Renault Boss Briatore Labels F1 ‘boring’

Flavio Briatore, the enigmatic team boss of Renault F1, has lambasted attempts by the sport’s governors to make races more exciting, claiming that F1 is still ‘boring’.

Briatore’s view is that recent structural changes to F1 have not succeeded in improving the spectacle and that he favoured two shorter races each Sunday of the calendar, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Commented Briatore: ‘The changes have done nothing for the show. A one hour 30 minute race is too long because the last 30 minutes – 90% of the time – is really boring.

‘Every time there’s excitement it’s because something’s happened outside or because it’s heavy rain or there’s some accident or stuff like that. I still don’t understand why we don’t try to make excitement in every race.’

‘Maybe one race of 45 minutes and one race of one hour with a reverse grid in the second race like we do in GP2. People want to see people overtaking and fighting and if you put the quick drivers behind, the quick drivers will start overtaking, for sure.
‘If not, the two cars quickest in qualifying are the two cars quickest in the race and win the race easily.’

Among the changes brought in by the sport’s governors of late include turning the qualifying session into a three-round knockout format.

But the 10 drivers who get through the first two stages must start the race with whatever fuel they had at the beginning of the final session, meaning drivers spend the first part of the final session burning off fuel before setting quick laps at the end.