+1

F1 is my wife ; MotoGP is my mistress.

QFT

I agree, although I don't think messing about with the rules was triggered by Austria 2002, rather by Ferrari's 2002 domination.

I have to agree, I don't terribly like the direction the sport is heading.

I accept there needs to be a degree of standardisation, and common ECU imo has been an unqualified success and should be applied to things like braking, gearboxes suspension etc.

But not engines. Indeed I'd rather companies spend fortunes on engines than any other component. The engine and misc helpers should, along with the driver, be the performance differentiators.

Aero should be relegated to a kind of homologated role engines have now, you can update your aero but only to a tiny benefit.

Spec engines, really, do not sit well with me. Maybe they can standardise some engine components, but in general engines should be open for development.

It makes sense too, by making engines the expensive bit the costs are borne by the manufacturers - the ones who can most bear the burden. Aero, gearboxes, braking, etc all need to be borne by manufacturer and independent alike.

Standardise the bits the indys have to spend a large percentage of their budget on, and let the manufacturers slog it out with engine power - so long as it is mandatory that they supply a works standard motor at a discounted fee to at least one other team.

Indeed, at the end of the day it's all Ferrari's and Michael's fault! :-)

Was all.... Now it's all Hamilton fault...

There has to be a baddie in F1.... It's part of Bernie's master plan

Thats exactly how i feel

That's right. After the unseen domination of Ferrari in 2002 Max & Bernie panicked and there were very late changes of the rules - qualifying, park ferme and setup change limitations, 1 engine per race. The idea was to prevent Ferrari from using the maximum of F-2003GA which was said to be a beast in qualification and race trim respectively. The whole 2003 season the car had to be raced with compromised setup as it was designed around the old rules where they used separate engine(s) and setups for the qualification and the race.
Honestly since then I've not been able to understand why teams were denied the change of their setup more radically if they need. To me it is a part of the competition and teams should be able to do so if another setup will make them more competitive and therefore raise the quality of the race.

I was actually thinking about starting a thread after watching a LeMans series race about whether anyone would think it would rival (or better it) had they shortened the length of the race and made the cars a little smaller...already it looks more technologically advanced and their aero and power come pretty close to F1. There doesn't seem to be much problem in overtaking either.

I think you could get some fantastic racing.

It will never fall apart. It's pretty much in a bubble and impervious to outside influences. One of the worlds most powerful sports. Controversies or any other problems won't stand in it's way.

There will always be an F1 no matter who is in it, who owns it or where it races. The matter of the moment seems to be what is the next big change to it.

Might this be a good time to refer to Percy Bysshe Shelley and his "Ozymandias"?

LeMans Prototypes are quite far off the Power_to_Weight Ratio of a F1 car.

In recent years, we have not seen much real racing in F1. It has become two, three or four sprint races.

http://www.psychicsahar.com/artman/publish/article_124.shtml

Read the accompanying message for Formula 1 addicts:
"The publishers cannot accept any responsibility for any damage or harm caused by any treatment, advice, or information contained in this publication. In the case of illness, you should consult a qualified practitioner before undertaking any treatment."

Is F1 falling apart...

God, I hope so. Then perhaps the teams will go start another championship and make their own rule book.

F1 doesn't need to be green. Motorsport is the antithesis of green and that's as it should be. If we want a green series, let's have the World Touring Car Championships for Prius.

F1 doesn't need KERS. Put that in the Prius Racing Series by Toyota featuring rolling starts and very slow safety cars.

F1 doesn't need "rule stability" where the rules are still tinkered with.

F1 doesn't need Stewards who have never driven a race car, worked a corner, tech'd a car. They should be professionals and their decision making process should be open and transparent.

F1 doesn't need more Tilke tracks.

and F1 certainly doesn't need Max Mosley. I will gladly spit on his grave.


What the fans want are cars that look like real race cars, that have good technology but still require the best drivers to be fast. We don't need movable front wings and some stupid looking rear wing. There was plenty of passing in the 80's and early 90's - they can build cars like that that are still safe.

Let the teams leave, form their own championship, use the tracks that can no long afford Bernie's fees.

The most important car technology right now that needs to be developed for the actual world outside F1, is figuring out some better way of wasting less petrol and not emitting ridiculous levels of emissions to the atmosphere. Also, with petrol becoming more and more expensive there could be a real massive public backlash anti-motorsports.

F1 needs to become green for PR reasons (and I mean REAL green, not painting green stripes on tyres or cars or whatever stupid shit they come with next), against the risk it could die on its own, or be banned from the western countries.



So what do you suggest, make a rule that says "the teams are enforced to make cars that are shit in terms of downforce and look good"?

It's not going to happen. The technology is here and nearly impossible to ban (highly advanced wind tunnels and computer simulations), without coming up with tight restrictions as they're doing for next year.

The rest of your points I agree with.

Plenty of racing series have produced rule sets in the last 10 years which have produced cars which you could pass in. CART cars for instance produced some great racing.

It has less to do with the actual aero efficiency of the cars, and more to do with the fact that the sheer design of F1 cars lends itself to the cars being very hard to overtake in.

I personally think the lowering of the rear wing in 1995 was the start of reduction of overtaking. Since then the cars have been giving off far less drag for a better slipstream.


And just a little point. F1 doens't need more overtaking. What it needs is dicing and closer racing. One car hassling another car for 20 laps and being all over the track but ultimately failing to pass the other car can be far more entertaining than the likes of the passing seen in NASCAR which is repetitive and ultimately boring IMO.

None of those racing series have the massive technological resources for creating uber-downforce-optimized cars like F1 has. And most of those series are spec.

I'm not sure what are you suggesting. They're already raising the rear wing for next year.

CART ran with two limited Venturi Tunnels instead of the flat bottoms in F1. The biggest advantage of that was having a stable front end which didn't lose too much downforce running in a slipstream.

CART cars were also wider. A wider car = more drag. More drag = bigger difference between top speed in and outside of a slipstream. Hence a slipstream would be even more effective for the following car.


The crazy two part rear wing proposed a few years ago is just an extreme example of how the rules could be changed to encourage more overtaking. The above are more realistic options.

The CDG wing actually proved to be useless in wind-tunnel tests as it removed the upwash produced from the diffuser of the car in front which actually helps the car behind.

Also, ground-effect cars are stable but very prone to understeer.

We could quite easily have cars producing 50% more downforce than we have today but you'd have to counteract that with A LOT more horsepower to make the cars exciting otherwise they may aswell be 1:1 scale Slot cars...

I'd say they could get a lot more than 50% more downforce if there was free reign on aero.

A word of warning though. Wasn't it Dario Franchitti who was getting headaches after running at Texas in a CART car. G forces have to be repected.

I've done a little testing of CART cars and they "only" generate 4G on the banked turns max but it's the duration of the loading that's the problem. I wonder what the late 90's cars with near 1000BHP were producing on the superspeedways

Mention of the Handford device in another thread.

Circa 1999 CART car with a standard wing at Fontana would have been fast. Too fast.

Wasn't part of the problem that the banking caused excessive longitudinal g-forces, which instead of just pummelling the body, actually caused drivers' heads to be starved of blood and making them black out? Obviously duration is a key thing in that, but it's not the sort of problem that would ever apply to an F1 driver.

Can't quote the source nor do I remember the exact year (not much help, I know), but I remember reading that sometime in the late 90s, Andre Ribiero did a trap speed in a CART car on Michigan's back straight at 251 mph...

Which has become one of the major problems with F1. IMO.

Fastest speed I've ever heard about for any race car on a lap is a Porsche 962 doing 253 mph when the Mullsanne straight didn't have chicanes.

251mph is a serious speed in an open wheel racer, esp with Handford device.

I think I remember (here I go again) that Mark Donohue once hit 257 mph in the Can-Am Porsche on the long Mistral straight at Paul Ricard.

Don't know if Ribiero's speed at Michigan was set using the Handford device, however... :\

F1 is heading down a dead end imo, the last raft of proposals are one more nail in the coffin. Turning it into effectively a one make series is to stick a dagger though it's heart - no different from anything else, except of course the bloated egos.

But it is not just F1, it is anything that the FIA touches right now. WRC has become a mockery of it's former self with two and half day rallys, repeat stages, super-rally etc. The WTCC stumbles from one ridiculous attempt at car equalisation (RWD vs FWD, Saloon vs Hatch, Diesel vs Petrol, etc) to the next and a success ballast system that leaves the best drivers scrapping for the odd point half way down the field for the last 2/3 of the season. Is there any championship they are involved with that is not in a shambolic state?

The whole F1 mess is compounded by the maze of junior formulas with no clear progression for young drivers or easy comparison. Throw in GP3 and F2 and it only gets worse - in a climate when there is not nearly enough sponsorship to go around anyway. The FIA should be trying to rationalise the junior formulas, not add to the confusion.

The series that are growing are all way outside the FIA remit - (American) Le Mans (Series), NASCAR in particular, and the IRL also seems to be getting back on it's feet following the reunification. MotoGP also seems to be in rude health with additional bikes next year, Sete coming back etc.

The FIA needs to get it's arse in gear, listen to the fans and stop lurching from one ill-thought out decision to the next. Any series that can class the Valencia GP as having a strong start when the racing sucked, the circuit looked awful on TV and significant numbers of the fans at the track had a miserable time has completely lost it's grip on reality and/or what is important.

HaHaHa Good old sniff!!!

there's a black sheep there!

Mosley is not there because it's missing a Prius... what a retard..