There are some videos about th ... ves the quality of racing. I'm not so sure whether that is so simple.
Of course with a car that is easier to drive you will have more drivers fighting for the win because easier car means the more skilled drivers do not have such big adventage over the less skilled drivers. Where there once were maybe half a second to gain in one corner there is now just 0.2s to gain because with easier car it is easier to get closer to the best performance.
What imho improves the quality of racing is mostly longer braking distances which in turn means less grippy tires and less downforce. And of course the equality of equipment. At least theoretical equality! But that is just one part of the quality. Racing wheel to wheel and the overtaking and defending are not all what the quality of racing should mean.
So depending how the quality of racing is defined then surely the route v8 supercars are taking (making the cars easier to drive) should work for creating closer racing. And in the end those goals are achieved by making the cars more technically advanced. But there are other factors as well.
With nascar one of the big aspect about the quality of racing is the development and changing nature of the cars during the race. If the cars were easy to drive and setup (=more technically advanced with more downforce, telemetry, more grip and better suspension and drivetrain among other things) then the show would suffer because the circuits are so simple. The room for skill to be the differentiator would be a lot smaller which would take away 90% of the race. With the way the car handling changed during the race gives me for example something to watch during the races. Without that aspect all that there was left is the purposeful wrecking and the last 5 laps to get excited or annoyed about
. Indynascart anyone?
With the v8supercars the development of the car during the race was never really such a big factor. Sure the tirewear and brakes wear but it was not something you could do much about because lack of trillion pitstops. In nascar they have the opportunity and time to change things and this is also visible in the broadcasts. So in that sense adding technology or improving tech in v8 does not or could not hurt the show but in nascar it would hurt the show.
I think it is also worth remembering that F1 is not just about high tech but also about car development. The tech spectable about F1 for example is not just about how high the engines rev, how many springs and dampers there are in the suspension and how delicate the aero is. It is also about the development race from start to finish. The delicate differences between the cars we can see with our own eyes. The gadgets the teams invent and put on the cars, the different approaches to making the car faster and the development race to figure out how to make the car faster. And to see that happen just within one weekend. Of course F1 is very different in that every team makes their own cars while in most other series you buy the cars from someone else.
Surely adding tech to F1 would not make the racing closer but I doubt it would improve the spectacle either. Simply because the cars and the development processes are already very high tech and as such the line where adding tech makes the cars easier to drive and creates closer racing has been crossed long time ago. Of course in F1 the technical freedom does improve the show in the sense it allows teams to build those gadgets that make F1 interesting but at the same time it reduces the close racing. Which in turn means we get stupid artificial balancing factors like drs to artificially improve the show while the absolute true fans of real harddd racing like myself are left to gouge their eyes out with the remote.
Of course the single thing common in F1, nascar and v8supercars is the tires. Either being undertired or just the tires being sensitive improves the quality of racing the most. Obviously a better performing tire means higher tech but worse tires tend to make better show. So I'd say the tires are the most important factor that defines the quality of racing. So in that sense higher tech cars alone does not mean much. Of course lower tech adds a nice touch of flamboyancy, crudeness and image of bravery to the sport while higher tech usually means sophistication, precision and neatness. So the lower tech the tires are the better the racing.
I'm not even going to mention costs in this post. Just about everywhere when you read some tech article about F1 there is always the mention of costs. It's expensive, I get it!
