Poll: Some proposals to sort out Formula One

Should JRS replace Max Mosley as FIA President?

  • Yes

    Votes: 139 79.9%
  • No

    Votes: 35 20.1%

  • Total voters
    174

JRS

JRS

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2004
Posts
19,700
Location
Burton-on-Trent
I was going to put this in the China race thread, but decided to make it separate.

Dad and I got to talking about the race today in the pub this lunchtime. Usually produces some interesting ideas about how they could improve the show, and today was no exception. Some sensible, some silly, I'll leave you to make your minds up about which side they fall on.

1) Car construction rules - don't make the damned things standard. You want spec-racing? Go watch A1GP. Though, since they couldn't rustle up a full grid for the opening event I think we can take it as read that standard cars might not be the way forward. Similarly, no standard engines. That's just silly and it isn't Formula One.

Give the teams some real freedom. In the past, F1 has always punished the innovators in the end by banning the stuff that they come up with. Four wheel drive, ground effect, traction control, active suspension, fully automatic gearchange, ABS, launch control....all banned. Why should the manufacturers stick around if they can't use F1 to invent some cool ****? Why should the garagistes stick around if they can't use some spark of ingenuity to beat up on the big boys?

2) Fuel tank sizes. I've always said that they should never have brought back refuelling in '94 - it adds nothing except danger and the chance that something that is 100% out of your control will ruin your race. Take away refuelling, and you bring back some different race strategies that have been lost for quite some time.

Alternatively - make the tanks even smaller, so that teams will generally have to stop four or five times a race. If you can make your car frugal in order to go for the race on four tanks of fuel then you've just saved yourself the best part of 20 seconds. Or you can make your car very powerful and very fast but need to stop five or six times to refuel. Your call.

3) Qualifying. For the love of God, bring back the old style of qually. Two days, each with a twelve lap session. Cars running on the smell of an oily rag, i.e. no qualifying on race fuel levels. Fastest driver and car combo takes pole, rather than the one who is going to stop earlier than everyone else in the race.

No-one got penalised for blocking in qualifying back then. When Mansell got horrendously baulked by Olivier Grouillard, he had a quick gripe about it and then got on with his life. And the format allowed for stuff like all those wonderful qualifying laps that Senna used to turn in while everyone else looked on in wonder.

4) Pit stops need work. Whichever way you go - no refuelling or smaller tanks - they need serious work. Dad came up with an idea that had us both laughing - instead of each team having a pitbox, have just one. A single spot where cars can get tyres and fuel, staffed by track employees or a team that goes to each race. You'd have people queuing, sure. But it'd be much more fun to watch than the current system!

If you didn't do that, and retained pit boxes for each team, then make pitting more of a penalty. Reduce the maximum speed a good chunk, make the wheels held on with five nuts rather than just one in the centre (increases the chance that you'll get one wrong). Some drivers will try and make tyres last so they don't have to change them as often. Others will go like a bat out of hell and take the risk of a fumbled stop.

5) Bring back turbocharging. Adds another dimension - managing the boost. You can leave it with the wick turned right up, but you'll shorten the life of your car and use a lot more fuel. Or you can turn it down a bit, save fuel and use maximum boost only when you need to clear somebody.

Of course, turbocharging wouldn't be compulsory. Rather, it would be like the old equivalence formula - which was 3.0 litre N/A engines or 1.5l blown engines from '66 right up to the end of the turbo era. The turbo cars used more fuel and ate their tyres quicker, but they were more powerful. You could build a turbocharged car and deal with the fact that you'd have to make more stops (see #4 for how that would affect things) or you could build a non-turbo car, need less fuel and less tyre changes but be a bit down on power. Again....lets see some variance in the grid!

6) It should be illegal to be Max Mosley.

7) Seriously. Max has to go.

8) The race stewards should be a group that goes to each race in the calendar. They should have to explain, in detail and in public, every decision they take against a driver. Should cut down on a lot of the problems we've had this year with strange decisions and no explanation for them.

9) Customer cars should be allowed, but the teams wouldn't be eligible for the constructors championship.

10) The points system needs a damned good overhaul. There needs to be more incentive to take a risk and overtake someone rather than settle for a point or two less. 20-16-13-10-7-4-2-1 could work in that respect.

Also - one point for pole, one point for fastest lap of the race, one point for leading a lap and one point for leading the most laps. At least that way a driver who got pole, led from the off, got all the way to about three laps from home before someone stacked into him or the car broke would get at least something for having been the best on the day. Constructors points wouldn't include these bonuses, they would just go on the main race points - so if the driver was doing well before the car let him down, he might get some bonus points, but the car wouldn't since it broke and doesn't deserve any!



Right, that ought to do for now. All complete nonsense, or is there something in that lot?
 
I have no problem with customer cars. They are afterall no worse than introducing "common parts" like what Max is trying to do.

The Toro Rosso this year is better than the Red Bull on which it is based. Rubbishing, IMO, any suggestion that customer cars are not a worthy contribution to F1.

Turbos were fun but are seen as not very eco friendly. This KERS thing is still up in the air but it could be good in terms of racing. Although personally I think it's all a bit of a gimmick just like the Toyota Prius is. But who knows... F1 has pioneered many technologies over the years which are now commonplace on road cars.

Pit stops should be made to be about 3x longer than they are now. By limiting the number of mechanics there are on each wheel.

No problem here with refuelling.
 
hehe, didnt want to lead the thread off track (sorry to OP)
Got to agree something has to be done with F1, it ends up being a follow the leader senario or when someone does overtake they get a bollocking. Well some people do !! What does the F in F1 stand for :rolleyes: :D
 
V12's please. They were beasts.
Slicks.
Old skool qually style.
same stewards every race.
Max mosely to be kicked out.
Me to be presiedent of FIA. :D
Put a limit on the amount of dirty air a car makes. So designs have to carefully design their cars.
And finally Nitrous Oxide. :cool: Only joking but would be really cool.
 
I think there should be only 1 person allowed to work on the car in the pitstop. It would be funny watching him having to jack the car up (front and back), change the tyres etc whilst leaving the fuel hose in :D

Seriously though, reduce pit crew by half imo.
 
The stewards rule enforcement should be consistent. I know I've said this before but if a back marker runs someone off the track on the 1st corner it should have the same penalty as the front runners (Hamilton) gets for the same thing. At the moment it's like the International Olympic Committee not banning althetes for drugs use if they don't get a medal, if they did that it would be deemed by everyone that it's a farce, but for some reason in F1 we seem to have accepted that the stewards will only look into events that effects the big boys at the front. Either all drivers/teams are effected by all the rules all of the time or there is no point having the rules, the rules which by the way tend to be sometimes rather vague.

I quite liked the cars this year, there has been no real complete dominance by one team or driver in particular and most of the teams are reasonably competitive. I think most of the boring parts of this season have just been caused by boring tracks, and no matter what is done to cars these tracks will still be boring, it's a shame that when designing new tracks like Valencia they didn't take into account overtaking (I mean, who designs a race track and doesn't have in mind good overtake spots?). Whoever is behind the selection of these tracks seem to think that putting it in pretty spot means it's ok to have a boring race.
 
Give the teams some real freedom. In the past, F1 has always punished the innovators in the end by banning the stuff that they come up with. Four wheel drive, ground effect, traction control, active suspension, fully automatic gearchange, ABS, launch control....all banned. Why should the manufacturers stick around if they can't use F1 to invent some cool ****? Why should the garagistes stick around if they can't use some spark of ingenuity to beat up on the big boys?
Yes, F1 is about the combination of car and driver which needs to be maintained otherwise you're struggling to see the distinction between F1 & A1GP, GP2, Indycar etc.


2) Fuel tank sizes. <snip> Your call.
No refuelling please.

3) Qualifying.
I'm all for two 60 minute sessions of 12 laps but I'm a touch worried about the dry Friday, wet Saturday scenario. Friday qually is unlikely to be televised so there has to be guaranteed action on Saturday. Whether that's simply legislating that all laps must be used or incentivising Saturdays with points I'm not sure.

4) Pit stops need work.

Reduce the maximum speed a good chunk, make the wheels held on with five nuts rather than just one in the centre (increases the chance that you'll get one wrong). Some drivers will try and make tyres last so they don't have to change them as often. Others will go like a bat out of hell and take the risk of a fumbled stop.
A different suggestion to my usual one - limit the number of airguns A1GP style.

8) The race stewards should be a group that goes to each race in the calendar. They should have to explain, in detail and in public, every decision they take against a driver. Should cut down on a lot of the problems we've had this year with strange decisions and no explanation for them.
Consistency, as we know, is the problem. Having the same stewards at each event is just common sense as is having a degree of transparency. At the moment nobody actually knows what will be allowed and what won't and then what the penalties will be. Write it down and publish it, it's not hard.
 
Lose the wings.

All of them.

I like this, the idea being that you can follow the car infront at a distance of 5cm from his rear axle around the corners (and the next straight) without you car either a) understeering like a mare, b) chewing through it's tyres or c) overheating because his car is spewing hot air into you radiator

Also, limit the cars to (say) 15k rpm except for 5 sessions each of 30 seconds in the race. This means if a nice overtaking opportunity comes you can hit the maniac button and go for it. This will increase overtaking and reduce engine failures. Easy to monitor on computers, as can cross check if the car was downshifting (so ignore) or hopping a curb and spiked the revs for a mo (so ignore)

Fluffy
 
Was starting to be a good read until I got to the bit about pitting. My god, that's a delusional way of looking at it.

White coat with extra long arms for JRS please.

Which one of the two was "delusional"? I said that the first one was more of a laugh than anything, but I think that the rest of it had some merit.

Lose the wings.

All of them.

Balls to that. F1 needs wings, otherwise they're just tooling around in really powerful Formula Ford cars....

No refuelling please.

Like I said - I've been grumbling about refuelling ever since it came back. It has added the sum total of ****-all to F1.

I'm all for two 60 minute sessions of 12 laps but I'm a touch worried about the dry Friday, wet Saturday scenario. Friday qually is unlikely to be televised so there has to be guaranteed action on Saturday. Whether that's simply legislating that all laps must be used or incentivising Saturdays with points I'm not sure.

Good point. You probably would have to make it so that all 12 laps must be done on both days, with grid penalties if you don't complete them (through mechanical faults or operational errors).

A different suggestion to my usual one - limit the number of airguns A1GP style.

Could work. NASCAR, for example, mandates that only two airguns can be 'over the wall' and being used at a time. They change left side tyres first then right side tyres (if it's a four-tyre stop). Would be interesting to see how F1 teams cope with that setup....

Consistency, as we know, is the problem.

Ain't that the truth.....


***edit***

Thanks for the poll, by the way. And thank-you to those who have voted for me. The other (currently) 12 of you....your names will go on The List™....:)
 
They are getting a new aero package and slicks anyway, so just take it back to the old style qually and all will be well. What is wrong with having quick pit stops and refuelling!?
 
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