2017 F1 car- first impressions
Discussion
Scuffers said:
There was never a championship for the r500, most ran on 17% road legal types in open championships, hence why times with slicks are harder to find.
I didn't say there was, I clearly stated that I was talking about the current Caterham championship. Scuffers said:
Back to history, you sound like the idiots that claim lap records for the nurburg ring, in the face of belof's record from 1983.
What makes you say that?SpeedMattersNot said:
Scuffers said:
SpeedMattersNot said:
I've done that.
no, you have just been lazy and assumed the current Caterham championships are the peak of what a Caterham can achieve.
Anyway, you claimed earlier that the R500 was quicker than the R400 lap from BHI in 2004 at the time but it was first built in 2008...it appears you need to go and brush up on your history of the marque, not I.
Scuffers said:
TSL is your oyster, go look for yourself.
There are plenty of open championships where R500's have quite simply dominated them in the same way a Radical does.
your dreaming if you think a (BMW) Mini can live with a Caterham, especially somewhere like BHI.
Hell, in their day, even the TVR Tuscan's were hard pushed at some ccts to top their times.
I originally said this;There are plenty of open championships where R500's have quite simply dominated them in the same way a Radical does.
your dreaming if you think a (BMW) Mini can live with a Caterham, especially somewhere like BHI.
Hell, in their day, even the TVR Tuscan's were hard pushed at some ccts to top their times.
SpeedMattersNot said:
A modern interpretation of your image would be a Caterham. If you want to watch boringly slow cars drive around with no grip, awful brakes which break down all the time and would be slower than a well balanced sport car, just go and watch the Caterham series. I think you just need to accept F1 for what it is. It is a brilliant sport and if having something slower is the recipe, why isn't GP2 the primary source of Motorsport entertainment ?
Do you have a time machine we can all use to go and watch the Caterham series in the past? Do you not understand that an open championship, is not the Caterham series. Like with the earlier debate about how Motorsport has benefited society, you have been making up your own argument as if that's what we're both discussing. On top of this, you claimed I couldn't even find 'mega-bucks GT series' nor Radicals. Therefore I didn't and I still found several cars that were faster last year than the Caterham series.
Deal with it.
SpeedMattersNot said:
patmahe said:
I know its a case of 'oh things were better in the old days' .... but I honestly believe F1 needs to think this radically, I was watching some videos of 1960's F1 last night and to see the best drivers of that era balancing and drifting the cars at huge speeds, you can really appreciate the skill and control, something which is quite difficult in modern F1 especially for the casual observer.
The thing is that today we have the technology to make cars like these safe, of course there would need to be concessions to safety around the cockpit and you could allow downforce that doesn't leave a massive disruptive wake (ie. no wings), maybe some ground effect, but again limit it so the cars can be balanced by the drivers. This would allow hard close racing.
Regarding engine regs I'd keep it simple, here's 100 litres of fuel to do the race with, come up with whatever you like to make it last. The difficulty here would be to keep costs down so I would also cap the cost of customer units (the availability of which would be mandatory) at €100,000 per unit or a similarly low figure. And enforce a budget restriction for engine development of €1 million. Making F1 more affordable to all teams and innovative. The exact amounts in the budgets and how exactly you can track them I would leave open to negotiation. But you get the idea.
I would enforce steel brakes and manual gearchanges to make it more of a challenge to the drivers and increase the possibilities to overtake (or make a mistake) without doing so in an artificial way, DRS or KERS for example.
Slick tyres, but as sticky as possible while being able to take a hammering for 2 hours, pit stops and refueling would be optional but refueling should be done with a maximum fuel flow rate of 5 litres per second.
I know that this is all very out there and that F1 should be the pinnacle of what is possible, but we've always had rules to control it, I just think those rules have taken the sport in the wrong direction for a long time. Would anyone seriously object if F1 became a modern interpretation of cars like the one below again?
I'm aware that what I've written above is just a brain dump and probably full of holes but I challenge anyone who disagrees, rather than knocking my concept for F1, think of how you would enhance it, just imagine an innovative, exciting, cost effective sport, the fans would come back in their droves and so would the teams.
I just think we ignore the lessons of the past at our peril.
Firstly, I think your type of post is quite common on here and amongst a significant number of F1 fans in general. The thing is that today we have the technology to make cars like these safe, of course there would need to be concessions to safety around the cockpit and you could allow downforce that doesn't leave a massive disruptive wake (ie. no wings), maybe some ground effect, but again limit it so the cars can be balanced by the drivers. This would allow hard close racing.
Regarding engine regs I'd keep it simple, here's 100 litres of fuel to do the race with, come up with whatever you like to make it last. The difficulty here would be to keep costs down so I would also cap the cost of customer units (the availability of which would be mandatory) at €100,000 per unit or a similarly low figure. And enforce a budget restriction for engine development of €1 million. Making F1 more affordable to all teams and innovative. The exact amounts in the budgets and how exactly you can track them I would leave open to negotiation. But you get the idea.
I would enforce steel brakes and manual gearchanges to make it more of a challenge to the drivers and increase the possibilities to overtake (or make a mistake) without doing so in an artificial way, DRS or KERS for example.
Slick tyres, but as sticky as possible while being able to take a hammering for 2 hours, pit stops and refueling would be optional but refueling should be done with a maximum fuel flow rate of 5 litres per second.
I know that this is all very out there and that F1 should be the pinnacle of what is possible, but we've always had rules to control it, I just think those rules have taken the sport in the wrong direction for a long time. Would anyone seriously object if F1 became a modern interpretation of cars like the one below again?
I'm aware that what I've written above is just a brain dump and probably full of holes but I challenge anyone who disagrees, rather than knocking my concept for F1, think of how you would enhance it, just imagine an innovative, exciting, cost effective sport, the fans would come back in their droves and so would the teams.
I just think we ignore the lessons of the past at our peril.
I agree with your first paragraph, to the untrained eye modern F1's do just look as though they are being delicately driven around a circuit and that's all there is to it. In the 1960's, as you say, it was visibly challenging. But doesn't the footage of the early 1900's make you reconsider this? The cars back then looked visibly impossible to drive. Is that necessarily a good thing? Does it improve the spectacle?
Regarding the balance being determined by the drivers, I find this a fascinating opinion of yours. We recently had a lecture about how drivers (humans!) generally can't react faster than 5 Hz. Older F1's used to have a yaw rate of around 1 Hz whereas now the engineers threshold is that of the humans ability. I believe you're discussing the controllability of the cars. The slower the yaw rate in frequency, the easier to control the car is. Do you really want the cars to be easier to drive? Seems to counteract your opening statement.
As per the fuel usage, what is your thinking behind this? You state what you want, but what do you think it will really improve or add to the sport? It is unclear whether you think there should be a bigger, or smaller gap between engine developers.
Do you have any justification for deciding to revert back to steel brakes and manual gear shifting? Does this actually make driving a car more challenging? In my opinion, this is counter productive. Some of the best racing I've seen doesn't involve gear changes and actually, the braking is incredibly efficient.
A modern interpretation of your image would be a Caterham. If you want to watch boringly slow cars drive around with no grip, awful brakes which break down all the time and would be slower than a well balanced sport car, just go and watch the Caterham series. I think you just need to accept F1 for what it is. It is a brilliant sport and if having something slower is the recipe, why isn't GP2 the primary source of Motorsport entertainment ?
I just think F1 needs to change its race format. In my opinion, the race format of the GP2 and GP3, of a sprint race and an 'endurance' race is perfect. WEC is taking over from the endurance factor so F1 should go towards more of a sprint race...if anything, it should be 2 sprint races! That's all we need...
In answer to your second question I don't mind what term you want to use, controllability is fine, but I think you get the point I was trying to make, the driver's own finesse and car control should make more of a difference in the car than it being glued to the track by tonnes of downforce. Whereas there may be skill in driving the current cars to the limits of their design parameters it doesn't exactly make for great cut and thrust racing which I think is what the majority of F1 fans want. Design cars that can follow closely and be driven hard all race long and you'll get good racing.
My thinking behind the fuel usage is that we are unlikely to be able to get away from the need for F1 to need to be seen to be 'green' but rather than take a prescriptive approach to this and say everyone must use 1.6 litre V6 turbo hybrids why not let the great engineers of F1 loose on the problem and give them one parameter to minimise (fuel consumption) and see what they come up with. In the mid-90s we had V8s V10s and V12s racing against each other and the results were mixed enough to keep it interesting.
My justification for steel brakes and manual gearchanges are to again make driving the car more about driver skill than about engineering excellence, you still have an engineering challenge but you've also lengthened the braking zone leaving more of a scope for outbraking maneuvers and with manual gearchanges (assuming no electro-trickery to manage the changes) drivers will be able to maximise the package they have or equally can miss a gearchange, drop out of the ideal rev range, or over rev the engine. The point is you are putting more control and more potential mistakes into the drivers hands.
I fail to see how a modern interpretation of my ideal for F1 would be a Caterham. Where did I say the cars had to be boringly slow we can still have slick tyres, still have plenty of power, just a reduction in grip, longer braking zones brakes and a championship which allows drivers to show what they really can do.
Yes you will have cars which break down but the cars that don't will win the championship and F1 will again be an innovative and exciting sport which the majority seem to believe it no longer is. I don't believe we should accept F1 for what it is, why shouldn't we make it genuinely better rather than trying to introduce artificial racing, I would disagree with your assertion that F1 is brilliant, it certainly has the potential to be, and I don't believe my solution has to be slower it just needs to be a different way of doing the same thing, GP2 isn't the primary source of Motorsport entertainment because it is F1 lite, and has a lot of the same problems, that and F1 is historically seen as the pinnacle of motorsport so it would take a long time for another series to overtake it in terms of popularity, but I believe on its current trajectory F1 will die slowly and painfully, to stand back and do nothing will ensure this.
I don't claim my solution is perfect and maybe after further consideration, aspects of it could be thrown in the bin and other aspects of current F1 might need to be kept (I don't wish to throw out the good with the bad) but I just want F1 to consider the more radical solutions so it is once again the great sport I know it can be.
Well as Pirelli have said that they can't make tyres that will take the loads imposed by cars built to the 2017 proposals, seems we're back to the drawing board.
Perhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
Perhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
REALIST123 said:
Well as Pirelli have said that they can't make tyres that will take the loads imposed by cars built to the 2017 proposals, seems we're back to the drawing board.
Perhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
Ten years ago, the cars were 4-5 seconds per lap faster than 2015, so I'm calling sPerhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
te that it's impossible to make tyres that can withstand the loads proposed for 2017.It's just not possible for Pirelli to make tyres that can withstand the proposed loads proposed for 2017.
patmahe said:
My justification for steel brakes and manual gearchanges are to again make driving the car more about driver skill than about engineering excellence, you still have an engineering challenge but you've also lengthened the braking zone...
You won't, you'll just have heavier brakes.HarryFlatters said:
REALIST123 said:
Well as Pirelli have said that they can't make tyres that will take the loads imposed by cars built to the 2017 proposals, seems we're back to the drawing board.
Perhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
Ten years ago, the cars were 4-5 seconds per lap faster than 2015, so I'm calling sPerhaps some of the pundits on here might like to send there ideas to the FIA, they seem to lack any good ones of their own.........
te that it's impossible to make tyres that can withstand the loads proposed for 2017.It's just not possible for Pirelli to make tyres that can withstand the proposed loads proposed for 2017.
What interests me is that it's not too long ago Pirelli were saying that they were building tyres that were crap because that's what the FIA wanted, the implication being that they could build much better but weren't asked too.
Now they're being asked to but, apparently, can't.
REALIST123 said:
I wold doubt that even Pirelli couldn't make a suitable tyre.
What interests me is that it's not too long ago Pirelli were saying that they were building tyres that were crap because that's what the FIA wanted, the implication being that they could build much better but weren't asked too.
Now they're being asked to but, apparently, can't.
The irony is not lost on me What interests me is that it's not too long ago Pirelli were saying that they were building tyres that were crap because that's what the FIA wanted, the implication being that they could build much better but weren't asked too.
Now they're being asked to but, apparently, can't.
REALIST123 said:
I wold doubt that even Pirelli couldn't make a suitable tyre.
What interests me is that it's not too long ago Pirelli were saying that they were building tyres that were crap because that's what the FIA wanted, the implication being that they could build much better but weren't asked too.
Now they're being asked to but, apparently, can't.
I think the problem is that now they are being asked to do both. As in they are being asked to make a durable, suitable for high downforce tyre, that's crap.What interests me is that it's not too long ago Pirelli were saying that they were building tyres that were crap because that's what the FIA wanted, the implication being that they could build much better but weren't asked too.
Now they're being asked to but, apparently, can't.
It's like the traditional cheap, fast, reliable question. You can pick 2 of the 3. You can't have them all.
Munter said:
I think the problem is that now they are being asked to do both. As in they are being asked to make a durable, suitable for high downforce tyre, that's crap.
It's like the traditional cheap, fast, reliable question. You can pick 2 of the 3. You can't have them all.
I simply don't agree with that it's not rocket science to make a tyre that's got the capability of delivering sensible levels of grip and carcass stability and yet wear out relatively quickly, Pirelli just seem unable to make decent tires. And to be honest my experience of them making slick race tyres is there crap Dunlop Michelin Bridgestone firestone all seem to be able to manufacture a decent race tyres to spec Pirelli always seem to manage to underperform.It's like the traditional cheap, fast, reliable question. You can pick 2 of the 3. You can't have them all.
rscott said:
Seems more like Pirelli are saying that, with the current (lack of) testing agreed, they aren't satisfied they can build suitable tyres.
From what I've read, BE has alluded to that but Pirelli simply say they can't build a tyre to handle the proposed cars without making it harder and slower. It is all a bit vague but Pirelli again seem to be out of their depth. Maybe they are regretting renewing the contract?
PhillipM said:
patmahe said:
My justification for steel brakes and manual gearchanges are to again make driving the car more about driver skill than about engineering excellence, you still have an engineering challenge but you've also lengthened the braking zone...
You won't, you'll just have heavier brakes.REALIST123 said:
rscott said:
Seems more like Pirelli are saying that, with the current (lack of) testing agreed, they aren't satisfied they can build suitable tyres.
From what I've read, BE has alluded to that but Pirelli simply say they can't build a tyre to handle the proposed cars without making it harder and slower. ttier than both Bridgstone's and Michelin's?patmahe said:
Really, how so, I'm genuinely interested by the way not just being difficult, I'd have thought that heat buildup in the steel discs would have led to a deterioration of performance in race situation, whereas the current setup can sustain continued heavy braking without holding as much heat so brake performance degrades very little.
The heat disappation is handled by the brake ducts and cooling flow. They'll just use a bit more airflow to run at lower temperatures. Braking is limited by tyre grip, not the discs and pads.BarbaricAvatar said:
That's daft. It's F1, the designers will find a way around it to make the tyres work no matter how hard they are. 11 years ago we had tyres that lasted an entire race at similar speeds to what they're doing now. Are Pirelli just coming out and saying that their tyres are sttier than both Bridgstone's and Michelin's?
There was also pretty much unlimited testing and Bridgestone tyres were highly focussed towards the Ferrari when Michelin were also involved. I'm sure Pirelli actually said 'without more testing we can't make a tyre that will do what you want safely' and that got changed to 'Pirelli can't make a tyre that will allow the cars to go five seconds a lap faster. Pirelli are sttier than both Bridgstone's and Michelin's?t!' By someone with an axe to grind.Gassing Station | Formula 1 | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff