How to ensure races are not terribly interesting [WARNING: Spoiler alert re: results of Malaysian GP of 3/30]

There have been two races on the Formula 1 circuit this spring. The cars are using new engines and much new technology, and the first bit of news regarding results is that Sebastian Vettel, who had won 9 races in a row ending the season last year, retired early from the first race of the season, and so there was a new winner in the year's first event, in Melbourne.

The new winner was Niko Rosberg in a Mercedes. That a Merc was somewhat unsurprising, as they had appeared the fastest and, even more important, the most reliable, during off-season testing, which itself was very limited. Rosberg started third on the grid, and with the start, which proved to be a mad scramble, he shot to the front. He then led the rest of the way for the win. To put it another way, on no lap of the race did his car not cross the finish line in first place.

On to the Malaysia Grand Prix, then. Leonard Hamilton, also in a Mercedes, won the pole. [He had also won the pole in Australia, but had power-supply problems early on--the new engineering is full of new challenges--and also retired very early from the race.] Rosberg again started just a few spots back. Hamilton led wire-to-wire, and Rosberg finished second.

So, in two races, Mercedes cars have won both, and in both races, the winner led every lap of the race. Hamilton has won both poles. This sounds a lot like a video game where only one team has the cheat sheets.

I haven't seen the Malaysian GP yet, but judging from the Australian GP, it appears that there's more politics to the races than technological short comings. When Ricardo got canned for the fuel flow issue, there's already conspiracy that Vettal may have pulled out of the race early as a cover up by red bull to cover up this fact if Vettel had the same issue of exceeding fuel flow rate. They may be trying to figuring out a new method to overcome this issue.

As for Mercedes with Hamilton and Rosberg, I secretly believe that Rosberg is a much better driver than Hamilton, but for publicity issues, Rosberg always had to be the scrapegoat with except of Australian GP where Hamilton did have technical issues.

This is definitely an interesting year with no sure champions until probably 4th quarter of the season.

I definitely think the F1 season is interesting, but a lot of it is for reasons not so much to do with on-track stuff. I wasn't aware of the rumors of Vettel's retirement being an attempt to reduce attention to Red Bull's fuel flow gimmickry, but it makes great grist for the scuttlebutt!

Rosberg is certainly a very good driver. I'm not sure I can compare the two adequately. In fairness to LH, though, Rosberg finished 17 seconds back of his teammate, though that was probably as much because some consider it poor form to chase down a teammate than anything else, or the team directors wanted the results they got.

I do wish the racing itself was better, though. Most of the drama right now has nothing to do with how well a driver takes his car through turns 4 and 5, if you know what I mean. Right now it's too much of a technological/engineering competition, along with technology management. Would the results be much different if Google were driving all the cars right now? Hard to say.

Because F1 is the pinnacle of technology. This year's FIA rules is one of the biggest change in decades. Going into uncharted territory of engine technology when no constructor has even fully gotten a grasp how it works yet. Even Red Bull's R&D got so fubar'ed during off season that they had to ask STR for advise. Imagine that.

I think for this season, it's pretty much a race of who can have the most reliable car. Not driver's skills. I also suspect that many driver's are holding back in order to protect their cars, that's how new and unreliable this technology is at current stage. I think once this season passes and everybody has an idea of how to construct the cars more reliably (and hopefully FIA doesn't introduce any more major changes), then it should be a battle of drivers, not cars.

But I do wonder what if all the drivers were given the exact same car with no adjustment to car's settings allowed. Who has better driving skills and adaptability to come out #1? For some reason I think LH is overrated. Vettel is definitely a good driver because of his sheer consistency. But how fast is he? Nobody knows. Same applies to Raikonnen, Alonso, Button, etc. Rosberg definitely has skills, I forget which race it was last year, but he was consistently increasing gap between himself and LH lap after lap even though LH's car was tuned more favorably (team politics to let the star driver have the better car).