Formula One's Newest Innovation (Maybe): Artificial Rain

The recently delayed Formula One season now begins at the end of the month, but the sport’s big boss-man, Bernie Ecclestone, the subject of a controversial new biography, has just the idea to take everything to the next level: artificial rain. Bernie Ecclestone: now officially a comic book super-villain. Good for him.

Ecclestone says that overtaking on dry tracks is “almost impossible,” and that the sport’s organizers (red: Ecclestone) are considering introducing artificial rain to make races more exciting.

He told the official Formula One site:

There are race tracks that you can make artificially wet and it would be easy to have such systems at a number of tracks. Why not let it ‘rain’ in the middle of a race? For 20 minutes or the last ten laps? Maybe with a two-minute warning ahead of it. Suspense would be guaranteed and it would be the same for all.

Bernie Ecclestone makes the rain fall.

The idea sounds genuinely insane to me, but who am I to criticize the man’s decisions.