Williams' Felipe Massa warns fans and observers not to wear rose-tinted glasses when looking at past Formula One seasons.
With the sport struggling to get out of its current existential crisis, some have been keen to reminisce so-called heydays in the hope of finding the cure to the series’ alleged woes.
From wider tyres and 1,000bhp engines to making F1 more dangerous again, harking back to past solutions has been trending around the paddock. Speaking to reporters ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix, Massa begs to differ.
“When it was the 20th anniversary of Ayrton [Senna]’s crash, I remember they were showing all his races in Brazil and I watched most of them,” said the Williams driver. “It was a lot worse than how it is now.
“The difference in qualifying was maybe 1.5sec between pole position and P3. They were lapping the third at every race! The difference was a lot bigger than what it is now.
“But when you speak to people, everybody is like ‘the past is amazing’. Just go back, watch and compare to nowadays. This is something people need to try to do, not just looking at the past without remembering it so well and saying the past was amazing.”
While Massa thinks safety improvements have made Formula One visually less impressive, the Brazilian veteran ridicules the idea of purposely bringing back more risk into the sport.
“The past also looks more interesting because the tracks were a lot worse and much bumpier. So when you see the cars drive on tracks that are bumpier, it looks different, it looks more difficult.
“But now everything is safer, the tracks are different. I don’t believe the FIA will change them to make it more dangerous, because I don’t think this would be correct.
“When I hear Kimi [Raikkonen] and Niki Lauda say [F1] should be more dangerous, I don’t agree. I just believe it should be better and more intelligent.”
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