Motorsport Off Topic Thread

KiNgPiN83 said:
That graph is amazing.. Where do these people come up with this stuff and why?!
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Jesus, firstly it's based on a completely bogus rating system, secondly you have to presume it accurately measures the g-forces... we have no idea if it does, third, someone taking the corner slower but taking a much tighter curve will have a higher lateral g-force rating than someone the same speed but taking a less tight line through the same corner which effectively means it's also measuring style of driver.

Again as dalin80 said if you're approaching corners slowly it's easier to pick a nice line through them. He's also one of the only cars to be in free air all afternoon. Plenty of faster cars have to leave a little wiggle room in corners in case the guy in front locks up, thus going slower than they might actually be capable of.

There are an immense number of factors that can effect someone's cornering speed, or g-forces experienced that using a simple rating system is both completely ridiculous and typifies the stupidity with which stats are used to attempt to induce facts that aren't there.

Football has a major problem with moving from the sensible usage of stats to the drastic overuse and interpretation of fairly meaningless stats to the point most peoples interpretation is gibberish.

Even suggesting that better cornering speed is better is nonsense, because this is a measure of the highest lateral g-force load, nothing more or less. Mechanical grip vs aero vs engine power vs driving style.

Look who is actually top, Kimi with a broken front wing in clear air was top till his race was over. Who was top after that, the high downforce Merc's who had the fastest cornering speed all last year basically everywhere and likely did here... nope... Massa. Another low downforce car, yet he was stuck behind the Ferrari despite supposed higher cornering speed throughout AND better straight line speed... does that add up. That the cornering rating means higher cornering speed and Massa for 30 laps of the race was the fastest in corners and down the straights but couldn't get past a slower car?

Or does the actual pecking order there(Kimi, Massa, then the Mercs) actually indicate that the cornering rating has no idea what it's talking about? Two of the lower downforce(with Kimi lacking downforce after front wing damage) had the highest rating... is that surprising? It means in a given corner Hamilton and Massa might be going 200kph... but with higher downforce Massa's car was slipping out further with a higher lateral g-force load.

The rudimentary rating clearly doesn't give us a good idea of cornering speed at all, otherwise quite simply it would be Mercs, then RBR, then Ferraris, with Williams way down the pack.
 
Skeeter said:
I went last year, but stayed in Barcelona and had a different grandstand (L).

On Friday you can get access to almost every grandstand, so use that day to walk the circuit and try out all the views, as you are limited to just your allocated seat on Saturday and Sunday.

I think its a great circuit for spectators. The track is always below you so you get decent views, and the paths and roads around are decent.

Other than that, take a hat and/or lots of sun cream, and enjoy!
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Hmm, all good. Just need to sort out driving there now. MY 350Z isn't big enough, so I need to hire a car big enough for 4x people with camping gear (Estate or similar), but hiring a car seems to be a minefield, especially if you want to take it abroad...
 
smr said:
"One particularly interesting aspect of this graph is how highly McLaren's Jenson Button (black line) scores throughout the race, especially relative to the Mercedes drivers. Despite struggling for outright pace, the Briton ended the race with the fourth-highest Cornering Rating, behind only Massa, Hamilton and Rosberg. Indeed, on Lap 23 he almost matches Hamilton, and is ahead of Rosberg. At this point, his lap time was 1m 35.643s - more than two seconds slower than Rosberg, who managed a 1m 32.948s.

Of course, there are several reasons Button could rank so highly in this aspect, the first being driving style. Button is known to favour carrying speed into the corners, lending itself to a higher score in this category. But even so, the cornering data from Australia suggests the MP4-30, while uncompetitive overall, is not actually surrendering too much speed in the corners relative to other drivers - which hints at it having an inherently good level of downforce. "

- Formula1.com

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom...ratings-explained--australia---cornering.html
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Just to go back to this, from formula1.com explanation of the ratings we have this gem

What are Race Performance Ratings?

Five key performance parameters are measured: Aggression, Braking, Cornering, Steering and Throttle. Using raw telemetry data, a driver is given a score on a scale of 1-10 for each category, based on how he compares to his competitors. For example, the driver making the most steering inputs at a specific point in the race will be given a score of 10 for the Steering category; the driver making the fewest will be given a 1. The other drivers will be somewhere in between.

The individual scores for each of the five categories - which update every five seconds throughout the race - are then averaged to give an overall Race Performance Rating.
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The bit in bold there, ruddy painful to read. That website has gone to utter crap over summer and the ratings are painfully stupid. If someone turns the wheel more they are better at steering... of course. Smooth drivers like Button then I presume being deemed awful by comparison to others. Or you know if you have to overtake someone thus turn the wheel while going around, you are a worse driver than someone like Maldonado who would just run into the back of person they were overtaking... but it's okay, they didn't steer thus better at steering.

The cornering thing not being done with actual data that has been available for years, but with a guestimated stupid ass way of doing it. I've been rewatching some 2007 races, in which I have not a great recollection of the season but Hamilton came into Mclaren and utterly bossed Massa, Kimi, Alonso, everyone else in the first 8 races, podiums in every race, won two, led the title(don't spoil it for me, I know he doesn't win but can't remember why). Anyway, they had a apex speed list in 2007 that they put up at several points in the race ffs. They've had the gps data to pick and choose a say difficult corner and actually measure the you know.... SPEED they are actually going on that given corner for 9 seasons(at least)... but now they are using g-forces, which are inaccurate measure of speed. Though again the websites reason for doing so literally says higher speed = higher g-forces and ends it there, zero mention of other reasons for increased g-forces and why it's a terrible measure.

Either way, at no stage throughout this season should anyone take ANY of those numbers seriously. The person who came up with the system is borderline retarded, I would say a website/marketing type idiot who wanted an easy out of 10 system to make the website look shiny and comprehensive and up to date with stats... without employing actual technical people who could interpret real data and put it across to the readers.

Paying for access to stats where they rate drivers as better if they steer less.
 
Duke said:
Going down to 4 after one season was a bit quick.
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In retrospect, yes, but I think they'll just turn them down in the race a bit later than they would have done if the 4-engine rule was in place.

As Skeeter said in the Sepang thread, the ideal scenario would be to give them an extra engine or 2 for Fridays only, but then you'd have the teams breaking curfews constantly.

The teams will always take advantage of the rules available and this won't make an awful lot of difference. If we've lost units already after (and before) Melbourne, then going from 4 to 5 engines is going to make **** all difference.
 
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If the teams really want it to happen there's not a lot the FIA can do to stop it, all they have to do is all agree to use a 5th engine at the same race, all take a penalty and there's no net effect.
 
kaiowas said:
If the teams really want it to happen there's not a lot the FIA can do to stop it, all they have to do is all agree to use a 5th engine at the same race, all take a penalty and there's no net effect.
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Force India say hi.

And I struggle to believe Manor would with their 18-race calendar when points means prizes.
 
4 engines would have been MUCH more viable without the in season token changes.

If everyone had to pick one engine to set at the start of the season then the teams would have spent the past year working to one target and then done it, tested the SAME single engine all through testing(as with last year) and started this year same as last... pretty much reliable.

The token changes means at the last second, effectively in what Jan, people started to change their plans entirely, decide which bits could be improved further and added later. As a result both their development changed, they started playing with more ideas and they tested various combinations of upgrades at the various tests with it would seem maybe two manufacturers at least starting the season with effectively engines that weren't actually run in testing.

4 engines after last year, was fine if the engine situation was the same in that they'd worked on one general spec and tested that engine properly. Unlike last season we're more at the point where they are testing engines in race weekends and we'll have further trouble when it comes to those tokens being used through the season because they will again be testing new engines in a race weekend.

More trouble should have been a predictable result of encouraging in season changing at such a late stage. If they were going to make the token change it should have been decided a LONG time ago so they could prepare better for a season start and big upgrade development plan, instead they rushed into it at the last second, testing was odd and reliability could be a big issue this year.
 
Here's a radical idea - how about they let engine people develop engines? And by racing them, they could develop better engines. And by developing better engines, they could get more engine people involved.

Or is that crazy talk?
 
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