The near future of F1 is looking dull..
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I know, its so obvious isn't it.
The FIA have done points 3 and 6, and then buggered it all up by increasing aero grip and complexity too. Its as if they started to write a good set of rules, and then felt uneasy about the amount of common sense and good ideas in the room, so wrote a bunch of crap rules to balance it out.
The FIA have done points 3 and 6, and then buggered it all up by increasing aero grip and complexity too. Its as if they started to write a good set of rules, and then felt uneasy about the amount of common sense and good ideas in the room, so wrote a bunch of crap rules to balance it out.
Soldato
I was watching the Sky China preview last night and they had John Watson on, and he was talking about how I think he said the 1982 Mclaren had so much ground affect, they removed the front wing as they didn't need it.
OK, that design is a bit too boxy
, but this is what we need to attempt to improve the "racing".
OK, that design is a bit too boxy
, but this is what we need to attempt to improve the "racing".
Soldato
Can I ask why people are against DRS?
Soldato
The only thing I have against it is that it's poorly implemented. You can guarantee that at China the cars will just be driving past each other on the straight instead of being side-by-side going into the braking zone.
It has been getting better but it's still artificial as there's not much, if any, driver skill required to overtake the car in front.
Soldato
From Barcelona testing this year - an iPhone picks up better sound than the broadcast TV.
And even that doesn't do it justice. You couldn't hear anything on the V8s - now the immense transfer of power is completely evident. The clatter of gears, whine of brakes and turbo spinning at full to still charge the electrics - all combined with a car losing 170 mph of speed in 100 metres - is absolutely mind-blowing.
Soldato
But surely, there's not much driver skill if it's over taking on a straight. Yes, take the previous corner better and have better exit speed, but the straights are mainly about the power of the car anyway. Giving a slight boost to whoever is behind might give them the opportunity to pass that they might not normally have, which I see as a good thing. If the car that's just been passed is generally the faster car, he'll be able to come back at them.
Soldato
But that is the problem. DRS has not fixed the issue with overtaking, which normally requires considerable driver skill, it has just implemented a boost button, requiring minimal driver skill.
Most of the time the difference in race pace between cars in the mid field is not massive. Obviously, a Mercedes is likely to be much faster than a Renault/Manor.
In general, the car initially behind is marginally faster (by a percentage enough to counteract some of the turbulent air), allowing it to keep close enough to utilise DRS on the straight. Once passed the slower car then does not have the ability to stay close enough to use DRS on the next time.
DRS by design is there to prevent a faster car being stuck behind a slower one.
Its not perfect, but broadly speaking it works. And its much better than the alternative, which is long processional races with no overtaking.
You can't simply "remove DRS" without solving the issue of following cars another way.
Its not perfect, but broadly speaking it works. And its much better than the alternative, which is long processional races with no overtaking.
You can't simply "remove DRS" without solving the issue of following cars another way.
Tha the thing for me. It is perfect, but it's better than just not having it.
What is F1? Is it a racing/driver championship or is it an engineering championship these days? Why don't the FIA implement a new one size fits all earo package for the entire grid, which would also include a huge reduction in downforce. Look at what we have at the moment, top teams designing aero parts in wind tunnels that the likes of NASA and Boeing would be jealous of. Look at the front wing on the Mercedes, it looks like something that fell off a spaceship whilst passing planet earth. One thing for sure, when that Merc is in clean air, it is like a glued to the ground spaceship, absolutely amazing. Equally amazing is the fact that when the air is disturbed on reaching the front wing of the Mercedes, the world championship winning teams car becomes an almost midfielder. I am honestly surprised that intelligent moveable front wings haven't been purposed to eliminate the disturbed air whilst chasing a car. The rule makers have made F1 a complete and utter mess. I watch many other race series from around the globe, most of which are absolutely thrilling from start to finish. F1 is boring and predictable. Large gaps in performance and extreme limits in testing feeds predictability.
Soldato
Why is the car behind generally faster? That statement in itself seems wrong. The grid is aligned based on the speed of the cars (with some other factors of course) so generally, the car behind will be slower. If it can gain some speed from a slip stream, DRS might be enough it can actually make a pass at some point surely?
F1 has always been an engineering / team / driver championship and it is very rare that the best car (especially as they tend to attract the best drivers) doesn't win the championship. Alonso in '05 where the Renault was way slower than Kimi's rather fragile McLaren and Hamilton in '08 are the only recent ones that spring to mind where a slower car has won.
Plenty of places have better wind tunnels in use than F1, take a look at what Audi use for WEC. F1 is also limited to 60% model size, and the amount of CPU FLOPs that they can use (so teams are now developing more efficient CFD solvers).
They have used moveable front wings in the past, the teams just used it to trim the cars and achieve a faster overall lap time.
Sound is subjective, but to me they sound crap compared to the best sounding racing cars I've heard in my life.
Soldato
But the point being the sound is still better than the broadcast sound, by some margin, and is brilliant live at the track.
Why is that? With all the hundreds of thousands of equipment.
Soldato
Because Bernie doesn't like the V6Ts so is hobbling their appeal, even though they're here to stay.
Admittedly it's partly because a lot of the noise is generated from the direction the exhaust is pointing, and obviously for onboard cameras it's difficult to position a microphone behind the exhaust, but even from the trackside cameras it's clear that the sound is being dulled. All you can hear that's really different is the off-throttle gargling from the McLaren and Ferrari.
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Soldato
So, the reason they want to muck about with Qualifying is to try and shuffle the order of the race some what. Having seen yesterdays race, I hope they find a way. One of the best races I've seen for some time I think, with lots of cars out of place due to all the bumps and such early on.
This hasn't been any different to the V8 and V10 era. Broadcast microphones don't capture what peoples devices did when they were in the stands/hilly areas.
I remember friends taking video cameras to races in the V10 era and I was shocked how different they sounded compared to broadcast.
Associate
Losing interest the last couple of seasons, mainly lack of action (MotoGP wins here) and being a McLaren fanboy doesn't help.