Here is an article about how Eddie Irvine has recently said that F1 has been dumbed down:

Former world championship contender Eddie Irvine has claimed that Formula 1 is being 'dumbed down'.

Irvine, who fought for the 1999 title with Ferrari and also raced for Jordan and Jaguar during his nine-year F1 career, supported Alain Prost's recent suggestion that driver skill now played a smaller part than ever.

"There's a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway when he said: 'There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games,'" Irvine wrote in a column for The Guardian newspaper.

"Formula 1 seems intent on trying to become a game.

"By taking increasing measures to slow things down the FIA is turning Formula 1 into tiddlywinks.

"It is nearly impossible to have an accident in F1 now, you just go into the sand traps.

"The sport has been dumbed down and it's not Formula 1.

"Before, if you made a mistake while battling to overtake, you would be in danger of flying into a barrier .

"Now it's not much of a gladiatorial contest."

Irvine believes the removal of traction control this season will have little effect.

"In terms of reducing driver aids to increase the skills employed in a race, getting rid of traction control will make very little difference save in exceptionally wet conditions," he said.

"The easiest thing to do is come out of a corner on the throttle; braking and turning is the hardest part.

"Yes, you need to concentrate a little bit more but for drivers at this level a lack of traction control won't be a major difficulty."

But Damon Hill disagreed with Irvine and suggested that drivers' talent was still a vital ingredient despite the increased technology in F1.

"Drivers' skill is probably as great as it ever was; it is the area that the driver works in that is much more restricted than it used to be," he told the newspaper.

"Some of the regulations are being changed to restore the element of racing ability and take away some of the emphasis on really quite obscure technology.

"The public, after all, wants to see who is the best driver rather than which is the best team.

"The true power of the sport is the spectacle of man and machine competing against each other."

What do you all think??