Toto Wolff: Open team radio would add drama and 'enhance the entertainment factor' of F1

Mercedes

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Wolff: Open team radio would add drama and 'enhance the entertainment factor' of F1

There was little strategy variation in Belgium with 14 of 17 finishers stopping just once

Sam Hall

Thursday 3 September 2020 08:02

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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes Formula 1 could add "drama" to races by completely opening up all team radio transmissions to the fans.

The Belgian Grand Prix was far from a classic, and the formulaic one-stop race has resulted in several team bosses making suggestions of how to improve the overall spectacle.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested making two or three strop strategies mandatory, but Wolff does not feel the change needs to be so extreme.

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"There is a lot more drama that is happening behind the curtains; getting parts ready, having engines failed on dyno’s, trying to bring upgrades to the track last-minute, and then like today all the worries about making it to the end on a one-stop," said Wolff.

"And what we should look at is really making those communications available to the fans, that they can really follow the action and see what is going on on the intercoms. And if every team would open up, that could be an additional way of enhancing the entertainment factor."

Acknowledging the dominance of one particular team, in this case Mercedes, does not help the situation, Wolff added: "I understand what the fans say, there are some races which are not very entertaining and there are others which are the contrary. It would be to easy to say there are good football games and there are bad football games, but as a matter of fact, nobody wants to see a team running away with the championship.

"We always doubt, we don’t really believe we are running away with the championship."

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, drastic changes have been made to the 2020 calendar and while some fan favourite circuits are missing from the final roster, new additions Mugello and Portimao were met with unanimous approval, as was returning venues Istanbul Park and Imola.

Venturing into the relative unknown, Wolff expects the circuits to provide entertaining races and quash the memories of the less than stellar grands prix of late.

He commented: "I think Mugello is an unbelievable racetrack that I know from my time and it will be very exciting to see Formula 1 cars there. I’m looking forward to go to Portimao, up and down.

"Again, a very entertaining place. It could be a very entertaining place. Then coming back to the iconic Imola too. Obviously then Turkey and Bahrain the other way around, so a lot of changes coming towards us. And I hope they will increase the entertainment factor."

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