The Canadian Grand Prix should have been subtitled “Someone sneezed, get the safety car out!”. The race started under the safety car, depriving everyone of what would have surely been a historic battle off the line, and continued to have the safety car deployed a further five times during the ‘race’.

Formula One racing seems almost unrecognisable these days: Don’t try to overtake too hard or you get penalised, don’t try to defend too hard or you get penalised; overtaking now granted by the whim of the stewards rather than the skill of the drivers, and now finally – let’s not try and race in that nasty rain…

It’s like watching a couple of oh-too polite people at a revolving door.

Driver 1: “You go first.”

Driver 2: “Oh no, please you go first.”

Driver 1: “Really. Please, I insist.”

Driver 2: “No, no. After you.”

F1 Steward: “Driver 2. You now have our permission to overtake.”

Driver 2: “Really? Oh thank you awfully.”

No-one wants drivers to get hurt, but you can’t just keep increasingly sanitising it and still call it ‘racing’. Motor sport is dangerous! It says so right here on the ticket.

This weekend we had the first race of the 2011 Formula One season in Australia.

There are a lot of new rules as there always are each year as the organisers seek to manipulate the outcomes of the races and artificially generate ‘excitement’ in a sport that is more circus than competition.

The race itself was about as uninteresting as we’ve come to expect in recent years, with little on track action and most of the talk being about ‘tire strategy’ based on the (again manipulated) wear characteristics of the new Pirelli rubber.

Personally, I don’t really watch racing to listen to endless repetitions of how the tires are designed to fall apart after 15 or 20 laps. I watch racing to hmmmm… oh yes, watch racing. Do you remember that? You know, cars, on a track trying to overtake and gosh, sometimes managing it…

So this year we have movable rear-wings to reduce drag and promote overtaking. It didn’t seem to make a lot of difference. Which isn’t really surprising given the ‘rules of engagement’ for the wing are tortuous and inexplicable to the point of recreating one of the lower levels of Dante’s Hell. Here’s a summary:

1. Following car has to be within 1 second of lead car at a given point.
2. Wing can’t be deployed until the main straight.
3. Wing automatically disengages when brakes are hit.
4. The wind must be from the East.
5. The spin of the Earth must have stopped.
6. The drivers name must contain a B, H or W.

I think I got that right

The second new gizmo, also designed to help overtaking, isn’t really new. It’s the return of KERS, the system originally promoted to show how ‘green’ Formula One is (like flying a few thousand people around the world and shipping entire cars and spares etc. could ever be promoted as an environmentally friendly pastime!).

KERS stores energy from braking that can then be used to give a boost at a later time, using technology similar to that used in ‘hybrid’ cars. Again, this didn’t really seem to help anyone and in fact the race winners didn’t even use it because they found it so unreliable.

Much like the ‘flapping wing’, KERS is governed by a number of artificial rules that have nothing to do with how the system works in reality. Each car suddenly getting a full recharge as it crosses the start/finish line regardless of the amount of energy that was previously stored.

The pundits keep pumping all the newness and trying to convince us that this year will be even better than last year, which was amazing… apparently. The latest in pathetic tomfoolery? Bernie Ecclestone wants to ‘improve’ things by introducing artificial rain!

Come on, guys. It’s time to stop shouting about the Emperor’s new clothes and start bringing back some real improvements and give us back real racing – this is starting to look more like ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’ than the world’s premiere motorsport event.

So again we see another F1 season close and again I find myself asking “where’s the racing?”

Sure it was a tight finish in the end. Sure they had four drivers all in contention. Sure we had David Coulthard’s all too tight jeans and Eddie Jordan’s florid shirts. Sure we had Ferrari cheating (again) and the soap opera drama of Red Bull “we don’t favour any driver – but we give the CrashKid anything he wants.”.

But where was the racing?

When people talk about the great days of F1 they typically recall the battles of Senna, Mansell, Prost, Hill and Schumaker – all of which typically involved close racing and, most importantly, overtaking.

I, like most people I expect, were probably attracted by that more than anything. It was the guys wringing the last gasp out of powerful cars and taking the other guy by any means possible. That was the thrill, that was the adrenaline buzz. Can he make it? Can he make it stick? Is there just enough room to squeeze by?

Then things started to go wrong somehow. We started hearing about tracks that were hard (or even impossible) to pass on. And these tracks weren’t historic tracks like Monaco that deservedly maintained there place on the calendar. These were new tracks.

Suddenly all the overtaking was being done in the pits. Huh? Now it was all about how much fuel people were putting in the cars, short-fueling versus long-fueling. Would the hose go on right? Would it come off?

And collectively I think the racing fans scratched their heads. What the hell is this? The races started to get pedestrian, now it was all about ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’. Okay, that’s interesting too. But hmmmm… I’d still like some racing too please.

So then we get to 2010. Suddenly we have even more new tracks on the calendar. In places we’ve never heard of, with no history behind them. These are specifically built just to house F1 races and jump on Bernie’s great cash cow – or sometimes just to make a political point. But, insanity of all mother of insanities, these are all being designed by the man Tilke to be hard to overtake on?

Huh? Why would you make a ‘race’ track hard to overtake on? Shouldn’t we be encouraging overtaking? Isn’t that the life-blood of motorsport and F1 specifically?

I’ve heard the arguments. It’s hard to overtake because of the aerodynamics. Its that the cars are so similar in power levels. They don’t have the tire advantages the older cars had. Blah blah blah. None of that matters at all if you’re deliberately making the tracks hard to overtake on?

Sure there were some exciting races in 2010. When it rained. Is that all we have to look forward to now? The most exciting part of F1 is… rain? Wow, excuse me while I… nod off here…

So 2011 is going to be ‘even better’. They’re banning diffusers and F-Ducts, there are more races than ever, in more unusual places, movable wings and the return of  KERS (yawn…) and teh 107% rule.

None of this will help if the tracks are still designed to disallow overtaking (should we say designed to prevent racing in fact?) . The new Indian track will be another Tilke disaster, as will the new US, Austin TX track. He’s the guy who also gutted the famous and daunting Nurburgring.

Increasing overtaking in F1 should be easy. It also doesn’t have to be expensive either. You want to keep costs down? Hmmm… how about giving the teams a maximum budget? Wow – that was hard…

The FIA seems to delight in making things as hard as possible while providing nothing extra. Moveable wings – great. But they can’t be used in the first two laps when the overtaking opportunities (such as they are) are greatest? They can only be used at FIA designated overtaking zones? Jeez, give me a break.

What next? The drivers are asking permission to pass? “Excuse me old chap, would you mind awfully letting me by?”

It’s interesting that F1is often referred to as a ‘circus’ – it seems that the clowns have taken over…