London: Formula One will not be “fun” anymore, according to the 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who is unimpressed by the design of the 2014 cars.
“The cars look as if they are asleep,” said Villeneuve, after announcing that he would be competing in the new World Rallycross Championship, driving a Peugeot for the Scottish Albatec Racing team. “For the purist, I don’t think it will be a lot of fun or very exciting. But it could be unpredictable. We might even have a Marussia on the podium.”
The switch from last season’s 2.4-litre V8s to new 1.6-litre V6 power units represents the biggest change in the sport for years, but it has left Villeneuve cold.
“The cars look terrible and they don’t look easy to drive,” he said. “And you can’t tell if a driver is driving hard.
“I think it was wrong to take the decision to slow F1 down. It was much better in my day, when it was already a lot safer than it had been in the 70s and 80s but you could still drive crazy fast.”
He added: “With the engine regulations, everything is so restrictive that it’s not Formula One anymore, there’s nothing special about it.
“Conserving fuel is fine, and it was great in the past. The problem is that the drivers don’t have to do it. It’s all done electronically. You sit there and it saves fuel for you, and that defeats the purpose.
“The epic has been taken out of F1. The overtaking happens because you press a button, not because you make a special move.
“I’m a purist and I love the sport. I loved the 60s and 70s, when the fans even enjoyed the races where only four cars finished and they were two laps apart.
“You respected what the drivers had done, what they had achieved. They are making a lot of decisions that in the long run are not helping F1.”
