You know how you try to watch a series you like, but it’s sort of a boring episode with a lot of nothing going on – at least in the beginning – and you fall asleep in front of the TV? And have trouble sleeping through the night afterwards...
Well, that could have been one of the problems last night for Formula 1 fans around the world who had to endure an almost hour-long break in the scheduled programme of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, seeing pictures of cars parked in the pitlane and mechanics wandering around. You wouldn’t blame anyone for falling asleep, having woken up on a Sunday morning to watch their favourite motorsport fail to start on time.
There was a delay because of the rain, yes, but those who have followed F1 for ages surely wouldn’t have been disappointed to see it pissing down when they tuned in. If you’ve been following F1 for about three decades, you surely know that feeling: it’s a good one. Television, dialled. Ear-pleasing guitar music, like a signal for lab rats desperate for their dopamine hit, quickly crescendos. The FIA logo with an F1 car incorporated into it assembles itself on your screen. And, when you see raindrops on the helicopter camera, blood instantly rushes to your brain.
Lab rats or not, you know - you just know - you’re going to be treated to something special. We’ve had rain delays in the past. They just added to the anticipation. They put you on the edge of your seat. F1 cars before battle, parked on a wet grid, were also a treat. The eyes of highly concentrated drivers with their helmet visors still up, staring ahead. Gladiators. Mechanics, whirring about, covering tyres with blankets. Engineers looking up at the skies. In the past, these were the best grid images ever, weren’t they? Not the ones with endless singers, actors and influencers you couldn't recognise on a clear day, let alone in the rain.
Sepang 2001
It was always - and I mean, always - worth the wait. Because something amazing was about to happen. Picture two Ferraris, those of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, going off the track almost simultaneously at Sepang shortly after the start, unable to control their cars on the slippery surface — only to then put on an overtaking fest, climbing back through the field amid the complete chaos of the race. That was your 2001, dear F1 fan.
A quarter of a century later, it was Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton crawling down the very same track at golf-cart speed during the formation lap ahead of a race that was about to become a thriller. Unable to control their machines with the throttle, the gladiators of modern Formula 1 appeared to be powerless, in every sense of the word. The thriller had to be red-flagged.
Dear Formula 1, you’ve ruined it. On this particular occasion, with this particular software glitch, which threw these super-complex power units into disarray, you deprived F1’s most dedicated fans of something amazing. It could have been a father delaying a trip with his family, for this. It could have been a kid for whom F1 is his own escape world. An old man in a retirement home who still remembers watching guys like James Hunt and Niki Lauda at Fuji fighting for the world title back in 1976.
“I wish we could go when we went, because you'd have had a nice race,” said Alexander Albon, an F1 driver and surely also an F1 fan himself, after the flag. “The track was good enough to start on the wet tyres, to race under those conditions. It would have been nice to actually get proper running in the wet with these cars and these regs.”
Source: Motorsport
