Back in the day, Formula One drivers spoke their minds, settled their battles on the track and somehow seemed a little more "real" than the current stock of F1 pilots. That's a statement that can drive a big wedge between F1 racing fans. No matter which side of that wedge you fall on, there is no doubt that the character of Formula One has changed in the past few decades. Once the domain of the passionate racer that would drop his helmet and pick up a wrench minutes before the parade lap, F1 has been transformed into a billion dollar enterprise with pit garages that resemble the pristine production floor of a microchip lab. Whether you long for the simpler days of wheel to wheel F1 racing or embrace the glamour, glitz and technology of today's Formula One arena, F1 represents the pinnacle of motor racing and it's the fans that ultimately decide the success of the sport.

I have been an F1 fan for 30+ years now and in that time I have seen the sport change in so many ways. Perhaps the most interesting change that I have noticed is within my fellow Formula One fanatics and myself. F1 fans can talk about their sport until they go blue in the face, but it's the way we talk about the sport these days that makes me realise how much the Formula One game has changed. I can recall endless chats that focused on the brilliant race craft of that Sunday's racing. We would analyse each move and deal out praise and penalties for the drivers of the day. The focus was so much more on the drivers, cars and on track action with the politics of the sport less prevalent. I am trying not to be blinded by sentimentality here, to be sure there was a fair share of team politics, but somehow it did not take on the same overarching influence as it does today.

In contrast to the racing discussions of the near past, the race talk of today inevitably revolves more around behind the scenes politics than anything to do with what's going on behind the wheel. Where once we would talk driving technique, we now discuss the merits of a legal protest or court finding. In the past we would chat about what a driver had said, now we ponder the meaning behind what a driver didn't say. The tech side talk would be about concepts that were even just remotely understandable, now there is little chance of the average fan relating to the inner workings of the current F1 racer. The materials, parts and overall technologies used in these machines is closer to the latest strike fighter than to anything sitting in your local showroom.

Don't take all this the wrong way, I don't want to roll back the clock on Formula One. F1 is a sport that is intended to push the envelope of motoring and I am all for advances that make the sport more engaging and maybe even trickle down into the "performance" cars that occupy our driveways. The point of this observation is really attempting to determine if all these transformations in the sport are getting us closer to the essense of racing or have we somehow gone down a path that has turned the sport into an exhibition of mega bucks and mega tech all packaged in a sanatised bubble.

Character is what makes people, places and just about everything interesting. The character of a person is what gives that person substance and is the hitching post to which you tie your impressions of that person. Good character and bad character are clear to those observing it, but an absence of character is like sand through your fingers. You can't bond to a sporting figure that is so controlled by the publicity machine that he/she is almost devoid of personal character. You can watch the drivers in a post race press conference and the words that leave their mouths betray the meaning in their faces. These drivers are clearly people of opinions and comment, but you can see their minds recalling all of the politically correct phrases that have been drummed into them by the PR machine within every modern F1 team. To be honest, you can't blame the driver or the teams for this as there is just so much at stake with sponsorship deals and the oversight of the governing body. The end result though is that the fan on the other side of the television screen can clearly see all this egg shell prancing and only snickers at the constipated responses.

True F1 fans that love the sport for it's history, technology, skill, strategy, excitement and race craft will remain Formula One fans to the grave. The interest of this hardcore category of F1 followers may wax and wane, but overall they will see the sport through just about any changes it may undergo. The challenge for the sport is not so much to retain these dedicated fans that see F1 almost as a religion, but more to secure the casual viewer of the sport by making it accessible. For those who casually flip by an F1 race on the TV one Sunday afternoon, there is a crucial threshold where that potentially new F1 fan can either embrace the sport or discard it for lack of understanding. I fear this happens far too often these days with the current state of the on-track entertainment.

The F1 fan in me almost avoids classifying our sport simply as "entertainment" because it seems to be so much more to us, but we all have to be honest about this, Formula One is entertainment and the way you get new viewers to pause just a little longer on the race is to give them something interesting to watch. A long standing F1 enthusiast will tune into 2 hours of cars standing still on the grid and be happy listening to commentators ramble on about the minute details of the sport. For the new viewer however, they want to see action and action means proper wheel to wheel racing and actual lead changes. While there has been a good spurt of interesting races in the immediate past, the overall on-track action has resembled more a high speed parade lap than a turn for turn race to the flag. This is where other high profile series like NASCAR and Indy/Champ Car have an edge at gaining new supporters for their sports. Being a dedicated F1 fan, I hesitate mentioning the likes of those series in the same sentence as our beloved sport, but you have to admit that despite the fact that NASCAR and Indy/Champ car are not on the same level as F1, they do give the fans a good show. This ease with which you can approach those series is a big reason why their adoption by the fans has been so robust.

You don't need to have been an F1 fan for 30+ years to see that the major players in the F1 business have been struggling to make the sport more "entertaining" to the average viewer. These efforts have verged on desperation in recent years as we've seen a myriad of adjustments to the cars, regulations, venues and drivers to name a few. The challenge really boils down to a simple goal of getting the passing and championship battle back into the sport. The reality is that the leaders of F1 want the average viewer to tune into the sport and see the cars battling for position and that is just not happening enough these days. As I indicated before, I think this is due in large part to the overly complex and drastically commercialised approach that the sport has adopted. Not that I begrudge the teams, drivers and management of the sport making some money out of this game, but surely there is a point where the commercial ambitions begin to eclipse the pure sporting ambitions and thus cloud the direction of the sport as a whole. The ideal balance of business vs sport is always going to be a difficult fine tuning operation and every high profile sport is dealing with this challenge in today's media driven and corporately centric sporting marketplace. The aim of this article is not to lay blame at the feet of anyone involved in Formula One, but to simply share a viewpoint that is clearly circulating amongst the F1 fan base.

We all love our sport and want to see it prosper in many ways into the distant future, but we also want our sport to remain accessible and somehow tangible. We want to form bonds with drivers and teams that we can foster and spread to future fans of F1. We want to feel proud of our sport when we do our best to convince the uninitiated that there is nothing quite like F1. We want all these things and we want to believe that those who are at the wheel and throttle of our sport have the best intentions at heart.

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