Bahrain Grand Prix 2010, Sakhir - Race 1/19
- Thread starter Duke
- Start date
Man of Honour
Let each driver pick one set from all four compounds available to use at each circuit
Nope, let everyone use whatever compounds are available - simple. No choosing, because everyone will choose the same - the safest option incase something goes wrong.
If you are going to stop refuelling, you need to allow freedom of choice when it comes to tyres. That way people can decide if they want to 1 stop, 2 stop, or maybe even try and coax one set of tyres to full race distance.
Forcing teams to use both available compounds just means everyone 1 stops and you get no action as we saw last week.
Agreed.
Personally, I would just bring back refuelling and be done with it. This adds an extra variable will allow a team to use an alternative strategy, which keeps the audience guessing on who is actually going to win the race.
Soldato
I'm trying to think of the last race where this was actually the case though
Maybe the FIA just need to ban strategy departments and strategy analysing computers...
In virtually every race where re-fuelling was allowed the audience was always kept guessing as to when the leading cars would come in for fuel. At this time, we would also get an idea if a car was artificially going fast (due to low fuel) or whether it was going fast on merit.
Another variable was that if you were lightly fuelled, you needed to get out there and put up very fast times. It was no good being 0.1s/lap faster than the guy behind if he was fuelled for an extra 10 laps.
All this variation has now gone, where everybody knows how much fuel all the other cars are carrying and everybody knows the optimal lap on which to pit. This encourages a procession.
Another variable was that if you were lightly fuelled, you needed to get out there and put up very fast times. It was no good being 0.1s/lap faster than the guy behind if he was fuelled for an extra 10 laps.
All this variation has now gone, where everybody knows how much fuel all the other cars are carrying and everybody knows the optimal lap on which to pit. This encourages a procession.
Soldato
Yeh we were guessing at the top 10 all last year 
If they brought back refueling they need to keep qualifying on fuels and not have the fuel amount decided the day before (what on earth was that ever brought in for, I can't think of a single benefit even in the warped FIA minds)
If they brought back refueling they need to keep qualifying on fuels and not have the fuel amount decided the day before (what on earth was that ever brought in for, I can't think of a single benefit even in the warped FIA minds)
Yeh we were guessing at the top 10 all last year
I was. Even looking at the published fuel loads, it wasn't always obvious who performed best.
Obviously in the first half of the season BrawnGP were light years ahead, so the result was always going to go their way, but from Silverstone onwards, the qualifying grid gave us no indication of who the final winner was going to be (unlike Bahrain 2010).
Soldato
You saying that even knowing the fuel loads you didn't know when the top 10 were going to pit?
It's that I was referring to in your previous post.
It's that I was referring to in your previous post.
Nope. Some cars would run leaner than others, which meant we never knew the exact lap they would pit.
Some teams had a policy of bringing in their cars before their fuel tanks ran almost dry. This was to avoid the situation of being caught up in a safety car situation, where you are not permitted to pit. Also, some teams would sometimes change their strategy, going from a 1 stopper to a 2 stopper, which means they would bring their cars in a few laps early.
Just in the paragraph above, I have mentioned quite a few variables, that have been removed since the loss of refuelling and it is these variables which add to the unpredictability of the final result - a good thing.
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I don't think I ever didn't know when a car was going to pit. They knew how much fuel each car had before the start of the race and the length of time fuel was going in.
I can count on one finger the number of times a fuel strategy surprised.
The races were crap before with refuelling and nothings changed. F1 needs a tyre war simple and keep the heavy cars and try to keep what overtaking there is on the track.
I can count on one finger the number of times a fuel strategy surprised.
The races were crap before with refuelling and nothings changed. F1 needs a tyre war simple and keep the heavy cars and try to keep what overtaking there is on the track.
Ultimately, its the dependence on aerodynamic downforce which is letting things down right now.
Not able to follow the car in front, closely, is a SERIOUS problem. Part of the excitement of F1 isnt necessarily the overtaking itself, but the potential to overtake. By having a car behind, follow the car in front, very very closely is what raises the excitement.
If you can, check out Nigel Mansell vs Senna, Monaco 1992.
http://www.spike.com/video/senna-vs-mansell/2812707
Mansell, much faster than Senna, but he can't get past Senna. Even though Mansell had virtually no chance of overtaking Senna, it was terrifically exciting, simply because Mansell was able to follow Senna into and out of corners, with both cars almost touching. What also made it exciting was the fact that it was "MANSELL". When he was around, anything was possible.
Not able to follow the car in front, closely, is a SERIOUS problem. Part of the excitement of F1 isnt necessarily the overtaking itself, but the potential to overtake. By having a car behind, follow the car in front, very very closely is what raises the excitement.
If you can, check out Nigel Mansell vs Senna, Monaco 1992.
http://www.spike.com/video/senna-vs-mansell/2812707
Mansell, much faster than Senna, but he can't get past Senna. Even though Mansell had virtually no chance of overtaking Senna, it was terrifically exciting, simply because Mansell was able to follow Senna into and out of corners, with both cars almost touching. What also made it exciting was the fact that it was "MANSELL". When he was around, anything was possible.
Exactly. All other ideas are just skirting around the problem.
Sort the aero out and we will see amazing racing again.
Maybe the problem is that the aero development they do is linked with other companies / sponsors?
Soldato
If anyone could have passed Senna on a track like Monaco, it would have been Mansell. Add to that the fact that Formula One was the pinnacle of racing technology back then (Christ, I can buy a ******* Datsun with more electronic trickery in it than a Formula One car these days....), and you start to see why the show was somewhat better. Interesting that you seem to have taken an about-face on this subject, since I'm pretty sure that you've argued against me before on the subject of how much more exciting the 'high-tech' era of F1 was.
Having thought about it, I'm not convinced that the tyre rules are the problem that F1 faces right now. Banning refuelling effectively has produced a stalemate - the racing still involves cookie-cutter strategies because no-one wants to take a risk on a potentially quicker multi-stop strategy when a standard one-stopper will get the job done with little or no risk. And why are the multi-stop strategies riskier now than they used to be?
Well, for one they didn't used to have such a draconion speed limit in the pitlane.
1994, the first year that refuelling came back, also saw the introduction of proper speed limits in the pitlane after Imola. And since then, to make a pitstop has generally taken 25-30 seconds. With no refuelling done now, that figure is still only down to 20-25. I'm pretty sure that teams used to be able to get a car onto pitlane, tyres changed, and back onto the track in less time than that. But when you know that a stop will cost you ~25 seconds, you aren't going to risk going for an odd-ball strategy in the hope that you can make the time up on track. Especially when you have the knowledge that if you blow an engine during this endeavour then that's it - you've lost one of your eight engines for the season. Who's going to push their car to the maximum with that weighing on their mind?
Even the days of 2004, where Brawn and Schumacher cooked up odd-ball strategies to win the French and British GPs (stopping four times and twice respectively, when virtually everyone else did three and three), are gone now. There are too many penalties for going quickly. Let them have more engines, more gearboxes, more tyres. Raise the pitlane speed limit another few notches (these are the best drivers in the world, I'm sure they can cope with going quicker than 62mph in the pitlane). Then turn 'em loose, and see if it improves things. I'd be willing to bet that it would.
Might as well just add sprinklers to every track.
Soldato
Don't think this has been posted, but the F1 race edit for Bahrain is up:
http://www.formula1.com/video/race_edits.html
not that it is that thrilling.
http://www.formula1.com/video/race_edits.html
not that it is that thrilling.
Soldato
Soldato