Motorsport on Monday: 22/09/14
Radio rollbacks - how far should the communications cut go in motorsport?
Daniel, you must stop smiling. Got it?
Edged out for pole pole by an ugly, Platypus-style nose - 0.007 seconds - the German struggled to get his car to the grid come race day, eventually taking the start after a steering wheel change.
More problems during the race for Rosberg meaning only his gearshift paddles were working (also meaning no hybrid power or DRS) was eventually traced to a knackered wiring loom in the steering column, putting him out of the twilight Grand Prix on lap 14 and redressing the reliability balance that's been so far weighted towards Hamilton this year.
This means it's now game on for the title with five races left, including double points at the last round.
How much influence should they have?
But this weekend was interesting for another, potentially very important reason. It marked the introduction of an FIA directive clamping down on the use of pit-to-car radio to improve vehicle and driver performance - something that could impact a number of other FIA-governed race series around the world, from the World Endurance Championship to European F3.
As a trendsetter (take KERS and DRS, for example), the FIA's decision could filter down to other national championships as they look to make F1 copycat moves.
With immediate effect last week, all communications to the driver from his engineer with intent to make him or the car go faster was ruled out, which, where my two cents are concerned, is definitely a good thing. Refreshingly, it's been welcomed by drivers, too.
A quick recap: this includes contact about lines, riding kerbs, changing car setup for certain corners, details on sector times and corner speeds, gear selection, braking points and throttle application - absolutely and compared to other drivers - car stability, use of DRS or any electric motor energy and driving technique. So, in short, pretty much everything a driver is employed to do.
And there's a championship back on!
Driving by committee
The man has a point. Article 20.1 of the FIA's Sporting Regulations states that "The driver must drive the car alone and unaided." Up until now, that's been a delightfully vague statement that's been left open to interpretation and loophole finding by teams.
My view is F1 shouldn't be a process of driving by committee. The current cars are incredibly complex, but they shouldn't need an engineer to extract the speed - if they did they'd have a second seat for a co-driver. And then it'd be called rallying.
In Singapore Rosberg reckoned the team was telling him about 20 per cent of the stuff it would have done prior to the new rule, meaning it's a big challenge for the driver - but that's what spectators watch the sport for, isn't it?
Driving 'alone and unaided' always vague
Any driver in tier one motorsport should be able to feel the car, sense the tyres going off and develop a strategy to drive around any problems that might arise, more than likely grip related.
They should also choose when to deploy any battery energy, where they need to brake, how the diff should be set for individual corners, and the brake bias, and the brake migration, and work out how much time they're losing/gaining through a particular corner, and how to make it up or make even more on their opponent.
That's quite a lot of things to do in a lap, which is why the best drivers would rise to the top quicker, rather than those whose ultimate talent limit is masked by an army of data experts in the back of a garage - or even a warehouse somewhere on the M4 corridor.
And we've not even talked about adding a third pedal and a stick yet...
Why stop at simply removing radio?
It's a debate that's taken up a hefty chunk of PH server space in recent times: manual gearboxes vs automatic paddleshift transmissions. Whether it's on a 991 GT3 road car or a top echelon single-seater, this one's not going to go away.
Dealing with the above takes a lot of brain processing power - and that's without the physical aspect of driving a car either. So should F1 return to manual gearboxes?
It'd slow speeds and lap times down, and prove a technical challenge to get a hybrid powertrain to work with an H-pattern 'box. But that's what F1's about, devising clever solutions to complex problems.
But it's more about driving. A great driver can make a lousy car go quicker than it has any right to, but I'm not so sure the reverse is true. If the FIA is going to stop driving by committee in cutting down comms between car and pit, do it with conviction.
Cut down communication between ECUs and let the main computer processing data inside a car be the driver's brain. Some might say that's dangerous (I'm not sure I agree), but it'd certainly be interesting. It worked with banning traction control again.
Give them a clutch and a stick and put a pedal cam inside the foot well of each car like they used to in V8 Supercars and watch 'em dance. Involve fans in it like this and it'd be a success, I'm sure. What do you think?
This is the pinnacle of the sport. You don't have footballers playing with headsets on, and that is the better for it.
Instead, in football, you have a manager seething with rage, or frustration, shouting and gesticulating wildly, and that is that.
If the drivers need advice on anything, then they could come into the pits and ask. Ron Dennis, Niki Lauda etc could then shout instructions into the ear of the driver. That would be fun.
Or just ban the actual TV transmission of the air traffic control instructions if we insist on having them?
Also, ban the different compounds of tyres as this is just complicated for the sake of it.
F1 should be glamorous, not a lecture that feels as if it has started before I got there.
Sorry, but the world has moved on from those times. Even shopping trolleys have flappy paddles these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8By2AEsGAhU
Sorry, but the world has moved on from those times. Even shopping trolleys have flappy paddles these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8By2AEsGAhU
I remember well a long period of time when everyone was saying "What we need to do is stick the cars back onto grooved tyres, that will spice up the show and sort the men from the boys." Didn't turn out that way iirc.
The last thing that we need is to regress back to stick shifters. If you wanted that the time to act was 1991...
Sorry, but the world has moved on from those times. Even shopping trolleys have flappy paddles these days.
To my mind, insisting on F1 going that way would be a strange backwards step, especially for a sport that has consistently pushed car tech forwards, and mating an h-pattern manual to a hybrid powertrain would be answering a question that no-one is asking.
F1 should be glamorous, not a lecture that feels as if it has started before I got there.
F1 is not that difficult to understand in 2014; it's probably easier than ever. The commentators still explain things every week, and they run features on the technology during the race build up/post race. There are also things like teds notebook, which is free to watch on Sky F1's website. F1 cannot ever be as accessible as football, because it's always going to be more complicated than kicking a ball into a net. That's just the way it is. Football is so popular because any idiot understands it.
Linky.
I'm in agreement though that forcing an H-pattern gearbox is a nostalgic step too far. Might as well re-introduce cork helmets as well for all the relevance that would have. I do think however that telemetry and 'ship-to-shore' radio should be severely restricted. If that means some of the tech being rolled back then so be it.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be computerisation but at the moment there is effectively an invisible umbilicle between each racer and a whole load of invisible tech that is having a massive effect on the race that no-one on TV or in the grandstands can actually see.
So, how about a rule saying that it should be part of the car, so teams have to literally weigh up the performance compromise of adding the power of a truckful of supercomputer to the actual car....!
But F1 cars don't have ABS or traction control, or stability control, or movable aero. All things road cars have.
I think if you're going to allow automatic shifting, torque blending and all that exciting stuff, you might as well allow ABS/TCS/ESP and so on.
So I lean toward an exceptional man or woman showing their skills operating the machine.
The only difference I see is that we can now hear the pit to car communication.
But F1 cars don't have ABS or traction control, or stability control, or movable aero. All things road cars have.
I think if you're going to allow automatic shifting, torque blending and all that exciting stuff, you might as well allow ABS/TCS/ESP and so on.
So I lean toward an exceptional man or woman showing their skills operating the machine.
first thing most people do to go faster on track days is to turn off TC and pop the abs fuse to go faster. Surely the driver at the highest level of sport should know how hard to break or rescue a slide.
On the subject of the banned radio transmissions, I totally get it, but does it extend only to audio transmissions, or would a pit-side triggered flashing light on the wheel also be illegal, for example, to change to a different fuel strategy? The wheels some teams use could actually put up full text messages and video if the teams wanted to send that to the driver.
I'd personally like to see a reduction in vehicle complexity. Take away all the extra fuel settings, the ability to alter aero trim, gearbox settings, brake balance, etc, etc, (ok maybe leave them brake balance) force drivers and teams to set the car up BEFORE the race and then drive the car to achieve those benefits, need to reduce fuel consumption? Back off the loud pedal, simples. All too reliant on technology to do the driving for them IMO.
I always like to read MOM but feel the title suggests a round up of Motorsport not just an F1 rant.
I always like to read MOM but feel the title suggests a round up of Motorsport not just an F1 rant.
I always like to read MOM but feel the title suggests a round up of Motorsport not just an F1 rant.
Entertainment,where the best drivers are pitted against each other in the fastest cars.
Why not increase the entertainment value,by giving the driver more to do in the cockpit,i.e manual gearchange, resulting in more mistakes therefore more overtaking.
Similarly,carbon brakes have no relevance to everyday motoring. A change back to steel,results in longer braking distance and again more chance of overtaking.
Gassing Station | General Motorsport | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff