Just watching the race before the predictable monsoon hit the drivers seem to be able to pass each other with a little skill. i know the yellows bunch the field but still, they are passing regularly.

The wings still look in proportion rather than the mess the F1 cars have become, i mean they just need a meaner engine and we'd be on our way.

What are they doing right?

No DDD?

The drivers are not as good, and make more mistakes. Ergo, more passing.

The DDD would help.

Ground effects downforce doesn't affect the car in back as much as the DF from wings.

Also I think the aero is much more standardized and the cars don't intentionally create turbulence.

may i mention existence of restrictors?

what track were the Indycars using?

I think it's more the tracks force them into mistakes. If you watch a natural terrain road course it's not much different from F1.

They still are, and it's the streets of Sao Paulo.

Its because Indycars have limited sized Venturi Tunnels. They will sustain downforce a lot better than downforce created by wings when in turbulence.

The matter of F1 teams designing cars which give off turbulence to stop other cars passing cannot be ignored either.

hard tires and less effective brakes could be part of it too.

Smaller wings.

No little parts sticking up all over th ecar

No DDD

Overtake button

Why do we have this discussion every 6 months?

because they dont have to race on tilke-tracks...

i still wonder why that incompetent tool was made F1s main track designer.

Lots of reasons: Same cars but with some truly terrible setups.

Push to pass button.

Hard tyres, iron brakes, less downforce - longer braking distances so more time to make a pass.

Less downforce - less turbulence as the air isn't worked anywhere near as hard.

Less downforce - less pace lost when following.

Ground effect venturis - not in any way the same as a diffuser, much less susceptible to wake turbulence.

No DDD - they were supposed to banned in F1 (a loophole was left, which made them legal) because they cause so much turbulence.

Worse drivers.

Most of all: defensive lines are not allowed at all.

Because the majority of people here are technically illiterate?

^ That was years ago, they're doing paddle shifts as well nowadays.

He made tracks that suited Max, MS and Ferrari

Cripes, can we stop with this myth? The brakes are just as effective (they are capable of locking up the wheels, afterall).

See the many threads in the Technical Forum of the benefits of carbon over steel. I'll give you a hint: braking effectiveness aint one of them.

Definitely helps, but they had plenty of passing before push-to-pass



Why do you think the tires are any harder than F1 tires? Heck, when F1 had grooved tires, I'd bet money that the F1 compound was harder than the Indycar tires to keep the grooved treads from squirming and disintegrating.

Why do you think they have less downforce? Traditionally, with the gigantic venturi tunnels, Indycars were capable of much more downforce with less drag.

As for iron brakes -- their effect on braking effectiveness is relatively moot.



Again, do you have any evidence that there is less downforce? Or is your reasoning a result of "F1 is the best, therefore it must have bigger tires, stickier tires, more horsepower, more downforce, etc. Why? Because it's the best."?



Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Yes, one the reasons it's much easier to pass in Indycars is the tunnels.



Hahahahaha!!! Do you know why F1 cars have diffusers? Because the F1 regulations do not allow them to have ground effects tunnels, ala Indycars. The diffuser is a band-aid! If the designers had a choice between a diffuser and Indycar ground effects tunnels, they'd choose the tunnels in a heartbeat. Once again, this thinking seems to come from the logic that "F1 = best. Therefore, if F1 has it (e.g. DDD), it must be the best". No, a lot of F1 engineering choices are because they are the best solutions given F1 rules, not because they are the best solutions overall.



weak answer


This is another important point. You could also call it enforced good sportsmanship.

= Not so good brakes and heavier car lead to longer braking distances which makes it easier to outbrake someone

= Aero is not as ****ed up for the car behind then F1

= Cars are generally more mechanical grip dependent then aero grip dependent, compared to F1

= IndyCar tracks (Watkins Glen, Sears Point, Road America) are just so much better for racing then what Tilke produced

Because at the moment F1 is a joke and one of the worst things about it is that whoever has the most expensive car or else some flaw in the wording of the rules always wins. I guess you need to be sympathetic to the fact that some people actually desire F1 to offer decent quality car racing.

Do we?

Ok, there's no need to be quite so aggressive in a discussion like this. Who are you trying to convince?

Stop with your hahaha - The F1 cars do indeed only have diffusers because venturis are banned but DDD stands for Double Deck Diffuser - banned from next season. The double deck in and of itself causes more wake turbulence and causes more difficult overtaking. I have at no point said that F1 = best in this arena, and you view my postings in the technical forum over the last few years, you will see I have pointed out and agreed with people more than once that F1 aero solutions make no sense outside F1 rules - and Indycars do not outside Indycar rules either.

It's a debate whether defensive race driving is bad sportsmanship or good driving. I'm very much of the opinion that as long as we restrict it to one move, and ban weaving, then it's good driving, and I'd rather see a five-corner hard fought overtake with switching lines and hard-but-fair racing than one move where the driver ahead is forced to stay on line and known he's going to get nailed under braking. That takes away the tremendous excitement of seeing two cars driven at their absolute limits, where one driver has clearly inferior equipment but wins through sheer skill.

I don't think so. I remember last year Sonoma race where Justin Wilson followed someone through long fast infield turns and completed overtaking on the straight. Nothing like that happens in F1.
Then, how often do F1s overtake on the street circuit of Valencia? Once in two years? Or was it opposite - twice a year?

Double deck diffusers are a complete red herring. Will hardly make any difference to passing.

Nothing but the technical flavour of the month.

Much slower cars.

Spec cars that aren't designed for absolute maximum aero performance, neither for ruining the wake of your opponent following you behind.

Its not just IndyCars. Pretty much every open-wheeler outside of F1 seems capable of overtaking without too much problem.

It all points to F1 being the one thats different, not IndyCar.

Indycars tend to be very processional on the road courses, even on the ovals last year they had some serious dull races. Be interesting to see if the aero changes they made last year continue to have a positive affect this year, especially at indy.

So what was the excuse then when the likes of Fittipaldi, the Andretti's, Mansell, Unser Jnr, Villeneuve, Montoya etc were all racing?

Plenty of passing/thrilling racing when those blokes were involved. Mind you....IndyCar was a different beast then to what it is now.

Also... horrible amount of safety car periods keep bunching up the field and providing more wheel to wheel racing. Spec cars, so little difference between them. Nature of their circuits.

Sorry for being so snarky, but we have this same discussion every 6 months, and it gets pretty old. What especially gets old are the same old fanboy opinions that are stated as "facts" over-and-over without any research into whether they logically (or empirically) hold up. So, when I see those brought up again, it pushes my button.

In contrast, for an intellectually stimulating technical discussion of steel vs. carbon brake rotors, see this thread from the Technical Forum:

http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?show...118948&st=0

That doesn't explain why there was the same amount of overtaking in Champ/Indy cars when it was Penske vs. Reynard vs. Lola vs. Swift vs. Eagle running Ford, Honda, Mercedes, and Toyota engines.

Spec cars that are knackered by rev limiters.

Indy Car drivers are better.

It is because there is more variety in driver ability in Indy and probably more mistakes are made , allowing the following car to overtake.

Some cars are definately not set up as well as others so allowing them to be overtaken. Cars are more rugged so drivers will take more risk when overtaking.


As after qualifying the F1 cars are in order of performance it is rather surprising there is any overtaking .

Therein lies the biggest problem with F1 cars...

Irl is a very poor run series so you can always expect good races from those! (think A1) The no-defensive-lines rule is plain horsecrap. The fact is that in motorracing the higher the series is up the ladder, the worse it gets in terms of actual racing (and no, Indycar is not very high on the ladder anymore).

BTCC is a superawesome series for example, while WTCC is sucking hard usually. Just as an example

Then why do most F1 rejects end up there?

its a much nicer series to be in, actully virtualy any american series is a nicer place to be than euro equivilent, from what ive heard. euro series are typicaly extremely cutthroat. its also one of the few open wheel series where you can make a living being a racing driver. theres f1, indycar and cart, and perhaps a few japanease series still? and some of the teams in a1gp and superleague might pay aswell

watching the indycars after the f1 race really highlighted how much better the IRL cars are at racing, there was constant action somewhere in the field, the cars could pass, and run really close, closing in to under a metre or two fairly often.

the track was awsome too

as for the car, well the car is pants in alot of ways, last year there where boring races because of the car, but the series did take positive steps to band aid the situation. most obivous ways the car is pants.... ugly, expensive (after all the fettling required to perform really well), ugly, weak suspension and half shafts, no one runs the power steering cos its awful, engine sounds awful, no starter motor and no reverse gear, and no anti stall (or its pants aswell)

I must agree.. After watching both races this weekend..the Indy cars were quite the better race. Action on track..passing..seems the drivers are more accessible..more low key.

Hmm..like RACING..

I lost interest in Indy after the Cart death..but it does appear that good racing is there...

No it wouldnt!! It screws up the airflow behind the car!

F1 drivers seem better... because they have all these luxurious gearboxes that prevent them to mis-shift etc... plus F1 drivers dont have to dance on three pedals..

SO YES: fewer mistakes by F1 drivers, because they are driving the easy cars

Why Indycars can overtake?

Bigger wings, more downforce and less sensitive in back draft. Bigger wings also means that it's more effective to slipstream behinde another car.

Harder and wider tires results in less dirt in alternative lines and better grip in overtakeing.

The Indycars are more stable and easier to drive. You can do something extra without risking it all.

In short every thing that FIA has done in the last 15-16 years to "spice up the show" has gone in the wrong direction.

Err, surely the indycars are using paddles to shift now?

Yeah, and I don't see how you can mis-shift in a sequential box even if you're using a lever....

It comes down to the fact that an F1 car is designed to operate in a very, very small window of performance. Every single aspect is optimised and developed and tweaked until it's as good as it possibly can be. The effect of this is that the cars are very fast. Another effect is that they are very, very sensitive.

An F1 car develops amazing downforce levels and can corner amazingly well and all of that, but if the airflow hitting it isn't perfect, then all the elements drop outside their performance envelope and the car ceases to have that incredible level of performance.

The very nature of oval racing means that you design the cars very differently. They're not designed with just the ultimate laptime in mind. Together with the fact that the cars are closer in specifications, it means the cars are designed to operate in a window that includes the other cars.

In my opinion the problem is the flat bottom of the car. It forces teams to find their downforce in ways that heavily impact the airflow coming off the car. The best way to fix that is to allow the cars to generate downforce through ground effect, but mandate a set of rear diffuser rules, and/or rear wing rules, that mean the airflow coming off the car is cleaner.

Heavier car, less reliance on front wing downforce, tyres narrow for the power, and therefore longer stopping distances.

OK. Indy Car drivers aren't better drivers they are just better at passing because they have to do it in races. F1 drivers rarely pass anyone on the track unless they are a backmarker who has moved 10 meters off the racing line or their spark plugs are broken.

...That's not true, though, is it? Indycar 1995-2000; GP500 1989-93; BTCC in the late '90s. These were seriously important, competitive series at the top of their respective fields, and the racing they delivered was more often than not stunning. The 'racing' is determined by the technical features of the competitors, not any mythical ladder concept.