Auto racing in the United States is dominated by NASCAR, where nearly every weekend, fevered fans are treated to the spectacle of 43 drivers turning left for three hours or so. There are only two road courses on the NASCAR calendar each year, which means that the 34 other races are all on oval tracks. On those weekends, the only time a driver has to hang a right is on his way out of the parking lot after the race.
Everywhere else in the known universe, Formula 1 reigns supreme as the pinnacle of auto racing. As compared to the typical NASCAR stock car, which tips the scales at 3,400 pounds and puts out about 790 horsepower, an F1 machine weighs just over 1,300 pounds and does about 950 horses. A NASCAR ride is a tractor, an F1 car is a rocket ship. And there are no ovals on the F1 circuit, only classic road courses like Imola in Italy and Silverstone in England.
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But for all its flash, F1 shows up on the radar of your average U.S. sports fan about as often as cricket. NASCAR drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. are selling jeans on TV, but only the most hard-core racing fans could name the newly crowned F1 world driving champion, Fernando Alonso.
F1's low profile in the United States isn't helped by debacles like the one at this summer's U.S. Grand Prix, when only six cars competed because of problems with the tires used by the other teams. But the other problem that F1 faces, not just in the United States but around the world, is that there's just not very much competition at a typical Grand Prix.
First of all, F1 tends to be dominated by one or two teams that have the money and expertise to develop a car that is simply superior to the competition. An F1 team costs hundreds of millions of dollars to operate, and without deep pockets, you're sure to find yourself at the back of the field. In the just-concluded F1 season, drivers from the Renault or McLaren Mercedes teams won 18 of the 19 Grand Prixs, the only exception being the U.S. Grand Prix, where neither team raced.
The other big problem in F1 (and where it pales in comparison to NASCAR) is the simple fact that there's not much passing in an F1 Grand Prix. A race without passing is more correctly called a procession, and doesn't make for compelling viewing.
The issue is that the exquisitely tuned aerodynamics of an F1 car are designed for clean, undisturbed air. But when you put one car behind another, the car in back has to deal with the huge turbulence kicked up by the leader, and its handling and speed degrade dramatically.
Last week, the Fdration Internationale de l'Automobile, which administers Formula 1, proposed a solution. It proposed a new design that incorporates a "Centreline Downwash Generating Wing." Instead of the traditional rear wing on the car, which generates "downforce" that helps keep the car on the road, the CDG wing design consists of two smaller wings over each of the rear wheels.
The result is much less turbulence behind the car, which should allow for more passing.
"This new research is important for the future of Formula 1," said Max Mosley, president of FIA. "By introducing the CDG wing we can give motor-sport fans exactly what they have asked for, wheel-to-wheel racing with much more overtaking."
The design for the wing was the result of a long-term project by FIA's research team, with help from Advanced Micro Devices.
F1 teams seemed to react well to the new design at its unveiling, although there are still many hurdles to overcome. No prototypes of the cars exist, and without extensive testing, it's impossible to know whether the changes will have the desired effects. Perhaps even more importantly, breaking the rear wing in two removes one of the prime advertising opportunities on the car, which means that the all-important sponsorship money is placed in jeopardy by the design.
What the move does show is that FIA and Formula 1 recognize that at the core, what draws us to sports isn't technology for technology's sake, no matter how mind-blowing it might be. An F1 car, with its carbon-fiber suspension and howling engine, is a nearly perfect machine, but that's not enough.
It's competition, in the end, that matters. Compared to an F1 car, a driver in NASCAR is stuck behind the wheel of a Winnebago. But the relatively level playing field in NASCAR makes for close, competitive racing with lots of passing, and that's what makes it fun. Because, lord knows, it's not the tracks.
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Mark McClusky is the products editor at Wired magazine.
