Formula 1: Refuelling to return in 2017

I don't think you'll ever see ground effect coming back. Although giving very fast cornering, any failure of the ground effect gives a sudden complete loss of downforce that would throw a car off a corner at very high speed. It can be too unpredictable and increases speed to above what's safe at most tracks.

There's a good article here.
 
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This only shows how they have no clue what to do with the cars etc any more, they have no direction and are lumbering along trying to think up ways to make it more exciting.

Heres a crazy idea, stop binding the engineers hands, let them make their own engines ( within reason) and aero on the cars and compounds on the tires.
And stop screwing over the smaller teams with money and spread the wealth more so we actually have more competitive racing over the entire field.
 
muon said:
There were not plenty of early releases last season. The only thing they do at a pitstop is change tyres. No one was released with tyres not properly changed.

The only thing that comes close is Kimi but that was a cross threading of the nut rather than everything not being done.

There is no danger in this age of a car being released with the fuel hose still attached. The crews are much better organised.
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Ok, not early releases but plenty of unsafe releases.

There is absolutely every chance of cars being released in an unsafe manner with refuelling introduced.
 
Overlag said:
Refuelling is bad...
Slowing cars 5-6 seconds a lap is bad...

I thought they wanted to improve f1?
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They want to make them 5 to 6 seconds faster, not slower.

Refueling is just about making the cars lighter, and therefore faster. They've seemingly forgot all about the ruined racing refueling brings.
 
The refuelling era of wait until the pitstops was as much down to how impossible it was to overtake than it was merely waiting.

If cars were able follow better or the tyres weren't changing or they keep DRS then it wouldn't be an issue. The advantage of fresh tyres would be negated by the heavy fuel load, but give the option of caning them for a lap at the risk of ruining the longevity of them.

It would open up different strategies intially, but that was the other main complaint with the refuelling - it was too much for casual fans to follow, much in the way the cheese tyres were at first.

I think what they're trying to do is to make teams push harder through stints, but it's not going to work - they'll keep doing whatever is the fastest way to go through stints, but until they instruct a manufacturer to make harder tyres that's never going to happen. And harder tyres and refuelling were what led to the (needed) drastic changes in 2009 and 2010.

Refuelling is an answer to one of the few questions nobody asked.
 
Again and again (and again!) I see the same suggestions being put forward every time a thread about F1 makes even a slight mention of how the racing used to be better. Sure, sometimes there were decent races and battles but I suggest people take off their rose tinted glasses and actually look at some of the races and results. There were far MORE races where the field was so strung out that there were often double digit seconds between drivers. In some races the fourth or fifth place driver was more than a minute behind and only six drivers were on the lead lap. In other races nearly half the field retired with mechanical issues. That doesn't happen now, or very rarely.

Also people bemoan the stringent regulations saying that it's tying the engineers hands. To some extent I agree but to 'release' the engineers would likely have only one outcome. Hugely inflated budgets where the rich teams can plough the most money into their car and we'll be back to where we were when McLaren lapped the whole field in 2004 at Melbourne (year off the top of my head) or when McLaren won every race except one. To some these are 'the glory days' but in all honesty they were **** for close racing the majority of the time and there were far more retirements than there are now.

In the 1998 British GP NINE cars finished, THREE cars were on the lead lap and second place was 22 seconds behind first!

In the 1991 British GP TWELVE cars retired in the race and Mansell won by FORTY TWO seconds. Only FOUR cars were on the lead lap. But the crowd went wild anyway because 'Our Nige' won.

People need to get a grip. Yes the racing isn't great at times but believe me, it's far, far better now than it used to be. People remember Mansell catching Senna at Monaco and get all excited, but then forget that in most of the races it really wasn't like that at all!

But why is the racing closer now? Regulations play a part, as does the recession from a few years ago which is still making some companies wary about doing huge sponsorship deals. There isn't as much (relative) money in F1 and, thanks to the regulations again, the engines makers are forced to work on reliability rather than simply making one engine for qualifying and one for the race and were able to swap engines as they wanted. Lack of testing keeps costs down as well (thanks regulations!) as some teams, especially Ferrari used to run a separate test team who would pound round Fiorano week in, week out testing new parts for days at a time.

Sure the regulations may be annoyingly restrictive (didn't stop Lotus making the twin tusk car last year or the McLaren of a couple of years ago having the funky side Pods!) but, IMO those very regulations have brought about closer racing and far more reliability. Yes, Mercedes have got their car right (or better anyway) compared to the others but they're not perfect, as Red Bull showed last year and Ferrari are keeping them honest this year.

Apologies for the Drunkenmaster-esque wall of text!
 
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Steampunk said:
I don't think you'll ever see ground effect coming back. Although giving very fast cornering, any failure of the ground effect gives a sudden complete loss of downforce that would throw a car off a corner at very high speed. It can be too unpredictable and increases speed to above what's safe at most tracks.

There's a good article here.
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They should bring back the fan car
 
MissChief said:
Hugely inflated budgets where the rich teams can plough the most money into their car and we'll be back to where we were when McLaren lapped the whole field in 1998 at Melbourne or when McLaren won every race except one. To some these are 'the glory days' but in all honesty they were **** for close racing the majority of the time and there were far more retirements than there are now.
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Fixed that for you. 2004 they had a terrible season IIRC.
 
MagicBoy said:
Fixed that for you. 2004 they had a terrible season IIRC.
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Yeah, 2002 and 2004 were the seasons Ferrari utterly destroyed everyone.

McLaren lost themselves in 2002 and 2003 with the misplaced efforts in getting the MP4-18 going, ultimately failing and continuing in running the MP4-17 for 2003. The MP4-19, an evolution of the 18, was still poor early in 2004 until a B-spec car appeared and got them back on the right track, leading to them having a championship challenging car in 2005, with only reliability stopping them from mounting a consistent challenge.
 
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Because the same driver keeps winning! Er, wait, erm, the same car keeps winning! Wait, I'll think of something! Erm, I don't like the noise! That's it!
 
this_is_gav said:
Yeah, 2002 and 2004 were the seasons Ferrari utterly destroyed everyone.

McLaren lost themselves in 2002 and 2003 with the misplaced efforts in getting the MP4-18 going, ultimately failing and continuing in running the MP4-17 for 2003. The MP4-19, an evolution of the 18, was still poor early in 2004 until a B-spec car appeared and got them back on the right track, leading to them having a championship challenging car in 2005, with only reliability stopping them from mounting a consistent challenge.
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What's remarkable when you go back and look at those seasons is the number of retirements across the field.

In 2002 Kimi finished up 6th in the drivers championship and he only finished 7 out of 17 races. SEVEN. That's absolutely mad. As you go down the championship table it's just a sea of 'Ret' with the odd results mixed in, the reliability was atrocious.
 
Formula 1 audience has changed, it will be very hard to get it back, if not impossible.

IMO they alienate fans by creating an aura of glamour and huge wealth. Other sports generate huge wealth, but they don't flaunt it as an attraction.
 
Slam62 said:
Because the F1 club isn't raking in enough cash.
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FOM revenue was up again this year. There making more money than they ever have.

Kenai said:
What's remarkable when you go back and look at those seasons is the number of retirements across the field.

In 2002 Kimi finished up 6th in the drivers championship and he only finished 7 out of 17 races. SEVEN. That's absolutely mad. As you go down the championship table it's just a sea of 'Ret' with the odd results mixed in, the reliability was atrocious.
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How may engines per weekend were they using back then too? At least 2 or 3 per car I expect!

Slam62 said:
Formula 1 audience has changed, it will be very hard to get it back, if not impossible.

IMO they alienate fans by creating an aura of glamour and huge wealth. Other sports generate huge wealth, but they don't flaunt it as an attraction.
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Really? Have you ever seen a football transfer headline that didn't lead with finances? F1 contracts are confidential, even the FOM distribution of funds needs to be squeezed out of them. F1 actually tries very hard to keep its finances secret.
 
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