Thanks to the masterful - though sometimes controversial - domination by Michael Schumacher of Germany and his Ferrari team, the sport lost television viewers and trackside spectators after he won the title in July. As a result, the International Automobile Federation, the sport's governing body, decided that the magic formula, the envy of nearly all other motorsports, needed to be revamped.

"Because of Ferrari, racing has become boring," Max Mosley, the federation's president, said. "We have to improve the show and reduce the costs. We've got some pretty explosive suggestions."

The federation sent a letter to the teams before the Japanese Grand Prix on Oct. 13, the last race of the season, about a nine-point plan to change Formula One. The teams and the other members of the Formula One Commission - which includes sponsors and track promoters - were invited to a meeting at Heathrow Airport on Oct. 28 to vote on those suggestions. Frank Williams, one of the team owners, called the meeting "the most important meeting for Formula One in two decades."

Several decided to meet three days earlier with the federation, in its London offices, to seek a more workable solution to some of the more drastic rules suggestions. Some insiders think this is an attempt by the federation to prevent the Oct. 28 meeting from turning into a stalemate.

Williams and some other team owners are worried more about the survival of the sport's integrity than about the television ratings. In reaction to what may be only a temporary loss of a portion of its television audience - some sources said the drop was 20 percent since Schumacher won the title - Formula One's organizers are looking for a quick fix for a sport that took years for these same organizers to develop.

While several of the federation's suggestions are constructive, the two most controversial ones, rather than saving the show, could kill it.

The first controversial suggestion is that Formula One's 20 drivers should switch from one team to another during the first 10 races. A team would be drawn from a hat. After the first 10 races, the first-place driver would have the first choice of the seven teams for which he would drive in the following seven races of the season. The second-place driver would get the second choice, etc.

The drivers would receive their pay from a central fund, according to the points scored. In a sport in which drivers are either paid millions of dollars by sponsors or bring teams millions of dollars in sponsorship, this suggestion has been taken as a joke by most people in the sport.

"It is beginning to be fashionable to criticize Formula One," reads the federation's letter, which was made public on the Web site of Autosport magazine. "Arguably, a change as radical as this is what Formula One now needs in order to re-establish its image and recapture the interest of the public."

The second controversial suggestion seems to go against what Formula One stands for. The best drivers with the best cars should, the federation suggested, be penalized with ballast weighing one kilogram for each point won after 20 points.

In other words, if Schumacher won the first two races next season, he would accumulate 20 points and then have a kilo of weight added to the car for every point thereafter. That would be meant to slow him down and give slower cars a chance to catch him.

The federation argued that Ferrari would still win the championship - and is not being penalized - and would keep the championship more interesting closer to the end of the season.

But evidence has shown that fans are turned off because they know in advance that Ferrari will win every race; and ballast or not, as long as they know the outcome, they will tune out.

But what if Ferrari lost while carrying ballast? The team's nearest competitors, Williams and McLaren, said they did not want to beat Ferrari if it was handicapped by weights. They want to win by being better. Some fans have said they wanted to see Ferrari beaten by a better team and that the weights should not be used.

"Does that mean Pete Sampras has two strings cut from his racket when he meets Tim Henman?" said Patrick Head, the technical director and part-owner of the Williams team.

Frank Williams has the same philosophy.

"I'm a big admirer of some of the superstars like Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis in his day," he said of the the Olympic sprinters. "I thought all these guys were made by God for one thing only, and that was to run. As the American No. 4 crossed the winning line, the rest of the field was only just rounding the bend on the finishing straight. And I thought that is just total sporting supremacy."

Unlike horse racing and some other motor-racing series with handicapping, each Formula One team is required to design and build its own chassis. The race is not only between drivers but also between carmakers. That is why since 1958 a championship title has been awarded to both the winning driver and the winning carmaker.

When Rubens Barrichello, despite having led the whole race, pulled over in the last lap of the Austrian Grand Prix last May to let Schumacher win, spectators were appalled because the best man was not allowed to win.

Yet, is it a better answer to pander to the audience by artificially giving a chance to a lesser driver and car by weighing down the better ones? Would that not be fixing the race result in another way?