The thorny issues facing F1 over racing, qualifying and safety
World champion Lando Norris said: "It looks great on TV and the viewers seem to love it. A lot of people seem to love it. Part of me is like, you know, that's a good thing.
"But some of that racing is because simply the guy who overtakes, because he has to use the battery, then has absolutely zero battery and you're just a complete passenger and you can't do anything. "So, you're not exactly racing when you're in that situation as well as you were before. It depends on what you want...
depends how you want to view it. " There are two ways of looking at a racing driver's job. Primarily, it is to get whatever car they have been given around a lap as fast as possible.
In that sense, nothing has changed. But on a more philosophical level, F1 is meant to be the ultimate challenge - the driver taking their machine and themselves to the limit of what is possible. In that sense, it very much has changed.
There is almost unanimous agreement that the challenge of a flat-out qualifying lap has diminished as a consequence of the demand for energy management. To the extent there is no longer such a thing as a flat-out lap. Some of the sport's most challenging corners have been made less demanding because they are now what Fernando Alonso has referred to as "charging zones".