Put Formula One drivers in road cars to show who really is the best

Much as I love Formula One, it’s nowhere near as productive, cost-effective, flexible and entertaining as it needs to be in the mid-2020s.

During most Grand Prix weekends, which last three largely uneventful days and nights, there’s typically only one and a half hours of actual F1 racing.

Some under-performing, serial losing teams – each with around 1,000 employees doing heaven knows what – have to massively up their game. And their drivers need and deserve more time and opportunity, and to, er, race in more diverse fleets of machines.

F1 reckons its fan base is currently around 800 million folk. Trouble is, they don’t witness enough wheel-to-wheel action. Think 24 Grand Prix weekends annually, comprising just a few qualifying laps (most of which provide little or no entertainment until the final seconds), six 30-minute sprints (but why not one every race weekend?), then the one thing that really matters: the 24 full-blown races (each lasting around 90 minutes).

Put another way, F1 drivers are permitted to publicly enter into proper racing combat mode for only about 39 hours a year. That’s not nearly long enough.

In the middle of their careers, several multiple race-winning, seemingly frustrated drivers have woken up to the shortage of racing. And that’s why they have temporarily stepped away (or are about to), before competing in non-F1 cars – for hours, not minutes, per race.

Fernando Alonso found the time and inclination to do Le Mans and Indy Car racing. Then Max Verstappen got itchy feet this summer and swapped his Red Bull for tin-topped Porsche and Ferrari models that look more like heavily modified road cars. Also saying he hopes to compete in multiple-hour races in cars he’s not experienced before is Lando Norris.

Not content with being among the best F1 pilots, the three are obviously keen to further show their greatness behind the wheel – in other more modest, but still interesting, cars.

This is why, during those lengthy, stupidly under-utilised GP weekends, more must be done to settle the argument about which F1 drivers are quickest – in a diverse range of race and road cars. Aston Martin, Ferrari, Honda, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault/Alpine have long been among the main players in F1. And they’re about to be joined by Audi and GM.

For me, the most blindingly obvious step forward for F1, its drivers and fans goes like this: These manufacturers must start taking it in turns to supply their showroom models of choice to F1 drivers for them to race in anger each GP weekend.

Only when we witness them go wheel to wheel in comparatively unfamiliar long-range road cars in the morning, followed by shorter-range F1 machines in the afternoon, will we really know who’s got the talent, bravery and hunger to secure the title of undisputed world champion driver. My money’s on Verstappen or Norris. How about yours?

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