British Grand Prix 2012, Silverstone - Race 9/20

A bit of an odd and somewhat personal observation here, but I've never liked watching the GP coverage at Silverstone.

There's something about the camera placement and angles that really feel odd and have never sat well with me over the years. Perhaps it's just the nature of the wide open, somewhat featureless circuit? I don't get it anywhere else, even at the really dull tracks.
 
singularity said:
It would only take a spreadsheet macro to calc strategy, I would think the driver would be much better at judging it, all the best drivers know what's going on around them.
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Well, big spending McLaren who pay a lot of money for their strategists and computers seem to disagree with you.

I have no idea what the real story is, but for whatever reason (and we have to assume that McLaren have thought this out well), McLaren feel that it is best that their strategists dictate the strategy during the race and not the drivers.
 
Let the drivers stick to driving, it's what they are paid to do. They may well know what is going on around them but, have no idea where a pit stop will bring them out in traffic, tyre temperatures, times others are doing on their stints. Anyone who suggests that it should be left down to the driver is a fool.
 
sunama said:
Well, big spending McLaren who pay a lot of money for their strategists and computers seem to disagree with you.

I have no idea what the real story is, but for whatever reason (and we have to assume that McLaren have thought this out well), McLaren feel that it is best that their strategists dictate the strategy during the race and not the drivers.
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problem is the driver should have a lot more chance of knowing exactly when the tyres are going than any strategy team who are just going off numbers etc

I suppose conversely the strategy team / pit wall will know other teams /cars times / performance in a lot more detail, but imo thats worthless if your tyres are never going to last the x amount of laps more that the strategy team want you to do (without losing much more time)

Of course it doesnt help that for instance the relative performance for a given car on one set of tyres changes from one race to the next in comparison to another team on the same tyres even in similar temps.

I can see the arguement that drivers have enough on their plate dealing with DRS /KERS , traffic situations apart from hitting the apex correctly etc etc etc, but I still think they are also the only ones who can possibly have enough of the picture to make the best judgement call at any one time.
 
Sparky-F1 said:
Let the drivers stick to driving, it's what they are paid to do. They may well know what is going on around them but, have no idea where a pit stop will bring them out in traffic, tyre temperatures, times others are doing on their stints. Anyone who suggests that it should be left down to the driver is a fool.
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And there you have it...from an insider who works for an F1 team.
 
Sparky-F1 said:
Let the drivers stick to driving, it's what they are paid to do. They may well know what is going on around them but, have no idea where a pit stop will bring them out in traffic, tyre temperatures, times others are doing on their stints. Anyone who suggests that it should be left down to the driver is a fool.
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Please don't infer I am a fool,

What did they do in the 70s 80s and 90s, wait for some bloke to finnish the hand calcs?

There's a lot more to being a great driver than driving fast.
Personally, I think there is way to much analysis going on these days.

Red Bull are a great team, who I greatly admire, please don't spoil my view of them with your smug, arrogant know it all comments.
 
Lunatic Dreyfus said:
A bit of an odd and somewhat personal observation here, but I've never liked watching the GP coverage at Silverstone.

There's something about the camera placement and angles that really feel odd and have never sat well with me over the years. Perhaps it's just the nature of the wide open, somewhat featureless circuit? I don't get it anywhere else, even at the really dull tracks.
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I really liked it, I thought the camera shots were the best of any track so far this year. I would agree that it is an incredibly featureless circuit though.
 
singularity said:
Please don't infer I am a fool,

What did they do in the 70s 80s and 90s, wait for some bloke to finnish the hand calcs?

There's a lot more to being a great driver than driving fast.
Personally, I think there is way to much analysis going on these days.

Red Bull are a great team, who I greatly admire, please don't spoil my view of them with your smug, arrogant know it all comments.
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If you are suggesting a driver know's best in this era of F1 then im afraid that is how you come across. Pitting a driver early because his tyres are being destroyed by following another car is a call only the strategy guys can make, leave it to the driver and he comes out behind more traffic and just repeats the process.

Not really a ideal way to look after your tyres and race strategy is it?
 
Sparky-F1 said:
Also the view of all the current F1 teams, maybe you know best.
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so why bother with a driver at all then? surely tyre wear could be optimised better by a computer driven car.

The driver just has to follow instructions which are ultimately given by a macro in a spreadsheet. (or at its most complex a fortran program, this I very much doubt)

The grand prix at the moment are losing value, because of tyres and DRS,

When the tyres go off, they lose too much grip, DRS makes it a doddle to pass.

The result of the grand prix is never in doubt once you realise which car can make best use of tyres, even the lottery qualifying at Silverstone couldn't change that.
 
I just thought it odd that Mclaren chose to give Lewis 8 laps on his softs ,when he had less fuel onboard, effectively forcing him into a particularly long final stint in order to cover Grosjean

He might of lost time to Grosjean with the soft stint, but he might of caught him up with fresher hard tyres in the final stages.

Clearly Mclaren had their reasons, but to me it just seemed.... odd?

In terms of driver input, if they told him to box, perhaps Hamilton could have questioned it - perhaps looking for an opportunity a few laps later if his tyres were OK
 
Sparky-F1 said:
If you are suggesting a driver know's best in this era of F1 then im afraid that is how you come across. Pitting a driver early because his tyres are being destroyed by following another car is a call only the strategy guys can make, leave it to the driver and he comes out behind more traffic and just repeats the process.

Not really a ideal way to look after your tyres and race strategy is it?
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so you are saying that a great driver is incapable of realising that he is following another car.

Of course the team can come up with the theoretical best strategy, but sport is about humans not computers. It is also about gut feeling and throwing the dice.

I'm sure McLaren with all their calculations think they have found the optimum solution to everything, but clearly they haven't.
 
No, read it again. The driver has no idea where he would come out on the circuit and would just end up stuck behind traffic again.
 
singularity said:
so you are saying that a great driver is incapable of realising that he is following another car.

Of course the team can come up with the theoretical best strategy, but sport is about humans not computers. It is also about gut feeling and throwing the dice.

I'm sure McLaren with all their calculations think they have found the optimum solution to everything, but clearly they haven't.
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Stop acting like a pedant. An arrogant one at that.

With different teams running different strategies last weekend were the driver to pit when he wanted they could well end up behind someone else who ran a different strategy and had made up a load of time on different tyres. If you are racing wheel to wheel with the guy in front, you don't know about the bloke 15,20 seconds back who decides to run a banzai last stint on soft tyres, or who is only one stopping. That's what the team strategists are for.
 
Tenzo said:
I just thought it odd that Mclaren chose to give Lewis 8 laps on his softs ,when he had less fuel onboard, effectively forcing him into a particularly long final stint in order to cover Grosjean

He might of lost time to Grosjean with the soft stint, but he might of caught him up with fresher hard tyres in the final stages.

Clearly Mclaren had their reasons, but to me it just seemed.... odd?

In terms of driver input, if they told him to box, perhaps Hamilton could have questioned it - perhaps looking for an opportunity a few laps later if his tyres were OK
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McLaren (both cars) suffered massive graining issues on the soft tyre in P3 after not many laps, so they ran the strategy that allowed them to use the softs for as little time as possible. If they were allowed they wouldn't have used the softs at all.

And Hamiltons view that it was a bad move had the benifit of hindsight. He was told the soft stint would be short as soon as he put them on.
 
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