The contradictions that prevent a perfect F1

Daniel Ricciardo's stunning victory in China last weekend came in a Formula 1 race that was as good as it gets in the modern era.

The mixture of his perfectly "brutal" overtaking moves, brilliant team strategy, variation in tyre compounds and some controversial clashes elsewhere served up a treat for fans. Coming just three weeks after a season-opener in Melbourne that prompted talk of an overtaking crisis, the Shanghai race also helped to calm nerves that F1 was at risk of being a total yawn fest in 2018.

But while the pressure for a knee-jerk response to spice up the action has certainly been eased by two good races in China and Bahrain, it will not stop the current intense focus on the scale of the revolution that should come from 2021as part of Liberty's grand vision for the championship.

The conceptual outline of its changes, which were presented to teams during a meeting on the eve of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, was certainly a utopian one. A cheaper, more spectacular and closer series where revenues have gone up and fan interest is higher than ever.

As Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe said in China last weekend: "If you could have the whole grid working within a performance range of one or 1.5 seconds it would be terrifically exciting."

But like everything, the devil is in the detail and when it comes to putting together the right ingredients to deliver the perfect dish, things do not always turn out the way you hoped. In fact, the elements that would be on anyone's check list as essentials for a perfect F1 are often totally contradictory.

We want super-fast, high performing cars with tonnes of grips and downforce, but we also want cars that don't have the aerodynamic characteristics that make it hard for them to follow one another. We want an F1 with cars at the cutting edge of technology, which are designed and run by the very best brains in the world, but we want a splash of unreliability and unexpected failures to mix things up a bit.

We want races with lots of overtaking to bring us lots of excitement, but we want passes to be difficult and well earned, so they remain special and stick in the mind. We want a grid of 20 cars separated by the one second that Lowe referenced, but to do so would ensure a performance spread between competitors that would make overtaking in the races near-impossible.

An overwhelming majority in recent fan surveys have made it clear that the one rule that should be changed is to bring back refuelling. And yet it is widely accepted that such a U-turn would be the death knell for overtaking on track - as it was when it was last allowed.

Taking things a step further too, there is an argument that a perfect F1 for the fans is something totally different to a perfect F1 for teams.

The squads and their engineers want a series where cars perform to their ultimate potential all the time. They want no surprises on a Sunday afternoon - so a car can deliver to its maximum every lap and strategy is easily mapped out before the lights go out.

A perfect F1 for the fans is something totally different to a perfect F1 for teams

But that is exactly the opposite of what makes a good spectacle. The most thrilling races often occur when teams don't understand how to get the most from their tyres, when the strategies are uncertain and when curveballs - safety cars, car problems, tyres falling off a cliff or mid-race rain showers - are thrown into the mix.

Ultimately, what's right for the teams and drivers is not necessarily right for the spectacle. And what's right for the spectacle may not be right for F1 in pure sporting terms. Fitting together all these obvious conflicts to come up with an end product that everyone is happy is not the work of the moment.

But at least we can take some encouragement from the fact that F1's new owner is taking a considered approach to changes. Liberty is going through a research programme and investing in getting scientifically-backed answers.

Its recruitment of top-level engineers, investment in computer simulations and the purchase of the defunct Manor team's models and data have all helped to contribute to a better understanding of contemporary car performance and how the cars actually behave in the racing environment. There has also been some detailed statistical analysis commissioned to go through the history of F1 and work out if there is a pattern to overtaking. This is to identify eras or venues where it increased or decreased and if the racing better or worse.

Too often in the past - for example, 2016's elimination qualifying - ideas for rule changes have been pushed through simply because it was felt something different had to be done.

Speaking to F1's managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn, it is heartening that he is not blinded by the idea that a good race simply comes down to the number of overtakes it contains. True appeal has different roots.

"The thing you have to be careful of is that overtaking isn't good racing," he said last year. "You have got to start to think about what is good racing and it is two cars fighting each other. It may mean the guy in front stays in front but you can have some great racing going on. It is a little bit more complex than counting the number of overtakes."

Brawn is right of course. Just as Ricciardo's victory in China was made by his brilliant overtaking moves, Sebastian Vettel's equally great win in Bahrain was sealed because Valtteri Bottas could not get past.

Iconic races where the leader has held off faster cars - like Gilles Villeneuve did at Jarama in 1981, Ayrton Senna in Monaco in 1992 or Fernando Alonso at Imola in 2005 - are every bit as exciting, and would have been damp squibs if the pursuers had been able to easily come through.

So even if we are stuck with high-downforce cars that will mean overtaking is never easy, it does not mean that everything is lost and that F1 needs a wholesale rewriting of what its cars are. Ricciardo proved that in China, and there are two other factors within F1 and the FIA's controls that can have a far bigger impact on the quality of the racing than the cars: tracks and tyres.

On the track front, it's obvious that layouts can help or hinder overtaking. It doesn't take a genius to understand that you will get more passing at Shanghai and Austin than you will in Melbourne or Monaco. Not all layouts should be the same though, but there are ideas for tweaks that are currying favour when it comes to improving venues that are not the best.

One is for corners to offer multiple lines: be it an ultra wide hairpin like Hockenheim has, the long sweeper onto the backstraight at Shanghai or the complex of corners in the first sector at Austin.

Perhaps the most important thing is the need to have tyre performance variety

Such changes can allow drivers a chance of doing something different in their bids to get past the car ahead - a defensive line and an aggressive line mean cars have speed differentials onto the following straights.

But it is not just track layout that is important either, because the surface has a role to play too. Holding races where the asphalt is silky smooth and doesn't degrade tyres has just as bad an effect on racing as a venue where cars cannot follow each other.

Look at the contrast between China and Bahrain, where the layouts and surfaces hurt tyres and put a premium on the right strategy, and what we often see in Russia where a super-smooth surface produces almost zero degradation - which isn't good for racing.

Perhaps the most important thing for racing is the need to have tyre performance variety at different stages of the races. That is the magic key to opening up overtaking chances.

This year's Australian GP was a perfect storm to hurt the spectacle - minimal tyre degradation on a track layout with few overtaking opportunities, with cars so even in terms of overall performance they were unable to closely follow each other.

Putting those same cars on tracks where there is degradation, strategy options, wider corners and passing places, and it becomes totally different.

But it is important not to take tyre degradation to the extremes. Even if some fans like tyres that fall off a cliff, multiple pitstops, overtaking chaos and random outcomes, that is not something that the teams or F1's bosses particularly want.

A balance can be found of having robust tyres that drivers can push on, but that do go off if abused. These would then allow the team to have multiple strategic options, so a soft tyre gamble against a medium tyre conservative approach should lead to a thrilling finish.

As F1 knuckles down for the debate about its 2021 vision, it faces some big decisions when it comes to prioritising the many contradictions that fans want. Achieving the perfect F1 might be an impossible dream, but the Chinese race has shown that all is not necessarily lost if we don't get there.