[cialesxtr]

Don't get me wrong drivers and personalities are important, I would say they are as important as the technical side. Possibly a little more so, but even if you say hypothetically that the "human" side makes up 60% of the equation, that's still a 40% shortfall in interestingness (for want of a better made-up word) when the technical side is completely emasculated. IMHO of course

And yes you need to find a balance which is hard, nobody wants to see the advent of robot cars where the driver is literally a passenger, and since like the A-bomb you can't uninvent aerodynamics, driver aids and so on.

But still, I think what all reasonable technically-minded F1 fans want is for the governing body to draw up technical rules saying what the teams can and can't do, however restrictive or unrestrictive that might be, and then let the designers and engineers go mad within that framework. But things like development freezes and common parts are a whole different kettle of fish to saying "the bottom of the car must be flat within a certain area", "the rear wing cannot be x number of millimetres wide" or "systems that take the control of the throttle away from the driver are not permitted".

It is at this point that supporters of such measures, will trot out the "cost cutting" excuse (which, despite the financial crisis only being approx two years old, is becoming more and more worn-thin and tiresome than Bono and Bob Geldof's rants).

But motor racing has survived worse times before. In fact history shows that in the past, in times of a bleak economy, or even worse (like say, the aftermath of a World War or two), motor racing got back on its feet by adopting an open, Formula Libre style approach, competitors bringing anything they could get their hands on and having some fun (which any sport is supposed to be, professional or not!), the exact opposite of the ever increasing standardisation and equalisation we have today.