Has technology ruined racing? It certainly has changed it....

Tom1200 wrote: MotoGP bikes have no downforce lots of passing, lots of sliding and once upon a time no electronic gizmos yet not the most popular form of racing. Tom

Tom1200 wrote: In reference to Aerodynamics/downforce; it is entirely possible to have cars with downforce that can follow each other closely, several F1 car designers have talked about it at length. As for close racing, in motorcycle road racing the 125 now Moto3 races are slam bang dog fights almost every race yet how many people watch (other than me and 6 other guys in the U.S.)? MotoGP bikes have no downforce lots of passing, lots of sliding and once upon a time no electronic gizmos yet not the most popular form of racing. Tom

True. MotoGP is popular but not the most popular. The most popular form of racing is something else with minimal downforce, lots of sliding and tons of passing.

@Nick Comstock; the winglets are going for 17

@DaewooOfDeath; yes lots of slipping and sliding but Cup cars suffer when following other cars, nothing like F1

I've said numerous times that I'm cruel and want to pull the wings off open wheel cars cause it's great to see cars skate through turns but I'm also honest and have to admit it wouldn't necessarily make the racing better. NASCAR has plenty of boring races.

It's hard to engineer close racing; Goodwood has all the things I love, old cars in big drifts but I've seen some runaways there too.

What you need is multiple cars or bikes capable of winning, beyond that is a total roll of the dice.

Tom

Lot of thought provoking responses. Perhaps I was a bit harsh in saying technology "ruined" racing. Certainly advances in technology/racing improves the breed. It just seems that more and more technology is taking the driver out of the mix. At the club racing level at least there are drivers who would be incapable of turning a decent lap if the only ABS was in their right leg,

Disk brakes, synchronized transmissions, auto spark advance, self oiling! All of these things have 'ruined' driver involvement and here we are still racing.