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Delayed/cancelled sessions in the wet - enough is enough


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#101 Lotusseven

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Posted 02 April 2015 - 06:27

I've lost count of the number of times in the last five years or so that a qualifying session or race has been delayed or even called off because it's been too wet, and we had it again at qualifying in Malaysia.

The commentators always tell us it's to do with the ride height of the cars and aquaplaning and acting like a "toboggan", and they always support each decision and act as if nothing can be done about it and that it's just one of those things. But surely this is complete nonsense.

If they said it was a visibility thing and following other cars would be too dangerous, then that's another argument. But that's never the reason given so I'm going to put that to one side.

If F1 cars can't race when there's standing water because they run too low, then raise the ride height of the cars. It's as simple as that. "Oh no, but then they'd be too uncompetitive in the dry". No. Change the rules so that they have to run higher, or to allow them to make changes in the wet, or make the wet tyres larger to automatically raise the ride height more when those tyres are fitted. Why is this such a problem?

 

I don´t know if it's been said in this thread, but the delays is mainly because of the ambulance helicopter must have clear visibility to lift off in case of an accident as more easily happens during rain as you know. 

It´s early days but we could have a rain in qualifying/race again in the coming GP weekend.

 

Can someone please do a thread about Shanghai GP build up ..I'm useless to do it. Thank you!  :up:  :)


Edited by Lotusseven, 02 April 2015 - 06:29.


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#102 lbennie

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Posted 02 April 2015 - 06:33

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#103 ExFlagMan

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Posted 02 April 2015 - 07:09

The full wets are mainly used now to help remove standing water from the track behind the SC, as they are more efficient at it than the inters - imagine the outcry if they trundled round for twice as long behind the SC just to clear the track and then had to pit straight away for a new set of inters as the old ones where no longer effective.

#104 SenorSjon

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Posted 02 April 2015 - 07:11

People are too funny. It's not a simple thing. You'd need to increase testing so teams get a handle on how the tires react in the wet. You have to increase costs of tires brought to race. You'd need a tire war to keep the tire company motivated to bring good wet tires. You need to open up Parc ferme which is a slippery slope of qualifying spec cars again. You might need to bring in Sunday shake downs.. Changing ride height greatly affects soo many things it's not like a team just raise it on get on with it. Eye roll. You really think it's that easy in modern day f1 car to do.. they barely get enough dry testing to get enough data with dry setup... Can't imagine them wasting valuable track time for a monsoon off chance session..

 

The Goodyear ones performed fine and they ran solo quite a few years. They even had soft-medium-hard at every race and teams could choose these tires at their own discretion. 

 

The Sunday shakedown was called Warm Up and it was a perfect way to start your Sunday breakfast. It was binned with parc fermé. And the lack of testing also comes from the lack of engines to burn on testing things. They rather sit out FP's to save parts and complain when the situation becomes less than ideal due to rain.

 

 Rain is the issue, so schedule a date and time of day where it is statistically low that rain will happen.

 

Too many fans are spoiled. Rotten. They want a race to be televised at a prime time of their day, and to ask them to conduct themselves like devoted fans and get up whatever the time of day or night is asking too much of them. But because the Formula One schedule is slotted in for their own convenience, we get safety issues such as rain and low light levels in the evening at certain tracks.

 

Don't just discuss band-aid solutions, but rather examine the core issue that creates such problems, the scheduling of races at crazy times.

 

Bernie tries everything to ruin F1 for the European fan (paywalls at TV and track), yet he suddenly cares for them when it comes to race scheduling? I dislike the artificial light races (I would want to see Singapore by day for instance, a lighted ribbon is a bit boring to behold). To me, a race should always start at 14.00 local time. Never a problem with diminishing daylight. A few years back we had drivers complaining that the lights and dials on the steering wheel were to bright and hindered their track vision. Malaysia was cut short due to rain delays which made it to dark to continue, Japan 2014 is already mentioned. I think a wet Singapore will never be run in artificial lighting.