Has F1 failed in its purpose?

Has F1 failed in its purpose?

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Kawasicki

13,041 posts

234 months

Thursday 24th March 2016
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REALIST123 said:
Kawasicki said:
REALIST123 said:
Kawasicki said:
Evangelion said:
In my opinion, the purpose of F1 is to entertain me. In this it has been failing for years.

Downforce is at the root of all F1's problems AFAIC. When it goes, my interest will return.
Yes.

We mustn't mention that though.

Ok?
Easy to say, even if it's not really true. Too much downforce is an issue and arguably F1 has that but other formulas have similar issues with less downforce and there's hardly a series out there that doesn't rely on downforce to some extent.

So how are you going to get rid of downforce then?
I would treat downforce like a minimum weight rule.

Wind tunnel. If your car generates downforce, you can't race. Easy.
Oh I see. You want to go back to the fifties, maybe even the forties? I don't think so.
Why is there a minimum weight rule?

Is motogp stuck in the forties or fifties?

Imagine someone invented a technology for racing cars that increases cornering speed, but stops close racing. It wouldn't even be considered. Yet downforce is ok? Why?

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 24th March 2016
quotequote all
Kawasicki said:
REALIST123 said:
Kawasicki said:
REALIST123 said:
Kawasicki said:
Evangelion said:
In my opinion, the purpose of F1 is to entertain me. In this it has been failing for years.

Downforce is at the root of all F1's problems AFAIC. When it goes, my interest will return.
Yes.

We mustn't mention that though.

Ok?
Easy to say, even if it's not really true. Too much downforce is an issue and arguably F1 has that but other formulas have similar issues with less downforce and there's hardly a series out there that doesn't rely on downforce to some extent.

So how are you going to get rid of downforce then?
I would treat downforce like a minimum weight rule.

Wind tunnel. If your car generates downforce, you can't race. Easy.
Oh I see. You want to go back to the fifties, maybe even the forties? I don't think so.
Why is there a minimum weight rule?

Is motogp stuck in the forties or fifties?

Imagine someone invented a technology for racing cars that increases cornering speed, but stops close racing. It wouldn't even be considered. Yet downforce is ok? Why?
There's a minimum weight rule for safety reasons. If there wasn't then the teams would build dangerously light cars. In recent years there have been increases because of the introduction of KERS and because the minimum weight was changed to include the driver.

No, MotoGP moves with the times. It's just that downforce isn't that useful in making a motorcycle go round corners quickly. It could be used to aid braking and accelerating but even then the gains would be outweighed by the cost and difficulty in getting it to work. I'm sure you realise that the physics involved in the two disciplines is massively different?

It isn't downforce per se that stops close racing, though it will make it harder to follow another car very closely. It's the almost total dependence on downforce driven by the sports insistence on crappy tyres for the past decade or more that's doing the damage. Plus all the other meddling that goes on by the rule makers who have set the conditions that make downforce, or more accurately aerodynamics, the be all and end all for the chassis designers.

By all means limit the downforce a bit and hopefully give them decently made and sized tyres, but get rid of it all? No way.




Kawasicki

13,041 posts

234 months

Thursday 24th March 2016
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REALIST123 said:
There's a minimum weight rule for safety reasons. If there wasn't then the teams would build dangerously light cars. In recent years there have been increases because of the introduction of KERS and because the minimum weight was changed to include the driver.

No, MotoGP moves with the times. It's just that downforce isn't that useful in making a motorcycle go round corners quickly. It could be used to aid braking and accelerating but even then the gains would be outweighed by the cost and difficulty in getting it to work. I'm sure you realise that the physics involved in the two disciplines is massively different?

It isn't downforce per se that stops close racing, though it will make it harder to follow another car very closely. It's the almost total dependence on downforce driven by the sports insistence on crappy tyres for the past decade or more that's doing the damage. Plus all the other meddling that goes on by the rule makers who have set the conditions that make downforce, or more accurately aerodynamics, the be all and end all for the chassis designers.

By all means limit the downforce a bit and hopefully give them decently made and sized tyres, but get rid of it all? No way.
If minimum weight was for safety reasons, then ballast would be banned. Ballast doesn't add safety.

Motogp is an interesting example, do you think it would be better if they could get aero downforce to work on motogp bikes, even if it meant that the racing wasn't as close?

Why not get rid of all downforce? Saying it is a step backwards isn't true. The racing would be more entertaining.



coppice

8,562 posts

143 months

Friday 25th March 2016
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Dr Z said:
1) I think it will be nice to go to an F3 or GP2 meet, separate from a F1 weekend. Easy enough to do, I guess. Done.

2) Define fast. And define 'hard to drive at the limit'. I don't know if you realise, they are both related (if I get where you're coming from). A very hard car to drive at the limit will also be a very slow car. Then you get people complaining that their grandma can drive faster or that F1 isn't a pinnacle of motorsport anymore, as the lower categories are faster. Of course, a hard car to drive at the limit would be good to demonstrate driver skill at the limit. But a car that is easier to drive at the limit will be naturally faster. Teams will always look to make their car do the latter, and not the former. Loudness is subjective, and I prefer musicality to brutality in the loudness scale. So, agree to disagree.

3) OK, no overtaking via strategy--how you achieve it is elaborated in the fourth/fifth points, so let's go there:

4) Right, you want tyres that last a whole race. I assume you'd also require these hypothetical tyres to take all manner of abuse without giving up the ghost, allowing the drivers to push to the car's max potential. By giving teams tyres like this, you invariably diminish driver influence on the race result. Let me explain. Suppose there are two front running teams, say Ferrari and Mercedes whose cars are 0.2s/lap apart in ultimate performance, with Mercedes faster than Ferrari. At the start of the race both Ferrari and Mercedes are pushing to their limit and by 10 laps we will have a Mercedes 1-2 with a gap of 2 seconds to a Ferrari 3-4. The only fight you are likely to have is between team mates, and you are much less likely to see that. In this hypothetical race you will have a nicely ordered procession according to the performance of the cars.

Driver influence has less of an effect on car performance after a certain threshold. You certainly see that in the current formula at the front. All top drivers can drive to within a tenth of each other. If you make the cars harder to drive on the limit, you also make them slower, but increase the effect of driver influence. But teams will always try to minimise driver influence to get a nicely managed 1-2 for the constructor's championship.

5) In total agreement there, but for different reasons which I have outlined in previous posts in this thread.

6&7) I guess these two points are related. Would you welcome manufacturers to the sport, and if you do, you have a massive issue of policing their budgets. If the big guns are banned from the sport, you would still get whoever can spend the most, end up being at the front. This imbalance is impossible to correct. I appreciate that the top spenders don't necessarily win, but asking teams like McLaren or Williams to stick to an arbitrary budget that panders to the lowest common denominator will be very difficult to do, and they'll simply leave or find ways around it. This includes our beloved Ferrari, btw.

8) Agree.
Thanks for your comments, which are helpful and informed. It wouldn't be easy to achieve but the outcomes are probably not at issue.

Re difficulty of driving - neither you (Probably )nor I (certainly ) could drive even a DFV engined F1 car as quickly as an amateur racer , they couldn't drive as quickly as a back of the grid F1 driver (or a decent F3 driver) and they couldn't drive to within the tenths that really count of a Senna or a Rindt. So that's my sort of my analogue take on 'difficult' .

Objective 8, as you acknowledge, is the key.The sooner this shower are deposed the better - for not only have they destroyed much of what was great about Grand Prix racing(not least rebranding it as Effone) they have wrecked most other forms of single seater racing in the process. So in the UK , which used to have 60 plus entries for F3 and FF1600 etc , as well as things like F2, F5000 and F3000 over the years ,we have no real single seater championship (except , ISTR, two series both called F4. You couldn't make it up)

Dr Z

Original Poster:

3,396 posts

170 months

Saturday 26th March 2016
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TL;DR version: Formula 1 is complex. It is difficult to increase the effect of driver performance to have a real effect on the race when car performance is often the deciding factor.

coppice said:
Re difficulty of driving - neither you (Probably )nor I (certainly ) could drive even a DFV engined F1 car as quickly as an amateur racer , they couldn't drive as quickly as a back of the grid F1 driver (or a decent F3 driver) and they couldn't drive to within the tenths that really count of a Senna or a Rindt. So that's my sort of my analogue take on 'difficult' .
Oh...I see that we are expanding the sample of humans who find an F1 car difficult from, what I thought were F1 drivers to include drivers from joe public to amateur racers to the top F1 drivers. smile

Suppose that you do an experiment where you get myself, some amateur racers and a bunch of F1 drivers ranging from the top to back of the grid, to do a few hot laps around a 90 sec/lap circuit in the same car/same conditions. You're likely to get data like this:



These top level athletes are so sensitive to miniscule performance differences between cars that a car that is hard to drive for an amateur may not be very hard at all for an F1 driver. A car that is hard to drive for an F1 driver will be very very hard to drive for an amateur and impossible to drive for someone like me, indeed. But I think I get your sentiment. It has been expressed by Webber, Button and Alonso in recent times when they talk about the sheer physical effort and mental recalibration required to pilot an F1 car from the 3.0L V10 era that they are all so fond of. I have also read where they talk about how big of a jump it was, to go from a lower category to F1 back then, which is not the case now. The performance jump is still there but rookies coming through in recent times have said that the difference is more in terms of going from a relatively simple to complex operation procedures of the cars (eg. going from working with 2 engineers to 50!).

Whilst I think the cars can be complex to operate (it’s the pinnacle of motorsport after all), there needs to be a reduction in the number of procedures and sequences the driver has to input/remember during the race, so they can devote more of their mental capacity to concentrate on driving/racing. We also need to get back to the speeds achieved during that 3.0L V10 era, but keep it so that there is more power than grip available (NB: I didn’t say reduce the downforce, but simply more power than grip). From where we stand now, this can be achieved and indeed original plans to change the regulations for 2017 might have actually done this, if it weren’t for the constant political wrangling between all parties concerned especially between Pirelli and some constructors. And this brings us to the idea of tyres that can last a whole race.

I have only been seriously following the sport from around Brazilian GP 2009 on, but I have noticed a trend in getting the drivers to be more involved in operating and driving the car more autonomously, and in reducing driver aids. I think the rationale behind this move is this:

If you see my hypothetical graph above, we’re talking about 0.1-0.7s difference from the top F1 driver to the back of the grid, ‘pay driver’ in pure driving performance alone (assuming all other aspects are kept constant). It’s a small difference, but still quite appreciable. But this is not all, in this lovely sport of Formula 1. We throw another larger variable into the equation, namely the cars themselves. The performance difference between a top car and the back of the grid car can be anything from 1 second to 4-5 seconds. This can allow the natural variability inherent in driver performance to overcome car performance deficit, but only to a certain extent.

Take last season, where the Mercedes W06 was consistently faster than the Ferrari SF15-T in the range of 0.2s-0.9s in the races. Because, Hamilton, Rosberg, Vettel and Raikkonen are all top drivers, the inherent variability within these four drivers, likely in the region of 0-0.2s will be unable to overcome the performance deficit of the Ferrari in comparison to Mercedes. Rosberg and Hamilton or indeed the team will have to underperform significantly and the Ferrari drivers have to extract the maximum potential in the SF15-T for Ferrari to beat one or both W06s. And we are assuming everything else is equal--we haven’t got to the tyres yet! So teams will try to minimise or control the effect of variables that can have an effect on car performance. The more control that teams have on car performance, the less effect the driver can have on it. You have basically hit the ceiling.

If we do give all of them tyres that last a whole race and doesn’t lose grip, you’ll have a Mercedes 1-2 with a Ferrari 3-4 all year long because you are cancelling the effect of a variable that can magnify driver performance differences, and you are therefore preventing drivers from overcoming car performance differences. But the governing body have a trick up their sleeve: if we can control tyre performance, we can control car performance.

This is what Pirelli were mandated to do, I think. By introducing variability in tyre compounds and forcing the drivers to use at least two compounds per race, they hoped to magnify driver performance and also car performance during different phases of the race. We have multiple tyre compounds that have their own characteristic in how durable they are and how fast they can go. What if a driver in a lesser car is able to deploy more of the performance potential available in a particular tyre or in a particular track condition? Or if the designers/engineers were able to design their car so that their car is kind to a faster tyre: they could potentially go faster for longer. And what if a driver is able to exploit this car characteristic better in a lesser car than another in a faster car? We have just given the smaller teams a fighting chance. It went horribly wrong for a couple of seasons, with no real predictability (Maldonado winning comes to mind!) but I think they might be on the right track now.

However, the problem of dirty air/hot exhaust air causing degradation still remains, preventing drivers from following closely, in addition to the turbulence causing significant reduction in downforce produced by the following car. Interestingly, during the last race I saw Verstappen following Sainz Jnr very closely for many many laps, then spun, smoked his tyres and still was delivering big lap times to catch up to Sainz once more, and Magnussen pretty much did the whole race on one set of tyres, so may be these tyres are getting better? I don’t know, but then again I also saw Rosberg dared not come within 1 second of Raikkonen in the early part of the race, presumably to not destroy his tyres and therefore not be able to do the stint lengths desired to make tyre strategy work. I also note, Verstappen was on Medium and Rosberg was on Super Softs...maybe this durability differs for different tyre compounds? It’s a mystery to me at the moment.

But, if you fuel correct lap times for a current car in clear air in the 2nd/3rd stints they are still not doing the maximum they can because the tyre degrades faster the harder they push, so in order to eke out a certain stint length they have to drive below the maximum performance of the car. If you allow drivers to push to the maximum potential of their cars, you also invariably magnify the effect of car performance and therefore let it be the deciding factor on the race result. This is what we’re trying to avoid, because fans do not like to see an ordered procession according to car performance. Looking up last year’s drivers championship standings will be a stark reminder of what can happen if car performance can be a deciding factor.

With regards to turbulence, I was reading a paper (see below) that suggested that the flow coming off the rear wing is fairly laminar but it is the interaction between the flow coming off the rear diffuser and rear wing is what that causes turbulence. What if we get rid of the diffuser? We lose downforce and perhaps reduce this problem of turbulence, but I think teams may be resistant to it. The rear diffuser size has been reduced massively from back in 2009 to now, but I think it has been set to increase for the 2017 regulations, IIRC. The paper also suggests that all those 2007/2008 winglets also can cause turbulence.

I’m no aerodynamicist or engineer, but what if we get rid of the rear diffuser? And get the exhaust pointing like a periscope way above tyre height? Would it improve ability to follow closely? Any aerodynamicist or engineer would like to enlighten?


Investigation of turbulence created by Formula One cars with the aid of Numerical Fluid Dynamics and optimization of overtaking potential [PDF file]

coppice

8,562 posts

143 months

Saturday 26th March 2016
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I think I would have to leave it to the engineers to decide the 'how', but the 'what' is relatively easy for me to define - I want spectacular speed and noise, on track overtaking, increased emphasis on analogue driver skill and a commensurate reduction in stuff that neither interests nor excites me(I can be excited about the mechanical beauty of a 900bhp V12 but I remain unmoved by the gratuitous excess of buttonry on a steering wheel),fewer races on Tilke dromes, bigger grids and increased affordability .

There also needs to be a major change in attitude by the sport- it's a fking entertainment and not the Large Hadron Collider. Cars being covered in sheets , obsessive levels of secrecy(when I read that Rainer Schlegelmilch , who has taken more GP pictures than anybody else, hasn't been allowed in a garage for years I don't know if I should laugh or cry )and a massively inflated sense of the sport's importance at the expense of any self awareness ,. I could bloody weep. Seems too long a time since I stood in a pit garage watching the gearbox being changed in Berger's Ferrari.

A parting point-

-'you can't un-invent technology ' is the hollow argument against reducing complexity and cost . You can't un-invent it,true, but you can ban it. Which is why F1 cars don't have enclosed bodywork (Mercedes tried this in the 50s), automatic transmission or antilock brakes.


Blackpuddin

16,409 posts

204 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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You do know the reason why he was driving that car that way?

Blackpuddin

16,409 posts

204 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Don't specially care Eric, it was just meant to be an explanation of why F1 has gone wrong in one simple image. I feel the sport has been tinkered with to a ridiculous extent and that it's time to wipe the slate clean and start again from a 'do what the hell you want' baseline.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Well you should care, because the reason explains why F1 isn't as exciting as it may once have been - and it also explains why it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to recreate a scene like that.

Blackpuddin

16,409 posts

204 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Oh well, as I say, it's meant to be a figurative image.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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And it is very illustrative.

The issue is "knowledge" and resources.

Back in 1980 or so, even Ferrari didn't have the knowledge base even the smallest F1 (or lower formula) team has today. Automotive engineers and race engineers have learned a huge amount in 35 years. They also didn't have the sheer number of clever people in the team nor the massive computer assistance available today.
Often the cars of those days were the work of one man. Now they are the end product of thousands of man and computer hours worked on by a team of perhaps over 100.

Today's cars more or less perform as expected by those who design them. Back then, it was often found that a car behaved very differently in the real world to what they had hoped when designing it.

Blackpuddin

16,409 posts

204 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Sure, and we can't uninvent the wheel. That being the case I'm all for inventing new wheels, whatever they may be and however much they may cost. Then after a couple of seasons we can take a look at what's been created and have a shakedown if needs be. But let's not stifle engineering creativity.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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And that is precisely the problem.

In order to make cars look and sound as exciting as (say) a 1980 Ferrari, the only way to do this would be to absolutely stifle what the designers of today or tomorrow could do. We know too much these days. You would have to stop them doing their best. You would have to make them do their worst - which most just wouldn't do.

Blackpuddin

16,409 posts

204 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Don't agree. With a clean sheet we can return to multi-cylindered engines, less restrictive exhausts, active suspensions of varying degrees of sophistication, all sorts of stuff that's more about materials engineering than software engineering.

//j17

4,471 posts

222 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Blackpuddin said:
Don't agree. With a clean sheet we can return to multi-cylindered engines, less restrictive exhausts, active suspensions of varying degrees of sophistication, all sorts of stuff that's more about materials engineering than software engineering.
...and a grid of 6 to 8 cars as only only the manufactureres would be able to afford the levels of investment required - and not all of them would consider it money well spent.

Oh, and terrible racing because with so many design options you've a lot of chances to make the wrong choices. Hell even with the tight rulebook from the last 10 years only 1 team made the correct guess on double-defusers and the rest never really caught-up. Same with blown defusers. Same with V6 hybrid engines. You can go further back and see the same pattern, Williams who went from top of the pack to middle when the active suspension they were masters of was banned.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Blackpuddin said:
Don't agree. With a clean sheet we can return to multi-cylindered engines, less restrictive exhausts, active suspensions of varying degrees of sophistication, all sorts of stuff that's more about materials engineering than software engineering.
I wasn't only talking about software.

Up until the mid 1980s, racing car designers were designing cars that were beyond their actual knowledge as to how those cars would really behave.

It's the opposite now. The cars are designed well within the boundaries of car dynamics. The engineers are very rarely caught out or surprised any more.

We will never get an ill handling, totally unpredictable piece of dog poo like the 1980 Ferrari ever again. So the cars will always be rather boring.

markcoznottz

7,155 posts

223 months

Friday 15th April 2016
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Tootles the Taxi said:
I don't know if I'm qualified to comment, only been following F1 since the days of Murray Walker doing a commentary of sorts over an insert into Grandstand about the previous week's race, but here goes.

F1 should be a massive pantomime of noise, colour, speed and danger. A bit like being invited out for a few "quiet drinks" by Freddie Mercury during his coke 'n' dwarfs phase. The audience (and by this I mean both TV and at the track) should be astounded by the way the drivers handle the cars, not the other way round. There should be a minimum amount of rules & regs. There should be no limit on engine size or fuel type, the only limitation being a maximum and minimum weight (including driver & fuel). The car should fit inside a box of set dimensions. The only downforce allowed should be generated by aerodynamic devices placed outside the wheelbase. These days I'm struggling to see the adverts on the cars because of all the ugly excrescences on the cars' bodies.

The drivers should be allowed to decide when they want to deploy DRS (or its equivalent) so that they can pass when they want to, not when the computer says they can. TV and F1 want to build the drivers up into heroes, and I don't decry their fitness and discipline, but Jesus, they're so boring "for sure". I expect the drivers to live in the country where the team is based and pay the relevant taxes in that country - until they retire, at which point they can scuttle off to Monaco as tax exiles. Perhaps this might "encourage" some of the longer in the tooth drivers to move over and let some new talent in - Yes Mr Button I'm looking at you, and don't try to avoid my baleful stare either Mr Alonso. Just think Fernando, you could have been filming a badly-dubbed TV advert last Sunday instead of soiling your Nomex underwear from an inverted position 3 feet above some gravel.

A manual clutch and gearbox should be mandatory. If these really are the best drivers in the world, I expect them to change gear for themselves. This would reduce the complexity of the drivetrain and reduce costs.

Testing should be unlimited, BUT all data obtained in testing is made available to all other teams, this includes aero and drivetrain data. That way the likes of McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes can test as much as they like, but won't be able to gain an unfair advantage over the smaller teams just because they have all the dosh. If they don't want to give away all their secrets, then don't test. It's a self-limiting rule.

Tyres should last the WHOLE race. I'm not really excited by Hamilton/Vettel/Rosberg winning a race because of the computer geekery of spotty Sid at Enstone having written a better strategy program than his similarly complexionally-challenged counterpart at Woking. In the same way, the fact that Dave at Mercedes is better at changing a tyre in less than 2 seconds than Luigi from the Ferrari garage doesn't blow my skirt up.

I think what I'm saying is that if F1 is about entertainment, it lost the plot long ago, when it became impossible to get close enough to the car in front to overtake (remembering of course that the car in front was unlikely to be a Toyota). When a pit stop became a way to win a race rather than a reason for losing it and especially when I heard the words "Fernando is quicker than you".

I rest my case gentlemen.
Modern racing drivers can't drive 'stick'

EnglishTony

2,552 posts

98 months

Saturday 16th April 2016
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Derek Smith said:
F1 hasn't got a purpose as such. It has no responsibility to be entertaining. It need not bother with helping out the motor industry. Football makes no sense, nor does golf. Why should F1, out of all sports, have a purpose? You might as well ask what the point of bird watching is.
In an ideal world, true.

However F1 exists to enrich Bernie and only he can tell us if it's doing so in a satisfactory manner & thus fulfilling it's purpose.

Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Tuesday 19th April 2016
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Wild and crazy thought from today's news.

Martin Sorrell to replace Bernie?

Big brain...
Proven global CEO...
Gets advertising and brand...
Confident...

Oh, and might work well with a certain Ferrari boss...