Was overtaking too easy in Turkey?

With Formula One introducing a number of new regulations for 2011 in a bid to improve the spectacle of Formula One, did it all prove a little too much in Istanbul?

There is no question that the re-introduction of KERS has given added benefits to Formula One, with some teams perfecting the technology, whilst Red Bull who have been the class of the field in 2011 have been lagging behind with reliability issues of KERS. On occasions this has proved to be the difference between a podium position and merely collecting points.

But the KERS device hasn't always proved popular, hence why teams chose not to run with it in 2010.

Pirelli have entered the sport for this year and received vast amounts of criticism regarding their highly degrading tyres during winter testing and again received complaints regarding the rubber marbles that have been left on the track during a race as a consequence of deliberately designing tyres with a high wear rate.

But overall they have won the teams, drivers and fans around the impact that their tyres have had on the racing.

The introduction of the driver enabled moveable rear-wing proved controversial when it was first announced, with people around the sport fearing how much of an impact it would have on overtaking, before in Australia it was bemoaned for having little impact at all.

Then at the following races it was praised for its influence on the racing, before last week receiving criticism for making overtaking too easy.

So was it all a bit much on Sunday?

'I think that what you were seeing was a track where, because the tyre degradation was high and because different people chose three stops and some four stops – and even the four stops were stopping at different phases of that, it built up big differentials of performance.' Renault technical director James Allison told Autosport Magazine.

'If you looked at people who were on the same strategy as one another, behind one another, they could not just breeze by on different laps. There were lots of laps where they were pinned behind other people for many laps, so I think the FIA got it again pretty spot on.'

But not everyone agreed with the Renault technical director, including his own reserve driver Bruno Senna who added: 'It is difficult to understand what is happening. And the problem is that sometimes you see people getting happy because their favourite car or driver overtook someone else, and then after five laps they will be sad because the other guy overtook them back because the tyres had gone or the DRS helped.

'Yet it is still racing and drivers have to do a lot. Maybe it is the case of trying to follow the recipe of GP2 a bit more, and getting the overtaking a bit more natural.'

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