Reliability...

[clv101]

This is how 2011 turned out:

The top three drivers only had four retirements between them, from 57 starts (7.0%).

Compare it to 1998:

Here the top three had 10 retirements from 48 starts, 20.1%!

Or 2000:

Here it was 9 from 51, 17.6%.

I actually preferred the high attrition rate. Does anyone else think F1 would be better with a higher, say double this year's 7% to 14%, attrition rate? That's still not as high as it was a ~decade ago.

 

[clv101]

Doesnt quite tell the whole story though - some of those Retirements are from driver error / crashes rather than mechanical breakdowns

Sure - but generally speaking, the top three finishers don't make many driver errors and people still make errors in 2011 as they did in 1998. The main signal in that dataset is mechanical reliability.

 

[clv101]

Lets just give them a fuel allowance like in motogp and open up the engine development.

I loved it when we had different types of engines competing, e.g the v12 ferrari vs v10 renault

I think this would be a really good idea. Maximum fuel allowance of say 150kg and do what you want with the engine. We'd see the full R&D effort trying to simultaneously maximize power and efficiency. Unfortunately, costs would spiral.