For those of us who can’t / don’t want to watch it, summary please? :)

So you only allow protour teams to race at protour events with no continental teams allowed unless they have discs? And then what do the continental teams do at non-protour teams? Do they have disc and non-disc bikes or is that at the next level or…?

:) To be fair, Schumi turned out to be well worth that money at Ferrari.

I think that Ferrari would have fitted in with his character and I reckon with a desire to create a legacy of some sort that would help him transition to politics in Brazil. Winning for Ferrari would been the icing on the cake.

For the record
161 grand prix starts
41 wins
65 pole positions

so that’s 25% wins and 40% poles

Overall, he wasn’t a country mile better than Prost. On his day though he probably was (eg Monaco)

As to the Ferrari thing, I remain unconvinced that it would have actually happened but I do believe he’d have given it serious consideration.

Tyres
Stems
Bars
Grips
Broken frames

I agree with some of that but I do think that they need to make sure that F1 remains a techncially challenging formula rather than just a spec car one.

Tyre blanket ban is an interesting one – it may mean that tyres become less temperature sensitive (with consequent loss of max grip when in operating window) but that should mean more cars being competitive rather than struggling to get enough heat in their tyres as happens quite regularly at the moment.

The various simplifications make sense too and I think that all the 2016 standards are sensible, maybe with the exception of the final drive system (or does that just mean the diff?)

Active suspension might be a positive but it would need very carefully spec’d rules to avoid the cars being overly stuck to the track or overly complex.

They’re certainly talking about it but practical issues are making it difficult – they’ll need to mandate disc use and then disc size and spacing so that neutral service can supply wheels (and they’re claiming to avoid crashes when people have different braking ability but I’m less convinced by this).

That’s going to be a bit of a jump given that there are teams who don’t want to swap over, particularly once you move outside of the protour to teams who actually have to pay for their equipment and don’t want to buy a load of new bikes/wheels.

Typically you go for the same size as your road bike which should mean approx 1cm shorter top tube. As I’m sure you know though, seattube size and top tube length aren’t directly linked so I’d use the 1cm shorter top tube as a rough guide.

Well, yes but I figured that people could add as many O’s as they saw fit :)

What do you call a grumpy cow?

Moody! :)

(with thanks to my son for that one)

Luddite! :)

Any frame design other than thin, straight round steel tubes.
Deep section rims.
Black components (not including cables, saddles, tyres or bar tape).
Slammed stems.
Stickers.
Cross levers.

With the exception of a slammed stem, that describes my bike :)

FWIW, I think classic steel frames look ugly, especially when built with lugs.

Well, if you will insist on building with lugs then of course you’ll be forced into silly designs…

Thing is, it’s not really a power thing. As everyone will say, you can easily enough lock road bikes’ wheels (definitely in the dry, usually in the wet if you give a moment to clear the water). It’s control.

Yes, you can but even then it’s still a bit faff. As I said, I’ll have one of these, please

Ditto. I like the clean look and less mess around the fork crown/seat stays.

Besides, while I tended to agree with this before I got a road bike with discs:

there are a few situations where discs are better on the road, but lots where there isn’t much benefit.

having actually experienced it, I disagree. Confidence in the wet and control over hard stops in the dry is much better IME. So that’s a lot more than a ‘few situations’. Unless you’re lucky to live somewhere dry or where you never have to brake hard :)

100!

I suppose it depends how good it needs to be at road or mtb.

A 29er hardtails will do the job as would a CX bike. The former better offroad, the latter on road.

If I was ever going to want to do ‘proper’ mtbing then I’d get the 29er and live with it being slower on the road as much as I love my CX bike, I wouldn’t want to be stuck with that as my only choice for a weekend’s mtbing with mates (on mtbs).

That is the simplest solution of course.

It does however mean faff getting things just right each time I swap it over.

An ergo stem would be ideal except that they’re rare as hell, silly expensive and IIRC quite flexy.

My wife thought she had sinus related headaches for years (she has dodgy sinuses) – treated it with sinus medication.

Turned out it was migranes and a sumatriptan prescription for when it happens has sorted it.

If your wife won’t go and see the doctor then as above, she should suffer in silence as that’s just silly.

I think that might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back given the number I’ve already got :)

scaredypants – thanks for the offer – looking into options but might take you up on that.

Funnily enough, I actually have one of those but it’s 25.4 size so only works on an mtb. Shame as if it was available OS, it’d certainly do the job.

Well it’s roughly the going rate but it does skew any calculations towards staying with the existing lender.

Wonga? :)

Trouble is that I’d need to take out a loan on a term to match the mortgage (eg 15 years remaining) otherwise the monthly payments would be silly but I’d then need to pay it back early (eg when the main mortgage is up for renewal) which seems to mean an early repayment fee on the loans I checked on.

The existing mortgage transfers over to the new house.

Thanks for that KG – I figured that was likely

I wouldn’t put a recon on it.

Actually, one other question. Can I take out the extra mortgage with another lender? (so I’d have the main mortgage with on lender, the extra amount with a different one) The comparison sites never seem to have an option for this so it’s hard to tell what kind of rates I’d be able to get, if at all.

I had an etrex H which did the breadcrumb thing (eg just a dotted trail, no map) and I found it worked well – I did various events/rides with it and the only issues I ever had was if a trail forked and both forks went in very similar directions to start but you quickly realise that you took the wrong one if you did.

I do have a mapping one now though as I like being able to see what’s around where I ride but it’s definitely not a necessity.

Yeah, both on 2 years fixed seems like the best option at present though I had been considering a longer tie in for the main mortgage which isn’t really an option this way unless I make the decision right now.

Yeah, I think I’m clear on the options and I’ve calculated all the total and monthly costs but I really want to check that I haven’t missed something that might be better.

Typical. Found the house we want about five months too early. Would have worked nicely if we’d been moving just after the current deal ended.

I still reckon that the lure of legitimately being on their phone/TV etc will outweigh that…

Thing is most of the configurations are well known so it’s likely they’d all end up with the same thing anyway. This way, they have PUs that are broadly similar to what road cars have. They did discuss V4s actually but it was deemed that that was just not F1 enough.

Trains don’t go from home to wherever you want to go. So long as it remains affordable (or arguably even if it doesn’t), people will always prefer personal transport – eg cars.

I imagine the drivers behind would be going berserk and pounding on their horns, despite the fact that the car is doing the right thing.

I reckon that people will be too busy watching TV/playing on their phone to notice what the car’s doing. It’ll be more like getting on a train when you go in a self driven car – eg you get in, the journey passes by, you get out.

Thing is the vast majority of people don’t watch F1 at tracks but on TV so IMO the sound is something that people really close to the sport (eg actually attend) worry about more than they probably need to as their perspective is different.

Found the article:

F1 2014: Why fuel flow is limited

With a set amount of fuel for a race, you have a pointless economy run before a wasteful dash to the flag, a set rate of flow promotes flat-out racing throughout, because hoarding fuel means extra weight sloshing in your tank. It would be totally unsatisfactory to have racing based on so many gallons for the race distance, so the only sensible alternative was to limit the maximum instantaneous power

If this instant fuel consumption was not managed, more power could be achieved simply by pumping more fuel into the cylinders, as was the case with the conventional turbo engines of the past and which is the exact opposite of what they wanted. But if the fuel flow was restricted, it would put the emphasis on producing performance from fuel-efficient turbochargers: something that could be directly transferred to production cars.

Personally I think they should relax the engine regs a little and just make it a fuel limited formula, that would see some innovation on performance vs consumption

I thought that but there was a good article somewhere explaining why that wouldn’t have made for good races.

And just found this too which explains that there would have been safety issues too
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113141

“If you have no fuel flow limit, the fastest thing is to use a huge boost at the beginning of the straight and then lift off.

“There will be huge and very dangerous differences of speed [between cars] on the same lap, with a driving style that is not really F1.

And of course, the limit makes it more relevant to non-racing cars too as it means efficiency is key.

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.

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