Montoya, recipe for improving F1: “Reduce energy by 20%. But be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot”

Advice to the FIA ​​Juan Pablo Montoya is undoubtedly one of the drivers who best represent the slightly more no-frills F1 of the early 2000s. Yet, the former Williams and McLaren driver did not hide a certain appreciation for the new rules that cause fans and drivers to discuss so much. The Colombian, however, in an interview granted to the Casinostugan portal, explained how, in fact, some corrective measures to energy management could benefit the spectacle on the track, as long as the FIA ​​is careful not to overdo it and avoid recreating the boring “DRS trains” seen very often with last generation cars. F1, the opinion of Juan Pablo Montoya “I don’t think that in five weeks – explains Juancho – they will be able to fix something that they have worked on for the last four years. The only possible solution, if it is a question of safety, is to limit the amount of energy distributed in the various sectors. At that point, the rules will be the same for everyone. If they want to change, you can remove power to extend the life of the battery a little and reduce lift and coast. If they removed 20% of power from the electric motor, more energy could be used for overtaking mode and it might not be a bad idea. If the amount of energy and its use were limited on the other straights, then the safety problem linked to the speed difference would disappear. But there is a need for uniformity.” “The fact is,” he adds, “that now each team delivers power differently and thinks theirs is the best way. You look at Ferrari in the first sector at Suzuka and how incredibly fast they were, and the same in the middle sector, but then in the third it seemed like Mercedes had done a much better job because they didn’t drain the battery too much at the start of the lap. That makes a huge difference at the end. So if you establish where you can deliver power and how much energy you can deliver for each sector, then you force the drivers to a normal race.” Be careful of the contraindications, however, Montoya warns Formula 1 against the risk of reacting in an excessive, and therefore harmful, manner: “If the FIA solved the safety problem, we could see the return of the DRS trains and we would arrive at a race without overtaking. And then people will complain that F1 is boring. The truth is that there is no right answer, because they abandoned last year’s rules because they were considered invalid, given that teams and drivers complained about how the ground effect was terrible, because you couldn’t follow the car in front and there was a lot of porpoising. And now everyone says we have to go back? “We have to be very careful, they could shoot themselves in the foot by trying to make F1 races safer for the drivers,” concludes Juan Pablo Montoya.