F1 bosses urged to add ‘single line’ to rules to end boring races

Sky Sports reporter and former F1 driver Karun Chandhok wants to see the sport introduce new rules that force teams to make two pit stops in every race in an attempt to make races “more exciting to watch”. While the spectacle outside the Miami Grand Prix since making its debut on the F1 calendar has attracted plenty of attention, the action on track has failed to live up to the hype.

The 2022 race proved to be rather dull after Max Verstappen was able to get past Charles Leclerc after the first few laps. But this year’s race also had barely any notable on-track action other than Verstappen steamrolling through the field to close up to Sergio Perez.

F1 has been riding on the wave of excitement built from the dramatic 2021 season with regulation changes since then failing to replicate that kind of racing. Cars are able to follow each other better, but that’s proven useless on tracks like Miami or Baku where there are hardly any sections on the circuit where cars are able to overtake one another.

The onus is on Red Bull’s rivals to close that gap, but Chandhok believes F1 bosses can also help make it a bit more exciting. The development of tyres over the past few years have meant that drivers are able to go for much longer stints on different compounds.

It’s meant more and more races feature just one pit stop for each driver and Esteban Ocon only pitted in Baku because the regulations stipulate all drivers must use two different compounds. However, Chandhok wants F1 to go one step further by forcing teams to use a third compound during a race to add a bit more excitement.

He tweeted: “Another race that underlines my crusade since 2016 that we need a single line added to the sporting rules to say: ‘All 3 tyre compounds must be used during a race that’s not declared wet at any stage.’ The cream will always rise, but it would be more exciting to watch!”

Adding an extra pit stop would add more jeopardy to an F1 race with teams needing to alter their strategies. But what’s made the F1 cars even tougher to overtake is arguably the size in which they’ve increased over the past few decades.

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The modern cars are over 200kg heavier than what they were 30 years ago, but they are also significantly longer. F1 cars are currently at a maximum 5.63m in length while some cars racing in the 1989 season measured just 4.4m in length.

Pat Symonds, F1’s chief technical officer is aware of the growing issue and is hoping cars will decrease in size starting from 2026.

“One of the things we want to do is make the cars a little smaller because they’ve grown massively over the last few years,” he said last year. “We’ve put a limitation on wheelbase for the 2022 car, which in my view was generous. My 2014 Williams was actually shorter than the current regulations require, so it can be done [though] it needs a little bit thinking about. Our aim is to make quite a significant [further] reduction in wheelbase [in 2026].”

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