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Well i wont be wasting many more sunday afternoons on F1. Seemed a bore fest to me. Not many overtakes and racing for the undercut is not exciting.
Shame really have been following the pre season a lot over the past month or so.
Agreed it's a bit worrying how difficult it is to overtake now. I guess it's the last of Bernie's shitty ideas that will start to be fixed now Brawn and co and in charge...
F1 has rarely been about overtaking. I wish they'd get rid of the DRS. Too artificial.
I'm not a big F1 watcher but maybe could be if there was more racing - I don't buy into the "best machine" aspect anywhere near as much as some doI wish they'd get rid of the DRS. Too artificial
I wish they'd do something different that'd affect the car in front somehow instead (speed, grip, whatever they fancy) rather than speed up the rear car. Overtaking on long straights - yawn
Well let's hope Albert Park has a particular set of attributes that make it the exception rather than the rule - the cars didn't particularly look "OMG wowz that's fast and difficult" and the lack of on track action will turn off the casual watcher.
I've always enjoyed a long tactical battle without needing tons of passing, but if races are generally one stop then that's pretty much over after the first stint.
Just hope we get a proper fight between merc and Ferrari, maybe with the rbs catching up when they sort out the motor.
As for fantasy f1... I'm even further down that list than I am on stravaaaaa
Not many overtakes and racing for the undercut
Overcut! It's about "overcut" in 2017. Apparently. 🙄
I don't understand why if more overtaking is wanted why they don't remove a lot of the aero / downforce stuff as that would make braking zones much longer thus passing more easy and also it would decrease the "can't follow in dirty air" stuff.
I don't understand why Hamilton could not get past using DRS tho
They did, and it worked, then some people had the bright idea of a faster car making a better 'show' and they allowed the aero back again
The really maddening thing is that LMP1 cars manage similar levels of downforce to F1, yet can follow each other closely through corners, so it's clearly far from impossible. They've also always had tyres the drivers can push all the time (but then they don't use Pirellis). My understanding is that the only reason they're slower is the higher minimum weight - well that and that the FIA would tweak the regs if they got too close. But it proves it is possible to have aero which allows driving closely behind another car and hence overtaking - it's just that F1 has gone down a route of generating the downforce from big wings and they're badly hurt by dirty air.
Most of the downforce in LMP cars is developed under the car; most of the underside of the car is a tunnel to generate a huge low pressure to suck it to the ground.
F1 cars still have the plank underneath that was bolted on in a knee jerk style after Senna's death to slow them down; big wings sprouting on the outside and a piece of wood on the underside is contradictory.
It's a throwback to last century that should be dumped.
Well let's hope Albert Park has a particular set of attributes that make it the exception rather than the rule
The teams themselves admit that Albert park is a complete anomaly within the rest of the circuits. So I doubt they are reading too much into the result. Weren't Ferrari pretty much nailed on for the win last year until they had a moment on the pit wall???. I expect normal service to resume at the next race with a Merc 1-2*
*And 2 Mclaren retirements 😉
To jump on the DRS bandwagon...... how about making it available all the time? If you've got the kahunas to try and open it early then you'll gain an advantage. If you have the kahunas but not the skillz the crashes should be great!
1 obviously spanner in the works is that it goes against "moveable aero devices" rules, but whatevs
Is anybody else having problems when transferring team members?
Didn't even notice this, I'm awesome 8)
retro83 - Member
And in STW fantasy F1...1st Racing Legend 523pts
2nd SvladCjelli 506pts
3rd Merchant Banker 502pts
and bringing up the rear (no pun intended) for the coveted picolax prize
55th MattA 0pts
55th stevehine 0pts
In my defence (and thanks for the mention) - I didn't register until after qualifying; so I couldn't actually pick a team/driver lineup
shermer75 - MemberThey did, and it worked, then some people had the bright idea of a faster car making a better 'show' and they allowed the aero back again
Excuse me if I cover old ground, I daren't look at the thread until now in case I caught the result - I have the BBC to think for ruining that for me.
As soon as they started I had flashbacks of the 90s F1 era, massively capable wide cars, huge cornering speed, tiny braking zones and oh wait "it's very hard to follow the car in front" - great. Okay it’s not that bad, there was passing towards the middle and back of the pack – but when Hamilton on brand new tyres in a Mercedes couldn’t pass Verstappen on worn tyres in a RedBull or even get close to him I was worried.
Okay, there’s a few disclaimers – Verstappen is pure racer, he’s a hard driver to pass, but Hamilton isn’t shy at making passes.
Albert Park, whilst not quiet Monaco is still a street circuit.
Hamilton said he was struggling for grip all weekend.
The Mercedes – or at least the 2016 and 2015 version struggled more than the other front running teams when following.
I think this rejuvenated need for speed is a mistake – I think some fans feel the need to know that their sport is the top motorsport and when there was talk of some sportscars being faster perhaps they got their knickers in a twist – for me though, speed itself is just a number, 99% of the audience is watching it on TV – you can’t see an extra 20mph down the straight – it’s just not visible, the only difference to the live watcher would be a case to see them a bit clearer mid-corner before they disappear again.
Its been know for years that complex wings make it more difficult for following cars and the way to allow them to follow each other more closely is more mechanical grip and downforce from ground effect rather than wings.
They need to tighten up the regs on aero. I don't understand why it seems so hard to nail them down. surely they can right the rules in such a way that the cars down sprout ridiculous aero addenda from every possible surface
Rule 101:
Single element for the front wing, double element for the rear, maximum diffuser size. No other aero devices or we throw your car in the sea.
I tend to agree, Rich. My ideal for the wings would be something like that on the FW14b.
Aside from dirty air, it is annoying that one minor bit of contact can break a tiny virtually unnoticeable winglet and suddenly lose a chunk of pace.
Hopefully Ross Brawn will get things sorted next season.
P-Jay - Member
it’s just not visible, the only difference to the live watcher would be a case to see them a bit clearer mid-corner before they disappear again.
Quite, the cars look slow on TV anyway thanks (so I'm told) to the lenses they use. The speed of the cars being too low is not, and has not ever been the issue with the popularity of the sport IMHO. And anyway, if you want cars that give the [i]impression [/i]of being fast, bring back V12s and V10s that actually sounded quicker than a Mr Middle Management's 320d.
If you want cars that look fast get them moving, sideways (a little)! Even the worst cars are generally so planted that they're barely moving around. Less grip, moar power and get them fighting the car a bit more
[quote=richmtb ]Rule 101:
Single element for the front wing, double element for the rear, maximum diffuser size. No other aero devices or we throw your car in the sea.
I'm not sure that will do it on its own, though it would help. They also need to specify maximum sizes for the wings and maybe other stuff to limit the amount they do. More importantly though they need to open up the regs on ground effect - which actually involves allowing more diffuser, I'm fairly sure that isn't significantly affected by following. Effectively as I inferred above LMP1 style regs and most of the downforce generated in the same way as those. I presume wings are seen as part of the visual profile of F1 though, so would have to be kept, though playing a far less important role.
I'm really not sure why it isn't possible to do that with F1 - I know safety always gets mentioned, but they seem to cope with generating downforce that way with LMP1 cars and also I think Indycars/Champcars generate a lot of theirs that way.
An interesting side effect would be that a damaged front wing might not mean an automatic immediate pit as the effect on lap speed would be much smaller.
Trouble is that f1 sits at the top of a whole series of other formulae, and the fia (and fans) want it to be the "pinnacle of motorsport" so you can't have lower formulate with more power, more complex aero, better anything than f1 has.
That makes it a whole lot harder to make a major change to the direction of F1, doubly so when those other series are all owned and promoted by different people so you have business entanglement in there too. Though it seems liberty may be sorting out gp2 and gp3 as proper feeders to f1, so perhaps there's some hope brawn can come up with a long term strategy that makes sense for the fans, the drivers, the team owners, the broadcasters and the race promoters. Good luck Ross!
I'm really not sure why it isn't possible to do that with F1 - I know safety always gets mentioned, but they seem to cope with generating downforce that way with LMP1 cars and also I think Indycars/Champcars generate a lot of theirs that way.
It isn't possible as the sport has been run by people scared of change and allowing the teams to take too much control.
F1 would actually be safter than closed cockpit cars as they are shaped less like a wing so not as likely to get airborne when the air lower is disturbed (see CLR flip at LeMans and 911 GT1 at Road America, Muslanne corner did a good feature at the time)
IMHO F1 is and always has been it's own worse enemy.
The top teams with massive budgets want and expect to win, or at least maintain their position as 'front row teams'.
This might sound odd, but the teams and most people within the F1 circle take it too seriously - DC is the epitome of this - he used to say "why do we expect over-taking in F1, we qualify to ensure the cars go off in the right order according to how fast they are", he probably still does.
To them it’s a pure sport, a science to discover fastest, most efficient way to get around a track – and that does sound good doesn’t it.
I once saw an interview with Adrian Newey, and Christian Horner – I don’t really like Horner, but he does at least speak his mind (although he’s a terrible fibber) the interviewer was asking all sorts of technical questions and Newey was answering them in his usual slightly awkward way and finally they asked something like “if you were allowed total freedom from regulations, how much faster could you go?” Newey thought about it for a while, gave a few caveats and a lap time which was about half what they were doing at the time and the interviewer was shocked – but Horner didn’t agree – his answer was that – they could do this, and do that – but the cornerstone of it was this – they’d build 2 cars, one that could do the lap time Newey mentioned – for qualifying, and then a massive one for the race – a huge billboard for advertising that could complete the full race distance without stopping and could vary it’s width to ensure it was always the full width of the track at all times so no one could pass it, neither of them would have a driver on board, they’re too inconsistent and often don’t listen to instruction.
That’s how F1 thinks, they’re total competitors, given total freedom they will try to design a car that cannot be beaten – all the competition would happen away from prying eyes back at the factories. Don’t assume that all this ‘hard to follow’ stuff is an accidental by product of bigger wings – they will be designing them not only for grip, but to purposely upset the car behind.
What they usually forget though is whilst it’s a Sport, it’s also entertainment – and people want to see people using daring and skill to win, not some pointless facts and figures about G forces and laptimes. If we’re going to go back to the age of little or no on-track passing and all the racing done between the stops – then the races are about an hour too long, you might as well make them a 20 lap race and give them tyres that only last 7-15 laps, the rest if filler. Otherwise audiences fall again, Sponsors pay less or walk away and the teams lose.
To paraphrase something I read somewhere, the fundamental problem is that there is a qualifying session to find the fastest car, then the cars with the fastest at the front and the slowest at the back. In order to pass a car, you have to go faster than them, so there is an obvious problem with letting the fast cars start at the front. The obvious way to fix this would be to award half the points for qualifying, start the cars in reverse order, then award the other half of the points for finishing order. That will never happen, so the alternative is to set up a situation where relative car speed varies over the course of a race. The easiest way to do this is to have tyres that degrade quickly if abused, so that smooth drivers are rewarded and pit stop strategy can overcome the disadvantage of a slower car. That was tried and resulted in lots of changes in race leads, but everyone complained that the drivers couldn't drive flat out. So now we're back to a situation where the fastest car starts at the front and the relative pace of the cars doesn't vary much during the race. If you wanted a format that guaranteed almost no overtaking, this is exactly what you'd do.
Edit. Oops, beaten to it by P-Jay.
[quote=thepurist ]Trouble is that f1 sits at the top of a whole series of other formulae, and the fia (and fans) want it to be the "pinnacle of motorsport" so you can't have lower formulate with more power, more complex aero, better anything than f1 has.
Well at the moment LMP1 does have better underfloor aero than F1!
[quote=hols2 ]The easiest way to do this is to have tyres that degrade quickly if abused, so that smooth drivers are rewarded and pit stop strategy can overcome the disadvantage of a slower car. That was tried and resulted in lots of changes in race leads, but everyone complained that the drivers couldn't drive flat out.
The trouble is they did it badly. They did it so the tyres fell off a cliff if driven at normal flat out speeds, no abuse required. High linear degradation would be fine, but they seem to have skipped over that and just gone for hard tyres which last.
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Rule 101:
Single element for the front wing, double element for the rear, maximum diffuser size. No other aero devices or we throw your car in the sea.
I don't think this would work at all races. Hungary, for instance, is landlocked.
Good to see someone else win in a fairly straight fight, and Ferrari back up at the sharp end. The cars look properly fast too.
But I started not bothering even with the highlights last year and I'm not yet convinced there's going to be any better racing this year to get me properly back into it. Hamilton's inability to make an impression on Verstappen was a bit worrying. I'll give it a few more races on non-street circuits though!
Alonso quitting speculation is growing - a fiver on him not making it past Spain would have been a good bet!? And a good article on Honda's woes here...
https://drivetribe.com/p/Tc5VZJtKSCqnH5eHGhjFQQ?iid=CdavBufbTzu-wUlwHGLU8w
...as for the first race, yep it was a bit dull. But that perception is probably heightened because it's the first race and we want it to be awesome after a long winter's wait.
And I hope Red Bull join the battle at the front and make it a three way fight. Another good article about them and their simple car here as well...
https://drivetribe.com/p/A_kzZYmKR76pw3zKkxZkDA?iid=FdMeAfZETgWTf3jpNhynXg
Woo hoo, I'm second! Rather surprising considering I haven't got Vettel and Kevin crashed then failed to finish.
[quote=the-muffin-man ]And I hope Red Bull join the battle at the front and make it a three way fight. Another good article about them and their simple car here as well...
> https://drivetribe.com/p/A_kzZYmKR76pw3zKkxZkDA?iid=FdMeAfZETgWTf3jpNhynXg
br />
Gosh it's hard work reading that. Is English his first language?
To paraphrase something I read somewhere, the fundamental problem is that there is a qualifying session to find the fastest car, then the cars with the fastest at the front and the slowest at the back. In order to pass a car, you have to go faster than them, so there is an obvious problem with letting the fast cars start at the front. The obvious way to fix this would be to award half the points for qualifying, start the cars in reverse order, then award the other half of the points for finishing order. That will never happen, so the alternative is to set up a situation where relative car speed varies over the course of a race. The easiest way to do this is to have tyres that degrade quickly if abused, so that smooth drivers are rewarded and pit stop strategy can overcome the disadvantage of a slower car. That was tried and resulted in lots of changes in race leads, but everyone complained that the drivers couldn't drive flat out. So now we're back to a situation where the fastest car starts at the front and the relative pace of the cars doesn't vary much during the race. If you wanted a format that guaranteed almost no overtaking, this is exactly what you'd do.
Nahhh.
The easiest way to bring back the spectacle would be to make them 1500hp, low downforce, high mechanical grip, lighter weight death machines.
The easiest way to bring back the spectacle would be to make them 1500hp, low downforce, high mechanical grip, lighter weight death machines.
Manual transmissions as well to increase the risk of a missed gear change.
My pet theory would be to ditch qualifying and give each driver points. Every driver has the same number of points - it'd be about a 100 for a season - I haven't done the maths. 1 point for pole, 2 points for 2nd on the grid and so on. At the beginning of the season each driver has to choose their grid placements for the whole season by spending all their points with the champion the previous year going first. You can only choose each position once.
pointy end drivers would have to make tactical decisions about where to take front spots and where to take a hit at the back. The champion gets to choose their perfect selection based on the car's assets and things like good overtaking circuits but their nearest rivals and use their selection to out manoeuvre them as they will be making their decisions based on knowing the champions choices. The slowest cars would get the crumbs but would at least not always be right at the back.
Is anybody else having problems when transferring team members?
Panic over- the 'home' screen shows the team from the previous round, the 'manage team' screen shows the new team. User error! 🙂
Fixing F1 you say? 20 teams, winning a race gets you 20 points, getting pole gets you 20 points but you start from the back of the grid. Do the double, pole and win, to get 10 bonus points.
All the problems would vanish overnight.
No they wouldn't because the teams are smart enough to drive a quick car slowly and avoid getting pole. The only way reverse grids are vaguely workable is if you have two shorter races and start the 2nd in reverse finishing order. Even then the teams might decide that by finishing 6th in one race they then optimise their chances of maximising the points across both, so wouldn't race for the win (see comments above about them being professional racers).
thepurist - Member
No they wouldn't because the teams are smart enough to drive a quick car slowly and avoid getting pole.
Why would they do that if it meant missing out on points?
Get pole = 20 points but estimated finishing position only gets you another 11.
Start lower down (further forward) and you get 15 points for quali and estimated 18 for the race.
Why go for pole if it's not worth it? Then you get a bunch of cars all trying to go just slow enough in quali, which is hardly gripping. There might be a bit more passing in the race but a lot of it will be artificial, which is what everyone dislikes about drs
I've posted a lot about how I've grown frustrated with the sport and how it's lost a lot of appeal. A lot of fans - myself included - want a return to spectacular engines, but the manufacturers have invested so much in R&D for hybrids, with relevant technology in road cars some ten years down the line so it's hard to make a case for screaming V12s.
Someone mentioned camera angles. There's a great point that cameras far from the track have to zoom in and the visual drama suffers. Maybe drone footage might be a good place to start, or with track cameras embedded in the kerbs?
The teams themselves have little incentive to be there. What started out almost thirty years ago as a way of weeding out the amateurs from Pre-Qualifying has ended up with fewer and fewer teams, with an ill-weighted allocation of prize money. If you were Audi or Toyota, you'd think twice about investing in the sport as a constructor because it's nigh on impossible to progress.
Toyota themselves pulled out after a fruitless decade and Honda's £100m a year investment has resulted in few points, a p****d off ex-champion and a car that farts it's way round the track in sixteenth place.
First race grid based on qualifying - for race only points
Second race grid (and subsequent) based on reverse championship position at end of last race - points for qualifying (but not many) and for race (loads).
a car that farts it's way round the track in sixteenth place.
Thirteenth place.
Depends on what point of the race.