technology have moved on, and the current well-honed system that F1 operates manages to capture things pretty damn well.

But perhaps a halfway house would work. The sport can keep pushing on with what it has now, but in the meantime smaller, higher-quality cameras in new positions can be developed until we get the perfect driver's eye view.

And even then, it should only be in addition to the regular camera shots rather than a replacement. Sitting through two hours of a driver's head moving around on the bumps, gearshifts, braking and acceleration would be a pretty nauseating experience.

Throw it into the mix when the occasion is right, like in Monaco and Baku, and during race starts or big incidents, and it could add something magical that lifts F1 to a new level, even on those days when the racing is a let-down.