Mike's Minute: My disappointment of the week

Disappointment of the week for me has been the gargantuan mess Formula 1 has got itself into in the name of climate change.  They want to be net zero by 2030. The question you can quite rightly ask as of this week, or as of the 2026 rules changes, is, at what cost?  In looking to save the planet not everything has to be ruined.  Christmas tinsel is up 40% because of the war and all the plastic bits that go through the Strait of Hormuz.  I'd rather go without Christmas tinsel than ruin F1.  Max Verstappen turns out to be 100% right: this isn't racing. And that is the most dagger in the heart-ish thing you can say to a motorsport fan.  "This isn't racing."  There's nothing wrong with moving with the times. When cars used to crash, they sometimes blew up and killed people. They decided that needed to change.  The halo had some pushback with its introduction, but ultimately it was the right call. But if you read the changes made this week to the cars and their power modes, and please don’t because its farcical, you would need a degree and you see just how out of hand and "unracing" all this is.  From qualifying, to racing, to starts, to tyre blankets, from kilojoules to megawatts, the changes are dizzying and depressing.  Where once a guy like Verstappen would ring the bejeezus out of an engine and get a car to defy physics, these days it's all batteries and who-knows-what other jiggery-pokery.  The drivers don’t like it. It's so complicated that some of the cars don’t even work. All in the name of net zero.  F1 is one of the greatest sports stories of the modern age. It's spectacular, it's massive, it's successful, it's global and it's growing It is everything you could ever want a sport, or business, to be.  Until it isn't.  It’s a golden goose and a battery is wrecking it. The more battery, the more wreckage.  The more questions, the more upset.  The more unpredictability, the more risk to the brand.  Speed, skill, risk, and an engine – that’s motorsport.  Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.