Martin Brundle has named the changes he would make if placed in charge of F1. The Sky Sports F1 pundit and commentator wants cars that are lighter, smaller and noisier, which is a sentiment shared by a lot of the drivers.

The current ground-effect cars are slightly narrower than their predecessors, but they are still significantly larger and heavier than the cars of the 2000s. In addition to that, the hybrid power units don’t come close to matching the screaming of the V12 and V10 engines used in F1’s past.

In a Reddit ‘ask me anything’ session, Brundle was asked what changes he’d make to F1 if he was placed in charge of the sport. “Oh, that’s a good question,” he replied. “Formula One is in a pretty good place at the moment.

“It is more popular than I have ever known it, and I’ve been around it 42 years, and I’ve been watching it for 60, when I first was at Silverstone and Brands Hatch in the 1960s as a fan in the grandstands.

“In fact, they were wooden boxes we were standing on back then. So I think it’s in a pretty good place… I would like the cars to be lighter and smaller and noisier, and I would go to some lengths to make that happen.

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“The rest of it I think is just fine. I don’t mind the sprint races – they’re better than practice sessions, they’re more exciting than that. So I think Formula One is in a very good place, but the cars are a bit fat and a bit heavy and a bit too big.”

This is an attitude shared by almost every driver on the grid, and both Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton have called out the FIA’s decision not to take drastic measures to reduce the weight of their cars.

After the ground-effect cars debuted in 2022, Verstappen said: “I think following has been quite a bit better, so that’s positive. But of course, the weight of the cars, they’re extremely heavy, which I think is not great, which I don’t really see a quick solution for.”

The problem will remain when the new cars hit the track in 2026 too. “It’s only 30 kilos, so it’s going in the right direction, but it’s still heavy,” Hamilton said earlier this year. “I’ve spoken to some drivers who have driven it on the simulator – I haven’t – but they said it’s pretty slow. So we will see whether it’s actually the right direction or not.”