/me shudders at the prospect of mid-late-2000 era cars.
There may have been loads of action in any of those races that just looking at the race results wouldn't show.
Cars back then didn't have the reliability they have now, so some of those huge gaps may have been caused by the lack of finishers.
** Warning, this post has drunkenmaster levels of mindless wanderings included **
Indeed, it was the dawning of the turbo era for F1 and the engines which went on to dominate F1 were going through their period of pain against the decade and a half old DFVs. Imagine the 2015 Honda against a V8 now and you'd have some idea... but if the regulations were as they were in 1981, who would have bet against Honda or perhaps Renault going on to dominate against the V8s a few years from now? Sort reliability out and they would decimate a field of NA cars - that's how it was in the 80s.
Mind, it's sad that that's the position in which Honda and to a degree Renault are in in 2015.
It's a shame the sport is so processional now. The commentators were getting excited when a lapped car appeared in front of the leaders on Sunday, which was mid-2000s level of desperation. While the sport remains as clinical as it is, it will continue like this. If you remove the bumpy, demanding tracks and engineers figure out the best way to utilise tyres
(that won't change with more durable tyres, so don't get your hopes up), then you'll get a processional sport with little in the way of excitement - throw in a dominant car and you will get tedium. Remove the potential for mistakes and you remove much of the what makes motorsport exciting.
The issue is it's not just F1 that's like this. Even the BTCC is like this now - less levels of technical expertise of course, but they've followed the same principles and now you've got cars which are so nailed that following cars struggle to overtake the top drivers, and that's in a sport where it's somehow become acceptable to nudge drivers out of the way!
Only LMS is flourishing at the moment, but have we've almost lucked in to that. The open regulations in LMP1 have worked for once and we've got 3 different manufacturers taking 3 different approaches to end up near enough in the same place
(hopefully soon to be 4 and even more wacky if Nissan can get there Nismo madmobile up there). You have to think that if Audi and Porsche remain and Toyota throw resources at the project then all 3 would eventually end up taking the same approach at some point and we'd end up with the consistency and reliability which has made F1 being quite boring. And there's no way we'll keep Audi, Porsche and Toyota for the next decade, and we will likely get a boring single manufacturer dominated series at some point. I suppose the trump card LMS has is multiple classes on track, which always allows for fun.
Even MotoGP is neutered and bland now compared to road racing, with its engine maps, traction control and billiard smooth tracks (more understandable with bikes of course). It's more 'slidy' than F1, but it's all done in a very controlled way. I enjoyed the championship battle this season, but the races haven't grabbed me for a while now.
Now the cars are so good it's hard to see how any motorsport is going to improve in the next few decades. Oversteer in the 70s meant enormous power-slides (helped by bias ply tyres and engines which were relatively weedy in terms of torque and power compared to most modern engines) and now it's case of can't slide, won't slide - throughout motorsport.
I suppose the only motorsport category which has any resemblance to its former self is rallying, and of course since we lost the mighty group B cars (for good reason of course) that's been an increasingly damp squib too. I'd struggle to name more than a few drivers now in anything but local rally, and I bet I'm not the only one.
