Super Andretti Bros.

With the Formula 1 season winding down, we're getting more info about the season for Formula E electric cars, which is run over the fall-spring. Probably the biggest change is that there are new cars with batteries that now have the capacity to run an entire race, so there'll be no more of the silly-sounding mid-race car change.

But another big change is the "Attack Mode" concept. What? you think that's a childish sounding name? Well it was almost called "Hyperboost." And nearly everyone is calling it what it reminds them of: Mario Kart. The premise here is that if you drive over a certain areas of the track, you get a temporary speed boost. The activation area will be off the racing line, so there'll be a bit of strategy on whether it makes sense to go for it.

Many people won't like this on the grounds that:

• it's an artificial gimmick, and,
• if you were going to import something from Mario Kart into real racing, surely it would be the exploding turtle shells.

But the fact is that artificial speed bonuses have been creeping into racing for a while now. Formula 1 has the Drag Reduction System (DRS) in which a driver can press a button to flatten the rear wing to get a temporary aerodynamic aid, though you can only use it for passing. And Indy Cars have the Push To Pass system, where the driver can get a temporary power boost, but only for a total of two minutes per race.

Add a long-time racing fan, I know I'm supposed to hate these ideas as a tarnishing of the pure and simple concept of auto racing. But actually, I'm okay with it. The fact is that racing is reaching the limits of what can be done within the constraints of human abilities and the current technology. It could certainly be managed better than the elitist mess that is Formula 1, but even Indy Car and NASCAR are running into a dull sameness.

When you listen to fans about how to improve racing, their prescription is usually to relax the rules and allow more innovation, but the fact is that rules are limiting money more than innovation, so that unconstrained approach would just lead to even more predictable results. The only way out that I see is to introduce strategic challenges outside of the engineering challenge of making faster and faster cars. Preferably, these would be:

• Strategic challenges that the drivers have to face on the fly, not something that the teams can calculate and optimize to the nth degree.
• Things that the viewers can see and relate to, rather than esoteric considerations that few relate to.

Getting these ideas implemented will be difficult, because Formula 1 has spent a generation promoting the idea that it's a pure challenge of engineering, and that's why it's okay that their races were just expensive parades of predictable order. Pivoting to a future where the cars are near-identical  and interest is generated by in-race bonuses as they do it in Formula E will take a while.