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Virtual safety car


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#1 Tommay

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Posted 31 October 2014 - 23:15

Can't believed no topic was created for this, I do hope to see it implemented by 2015. Thought as there was no topic I would weight up the positifesa and negatives and try to create a solution to prefect the system.

Copied and pasted from F1 Times
<quote>
The system is aimed at ensuring drivers stick to a certain speed through each sector by way of a delta time which is believed to be about 35 per cent slower than a dry lap. For example, a lap of the Circuit of the Americas is around 1 minute 40 seconds, therefore drivers would be forced to lap the circuit at 2 minutes 15 seconds if the entire circuit is covered by the limit. It's aimed at avoiding a safety car for each and every incident because of the delay this incurs when lapped cars are released. Drivers will be aided by a dashboard display which will alert them if they're going too quickly, which would also result in a severe penalty to ensure drivers stick to the enforced limit.

</quote>

Basically a driver needs to stay positives on there delta time for that area, mandating a slower speed.


Positives

Mandates a speed resulting in more fair racing (no advantage to be made of a yellow flag)
Safer as the driver is not pushing under yellow flags
Means we will not have to use a safety car if there is people on track or trucks
Easy to implement and follow by the drivers and does not cause massive decreases in speed (could be seen as a hazard)

Negatives
From what we saw the mandated speed is fairly low. What happens if one driver goes through it once and the other twice?
Does not bunch the field up meaning if debris on the track it is still likely to be a safety car
A driving aid?

Personally I think the positives outweigh the negatives. However if implemented I do not think the mandated speed should be that much lower then what it currently is under normal racing circumstances. If you could knock of enough speed for it to take the racing edge out (meaning they are not pushing near the limit) they should easily be able to control the car through these sections. To make sure they stay fully concentrated also do not allow changes on the steering wheel etc while you are in one of these zones and a lapse of concentration when not dricing at full speed may be disastrous

Edited by Tommay, 31 October 2014 - 23:17.


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#2 jonpollak

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Posted 31 October 2014 - 23:26

Great idea

#3 ensign14

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Posted 31 October 2014 - 23:41

Great idea

 

Thanks.



#4 Exb

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 00:00

How on earth do  you remember (and then find) your old posts from 8 years ago :rotfl:  (I can't remember what I posted last week)  Still great idea  :up:

 

 

Negatives
From what we saw the mandated speed is fairly low. What happens if one driver goes through it once and the other twice? - well its no worse than stacking them behind the safety car and wiping out all the advantage of the driver ahead.
Does not bunch the field up meaning if debris on the track it is still likely to be a safety car - agree it could only be used in certain situations like clearing a car from off track, if marshalls need to be on track a safety car would still be required 
A driving aid? - no more so than having a car guide them round or sticking to the safety car delta as they are catching it up

 

Also another positive is no unlapping of backmarkers and wasting 3 more laps

(& prevents standing restarts due to a safety car from next season (if that is still in the rules, I've lost track)

 

Its a good addition in my opinion!
 



#5 OO7

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 00:18

How on earth do  you remember (and then find) your old posts from 8 years ago :rotfl:  (I can't remember what I posted last week)  Still great idea  :up:

I was just about to post exactly the same thing Exb. :lol:



#6 Lights

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 00:29

8 years might be a bit extreme, but it's not that hard to remember your opinion about a situation in general. I also remember I once wrote something like that and searched for it.

 

So in the light of shameless self-promotion...  :D

 

However, the main problem is still that this doesn't bunch up the field to give the marshals time to work with.



#7 noikeee

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 00:59

Coming up with a crazy idea then watching F1 make that reality isn't something you tend to forget. Like say, inventing DRS (sort of) a few months before F1 announced it. I'm still waiting on a nice all expenses paid trip to a GP as compensation Bernie.



#8 Thomas99

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 01:02

Its a pleasant alternative to standing restarts.



#9 george1981

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 09:40

8 years might be a bit extreme, but it's not that hard to remember your opinion about a situation in general. I also remember I once wrote something like that and searched for it.

 

So in the light of shameless self-promotion...  :D

 

However, the main problem is still that this doesn't bunch up the field to give the marshals time to work with.

 

Double waved yellows don't really bunch the field up, that only really happens with a safety car. This system isn't intended to remove the need for the safety car it's intended to improve safety in the event of double waved yellows.

My understanding was that this system is to ensure that all cars slow down enough and the same amount when there are double waved yellows. This removes the advantage that one driver might get by going slightly faster through the double waved yellows than his competitors.



#10 Lights

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 09:52

Double waved yellows don't really bunch the field up, that only really happens with a safety car. This system isn't intended to remove the need for the safety car it's intended to improve safety in the event of double waved yellows.

My understanding was that this system is to ensure that all cars slow down enough and the same amount when there are double waved yellows. This removes the advantage that one driver might get by going slightly faster through the double waved yellows than his competitors.

 

So is it to improve safety or to remove the advantage one driver might get?



#11 redreni

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 09:52

It's better than using the SC all the time, but it doesn't accurately address the known problems. One of the lessons of Suzuka must surely be that what may be appropriate in the dry is not always going to be appropriate in all conditions, and when conditions are particularly poor, even cars that have backed off may go off. 35% slower than a typical dry lap may not be enough when passing the accident. If the slow zones were localised it would be feasible to insist on slower speeds past the accident, because cars wouldn't be in the slow zone long enough to lose brake and tyre temperature. For the people working on or near the race track, the slower the competitors come past, the better, and 65% of full speed is going to seem pretty bloody fast to them, particularly in heavy wet conditions.

 

On the other hand, limiting cars' speed on the parts of the circuit that are clear is not making anybody any safer. It's just making it harder for drivers to keep their temperatures and tyre pressures where they ought to be, giving them more to think about apart from just driving the car, obeying the flags and looking out for hazards. It's also needlessly creating periods of time where there is no racing, and it's all because Whiting can't be bothered to police the transition into and out of local slow zones.

 

I think Whiting's laziness on this issue has given us a system that interrupts the flow of the race more than it needs to, and is also not as safe as systems which he could have introduced which impinge on the racing less.


Edited by redreni, 01 November 2014 - 09:54.


#12 ExFlagMan

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 09:55

Most incident clear up does not need the field to be bunched up, just slowed down enough the let the clear take place safely. Marshals have been working such a system for 60+ years, and will probably continue to do so in most formulae without the drivers needing to be 'forced' to comply.

See we also get the 'my driver might get penalised more than yours' type winging already - not sure it will be any worse/better than using a SC in that regard but as Mario always said 'what goes round, comes round'

#13 redreni

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 10:05

Most incident clear up does not need the field to be bunched up, just slowed down enough the let the clear take place safely. Marshals have been working such a system for 60+ years, and will probably continue to do so in most formulae without the drivers needing to be 'forced' to comply.

See we also get the 'my driver might get penalised more than yours' type winging already - not sure it will be any worse/better than using a SC in that regard but as Mario always said 'what goes round, comes round'

 

Personally I don't think the drivers slow down enough for local yellows in junior forumula racing either, though, and I do think it represents progress if we can get everyone to slow down significantly more than they currently do by specifying how much they have to slow down, and making it a lot more than two tenths for a SWY and five tenths for a DWY. And at the top level, taking pressure off officials by endeavouring to remove as much of the subjective judgement out of it and having a system that is seen to be fair, is not such a bad thing. There's more riding on a Formula 1 Grand Prix than there is on a club race.



#14 redreni

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 10:10

8 years might be a bit extreme, but it's not that hard to remember your opinion about a situation in general. I also remember I once wrote something like that and searched for it.

 

So in the light of shameless self-promotion...  :D

 

However, the main problem is still that this doesn't bunch up the field to give the marshals time to work with.

 

Quite right that it doesn't bunch the field up. It's for situations where marshalls don't need prolonged access to the racing line, which would hitherto have been dealt with under local yellows. If you have debris all over the track and need to send men with brooms onto the racing surface to sweep away the carbon fibre shards, then the SC will come out and rightly so. But if you have a car in the barrier and you need to take it away, why do you need to bunch the field up? If everybody slows down sufficiently to ensure they're not going to go off, that's all that's required of this system.

 

Please don't suggest bunching the field for every piece of debris or broken down car, because Bernie would love that idea... Races would become virtual lotteries.



#15 Nemo1965

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 10:27

I was wondering: why not use prescripted gears and/or revs? The race-officials could, of course, well before the race set the speed for every corner and then calculate which gear with which max revs would result in the desired speeds.

 

Then, on the dashboard, for each sector the driver sees (for example): highest gear 3 or highest gears plus highest revs 9000 (or something).

 

Sounds more simple to me...



#16 ANF

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 10:29

They have only just begun to test the system, and I would like to hear about the plans for next season before I jump to conclusions.

Anyway, redreni pointed out the problems with having a "virtual safety car" around the entire lap, and that's exactly why I would rather see a system with slow zones.

This is what I wrote in the Bianchi accident thread:
 

Yeah, I think they should consider a combination of speed limit and delta times. A speed limit through the zone where an incident has occured, and quite slow delta times through the zones before and after?

And perhaps they would have to consider extending the zones at certain places of the track. At Suzuka, for example, I guess it would be better if the drivers were told to slow down at Spoon rather [than] further down the straight.

 



#17 Kalmake

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:01

It's about 2 seconds per yellow flag sector (they may flag more than one) plus possible time loss of entering green sector with less speed.



#18 Fatgadget

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:48

Blue flags,yellow flags,red flags,chequered flags,safety cars..soo very anachronistic in this day and age of instant screen read outs on a driver's steering wheel....Deffo way to go.

#19 ExFlagMan

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:53

Blue flags,yellow flags,red flags,chequered flags,safety cars..soo very anachronistic in this day and age of instant screen read outs on a driver's steering wheel....Deffo way to go.

Until the electronic systems go down - remember the problems they had with DRS activation not working a couple of seasons ago.
How many steering wheel changes did one driver need a race or two ago?

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#20 Missedtheapex

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 12:54

I think this is a great idea in terms of drivers' safety; but it has to be polished in terms of marshalls'/tractors / cranes safety.

#21 Fatgadget

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 13:42

Until the electronic systems go down - remember the problems they had with DRS activation not working a couple of seasons ago.
How many steering wheel changes did one driver need a race or two ago?

Comeon! Im sure you have heard of 'built in redundancy'? Sort of stuff the aerospace industry have been using for donkeys years.Sure it's not
fool-proof...then again what is idiot-proof?

#22 bonjon1979a

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 14:41

They have only just begun to test the system, and I would like to hear about the plans for next season before I jump to conclusions.

Anyway, redreni pointed out the problems with having a "virtual safety car" around the entire lap, and that's exactly why I would rather see a system with slow zones.

This is what I wrote in the Bianchi accident thread:


The delta time is a speed limit. If you have to complete a 5km track in 5 minutes - that's 60kph speed limit. The delta time is used because the timing transponders are easier to monitor than cars speed throughout lap?

#23 george1981

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 14:41

So is it to improve safety or to remove the advantage one driver might get?

Both the two are linked.It seems that drivers are not slowing down enough or unifomrly through double waved yellows, one of the reasons being they think they'll lose out to other drivers who are going quicker.

So by removing the advantage it improves safety because all drivers should be going at the same speed through the sector and no advantage can be gained by going quicker.

From what I had heard after Bianchi's crash drivers had interpreted a single waved yellow as you must be atleast 0.1s slower than normal, a double waved yellow should be atleast 0.5s slower than normal.

To me those limits do not sound like enough. Double waved yellows mean there could be marshalls/debris on track and be prepared to stop. The Mercedes could be 0.5s slower than normal through a sector  and still be quicker than their next competitor at full speed.

For the record I think that Bianchi's speed wasn't the cause of his accident. Drivers have spun off under the safety car before in similar conditions. it seems to have been a very unlucky series of events in conjuction with one another that meant he wasn't able to walk away from that accident.

So the had the virtual safety car been in action that day he may well have had the same accident with the same results.



#24 ANF

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 17:38

The delta time is a speed limit. If you have to complete a 5km track in 5 minutes - that's 60kph speed limit. The delta time is used because the timing transponders are easier to monitor than cars speed throughout lap?

You're talking about the average speed over a lap. You could go quicker than 60 km/h at some places and slower at others and still average 60 km/h.

And that's all you get with delta times as far as I know: a minimum mini-sector time (and maximum average speed).

I think a real speed limit would be safer through mini-sectors where there are double waved yellows.



#25 Bloggsworth

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 17:49

To make sure they stay fully concentrated also do not allow changes on the steering wheel etc while you are in one of these zones and a lapse of concentration when not dricing at full speed may be disastrous

 

Beeps in their earpieces, no tone for correct speed, high pitch for too fast; and if you want it, low pitch for too slow. You could vary the pitch increasing if your speed is increasing, and vice versa. This sort of system was used to tell pilots if they were left or right of the runway when landing. Wouldn't work for deaf drivers though...



#26 OO7

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Posted 01 November 2014 - 17:50

Coming up with a crazy idea then watching F1 make that reality isn't something you tend to forget. Like say, inventing DRS (sort of) a few months before F1 announced it. I'm still waiting on a nice all expenses paid trip to a GP as compensation Bernie.

Well done from me noikeee, however you may be on the hit list of many forum users now!



#27 ANF

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Posted 03 November 2014 - 13:20

There were some incidents of interest in Austin.

1. The Pérez–Sutil accident on the opening lap

Sutil's Sauber was parked on the kerb, and the track was covered with debris. Race control immediately deployed the safety car – a good call.

Hopefully, even with a virtual safety car system in place, the real safety car will be used in incidents like this when track workers have to remove a lot of debris. Bunching up the field makes sweeping a lot safer.

2. Speeding behind the safety car

A number of drivers were penalized for speeding when the safety car was on track, and they were only given a five-second penalty. I think the five-second penalty is excellent for small offences, but if the FIA are serious about safety, they'd better start handing out drive-through penalties for speeding behind the safety car.

3. The recovery of Hülkenberg's car

The car was abandoned along the armco some 300 metres down the straight between T11 and T12. It was completely outside the track and close to an exit in the barrier, but the runoff is very narrow.

It took quite some time (two or three laps) before the marshals got to the car. Normally at a grand prix, you would see them rush out as soon as the car has stopped. I suspect they have been instructed to be more cautious. That's good.

What I found disturbing, however, was that the cars were going by at high speed. I assume there were double waved yellows, yet they didn't seem to slow down much at all. Charlie Whiting has already said there has to be a better way of making the drivers slow down under yellow flags. Two grands prix after the tragedy at Suzuka, nothing has changed.

I realize they can't introduce a virtual safety car system until it has been thoroughly tested. But why aren't the drivers told to slow down more? There are already rules for how much slower they must go under yellows. Just increase that delta for the remainder of this season.

And please consider the introduction of local slow zones with a speed limit for next year. Force the cars to go by a recovery scene at a safe speed, say 100 km/h. At a high-speed part of the track where cars average 310 km/h, you would only get them down to 230 km/h with a 35-percent increased delta time. That's not a safe speed for either drivers or marshals – not even in the dry with tarmac runoffs.



#28 redreni

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Posted 03 November 2014 - 21:55

There were some incidents of interest in Austin.

1. The Pérez–Sutil accident on the opening lap

Sutil's Sauber was parked on the kerb, and the track was covered with debris. Race control immediately deployed the safety car – a good call.

Hopefully, even with a virtual safety car system in place, the real safety car will be used in incidents like this when track workers have to remove a lot of debris. Bunching up the field makes sweeping a lot safer.

2. Speeding behind the safety car

A number of drivers were penalized for speeding when the safety car was on track, and they were only given a five-second penalty. I think the five-second penalty is excellent for small offences, but if the FIA are serious about safety, they'd better start handing out drive-through penalties for speeding behind the safety car.

3. The recovery of Hülkenberg's car

The car was abandoned along the armco some 300 metres down the straight between T11 and T12. It was completely outside the track and close to an exit in the barrier, but the runoff is very narrow.

It took quite some time (two or three laps) before the marshals got to the car. Normally at a grand prix, you would see them rush out as soon as the car has stopped. I suspect they have been instructed to be more cautious. That's good.

What I found disturbing, however, was that the cars were going by at high speed. I assume there were double waved yellows, yet they didn't seem to slow down much at all. Charlie Whiting has already said there has to be a better way of making the drivers slow down under yellow flags. Two grands prix after the tragedy at Suzuka, nothing has changed.

I realize they can't introduce a virtual safety car system until it has been thoroughly tested. But why aren't the drivers told to slow down more? There are already rules for how much slower they must go under yellows. Just increase that delta for the remainder of this season.

And please consider the introduction of local slow zones with a speed limit for next year. Force the cars to go by a recovery scene at a safe speed, say 100 km/h. At a high-speed part of the track where cars average 310 km/h, you would only get them down to 230 km/h with a 35-percent increased delta time. That's not a safe speed for either drivers or marshals – not even in the dry with tarmac runoffs.

 

Regarding (1), it wouldn't make that much difference on the opening lap since the cars were still in a fairly tight pack anyway. But yes, I agree that sweeping the track should normally only be done when there's no race traffic coming, with the post chief calling his men off the track before the cars come by.

 

Regarding the bolded part, I'm not satisfied the FIA has got to the bottom of this network of problems yet, and I think they know that, which is why they're very sensibly waiting for the accident report before changing the rules. We have to remember that respect for yellow flags, in terms of slowing down, has been very poor in F1 for a long time, and the wrong signal has been given to drivers for a long time (like Interlagos 2003 when Alonso was awarded a podium finish which he would not otherwise have got after he ignored yellows, and caused a huge, race-ending crash under yellows that endangered the lives of Mark Webber and several marshals at the scene. Not only did that go unpenalised; Alonso went home with a better result than if he had observed the flags and avoided the accident.

 

Yet despite this appalling situation having persisted for many years, serious incidents under local yellows have been very rare, so we shouldn't exaggerate the risk in just leaving things more or less as they are for a couple of races until the panel has had a chance to report.

 

Maybe Charlie has indeed insisted on marshals obtaining his permission before going trackside to recover cars, but if so, I'm not as convinced as you seem to be that he's made the right call. Sutil's car was ideally placed to be pushed back behind the barrier, but Sutil was reluctant to leave it because it was in neutral and it was rolling back down the track. If one marshal had gone to help him steer, they could have got the recovery done in a few seconds without machinery. As it was, the car rolled to a point where it would have had to be pushed forwards, back up the hill, before it could be steered back into the gap, and as the television pictures cut away they were bringing a digger in (I'm not sure if they used it in the end - there was clearly no need). Whether they were following instuctions, I don't know, but when you've got a car rolling back down the track past the access gap, a driver standing by the car not being directed to a place of safety, and three marshals standing behind the barrier doing nothing, that to me looks like it's simply extending the amount of time the car and driver and (eventually) marshals are going to be exposed to danger. The situation was nothing like the Bianchi one, it wasn't necessary to have a SC or a slow zone, because the chances of anybody going off under local yellows there, in those conditions, were just vanishingly small.

 

That's why we need to wait for the report and hope it looks at risk management as a whole, rather than just focussing on the thing that's just happened. If we start saying marshals can't assess the situation for themselves in a case like that and go and get the car before it rolls past them and becomes harder to recover, then we've created a rule that mitigates a risk that's so small it's virtually non-existant while still allowing, for example, flag marshals to stand on the pit wall during the start. And if somebody stalls, the marshal standing just feet away from him sticks his head arm and shoulder trackside of the debris fence to wave his flag, even though if the stalled car does cause a collision, they're at serious risk of getting a wheel in the face. Recovering a car from the outside of a fast bend in the wet when several cars are on heavily worn inters it would be different, but on the inside of the track in the dry, come on. Just get the track cleared asap and get on with the race. The race director needs to trust the marshals to know when it's safe to enter a live race track and when it isn't. Maybe that is still the case and the marshals at Austin were just not used to being expected to go on a live track. Maybe they normally work ovals, or maybe they're just more familiar with the system used by IMSA and Indycar and USC and every other North American series where you just call the SC for everything.

 

Whatever, we need to try to consider as many risks as possible and rank them for likelihood, severity and how easy they are to mitigate without impacting too much on the racing, and address the biggest risks, not just the thing that happens to have occurred recently.



#29 ExFlagMan

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Posted 03 November 2014 - 22:15

One point about the Hulkenburg recovery is the fact that the car was probably still electrically 'live' from the KERS/ERS systems, as I seem to remember the team advised him over the radio to leap out of the car without touching it, probably why he seemed somewhat reluctant to try and stop it rolling back down the hill. I guess the marshals would have been aware of this as there is supposed to be a light that indicates if the car is in safe mode or not. I guess it depends if the nearest marshal was equipped with the requisite safety equipment, ie a pair of heavy duty 'Marigolds'.

#30 ANF

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Posted 07 November 2014 - 11:30

Recovering a car from the outside of a fast bend in the wet when several cars are on heavily worn inters it would be different, but on the inside of the track in the dry, come on. Just get the track cleared asap and get on with the race. The race director needs to trust the marshals to know when it's safe to enter a live race track and when it isn't.

Well, in a way I agree. On the other hand, drivers not slowing down enough under yellows is a serious issue. Like you said, it has been an issue for many years.

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of bringing the speeds down with slow zones with a speed limit when marshals – regardless of the conditions, the location, and the use of a recovery vehicle – are about to get inside the barriers. It would be safer and straightforward, it wouldn't interrupt the race on parts of the track that are clear, and it shouldn't have to happen very often during a grand prix.



#31 ANF

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Posted 07 November 2014 - 11:32

One point about the Hulkenburg recovery is the fact that the car was probably still electrically 'live' from the KERS/ERS systems, as I seem to remember the team advised him over the radio to leap out of the car without touching it, probably why he seemed somewhat reluctant to try and stop it rolling back down the hill. I guess the marshals would have been aware of this as there is supposed to be a light that indicates if the car is in safe mode or not. I guess it depends if the nearest marshal was equipped with the requisite safety equipment, ie a pair of heavy duty 'Marigolds'.

Ah, thanks for reminding me about ERS. Seems like a plausible reason for the delay.



#32 FerrariV12

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Posted 02 December 2014 - 14:06

Confirmed for 2015.

 

Pleased with this - watching the WEC equivalent (FCY) in action at the weekend, if done well it really is the best of all worlds - safety, minimal race disruption and fairness. I haven't praised many of F1's rule changes or new features in recent years, but this is a welcome exception.



#33 redreni

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Posted 02 December 2014 - 15:14

Confirmed for 2015.

 

Pleased with this - watching the WEC equivalent (FCY) in action at the weekend, if done well it really is the best of all worlds - safety, minimal race disruption and fairness. I haven't praised many of F1's rule changes or new features in recent years, but this is a welcome exception.

 

I predict it will work less well in F1 than it does in sportscars. It's actually a slightly different proposal for F1, anyway. F1 cars have a much narrower operating window for tyre temperatures. In WEC, the VSC boards go out, and people drone around slowly on a speed limit until the boards are withdrawn. In F1, there will be delta times instead of a hard speed limit and the drivers are going to duck and dive and weave and accelerate and brake like madmen, which is why the drivers asked for the length of the timing loops to be increased so as to allow them to vary their speed more and still hit their deltas.

 

This is kind of inevitable for F1 if speed is limited and reduced over the whole course - having a hard speed limit, as in WEC, wouldn't work because the restart would be a rather hazardous farce with everyone running too-cold tyres and brakes. But it's not ideal, because it gives the drivers a hell of a lot to think about when passing the accident beyond just going by at a safe speed and watching out for people on the track. They have to constantly monitor their deltas and their temps, so they're staring at their steering wheels rather than looking where they're going. The way to avoid it is to use a local slow zone with a hard speed limit, because this would control speed more tightly and provide a safer working environment for those at the accident scene, while giving the drivers the rest of the lap to go at full racing speed thereby maintaining their tyres and brakes within their operating window. For the people working at the scene of the incident, having cars coming past at a constant, predictable speed and not accelerating, braking and changing direction suddenly, is always likely to be a major aid to safety, particularly if they need to enter the track for any reason.


Edited by redreni, 02 December 2014 - 15:16.