Despite all this, F1 racing has two major problems. First, as I said, it is almost entirely unknown in the United States. I’d rant about that, but Formula Pod does a sufficient job of it. Instead I want to discuss what I feel is the most pressing issue in F1, the rules.

F1 is both a sport and a game. As in any sport or game there are rules which describe how the game is played, how you win, how you lose and what happens if you cheat. Because F1 is also incredibly dangerous, there are a large number of rules which exist only for the purposes of safety. In fact, most of the rules deal specifically with the engineering of the cars themselves. I haven’t read all of the rules, but most of them can be summed up in one sentence: “Engineers, please don’t make a car that hurts the driver.”

F1 does do one thing right with its rules. They have the marketing body completely separate from the rules-making body. On paper this is a good thing. It should mean that the rules are made in the interest of the sport rather than the interest of the wallet. The problem is that the rules-making body isn’t the greatest. The rules they have made are too complicated and force F1 to be less exciting for the fans that it could be.

Rather than continuing to bitch and moan about some rich assholes and their F1 snob games I’m going to come up for my own F1 rules. If you really want to have the premiere motorsport in the world, this is what your rules should be. I’m not going to talk about the reasons for, or the consequences of, these rules. I’ll leave it up to you to think about what the rules I propose will mean for the sport. I’ll also leave it to the comments to discuss the pros and cons.

First, the rules of the Grand Prix weekend. Not too many rules should be changed here, just simplified. There should be two practice sessions where drivers may choose to freely drive their cars around the track as little or as much as they want. They may modify and fuel their cars in any legal fashion during this time.

Next, qualifying. At the beginning of qualifying all cars should be inspected to make sure they are race-legal. Then each car shall be filled to the brim with whatever fuel it uses. Each driver shall go around the course for two complete laps. The times of the two laps will be averaged together. Drivers with the fastest average time shall start on pole, slowest starts in the back. Only the fastest 20 cars will qualify. Other cars will not advance to the race. Failure to complete the two laps also results in disqualification. After qualification all qualifying cars shall be parked and may not be touched at all until the race begins.

At the race all drivers shall be given access to their cars at the same time. All engines will be started and all cars will immediately go on a formation lap behind the safety car. After all cars have lined up on the grid the lights will signal the start of the race. Drivers will then attempt to complete the specified number of laps in the shortest time possible. On any lap drivers may choose to go to the pits. The same pit-lane speed limits we have now can stay. In the pits any part of the car other than the chassis, motor and transmission may be replaced. Any amount of fuel may also be added to the vehicle at any safe speed, but no lubricant or coolant may be added to the car. You may not change drivers, motors, transmissions or chassis at any time during the entire race weekend.

Whoever completes the race in the shortest time wins. The top 7 positions will score points in the same fashion as Mario Kart DS: 10,8,6,4,3,2,1. The driver with the fastest lap shall receive a bonus point as well. The driver who leads the most laps shall also receive a bonus point. Only drivers completing the entire race are eligible to receive any points. Cars that are multiple laps behind at the end of the race must complete the specified number of laps if they wish to receive points.

Now for the part that is very different what we have now, the rules for the cars. The cars may use any motor, any chassis, andy fuel source, any tires and any technology they wish as long as the cars meet the following requirements. The chassis must be a four-wheel open-wheel design. The car must be safe enough that a licensed F1 driver is willing to drive it. The car must be safe enough that it does not pose a significant increased level of danger to any other driver in the race.

You might now be thinking I’m a nut. Obviously with these rules the rich teams will build the best cars and the poor teams will fail. Not so. I have two more rules to even the playing field. First, there will be a cap on R+D spending. No team may spend more than $X on R+D per year. Anyone caught doing so is disqualified from the season. All accounting for R+D costs must be made public. Secondly, all results of R+D and complete vehicle blueprints must be made public. Everyone will know how everyone else’s car works.

I think this is a really great idea. While individually each team will spend barely any money relative to what they spend now, collectively the teams will spend a lot. Also, all the cars will be constantly changing and trying out new technologies to get ahead. If you really want the fastest most technologically advanced cars in the world, then all the teams should be sharing all their technological advances with each other. No longer will their be a problem of some cars being ludicrously slower than others. No longer will money make a difference between winning and losing. What will matter is which team can use the collective knowledge of F1 to create the fastest car and get the best person to drive it.

I think that’s all I’ve got to say about that. It’s just that F1 claims to be, and is, the pinnacle of motor racing. It is still better than other forms of racing, but it could be so much more. I don’t really think that rules like this will ever be implemented, but it’s nice to think about it. Maybe a new racing league or a video game can do something like this.

Every sport has two aspects it must balance very carefully. The first aspect is the integrity of the competition. This includes how fair the competition is and how well the competition determines who is indeed superior. A good example of games lacking integrity are collectible card games. At this point in time it is not a contest of who has a better strategy at the game itself, but who has more money. You might as well just compare checking account balances and determine the winner right there. Yes, I know that is not 100% true, but you get the idea. The other aspect is money. All sports require money to operate. To accurately execute the contest of who is the best at a particular thing you need money. Someone has to pay for the equipment, the land, the time, the officials, etc. F1 is obviously the most expensive sport in these regards. Some like hockey are not as much as F1, but far more expensive than baseball or soccer. The money that is used to pay for these things comes from those who are entertained by the sport. If people did not pay money to attend sporting events then there would be no money for the sport to happen.

This is where a dilemma often arises. Sometimes decisions must be made that will compromise either the money a sport makes or its integrity as a true competition. When such decisions are made there must be a balance. A sport with perfect integrity that makes no money cannot operate. And a sport which only exists as a money making machine with no integrity will fall apart as it becomes pointless and silly. Just such a dilemma occurred for Formula 1 this past weekend, and the decisions made by all parties did not attempt to strike a balance in the least.

Compared to most sports Formula 1 Racing is incredibly balanced towards integrity. The F1 drivers champion is almost surely the greatest driver in the world, and the constructor’s champion is almost surely the greatest car. NASCAR is perhaps the exact opposite, where winning means you were the guy lucky enough not to crash every race. And the rules of the race themselves are designed to induce, not prevent, crowd-pleasing accidents. In the US Grand Prix Michelin messed up manufacturing tires. Standing by the rules and fairness of the sport 100% the FIA basically said they could choose between losing or not racing. Obviously the team that messes up in making tires is not the greatest car in the world. So every team using Michelin tires did not race. While it is easy, and probably right, to put the majority of the blame on Michelin, nobody in the sport of Formula 1 smells like roses. This latest debacle will do irreparable damage to the money factor of the sport that it may not exist much longer.

So rather than talk about fixing F1, which I just said was irreparable, I have a solution I would propose. Let us create a world Grand Prix, but not like the one which many current F1 teams are proposing. This Grand Prix will have races of all shapes and sizes. Roads, off-road, city to city, oval track, endurance, drag, short track, super speedway, street and of course Grand Prix. There would be allowed one team per auto manufacturer only. Each team may enter one car with one primary driver and one backup driver only. By one car I mean one car only, not one design of car of which they manufacture many separate vehicles. One car. That car must be used in every race of the championship. There would of course be refueling and tire changes when necessary. Teams would be allowed to modify gear ratios, suspension settings, wings, etc. However, no parts of the car may be added or removed nor may the design of the car change. There shall be one engine that will last the entire championship.

The rest of the details can be figured out later, but the point remains the same. A championship of this nature will be both extremely entertaining and profitable to the entire world. The excitement of watching the same set of cars driving through the Sahara one week, a mountain in Japan the next and then 500 laps at Indianapolis is pretty much as exciting as racing gets. And when it comes to a test of driver skill and car quality there is no compare.

While I doubt this will ever become reality due to many logistical problems with such an endeavor my point is made. We need to have a system by which we can determine the greatest drivers and car in the world. And watching that championship play out should be the most exciting auto racing event in the world. F1 used to be the real deal, but now only is so on paper. So I say to everyone with the power to do so, fix it. I want to see cars go fast, turn left, turn right, go up, go down and bank. I want to have something to cheer for and something to be amazed by. The politics between all the different groups that currently make up F1 are no good. Fix the sport, balance it out.

Let it always be remembered what the score was on February 16, 2005. Rich people 1, Hockey Fans 0.

A few weeks ago the company I work for ran the Chase Corporate Challenge. It was a big evil corporate hoo-hah, but besides that I ran 3.5 miles. In High School I ran 1 mile at least twice a week, in gym class that is. Since then my exercise has been limited to Dance Dance Revolution. And since I don’t play that nearly as much as I used to, my shape has gone downhill. My arm muscles were always week and I always had a gut. My leg muscles are still strong as ever. But my respiratory and circulatory system “cardiovascular” if you will is weaker than it was. I get tired and out of breath too quick. Quicker than I used to, and too quick for my taste.

Now, you gotta understand something. I’m not even close to fat. In fact, my physical body is flawless. I’m almost immune to all disease. I am allergic to poison ivy and that’s it. I eat when I’m hungry and I eat what my body craves. I only drink water, 100% juice and whole (3%) milk. I wont drink anything else. Well, fresh squeezed lemonade or a milk shake occasionally. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with my body except minor skin problems and a slight arch in my back. But what’s to be expected from a computer geek who writes in C all day?

So until now I’ve been out of shape, and I really didn’t care because I wasn’t ill and I didn’t need to be in shape. But you know, damn those documentaries. Sure I can think logically and I can avoid all kinds of advertising and all kinds of coercion. Mainly thanks to Douglass Rushkoff. But a documentary is the most coercive media format in existence. It shows you the real deal and the cold facts. Facts that are guaranteed to shock, surprise and sway you. Even though I know this in my head, I still feel the need to get my ass up out of my computer chair.

Now. I’ve had this exercise policy. I figure it like this. I’m 22. If I run a mile every day. It takes me 7 to 8 minutes to do. Add the time to go to the running place and back. 20 minutes a day. If for each of those 20 minutes I add 20 minutes to the end of my life its a bad deal. I’m trading young years for old years. I want young years, more free time when I’m 99 just means more shuffleboard before I bite the dust. And since I don’t find running a mile enjoyable I’m pretty much trading potential young healthy joy time for old crochety time.

So today I got my credit card down to $0. Hooray for me! I have a job! When I got the job I made a list of things to buy. Anyting over $50 I would not buy if it wasn’t on the list. The only things left on the list are iPod mini (unless a newer one comes out) and a new cell phone (Treo 610 is current desire). The bicycle I bought today is the only exception.

When I was a little kid I rode my bike all around the block. Every day. I didn’t even think of it as exercise. It was just the thing. Get home, get on bike, go. Sometimes we just rode around, most of the time it was transportation to the house of the friend down the road. I wonder whatever happened to that kid, I should use the Internet and find out… Anyway. In like 6th or 7th grade when I was at summer camp my 10 speed bike was stolen. I haven’t had a bike since. I’ve ridden since then, most memorably in Israel, and I still can. But I realized. Bike == fun and exercise. I can get back in shape, and have fun at the same time. So I’m no longer trading young years for old years. I’m Getting more out of my young years.

Besides, my current situation is pretty grim. I work 9 to 5 5 days a week. I come home, and all of my college friends are either graduated or home for summer. I still live in my college apartment because the work is near here and my house isn’t. Plus I get to stay on the OC3 Internet of doom. So since my friends left my after-work entertainment has been Puzzle Pirates, web sites, dvds and eating. But now, on every single day of good weather I’m going to get home, change, get my ass on my bike and go. I’m going to go until I can’t go no more. Then I’ll turn around and go home. It’s the best. Today I rode all over RIT. I zipped around campus in places I couldn’t go with my car. I passed rollerbladers and other bikers. It was fantastic.

Oh yeah, I bought this bike today at a bike shop. Just a normal mountain bike. Here it is. I added a lock and a kick stand, necessities. I’m going to get a helmet and blinking red light for the back and maybe a headlight. I wont use the helmet unless I’m riding on roads as opposed to just college campus. The bike shop was really cool too. I get to come back before 30 days to get it re-tuned up for free, and it has super maintenance and warranty of doom. I can pretty much go there to get anything fixed for free. I should set up a computer store with the same kind of business model.

So I got a bike. Fat people suck. I have something to do with my spare time. And I can improve my health and hopefully delay my inevitable heart attack. Oh steak, how I pine for thee. Either tomorrow or Monday my $120 160 gigabyte Serial ATA hard drive should show up. I’m going to back up all my files and start using Linux for everything except for Steam. And as soon as WineX supports Steam/Half-Life 2 I’m going to hit that shit. Also I will have adventures trying to make a DOS partition, oooh. Stay tuned for more fun.

Oh, and because this needs to have its google pagerank increased dramatically. Gentoo Linux is for Ricers. I must say I am a proud Gentoo zeal^H^H^H^H user. It’s the first distribution I’ve felt to provide me with what I really need in a linux. I also wholeheartedly agree that gentoo is for ricers. I think at heart I am the king of ricers. While I don’t have tons of money or a cool Japanese car, I do desire one. And I just love customizing the fuck out of everything. Got Rice?