F1 Russia: cold track, cold tires, several wrecks

The F1 grand prix in Sochi Russia was this morning. The track temp was cold, so even the sticky tires offered poor grip and there was a fair number of wrecks associated with this. Eventually, someone is going to figure out if Mercedes is cheating. Their cars corner faster than other cars do, and they are much faster on the straights as well. How are they getting so much more horsepower than the other teams? Even teams running Mercedes engines don't hold a candle to the Mercedes team. Its very suspicious.

Rather than be ingenius, the current hybrid cars used in F1 just plain suck. They aren't reliable. They're too quiet. They suffer from all sorts of reliability problems and its not fun to watch a race where the leader pulls over because his computer went wonky or the brakes failed because his battery overheated. That's not safe either. Nearly kills someone every few races when they hit the brakes at the end of the straight after using the battery, now hot, and the rear brakes, which are electric motors and supposed to pump power back into the battery don't engage, which overloads the front brakes and you get tire smoke and the car goes into the barriers at 150 mph. Not cool.

Why don't they bring back the V12? I'm okay with them fuelling at pit stops. Yes, they'd take longer than 2.8 seconds, but that plus wider rear wing, keep the moving flap for passing purposes, that would be the kind of race worth spectating. Also, cheaper tickets so people could afford to go. Fill the stands. The obsession with billions of dollars only makes Bernie Ecclestone rich, and while the drivers get tens of millions a year, they are the ones risking their lives. I just don't buy that you need batteries to pass in an F1 car. The flap in the wing drops the drag enough for that, and there's these things called turbochargers which gives a serious boost to power when they spin up. Having a button for that would be useful for passing. And they're hundreds of pounds lighter than batteries. So yeah, this is a very fixable problem. It means dumping the annoying hybrids as a bad deal, and getting back to loud and powerful engines, but loud and powerful are what the fans want, and drivers can get back to driving instead of fiddling with computers on their steering wheel.