They could have a switch they have to trigger (like the pit lane entry one) that restricts their speed in the event of a safety car so they maintain gaps. The speed would be set before each race to be one that is optimal for the circuit.

Then the cars would still be spread out around the circuit, surely part of the point of the safety car is when the pack bunches up it allows the marshals to safely clear away any debris

He excelled in the teams he was in before he joined RB.

That’ll be the Toro Rosso he drove which at the time was a Red Bull with a different paint job.

This year will show his true colours.

Then the cars would still be spread out around the circuit, surely part of the point of the safety car is when the pack bunches up it allows the marshals to safely clear away any debris

Yeah good point. Good job I’m not in charge.

That race was won at the start – lead drive in merc has the call on strategy and pits. Hence why Hamilton defended like his life depended on it before the first stops. Both drove a great race, loved it.

If you really want rid then just get all the cars to stop when the ‘SC’ notification is activated. When its safe everyone starts going again. It would be rubbish.

aside for my Lewis bashing and trolling also in the news…. it seems the F1 guru’s are already looking at exhaust changes to bring a louder F1 back….

queue the inevitable loopholes and post-race-investigations into new illegal / legal exhausts and the arguments it was done to curb Mercedes pace (if indeed it does)

I quite liked the onboard “quieter” F1 footage, as DC said on our BBC commentary you can hear a lot more other “car” noises, like scrapping bottoms (!)….

I’ve got mates working in the support paddock and they are very happy by the quiet cars, they can actually talk to each other now!

A few years ago in club racing we had the quarter flag that was used to slow the whole field to 50mph. It just meant everyone caught up the leader who dictated the pace and then racing was resumed once the green flag was shown. I liked it, not sure why it was changed to a safety car…

Regarding running people wide and off the track, bring back grass and gravel traps, then it won’t seem fair game! I don’t see how it’s acceptable to just take your line when someone is next to you….

I agree. It’s made the sport more interesting as there is more to take in rather than just the monotonous ‘whine’ of the old V-8s. Maybe you notice it more when you are actually there, I’ve never been to an actual race do I guess I’ll never know!

Red Bull’s day in court today for the Ricciardo DQ. I hope the FIA win this one as RBs conduct seems to have been arrogant beyond belief.

Rumours on Twitter this morning that Stefano Domenicalli has left Ferrari

Badger GP @BadgerGP
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Stefano Domenicalli rumoured to have resigned at Ferrari. In other news, Ross Brawn has switched his phone off.

and

Adam Cooper @adamcooperF1
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Lots of buzz on Twitter about exit of Stefano Domenicali. Montezemolo’s face during the Bahrain GP was a big hint…

Ross Brawn has switched his phone off.

Meanwhile Martin Whitmarsh is watching his like a hawk 😉

Can’t see MW at Ferrari, and given the downward trajectory of Mclaren under his management, I don’t think they’d want him either!

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113446

Domenicali has gone. Shame in the sense that he seemed like a decent guy but like Whitmarsh, he clearly didn’t have enough success at the team to stay on.

Meanwhile in court, RB admit that their choice of fuel flow settings were advantageous to the tune of .4s per lap…

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113447

It’s going to be interesting to see which way this goes given that it could set quite a precedent if the ‘advice’ from the FIA during races is deemed not to hold any value at all.

I can’t see how Red Bull can possibly win the case. It would put every other race position since the start of the season in doubt as the other teams would claim to have been hampered by the approved equipment. They’d probably have to nullify it all and start from zero next weekend

Well we all knew this was coming!

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113446

Yeah, that too though again, RB are correct in that it is only ‘advice’ and not a regulatory thing technically but it could get rather silly.

Shame about Dominicali going, I always thought he was Ferraris voice of reason as opposed to do montezemelo’s ranting. I don’t know why he’s gone, Ferrari were pretty much in the mix most years, just the usual RB dominance that got in the way of Alonso winning 2 more titles I reckon.

Which team boss are the Beeb going to talk to now? Domenicali was always there for a chat with them – maybe he should’ve been busier running the team?

Trouble is it’s not directly attributable to him – he has nothing to do with the design or engineering of the car, but he is the one who hires and fires the people who are doing that and he should be the one who gets them to perform. If that’s not happening then he has to go and they need to hope some new blood will give a quick fix in terms of motivation and a longer term fix in terms of personnel.

There’s another interesting F1 court case brewing between RedBull & McLaren to do with the transfer of certain aero personnel from RB to Mac. Mac claim they have contracts with them, RB say the don’t and that they’ll be staying at RB. I think Pedromou is now on gardening leave from RB before he starts with McLaren but AIUI his #2 is also on the McLaren shopping list and is the one under dispute.

Red bull have lost their appeal, thank goodness. Nothing against red bull (except that smug git Horner. Oh and that smug git Vettel) but if they won it would have opened the floodgates for the teams to effectively police the regulations themselves – I couldn’t see that going wrong, oh no.

After Newey admitted that their own calculations were 0.4s per lap faster than the FIA sensor derived ones I think they were done for. I agree with Mercedes that there should be a suspended punishment as well in case of further breaches of the rules.

Sorry for cheating RB should be suspended from the grid for a few races.

Nah, they were very clear and open about what they were doing so I reckon that losing the points is the right penalty, same as most other breaches. Compare for example to BAR getting a two race ban for what I would actually consider cheating – eg the hidden fuel tank that allowed them to run underweight for short periods in the race.

IMO they were a bit stupid/arrogant to do it regardless of the fact that they were probably right about the flow sensor accuracy and this has now set the precedent to make clear that it’s not OK to just choose your own methods of measurement if you don’t agree with those provided by the governing body.

Active suspension being mooted for a comeback, under the guise of cost saving! I’d think it more relevant if it was brought back under the guise of road car development going this way, there are already some seriously sophisticated suspension systems out there, about time F1 reflected it…I’d like to see some circuits with lots of brkaing bumps in to make it trickier for the systems though!

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113465

Good piece on why Mattiacci was chosen as Domincalli’s replacement.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113454?source=mostpopular

Soo…. Pedro Piquet. One to watch? …..

Someone mentioned on here about heads rolling at Ferrari

new guy is a scape goat, stop gap until real boss is found, around 4 races from end of season, and post alonso exit announcement who has imho left ferrari already, brawn and vettel for 2015, huge budget , hence the scuppering of the cost cap, it all begins to fall into place eh?

Where is James Allen on 5 Live?

Vettel gets passed by a Caterham …. priceless 🙂

Not the most exciting Grand Prix

Such a contrast to the last one. That was pretty dull.

cant take anything away from Lewis this time, what a fantastic race he had.

Vettel showing his “child” side, as i said previously, i think he’s on his way to Ferrari to replace Alonso , and probably signed the contract before this year started to co-incide with Alonso’s end of contract.

Ricciardo really showing great form here again

no Ferrari cant afford to lose Nando. better off getting rid of Kimi

I thought Vettel’s radio message was quite amusing after he was told to let Ricciardo through:

“What tyres does he have?”
“Ricciardo is on the prime same as you”
“Tough Luck”

Then even more amusing when he got passed anyway after deciding he didn’t want to yield!

I’ve been well impressed with Ricciardo this season at Red Bull. Shame about all the sensor trouble at Melbourne as he raced well at the season opener.

Didn’t see it, but …

Vettel tried to hold up his team-mate against pit orders and then was well beaten by him, having in the meantime possibly stopped him from getting 3rd ?

He’d better have a place lined up somewhere if he’s going to piss about like that

Reading between the lines here it looks like Dan Fellows (Head Aerodynamicist at Red Bull) changed his mind about moving to McLaren after Ron Dennis came back, haha. I guess he had had enough of Ron Dennis already from when he worked at McLaren before!

so the dull-fest seems to have prompted the big wigs to start thinking about bringing back sparking undertrays, louder exhausts, etc etc to give the cars more excitement.

so…………just go back to the frickin early 90’s designs then!
have you seen the front wings and little winglets still on the fronts of the cars, lets simplfy that to cut costs, and the rear wings too and bodywork – then give them all bigger wider tyres, and hey presto much more grip based on mechanical!!!

So wet races are crap then? Because there’s little mechanical grip in those races…

so the dull-fest seems to have prompted the big wigs to start thinking about bringing back sparking undertrays, louder exhausts, etc etc to give the cars more excitement.

I’ve been watching some of the old races from the late 80s to the early 90s and despite the often poor broadcast quality footage, you get a great sensation of speed from the cars, which all sound fantastic with V12 and V10 engines hitting the heady heights of 12,000rpm.

The problem is that you simply can’t “un-invent” aerodynamics – the reason why the cars looked simpler and less fussy then is because the computing power used to design them as at a premium. Also, the cars then ran a lot of wing compared with today’s designs. As for the return of sparks, this was the result of the undertray of the car bottoming out on the track, which had potentially very dangerous implications for grip.

IHMO the return to turbo engines is a mistake – I feel robbed of spectacle and the fact that there are only three engine suppliers in the sport (one of which has a clear lead) hardly helps to reduce costs. I’d have a different opinion if the F1 engines had to share a block with a production unit perhaps, like the BMW unit of the 1980s.

As for the cars, I’d like to see a cleaner look with an emphasis on mechanical grip. Aesthetically, the Ferrari 640 and McLaren MP4/5 epitomise the sport for me, especially when I see the modern breed of F1 car with an Ann Summers nosecone.

Sparks can fairly easily be generated again – just mandate skid blocks with maximum wear same as they do at present with the planks.

Turbo engines and probably all the electric systems were an absolute necessity – Merc and Renault would likely have pulled out otherwise due to the complete irrelevance of previous F1 engines to what’s actually being made and sold now. Now F1 has Honda coming back (and they’ve stated that it’s because of the turbo/electric PUs) and some point to the huge sums spent on the engines (sorry, PUs)

As to mechanical grip, it’s very simplistic to looks for more of it. More grip = shorter braking distances which means less overtaking usually. And the point I made about wet races stands. I would suggest that they should look to make the wings much less effective again and open up development of venturis/ground effects as these are less affected by following another car.

Nosecones – yet another rule cockup – people said the cars would look crap/odd, nothing happened… Same as the double diffusers.