is F1 on its knees
Discussion
Ahonen said:
Scuffers said:
no comedy tyres!
I was heading more along the lines of the brilliance of the new generation of LMP1 chassis, which are nearly three seconds faster than they were last year.
t load more than 3 sec's a lap (race pace).Scuffers said:
Ahonen said:
Scuffers said:
no comedy tyres!
I was heading more along the lines of the brilliance of the new generation of LMP1 chassis, which are nearly three seconds faster than they were last year.t load more than 3 sec's a lap (race pace).Redlake27 said:
True, there's more than 3 seconds per lap potential in tyre improvements and far more than that over a race distance. But , there again , on tiptoe tyres we are seeing passing moves in places where it was previously single file .
don't agree, the lack of overtaking is not the fault of the tyres, it was all about aero.Adding comedy tyres has just added a factor to plan for with pit stops.
overtaking the next car because his tyres have gone off is not really F1 racing, people want to see cars going wheel to wheel.
Derek Smith said:
I think the anniversary of the Imola race where two drivers died shows why speeds had to be reduced. What is remarkable is that they've been successful. If the lap times had continued to rise then the circuits would have had to be modified to an extent that would render races unexciting.
I don't really agree with that as I don't think pure speed had much to do with Imola. 12 years since a fatality and then a catalogue of errors during that weekend (and F1 year with the fairly brutal stripping of driver aids) marked a very difficult weekend for the sport.Though controversial I think 'acceptable risk' has to be considered. F1 in the 1980's was far far safer than a vast number of sports but due to the high profile of motor racing and the mainstream TV coverage, it gets analysed to the nth degree.
If you look at the risks in Horse Riding, Cheerleading (I kid you not), Sailing, Surfing, Motocross etc, F1 considering it allegedly being the pinnacle of motorsport was extremely safe.. Then if you take into factors which weren't directly speed related (head / neck protection, how driver aids were removed from cars, Senna's steering column extension, tethers to keep wheels attached to cars), I don't see how speed or even the tracks of the early 1990's really needed a whole lot of consideration whilst keeping F1 at the very cutting edge (and perhaps the pinnacle) of motorsport.
Eric Mc said:
Where would cars be today speed wise if the regulations hadn't started tightening up in the mid 1980s?
Good question but I'd say as with all sports, regulations etc get altered and shifted to keep things in check (to some degree). Personally I think with F1 if you take a step back, it's gone off into a bit of a parody of itself. I do think the sheer amount of money and its almost entirely 'business driven model' has made it a bit of a pantomime formula and hard to take seriously.
To me it's become more 'wacky races' without the bizarre crashes rather than the racing of motorsport heroes that I lived through in my younger years.
The technical limits HAD to come about. Tentative moves in that direction had started in 1981 with the restriction on underfloor downforce (the banning of the flexible skirts). In 1983, sidepods were banned completely. From then on, the technical regulations essentially consisted of banning technical advances that made the cars quicker.
It was a new mindset but now one which entrenched in the way the rules are drafted.
It was a new mindset but now one which entrenched in the way the rules are drafted.
Redlake27 said:
In 2004 , Michael Schumacher took 1hr 28m 34s to win Bahrain.
In 2015, Lewis Hamilton took 1h 35m 05s to win on the same circuit layout.
That is the equivalent to 4 laps behind....
The slowest car in the 2004 race (The Minardi Cosworth) was faster than Kimi's 2015 fastest lap.
I'll admit, take away the downforce, the tyre war and give them DRS and we get more overtakes now....but surely we have gone too far.
When it's put like that, then arguably, yes. In 2015, Lewis Hamilton took 1h 35m 05s to win on the same circuit layout.
That is the equivalent to 4 laps behind....
The slowest car in the 2004 race (The Minardi Cosworth) was faster than Kimi's 2015 fastest lap.
I'll admit, take away the downforce, the tyre war and give them DRS and we get more overtakes now....but surely we have gone too far.
But it rarely is ever put like that so the difference isn't really noticeable.
The paradox is that in the early part of the 2000s', F1 racing was probably the dullest it's ever been yet over the past couple of years, the actual racing has very often been brilliant.
Scuffers said:
Redlake27 said:
True, there's more than 3 seconds per lap potential in tyre improvements and far more than that over a race distance. But , there again , on tiptoe tyres we are seeing passing moves in places where it was previously single file .
don't agree, the lack of overtaking is not the fault of the tyres, it was all about aero.Adding comedy tyres has just added a factor to plan for with pit stops.
overtaking the next car because his tyres have gone off is not really F1 racing, people want to see cars going wheel to wheel.
Redlake27 said:
So the answer is the current aero and a tyre war then? If the cars ran 18in wheels I can see three or four tyre manufacturers being interested, as long as it was policed (as they do in LMP2 ) to restrict the number of specifications and prevent bespoke tyres that only suit one chassis.
That would work for me, preferably with even less aero, say single element front wings.RYH64E said:
Race cars typically waste a lot of energy through maximum acceleration and deceleration at the beginning and end of every straight, so there's a lot of energy to be recovered in the braking phase. In the real world we don't drive like that so there's little benefit in costly, heavy systems designed to recover energy in the braking phase that represents a very small percentage of the average journey. If one of the mainstream manufacturers thought that there were significant efficiency gains to be had don't you think we would be seeing them on cars? F1 is hugely expensive, but compared to the resources of a comnpany like VW the budgets are tiny, if fitting KERS/MGU-H/MGU-K etc offered substantial real world efficiency benefits the big manufacturers would be fitting them already.
Both the Porsche 919 and all the current F1 engines have energy recovery that doesn't rely exclusively on braking.An Ad Man's perspective http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/01/motor-rac...
Pretty much states the obvious as, at the end of the day, it is clear that several issues need to be addressed. It is just that some of the stakeholders live in a fantasy world.
Pretty much states the obvious as, at the end of the day, it is clear that several issues need to be addressed. It is just that some of the stakeholders live in a fantasy world.
Just read the article and it is quite enlightening. Seems like the overall issue is the marketability of the sport in general. Sponsorship is also an issue as it is connected to the sport's marketability. It all boils down to how the sport is being governed in general. Here's to additional Formula one news for more reference.
Edited by JasonNorin on Thursday 7th May 06:37
DC now adds to the debate http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/32699924
Everyone seems to know there is something fundamentally wrong ith the current F1 regs
Everyone seems to know there is something fundamentally wrong ith the current F1 regs
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