F1 2021 – spoilers here

Sainz might have attacked

I’m struggling to see this. Reckon it’d be more likely he’d not want to interfere with a title fight in the last round

Oh, they’ll be fuming – what the hell do they do now? Masi’s dropped em right in it

It’s largely a problem of their own making though. The FIA have rounded up a whole bunch of roles since 2019 when  Whiting died, who’d been doing the role without a job description for decades, and thrown them all at Masi who’s probably got too much to do come race day, and hasn’t got nearly enough support.

One of the Sky pundits (Nico I think) said on Saturday after qualis that he wouldn’t want that role for all the money in the world.

I still don’t really understand why you have to bunch the cars under a safety car.

It dates back to cars that didn’t have electronic control, GPS etc. so there was no real other way to do it.
But nowadays, why not just have the virtual safety car? Gap between cars is maintained but they all slow down to whatever speed is deemed acceptable. They could even do it so the cars can go faster away from the accident to maintain tyre temps etc. but then slow right down past the incident.
Why is it deemed acceptable that a team who has built a lease for the whole race, loses it because someone else has a crash?

Max was nowhere near catching Lewis at the required rate.

Max was on much younger tyres and catching at almost the required rate to give him a chance on the last lap,

This is absolute rubbish. The gap had stabilised WHILST Hamilton passed those 4 cars. Max had 5 to get passed and was still near 12secs back. He was never in with a sniff, hence Horner’s comments with 10laps to go.

I still don’t really understand why you have to bunch the cars under a safety car.

I was thinking the same but the main point I guess is the give the marshals a chance to clear debris. Bunch them all together and once thats done you have at least a minute, minute and half of traffic free road to go out and sweep debris, move a telehandler across the track etc every lap of the bunch.

I guess you could ‘fan’ them out afterwards with gps positions but than might be a complete mission to achieve. Or released from the pitlane by car number at the gaps at the time of the safety car going out (so they circuit the track to keep tyres sort of warm then go into the pitlane with the safety car and get spat out with time gaps restored).

However that would be prioritising fair racing. This mob probably quite like stirring it all up to generate pay per view thrillz for teenage boys. As binners said a few pages back, if they could find a way of engineering in mario kart banana skins I’m sure they’d have done it by now.

Ah yeah. Good point about creating a gap for the Marshalls to work in.
Although they could do that and then just before the safety car comes in they spread all the cars back out again. It can’t be that hard with all the telemetry and data in those cars to reset the gaps at an appropriate time.

Let’s face facts: the primary function of the safety car is to create close racing and excitement. But that’s fine! Teams don’t object to it because they know about it, everyone has the same risk, everyone can factor it into their decision-making, and so on. Sure, it’s a lottery in that you sometimes benefit and sometimes lose out, but it’s fine because everyone accepts it, and audiences love it because it spices things up. And it’s not too gimmicky, like banana skins or other ideas like sprinkler systems or long laps (we’ll overlook DRS for the moment).

But again, it’s about building that framework for a spectacle before you go racing, not deciding on a whim that a new procedure applies today.

But again, it’s about building that framework for a spectacle before you go racing, not deciding on a whim that a new procedure applies today.

That. It really doesn’t matter what the rules are. What matters is that they are known in advance and applied consistently

@Daffy

Do you also factor in YOUR job into your climate impact?

Aye my 6mile commute 3 days a week is up there with someone jetting around the world every weekend and burning hundreds of litres of fuel and trashing umpteen sets of tyres.

If it bothered him that much hed stop doing it and go live off grid in the arse end of nowhere. Empty words from him. Our jobs are not even in same carbon footprint league.

Hold on I see a light left switch on otherside of building let me go shout at someone for killing a dolphin with their reckless attitude to the environment.

Is there any reason for actually having a safety car anyway?

For safety. Wasn’t it introduced to reduce the number of first-corner collisions on restarts?

If that was the case, you’d just do all starts as a rolling start using a pace car to get them formed up. It doesn’t make any sense to have red flag restarts as standing starts if standing starts are unsafe. Same goes for regular race starts.

If you want to actually make it safe for the marshals and rescue crews to work after a crash, then just red flag every major incident and put cars to the back of the grid if they want to work on the car.

Slightly too early to start the 2022 F1 thread but here’s to hoping that Merc produce a 2022 engine that’s 150bhp up on the Redbull inhouse 2022 engine with Honda now leaving the scene. Horner’s face with a RB struggling to get into the top 10 each race in 2022 would be a sweet turnaround! 😀

The safety car is definitely necessary at times but creates unfair situations, perhaps they should all form a grid for the restart with timed lights to match their race positions/timing gaps

If it bothered him that much hed stop doing it and go live off grid in the arse end of nowhere.

It’s great that your carbon footprint is apparently lower, but how many people are listening to your arguments and observing the changes you’re making? I’m guessing your global audience is roughly this thread, and I suspect no-one here is responding to your sarcasm and whataboutery by changing their own actions.

If that was the case, you’d just do all starts as a rolling start using a pace car to get them formed up. It doesn’t make any sense to have red flag restarts as standing starts if standing starts are unsafe. Same goes for regular race starts.

Everyone knows that, but the grid start is one of the differentiators between F1 and other top levels of motorsport, so it’ll never change

If it bothered him that much hed stop doing it and go live off grid in the arse end of nowhere. Empty words from him. Our jobs are not even in same carbon footprint league.

Appreciate that this is going a bit off-topic from the main thrust of the thread but there’s an article here (from a couple of years ago) about F1’s carbon footprint. Most of it is not the actual racing, it’s the carting thousands of tonnes of kit around the world:

https://theconversation.com/formula-1-says-its-going-carbon-neutral-but-fans-must-demand-greater-detail-on-how-127328

Undoubtedly there’s some green-washing in there too – glib words about tree-planting and offsets mixed in with some “well if it wasn’t for F1 tech [x, y and z] wouldn’t have been developed which are greener than what came before”.

However, top sportspeople have a global platform of millions so can use that position to drive change on all manner of issues.

How about to finish the SC, all into the pits and let out by lights timed to the pre-SC time gaps. If you need to change tyres for safety reasons, you can, but leave the pits last.

The safety car is definitely necessary at times but creates unfair situations, perhaps they should all form a grid for the restart with timed lights to match their race positions/timing gaps

Yeah I agree that something needs to change as the current regulations do make it really unfair.

Seems reasonable, although would actually negate the need for the SC, just make them all pit (essentially a red flag).

Would Masi have done the same thing if LH and MV’s positions were swapped when the SC was declared?

It looks like MV needed all the ‘Frankly Incomprehensible Assistance’ he could get.

“The whining to the RD definitely needs to stop, I can understand Toto’s dismay on the last lap, but the earlier one about the SC was not on.”

The thing is, this is how Masi operates. In Saudi we all heard him and Horner bartering for am outcome. “Here’s the deal” (or words to that effect). What are Merc to do? Sit there and say nothing as the whole world listens to RB and the RD negotiate the rules?

The race directors’ job is to direct a race, not a movie.

Yeah I’m with you there, if Horner’s doing it and Masi’s allowing it then Toto has to join in to try and maintain a balance.

For safety. Wasn’t it introduced to reduce the number of first-corner collisions on restarts?

Partly, it was also brought in to enable the race to continue and not overrun due to restarts back in the days when TV stations had to book a specific slot of satellite time so they could show the race live. The initial idea was one of safety but over the years its role has evolved. The initial idea was for a medical car to follow the first lap and it moved on from there, there’s a very good explanation of it all and the pitfalls they went through (Vauxhall Cavalier safety car one race, Lamborghini Countach the next!) in Prof. Sid Watkins’ book Triumph and Tragedy in Formula 1.

It’s interesting that none of the normal sites (Planet F1, Autosport etc) think that what happened was anything other than a farce. While all of them are very quick to point out that they think Verstappen’s a worthy winner of the season (I don’t think many think that he’s not) most also think that those decision will definitely echo on.

1. Don’t let cars un-lap themselves

2. Let only on a select few un-lap themselves

3. Change the rules about when the race starts again after the SC has come back in.

what a bin fire.

In the early days of the safety car, wasn’t the pit lane closed automatically when the safety car was deployed, until the RD deemed it was safe (or fair) to open it, and maybe something about returning to the original position in the pack (although I am less confident that was a thing).

By early days I eman probably some point in the 90’s or early 2000’s when it seemed to become a regular thing.

thegreatape
Free Member

Seems reasonable, although would actually negate the need for the SC, just make them all pit (essentially a red flag

Except you can’t just drive these cars into the pit lane, turn them off whilst the track is cleared, then fire them back up and hammer out of the pits when you get your countdown. Anything like this turns into a massive faff and 20+ min delay

I see the biggest hypocrite is whinging again that Merc unworthy sore losers and that if the protest is successful then DedCow will take their ball and not play…..

‘Helmet’ Marko calls Merc unworhty losers and threatens to quit F1 (again, for the millionth time….)

Ha! I was about to post the exact same. Marko in “mouths off with total lack of self awareness and threatens to have a flounce” shocker! You could set your watch by him, assuming you wanted your watch to behave like a dick.

I’d love him to do it just to see Max’s reaction… “I love you guys, let’s do this for 10-15 years!”—“**** that, Max, you’ll have to go to Formula E, I’m pulling the whole thing because I can’t stand people who over-react to something that they don’t like!”

It’s not even his team anyway. It would be a more credible threat if the guy who carries the left rear wheel to the box threatened to walk out.

Except you can’t just drive these cars into the pit lane, turn them off whilst the track is cleared, then fire them back up and hammer out of the pits when you get your countdown. Anything like this turns into a massive faff and 20+ min delay

Fair point

1. Don’t let cars un-lap themselves

2. Let only on a select few un-lap themselves

3. Change the rules about when the race starts again after the SC has come back in.

what a bin fire.

The thing is, had that SC been at any other point in the race, it’d largely have been OK.
They tried to rush it to finish so they could get one more lap in, pulled out half the cars but not all of them (as though the placings below 2nd and the midfield battles didn’t matter) and made all that up on the fly.

If they’d have had another 5 laps in hand, it’d (probably) have been OK. Equally if the SC had come out with 1 or 2 laps to go, they’d have had no choice but to finish under it.

For me, I think the only ‘fair’ way of treating the SC / pit stop rule is to either make cars that stop join the back of the tail, so there is some cost – and would restrict drivers to pitting under the SC for safety reasons – or it would be to freeze the positions as they are when the SC is deployed and allow all the drivers to reform in their original positions.

Ultimately, the rushed ending guaranteed Max the win, I’m not surprised Mercedes are kicking off..

Except you can’t just drive these cars into the pit lane, turn them off whilst the track is cleared, then fire them back up and hammer out of the pits when you get your countdown. Anything like this turns into a massive faff and 20+ min delay

It wouldn’t take 20 minutes to restart the cars if this was a normal part of races. Teams would be prepared to stop and restart in a hurry. The reason it won’t happen is because everyone is used to doing it the way it is now.

and made all that up on the fly.

I think that’s the nub of Mercedes’ complaint, isn’t it?

WEC have a “full course yellow” and the pit Lane is closed until the race director opens it. They use the safety car keeps frequently. It’s not prefect, but it’s better than F1

I too was about to post about Helmet bleating. There’s only one thing worse than a bad loser, and that’s a bad winner.

It would be good if the sites just stopped reporting anything he (Marko) says – it never seems to add anything to the discussion

Sainz might have attacked

I’m struggling to see this. Reckon it’d be more likely he’d not want to interfere with a title fight in the last round

I agree…but what if Sainz finishing above Max had meant Ferrari beating McLaren to 3rd place, and he was unable to because he had back markers but Max didn’t? I know, all hypothetical but you can’t have one rule for some back markers and another one for the rest!

How about to finish the SC, all into the pits and let out by lights timed to the pre-SC time gaps. If you need to change tyres for safety reasons, you can, but leave the pits last.

Pit lanes aren’t designed for lots of people doing a high speed start together – imagine if a car near the back of the lane is say 0.5 seconds ahead of one at the front – and it is released just as the rear car is passing. if you are doing “timed release” it would be far better / safer on the grid – but then cold tyres aren’t that safe either…

I’m sure 2022 telemetry could be used to restore pre-safety car positions. But then if you were gaining 0.5s per lap with a 4sec gap and 12 laps to go and the safety car comes out for 6 laps you are still unhappy.

There is potentially an argument that SC laps shouldn’t count (or perhaps count as 1/2 laps) – the TV schedules shouldn’t be too screwed up if it avoids stop/start, but then if you do 10 extra laps under safety car with tyres and fuel calculated for less you are penalised.

What is clearly unacceptable is to have inconsistent rules. But to have finished yesterdays race under the safety car whilst people were unlapping themselves would have been criticised as an anticlimax. I think anyone who reads this:

The race directors’ job is to direct a race, not a movie.

and doesn’t think – are you sure – there would be no race if it wasn’t a “spectacle”…

The FIA have rounded up a whole bunch of roles … …and thrown them all at Masi who’s probably got too much to do come race day, and hasn’t got nearly enough support.

I’m quite sure if Masi wants help he could just ask and have assistant race directors or clerks of the course or whatever separation he needs – its not like budget is the problem. If he doesn’t have that its because he or the FIA (or most likely both) prefer it to be more interesting/controversial than a very smoothly run race.

Pit lanes aren’t designed for lots of people doing a high speed start together

It doesn’t have to be high speed starts. When the SC finishes:

All cars drive into the pit lane in race order.(note, nobody actually pits)
Set up timed lights at the top of the pit lane. \
You aren’t allowed over the line until your light goes.
Pit lane speed limit still applies.

It doesn’t even need to be the PL, it could be the starting grid. Just a way of preserving the pre-SC time gaps.