i think there is a “list” in the Agreement of which teams start 3 cars first to fill the grid, i think Ferrari are at the top as they get the “special” payout…

On the team numbers/ 3 car thing, aren’t Haas coming to F1 next year?

2016 for Redneck Haas F1

Sorry just checked, I think its 2016.

If it comes to 3 cars/team – I guess the F1 strategy group will decide and agree who does it.
Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Williams with Lotus as the current floating member (Force India will likely take that spot in 2015)

Er… just realised that I missed Merc out of my musings over who’d supply three cars 😳

I’ll be honest, I’m not dead against 3 car teams providing the 3rd car is for a new/young driver (no more than 2 seasons).

It could even bring more money in.

Say young ‘Carlos Fandango’ from Mexico is pitching to his sponsors for money to enter F1. He can either say…
a) I need £X million to drive for a back of the grid team and get little exposure.
b) I need £XX million for a 3rd car drive with Ferrari. Sponsors may be more prepared to open their wallets for this sort of association.

I can’t see them agreeing to them without some bitterness, unless they all get a 3rd car.
The setup knowledge gained from another car running on Friday and Saturday is considerable and the ability to race test future upgrades is almost priceless

Just wanted to agree that Claire Williams is great. Very switched on.

3 car teams is a terrible idea – I really enjoy seeing the back end of the grid do well every so often

However, the main reason why 3 car teams are bad is when the manufacturers leave again. Mercedes & Red Bull are not in it for the long run – they’ll both be gone in the next 5 years

Must admit, I quite fancy Claire Williams 🙂

I think the most serious proposal was eight 3 car teams.

They would be Ferrari, Mclaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams, Lotus, Force India and Sauber. So we would lose Caterham (who are all but dead anyway) Marussia and Toro Rosso. Although given the parlous state of Sauber its quite likely that we’d lose them instead of Toro Rosso

But if it goes this way what’s to stop 4 car teams once Lotus and Force India are skint?

Then Merc pull out because they finally stop winning, Red Bull pull out because the find a better vehicle for their brand.

We then end up with three 6 car teams Ferrari, Williams and Mclaren

Williams and Mclaren then get fed up with Ferrari’s political antics (which were bad enough when there were 10 teams to argue against them) and also leave

So F1 becomes 18 Ferraris

So Claire thinks closed cockpits may be the way to go…

A bit more info on that Louis Hamilton/McLaren rumour here

Closed cockpit would have done nothing to help Bianchi as his injury came from his brain rattling around inside his skull.

we would lose Caterham (who are all but dead anyway) Marussia and Toro Rosso.

I think Marussia are reasonably secure with the Russian oligarch cash and now extra money for actually getting a point.

Red Bull effectively run 4 cars now anyway; TR is the RB B-team so it wouldn’t make sense for them to run 6 cars from the same pot of cash. Even if they could run 4 children instead of one.

Closed cockpit would have done nothing to help Bianchi as his injury came from his brain rattling around inside his skull.

+1 – More driver protection while not inherently a bad thing is only a mitigation here – In Bianchi’s crash, the causes for his injury are aquaplaning off and hitting a truck

For the first, they should be looking at whether they should have still been racing (and IMO it wasn’t unreasonable though possibly light conditions weren’t good enough). For the latter, they need to consider whether trucks should be allowed on the circuit while cars are racing (particularly if it’s wet) and if so, what mitigations they can offer against cars hitting them – be that SC, crash protection on the trucks, etc.

But they need to also consider that motorsport is inherently dangerous given high speeds and it’s possible that they have to just accept that this was just a horribly unfortunate combination of circumstances that will always happen every now and again in the sport.

Do we know that Bianchi’s helmet didn’t hit the truck and that caused the injury? I think a closed cockpit may have helped here. If his helmet had been protected I can’t imagine that the car’s impact with the truck was as big as Kubica’s wall hit in Canada and his noggin was fine.

What they’ll enforce for future races will be that the recovery vehicles are capable of removing cars without going on the track side of the barriers – so more like cranes rather than loaders.

Do we know that Bianchi’s helmet didn’t hit the truck and that caused the injury?

Helmet was intact in the pictures. Doctors have stated that the injury is was caused by sudden deceleration of the brain [within the skull]. Similar to shaken baby deaths.

I can’t imagine that the car’s impact with the truck was as big as Kubica’s wall hit in Canada and his noggin was fine.

Kubica’s crash in Canada was a bit different. He hit the wall at an angle with the front of the car so a lot of the energy was dissipated by the front suspension/crash structure at the front of the car. He then bounced off down the track for a couple of hundred metres. Bianchi hit a the tractor which while not being a solid object like the wall at Canada was unfortunately just the right height for the front of the car to go under it, the car only really stopped once the roll hoop hit which is probably what did the damage as the deceleration will have been massive.

Helmet was intact in the pictures. Doctors have stated that the injury is was caused by sudden deceleration of the brain [within the skull]. Similar to shaken baby deaths.

I get that, but I’ve not seen a picture of the left side of the helmet. And I can’t imagine that the force of the car hitting the truck would have been as bad as hitting a concrete wall, the truck moved a fair bit on impact.

I would assume that the helmet hit the truck, that stopped his head suddenly and caused the brain injury, but the strength of a modern helmet stopped any fractures/obvious injuries.

However, I am not a doctor or a fizzysist.

Edit – @ northernmatt – good point on the snagging roll hoop, didn’t think about that.

If the FIA did decide that closed cockpits should be mandatory on F1 where does that leave all other open cockpit racing? Speeds of 125mph are easily reachable in most race series.

And would they ban motorbike racing all together!

What they’ll enforce for future races will be that the recovery vehicles are capable of removing cars without going on the track side of the barriers – so more like cranes rather than loaders.

It’s kind of strange they don’t do that already – maybe it just needed an incident like this to provide the impetus. Even at an old track without much space it seems there is plenty of room to take a big mobile crane in behind the barriers to lift Sutil’s car.

I can’t imagine that the force of the car hitting the truck would have been as bad as hitting a concrete wall

They don’t generally hit concrete walls head on.

Perez talks sense http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/29551563 – we discussed above that drivers won’t necessarily slow down that much when the SC comes out until they’re behind it, but surely with a SC and waved double yellows they would, as it’s not the same as waved double yellows without a SC when they are still racing. They should of course also get rid of the silly unlapping rule – does anybody have an explanation of what the supposed advantage of that is?

They don’t generally hit concrete walls head on.

Bianchi didn’t hit the truck head on either.

does anybody have an explanation of what the supposed advantage of that is?

I think it’s to make the restarts a bit more interesting as technically they aren’t allowed to overtake until the first safety car line which is somewhere between the last corner and the start/finish line and I think this uncludes lapped cars. Obviously if you have a Mercedes sat behind a lapped Caterham it’ll have a massive straight line speed advantage and will have to hang back whereas the cars behind can keep their foot in.

It’s all a moot point anyway as they are introducing standing starts after SC periods next year, which is just bloody stupid IMO.

It’s all a moot point anyway as they are introducing standing starts after SC periods next year, which is just bloody stupid IMO.

No that got sensibly dismissed.

The unlapping cars thing is annoying and stupid. One of the reasons for the safety car is that it keeps all the cars in the same place on the track. If you let the lapped cars through you’ve no longer go them all together in the one place

I suspect they’ll introduce something like a 75% delta time for any sector with double waved yellows.
Very easy to implement & police

Easy to enforce, not so easy for the drivers – don’t forget they are still racing, so won’t want to do 70% sector time if the chap just in front is doing 74.9%

The drivers can easily see if they’re on target for the delta or not, if they choose to push the envelope, they’re risking a penalty.
Pretty much the same as attacking the pit lane in and out, push it too far and you’ll be coming back in.
They are driving to a delta now when catching the safety car

If the FIA did decide that closed cockpits should be mandatory on F1 where does that leave all other open cockpit racing? Speeds of 125mph are easily reachable in most race series.

And would they ban motorbike racing all together!

A change like this in F1 is not going to affect motorbike racing.

For other car based open cockpit racing – yes there is a risk. Plenty more flip overs in slower car racing and possibly less safe cars as smaller budgets but what gets developed for F1 does trickle down through improved understanding and analysis. Maybe they will get closed cockpits eventually, maybe not as at the end of the day F1 is much faster and longer races than any other open cockpit series.

With regards to the roll-hoop snagging: that is what I thought when I watched the video the other day. The car seems to not only snag but be pushed down and slam into the ground and seems to stop very quickly. It looked to me as though his head missed it, just.

And would they ban motorbike racing all together!

The FIA aren’t the sactioning body of international motorcycle racing, that’s the job of the FIM

So have his team released his telemetry yet? It’d be interesting to see what he was doing before under double-yellows and if he really had lifted right off as required.

So have his team released his telemetry yet?

According to this he was doing 132mph when he went off..

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/amateur-video-shows-green-flag-waving-at-time-of-bianchi-crash/

Ok and looking at this? (JB was doing 213km/h in the wet possibly trying to clawback time?)

He was going quickly to track and catch up to the rear/make capital on the safety car?

ALL drivers know you can’t overtake under SC but MANY drivers know (and do) make capital to either capitalise on their position to the safety car (or pit).

This’d only stop when all cars have automatic limiters.

Is that fair to say?

He was going quickly to track and catch up to the rear/make capital on the safety car?

No, the safety car wasn’t out

It’s all a moot point anyway as they are introducing standing starts after SC periods next year, which is just bloody stupid IMO.

@northern – I didn’t know this. I can see why they would do it to make the racing more exciting (artificially) but it’s going to be complicated to keep tyres warm etc.

but it’s going to be complicated to keep tyres warm etc.

Tyre warmers may also be banned from next season too. So no different to what will then be a normal start.

Tyre warmers may also be banned from next season too.

That’s in doubt too and likely to be deferred until at least 2016 or until and if lower profile tyres come in.
At the Pirelli tyre tests in the heat of Bahrain they were unable to get the 2015 tyre up to temp without the use of warmers.
Without the temp, the pressures were too low to push hard to try and get heat into them – catch 22