So you're saying that era was exciting because you found one clip with hard racing on wet weather? Come on, man, 2008 was just as boring as today.
F1 is boring, and has always been, for most of its lifetime. Pick any random race from 30-40 years ago and try sitting through it - you may be entertained enough, but I dare say you wont find it was an adrenaline hit...
You have a series where each team builds its own cars; the best ones will tend to hire the best drivers, and then you run qualifying to pretty much ensure the faster ones start in front. Not exactly a great formula for action and again, its never been. There even used to be 2 qualifying sessions to smooth out the occasional anomality...
But its that very nature of the sport which makes the occasional race action-packed race, or the even rarer action-packed season so memorable - you know its a product of actual, pure competition from elite people, from drivers to the engineers.
Which is not to say the current situation isnt worrying, and worse than ever before. Reasons are IMO threefold:
1- Mercedes domination is unprecedented in terms of sheer length of years it is being going for; there has often been similar periods of domination before by a top team who would get an unique grasp on whatever the current rules were - that’s actually the rule rather than exception in F1, but these would usually be broken by a timely rule change just around the time it reached saturation. That timely rule change is taking too long already;
2- unlike boring races from 20-30 years ago, the current cars and tracks themselves generally make for an insipid combination, and seeing / hearing them in action by itself is not enough to generate excitement;
3- the general public has less tolerance for boredom; “slow burner” entertainment that demand more from the public before the eventual reward are not as competitive as anything that provides a quick fix, specially for younger generations. As a result the core audience is ever older, and even that core is growing tired of the sport as it is.
Short term, the solution is a rule change to shake up the grid and hopefully provide cars to fight more closely. Even if that doesnt happen, F1 has a tendency to self correct and pull off a stormer race or even stormer season on its own following any extremely boring one, which has for decades allowed the health of the sport to deteriorate without significant measures being taken. Dont be surprised if Austria produces a cracker, leading management, participants and fans alike into a false sense of security... and this conversation dies off. Until it comes around again, with the sport just a bit shorter of breath. If it keeps going like this it will eventually die off, unless Ross Brawn manages to break the cycle somehow in the next rule set...
Perfect!
Like I said, Formula One has always been pretty much as boring as it is today. it's easy to say "oh 1984 was so exciting" if you take a clip from Senna overtaking everyone with a Toleman under rain at Monaco, but I dare anyone to watch every race from that season and say there wasn't at least one borefest like last sunday.
And like you said, today everyone is used to be entertained all the time, we spend all the time on the internet, on youtube, on social media, on our phones, playing video games, and so on. We don't tolerate a sport where 1 out of 5 races is exciting, we want every second of every race to be entertaining, because we're used to being entertained all the time. F1 is not gonna provide that and people are naive if they expect this.
What you said about each team building their car, hiring their drives and qualifying is perfect. Chain Bear recently made a video about how Formula One is filled with positive feedback loops and it sums up why the ones that start in front finish in front and we don't see many fights for position. The more you win, the more likely you are to keep winning, and that's a terrible formula if you want something to be unpredictable.
And then there's the fact that everyone loves to have a knee jerk reaction. Remember (I think last year) when there was no overtaking in Australia? Then because of that they increased the lenght of the DRS zone at Bahrain and everyone complained that it was too easy to overtake.
The same goes for excitement. If there's one eventful race everyone can't wait to watch the next one. If there's a snooze fest like last Sunday, everyone is just like "oh F1 is so boring I'm gonna stop watching it". Make up your minds, people!
In my opinion the thing people miss is that it is impossible to have a sport that is exciting all the time. If there's not a boring race, the exciting races won't be exciting anymore. And also, nobody is forced to watch it. If you like it, watch it, if you don't like it, don't watch it. I can't understand why people watch it, find it boring, complain all over the internet, and then go back to watch it next time.
