Formula 1 - Canadian GP 2015: The usual picture

Today's race weekend in Canada was a repeat of the usual scene of the season so far: The Silver Arrows start from the top and win, with Ferrari & Co. behind them. A little more excitement would be desirable, a change is needed.

by Rolf Fleckenstein

Nothing is more boring than when you already know the outcome of a race at the beginning. Formula 1 has been suffering from this for some time now. Season after season, one team dominates all the others and even the best drivers in other teams can't do anything about it, the technology is too dominant. This weekend saw not only the Canadian GP but also the final of the French Open at the Tenns. The excitement was that there were two strong opponents facing each other, both of whom could win, and you had to watch the match to understand why one player won in the end. That's the attraction, that's the excitement of a match, the unpredictable!

Little excitement in Formula 1
Unfortunately, there is little excitement for spectators in Formula 1 today. There are opponents of unequal strength on the grid, and every season a team dominates the field that is so technologically ahead of the others that it has to take home the Grand Prix no matter what, unless a completely unforeseeable glitch throws a spanner in the works. Ferrari was rumored to be making progress in the run-up to the Canadian Grand Prix, and Vettel was sometimes ahead in the free practice sessions. If Ferrari had managed to fight on equal terms with Mercedes, it would have been exciting, but these rumors were probably the products of hope.

No, this weekend too the Silver Arrows with Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton started the race from the top and drove the race home smoothly. No excitement, no thrills, no adrenaline for the spectators, only the sponsors of the winning team and the winning team itself, which did a super job as usual, were happy. Perhaps the only thrill was Vettel's race to catch up from the back of the field - he started from 16th place and finished in 5th - to the top. What's the point of watching another race if I already know at the start how it's going to end? The winning team is certainly to be congratulated, but I think Bernie Ecclestone and his friends should once again think about how Formula 1 could be made more exciting again. An exciting Formula 1 race should be a race between great drivers, not a race between racing technologies and racing budgets - that's just for racing engineers.

However, this is in no way intended to diminish the top driving performance of the winner Lewis Hamilton as a driver or of the other drivers, that is not up for discussion at all. But I knew right from the start of the race, when Lewis Hamilton started the race in his Mercedes with the number 44, that he would most probably end up on the top step of the podium, and that's just boring from a spectator's point of view. One can only hope that the other teams, especially the Ferrari team, which has become stronger this season, will manage to catch up technologically with Mercedes during the season, so that the next races and thus the whole season will not be so predictable.