Because of all the rules and modifications to cars and circuits. Driving on safe mode in the fastest car is rewarded and driving risky to be the fastest is penalised. So while I don't think there is any form of match fixing. Winning the F1 competition these days is mostly about being the first driver in the fastest team, so luck and money. That's why Vettel became four times world champion in a row and Hamilton is dominating now. If the F1 would be deregulated again and driving riskier to be faster would be rewarded again the F1 would become way more like how it was in the 20th century minus the deaths.

Look at it from another perspective. We all know the red bull era. It was a period of absolute dominance by Red Bull. Now we have a Mercedes dominated era. Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton are arguably the best drivers out there at this moment, since they are both four times world champions. Yet except for the last season they rarely where real competitiors for the title. Mercedes had so many 1-2 victories during 2014-2017 I practically lost count.

In 2015 they won 19 GP's. So yeah I would say it's all about the car like at least 90% and only 10% real driving skills. But then again most brands have stall orders anyway, Mercedes oddly enough doesn't use them as much.

It's pretty much visible in this list how much more important the faster car is compared to the best driver. During the 90'summer Renault was very dominant, but they didn't win every race. He'll they didn't even manage a spot on the podium every GP. Less than 20 podium spots for the best constructor where pretty standard back then. Now more than 25 podium spots for the best constructor is pretty standard. So yeah I would argue that if Vettel was driving for Mercedes and Hamilton for Ferrari the last four seasons Vettel would have had at least seven GP titles instead of four.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World_Constructors%27_Champions

Holy slippery slope fallacy, Batman!

The choice of being a telegraphist also disappeared when we started using telephones. Telegraphists were never banned though, they just became obsolete. But the choice still disappeared. Boohoo.

Do you propose that we force F1 to keep grid girls against their will?

False equivalence. The choice of being a telegraphist disappeared because technological advances made that profession obsolete. You cannot say the same with grid girls. Your question is also malformed with the 'against their will' phrase because there were grid girls from F1 who expressed their disappointment with F1's decision, so who is exactly 'their'? If you want to prove your point right, then you need to show me how keeping grid girls in F1 would lead to a loss in profits.

In addition, you are pivoting to a different topic. My original refutation was that while the choices still exist, there are less of them available. If the amount of demand remains the same, but the supply goes down, then that's not good. My argument had nothing to do with obsoleteness, so your argument is ultimately a non sequitor.

Your argument is that it's a net loss of grid girl jobs, and my argument is that I don't care, because the owners of F1 made the call that those positions weren't worth keeping on to. They are entirely within their rights to do so, as long as they follow any laws and regulations that apply to them.

That should also answer who "they" are - those who made this decision, namely the owners. . Obviously it's their will too remove grid girls, because ultimately, regardless of potential outside influences, they made the decision. Of course the grid girls can disagree, I assume most people would disagree with a decision that results in yourself losing your job, but it's not their decision to make - it's the F1 owners, again as long as they follow laws and regulations that apply when making such a decision.

How on earth could I prove that keeping grid girls would lead to a net loss in profits? That's a hypothetical that no one could prove. And that's not even what I'm saying - I'm saying that the owners seem to think it was more likely that keeping grid girls would result in a net loss in profits than the opposite. If not, why would they have removed them?

The owners of F1 might be mistaken, maybe it would have paid of to keep grid girls, but that's another thing entirely - they made the judgement that removing grid girls was more likely to pay off than keeping them.

The telegraphist example was arbitrary - the point is that no one has made any decision to ban grid girls, the F1 owners just made the call that employing them isn't in their financial interest, much like telegraphists. There is more concrete evidence for why employing telegraphists doesn't make sense for phone companies, but ultimately, both decisions are based on what the respective companies judge as being in their best interests.

It sucks that people who certainly enjoyed their job lost opportunities to do so, but it's fair for F1 to make that decision.

Yep let's defend the end of free work and make the girls unemployed to protect them and incentive them to look at other job opportunities that since they are to stupid to look on their own we need to do.

And your mistake is to assume they are taking out the grid girls because they wanted and not because they were pressured to do it.

But then we have Ayrton Senna on Toleman winning on Monaco on his first year and being stripped of the victory... or Michael Schumacher on his first years as well... Sorry but as Qwark said, pre 00's F1 had more weight on the driver than cars... unless you want to believe we now only have 2 good drivers on a season.

If your argument is simply I don't care, then that's a poor argument altogether. In addition, the owners of F1 vaguely explained that grid girls do not resonate with their 'brand values', but never elaborated further than that. And again, you're pivoting to another topic with the talk about legality. Nowhere in my comments did I mention about the owners' rights to their decisions until you did.