11 replies to this topic

[V8 Fireworks]

Exactly. That's why I'd never be able to implement my single engine formula. It's not that equivalency formulas don't necessarily work, but it's very hard to be objective about if they're working or not when there are so many bikes to take account of. It would be much simpler if the equivalency formula wasn't needed. It's not as though Ducati can't make a four - they made the Desmo RR.

In the top levels they are a necessary "evil", the specification of "Item 1. Must not exceed 600 kgs total weight. End." is no longer considered an acceptable rule book in motorsport since 90-100 years ago.

We see two main schools of thought for producing close racing and even playing field.

1. Technical parity. The cars will perform the same or similar because they are the same. This is the model, of course, used by NASCAR. The chassis are identical and the four different engines are all-but identical in specification. This is also the model used by F1, not quite as strict but not far off. Your 2.4 L V8 must have this many valves, this stroke, this bore, this COG and be made of this material. You must use these tyres. You must use this ECU. And so forth. It is also the model used by DTM, where all cars will be based on the same Dallara chassis. Furthermore, the Aussie V8 and the Brazil stock car series have the same thinking. Not to mention the countless spec series (from junior formulae to sportscar series like Carrera Cup and Ginetta racing) that cater to professional and amateur racers (and F1 technical directors ) who want to be sure they have a chance at being competitive for their cash.

2. Performance parity. Cars prepared equally well and driven equally well should have the same chance of a result, even though they different technical specification. Some balancing measures are applied, either beforehand or on an ongoing basis throughout the season. This is, of course, the model used by the ACO at Le Mans where petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles are supposed to fairly balanced by a series of measures including the engines themselves as well as different fuel tank allowances. For years the provision for 1500cc with forced induction went unused within the F1 regulations, until it became the better choice. MotoGP has traditionally been closer to allowing freedom, but will create their own performance parity situation with the introduction of the claiming rule bikes within the MotoGP competition.

A couple of poll questions:
1. Which do you prefer as a racing fan or competitor?
2. As an F1 focussed bulletin board, which would be the better direction for F1?

[Rikhart]

Technical all the way, otherwise it´s not really a "competition", ie, why improve when they will just ballast the guys in front? And saying

Cars prepared equally well and driven equally well

just sounds about the hardest thing to monitor in the history of mankind!

[Risil]

Entertaining racing invariably comes from machines (and more rarely, their fleshly control interfaces) with different performance (power/durability/handling characteristics), but probably equal in potential speed over the course of the whole race.

Formula One, NASCAR, DTM's interest in absolute "technical parity" is the result of bad leadership making shortsighted decisions made up for by the vast media- and globalisation-driven expansion of markets and capital for racing at the top level. Indycar's attempt to reverse their spec-series trend is illustrating the difficulties of making water flow uphill, so to speak. Also note F1's abandoning of ground effects chassis in 2014, because the world's best and best-funded automotive aerodynamicists apparently don't know how to deal with them. Reminds me of Homer Simpson's quote on a change of job: "I'm no supervising technician, I'm a technical supervisor. It's too late to teach a dog new tricks!"

MotoGP had the right idea between 2002 and 2006, but the independents like Cosworth, Ilmor, Team KR, Blata and so on were outgunned by the sheer resources and motorcycle know-how of the big manufacturers. Hopefully the technical restrictions (rev-limits, maximum bores, maximum number of cylinders) will be temporary, but with Mister Ecclestone-lite Ezpaleta apparently writing the rules I don't think it will be until his leadership (or Dorna's chequebook) is exhausted and the series is turned back over to the FIM bureaucrats.

Don't mind equalisation formulae a la IMSA, or the Le Mans series, or World Superbike (or even MotoGP 2012). It's constant and dirty work for the rulemakers, but it proved its worth with the Camel GT series in the 1980s and the WSBK series in the 1990s. Racing-as-marketing has a lot to recommend it. Honda, Ducati, Kawasaki, Yamaha all racing according to brand profiles is more exciting than a photo in a magazine, that's for sure. If it means that twins have to be forced to be competitive with fours, that's a price worth paying. It requires a lot of communication and good will between sanctioners and competitors though, which isn't usually possible when the competitors are big auto manufacturers.

I suspect the major, largely unmentioned problem is that most series have reached the limit of what speeds are safely achievable, making any further technical advance an actual danger to the sport's continued livelihood. A big step forward in F1 laptimes wouldn't really be welcome around Spa or Monaco, for instance. And NASCAR's had the Daytona lap speeds pegged at 200mph for around 25 years now, for the purposes of insurance premiums and (indirectly) crowd safety. There are enough examples of this situation at Indianapolis to write a book on. If we want to see real technical freedom -- at the cutting edge, not with teams trying to do something novel like turbodiesels or carbon bike chassis to match the status quo -- I reckon corner speeds will have to decrease considerably. Whether racing crowds -- let alone the people who paid for bespoke racing wind tunnels -- will accept that is another question.

Edited by Risil, 27 February 2012 - 13:17.

[fastwriter]

It's F1 - I don't want a drivers battle only, I wanna see which constructor does best. That's what F1 always was about. If you give that up, F1 will die.

Edited by fastwriter, 27 February 2012 - 16:22.

[Faupa]

In the top levels they are a necessary "evil", the specification of "Item 1. Must not exceed 600 kgs total weight. End." is no longer considered an acceptable rule book in motorsport since 90-100 years ago.

We see two main schools of thought for producing close racing and even playing field.

1. Technical parity. The cars will perform the same or similar because they are the same. This is the model, of course, used by NASCAR. The chassis are identical and the four different engines are all-but identical in specification. This is also the model used by F1, not quite as strict but not far off. Your 2.4 L V8 must have this many valves, this stroke, this bore, this COG and be made of this material. You must use these tyres. You must use this ECU. And so forth. It is also the model used by DTM, where all cars will be based on the same Dallara chassis. Furthermore, the Aussie V8 and the Brazil stock car series have the same thinking. Not to mention the countless spec series (from junior formulae to sportscar series like Carrera Cup and Ginetta racing) that cater to professional and amateur racers (and F1 technical directors ;) ) who want to be sure they have a chance at being competitive for their cash.

2. Performance parity. Cars prepared equally well and driven equally well should have the same chance of a result, even though they different technical specification. Some balancing measures are applied, either beforehand or on an ongoing basis throughout the season. This is, of course, the model used by the ACO at Le Mans where petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles are supposed to fairly balanced by a series of measures including the engines themselves as well as different fuel tank allowances. For years the provision for 1500cc with forced induction went unused within the F1 regulations, until it became the better choice. MotoGP has traditionally been closer to allowing freedom, but will create their own performance parity situation with the introduction of the claiming rule bikes within the MotoGP competition.

A couple of poll questions:
1. Which do you prefer as a racing fan or competitor?
2. As an F1 focussed bulletin board, which would be the better direction for F1?

Neither I hate formula when a penalty is placed on successful car/driver combinations . Success should be rewarded, not penalised, innovation applauded and risk taking rewarded.

Whilst I admire the dominance of Red Bull I am equally encouraged by the rise and rise of Team lotus/Caterham. Similarly I am disappointed by the decline of Williams.

Nothing is better than watching Kobayashi "belting" big names in the ever improving Sauber

No parity, everyone has the same set of rules. It all depends on interpretation and implementation

[abulafiaF1]

No parity, whatsoever. The reason I like the sport is because it is a competition between engineers as much as it is between drivers (even more so, in fact). Ok, some may argue that it's a competition between budgets, but that's true only up to an extent. I think F1 was heading in the right direction with the RRA and FOTA, which was what the sport needed: Maintain innovation and technical competition, but restrict it financially. Too bad they decided to blow it.

Frankly, I don't understand why people keep on moaning about F1. Over the past few years, we have had some really amazing championships. In 2008 it was decided at the last race. 2010 was a free-for-all between 5 drivers, and kept us again in the edge of our seats until the last corners. 2011 was easy for Vettel, however the spectacle was simply amazing, with all the overtaking, fast-degrading tyres, etc. And, to add to that, we have had no deaths in the sport (with the sad exception of the marshals in Australia and Monza) for the last, what, 18 years. I say F1 is doing just great, managing to maintain its core audience and at the same time attracting many new fans from the emerging markets. All they really need is find a way to share profits better and restrict resources. That's all.

[freya]

Full performance parity is the ideal solution. But that's really all it is. The problem with that approach is that in every scientific field we still have issues defining sophisticated metrics to quantify complex performance factors. For example, which language has the highest expressiveness? This problem, as complex as it might sound is actually very simple as all languages are pretty much achieving the same, yet there are no globally accepted metrics.

The same goes for F1 cars. It is literally impossible to quantify the performance of a certain aero configuration. Interestingly the rules we have currently with all the technical parities still don't manage to close every loop hole, now imagine opening the can of worm that is performance parity instead.

[V8 Fireworks]

Over the past few years, we have had some really amazing championships. ...2010 was a free-for-all between 5 drivers,

The technical parity measures have helped privateer teams like RBR greatly though, I am not sure they would be in the hunt if there was more emphasis on engines and tyres. Wind back to 2006 and RBR were supplied with secondary spec Michelins (having the "choice" of receiving what McLaren had tailor made half a season or more ago). They also paid $25-30m for the privilege of substantially detuned customer Ferrari engines.

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 28 February 2012 - 10:40.

[travbrad]

Technical parity definitely. I don't want a spec series where every car has identical performance. There are tons of series where you can get that already. That being said I do wish the technical regulations were less restricted.

[Buttoneer]

Performance parity to give the engineers something to work with. Certainly in terms of engines etc it would be incredibly interesting to see what could be done with a specific amount of energy. A team could have 'x'kilojoules of petrol, diesel, battery, whatever and then try to get to the end of the race using whatever further energy regeneration and recuperation techniques they can.

Some teams might go light and refuel while others will be able to take a more endurance view, but we will see some interesting and road-relevant technologies and ideas coming out of the on-track warfare. Whether that's incorporation of laminate solar panels or little windmills on the side pods, or sticking with tried and tested KERS systems I don't much care but allowing that sort of freedom would be fantastic IMO. Sadly, it would also be expensive.

It's much harder to achieve this sort of parity though when all the systems are so different, so we would have to accept that the driver element will be questioned or impacted in some way because coming up with a standard ECU that can handle all the possibilities might be too much. Perhaps the 'standard' bit could just concentrate on power delivery from the gearbox onwards rather than the engine mapping and management? That way we'd at least know the driver wasn't using launch or traction control and inhibiting certain types of feedback will prevent teams using engine versions of those.

Much harder to achieve this with bodywork and aero I think, but I'm just throwing some ideas around.

[abulafiaF1]

The technical parity measures have helped privateer teams like RBR greatly though, I am not sure they would be in the hunt if there was more emphasis on engines and tyres. Wind back to 2006 and RBR were supplied with secondary spec Michelins (having the "choice" of receiving what McLaren had tailor made half a season or more ago). They also paid $25-30m for the privilege of substantially detuned customer Ferrari engines.

Fully agree. I guess I should re-phrase my post: technical parity, but with a big enough scope for innovation and differentiation. As I said, I think the current model is working very well indeed. No need to mess about with it too much.

[RealRacing]

This is a very personal view: I think that the most entertaining and fair competition in any sport happens when said competition is between human beings. So, for me, talent and preparation should be the factors by which differences are made. Where are the best competitions seen? Normally, where there are as few variables as possible. In the case of sports where more than the mere human body is used, this equalization happens when standard machinery is used (see, for example, olympic boat racing).

Having said this, in F1 I would like to see who the best driver actually is and, at the same time, have the closest, most exciting competition possible. F1 should not be a team sport, it should be a driver's sport. When I go to or watch a F1 race on TV, I want to see amazing car control, close battles, late braking, passing and re-passing and all the great things that a talented driver can do with a car. So, if a team, a team principal, a regulating body, a No. 1 driver or whatever deprives me of seeing this, I start to feel alienated from the sport.

So, to answer the question, I would like to see total standardization of F1 cars or, at least, whatever comes closer to it.