18 replies to this topic

[mariner]

Well, in way there is a connection.

 

The big professional sports are trying to restart their TV income streams including F1. 

 

Tennis has started in indoors Germany . You only need three people to hold tennis match if the players collect their own balls as they are doing. The net and the tall umpires chair ensure social distancing and the only risk is picking up the ball which most pro's can do with the racket.

 

Even top level football can be played behind closed doors with 30 people, 22 players , 2 managers,and 5 officials plus a medic, and all in one country with no international travel .

 

F1 apparently needs to move 1,000 people to a track - 80 people  for each of 10 teams, tyre technicians,  FIA officials and scrutineers plus experienced marshals. It seems a big ask of a host country to allow 1,000 people to come in , spend  5 days together while needing to use  several hotels.

 

The link to Mexico 1964 comes form a pic I found on page 54 of the great " Tales from the toolbox " book. It shows all the mechanics and tyre people at the 1964 Mexican GP. Just 28 people !

 

Add 19 drivers and maybe ten team managers gives less than 60 incoming visitors , maybe just over 60 with an FIA steward etc.

 

I am not just a nostalgist but I can see running a GP if you only need 60 people to fly in is an awful lot less risky for a host country than  1,000.

 

If coronavirus does cary on a long time maybe somebody neds to figure out how it al carried on with just 60 people at the " flyaway" tracks?

 

[Michael Ferner]

28 people? I bet Ferrari have as many chefs these days! Ain't gonna happen.

[opplock]

Good luck with reducing numbers. I remember a Channel 4 programme a few years ago featuring David Coulthard (2013 Red Bull) and Guy Martin (BMW Superbike) doing various tests at Silverstone. Martin and a mechanic turned up with the bike in the back of a van. Red Bull needed a transporter and a team of 12. Not including the Renault man who flew over from France to look after the engine. Total mileage over 2 days - about 20. 

[D-Type]

One year I was down near at the start line at the FoS.  Each modern grand prix car was accompanied by a minibus load of mechanics.  A prewar Auto Union came down unaccompanied under its own power as did Mephistopholes and Babs, both Land Speed Record holders.  Because of their size, the latter two had to do a three point turn which they accomplished easily - so the mandatory reverse gear actually works!

Edited by D-Type, 03 May 2020 - 19:24.

[Jack-the-Lad]

Well, given the impulse of both Liberty and the FIA to control, perhaps they should consider a limit on the number of staff, advisors, consultants, caterers, sponsors, hangers on (including family) etc., that each team is permitted to bring to each GP. It would reduce costs, footprint, etc.

And FIA and Liberty should be held to a standard as well.

[Lee Nicolle]

Big time motorsport has long lost the plot. At the upper levels they require a hundred in the factory and 30 or 40 at the track. 

Make far simpler cars! Sir Black Jack had a team of about 6 plus wife. And I suspect Larry Perkins had himself and an unpaid helper.

Watching V8 Stupidcars and they have hot and cold running gofers.  15 years ago at Mallala Gibson motorsport seemed to have Gofers to drive the car to the grid. Wheras Perkins Motorsport seemed to be one mechanic, Larry and Russell.

And that was watching Larry refit the axles in his race suit while the mechanic was under the car. Plus Larry was supervising customers on engine maintenance. 

And these days they have a huge number of people, even the ones running last. Massuers, cooks, PR people, and about 6 in pitlane watching the race on assorted monitors. Plus a heap of mechanics. 

[john aston]

Actually , I find the resources at lower levels even more shocking than  F1 . I remember going to a TCR race meeting at Croft a year or two  ago and apart from the single figure grid and stupid amount of track time to what is basically BTCC lite , the amount of kit and personnel was quite absurd . You will see the same at British GT , with uniformed crew , huge transporters and serried ranks of screens.and laptops . 

 

It is reassuring to see a Lola T70 being fired up by a hairy arsed bloke with a squeegee bottle of petrol and with the owner/ driver in the cockpit 

[2F-001]

I've probably said this before around these parts, but a present day pit stop for a tyre swap in a Grand Prix typically involves more pit crew members than there are drivers starting the race.

 

(I've seen participants in some of the higher end track days with more crew and kit than we used to see at a Grand Prix.)

[Michael Ferner]

Corona would be a good excuse to get rid of these stupid and pointless pit stops - social distancing at work! Really, changing wheels in nought-point-something belongs on the circus stage, not the race track 

[john winfield]

Corona would be a good excuse to get rid of these stupid and pointless pit stops - social distancing at work! Really, changing wheels in nought-point-something belongs on the circus stage, not the race track 

 

Social distancing might stop the crazy pit stops, Michael, but it will also put an end to the closely packed 4-3-4 grids at the non-championship Formula 1 races.

 

Oh, hang on, I might be hallucinating. Probably lockdown lunacy...

[mariner]

I don't agree with everything Bernie did nor most of his opinions outside racing but in this interview he seems to think F1 is up a blind alley and needs to go abck a few decades in terms of entertainment 

 

https://www.autocar....s-and-elon-musk

[Michael Ferner]

A few decades, eh? Preferably to the time before FOCA and all that jazz.

 

Btw, terrible interview(er), I gave up after five minutes of waiting for something interesting to come up.

[68targa]

This is what happens with the technology that Grand Prix racing has grown so used to.  Once you have it, it's not so easy to give it up especially when the teams decide upon the rules.

 

 I have just seen a quote from Christian Horner that 'Draconian' measures will be in place and that means we can only have 80 team members for the (possible) race in Austria.  Oh dear !.

[absinthedude]

I gather Silverstone uses around 1000 marshals alone for the British GP. If that's the sort of figure required just for marshals the F1 circus is going to be quite a large bubble.

[Charlieman]

I don't agree with everything Bernie did nor most of his opinions outside racing but in this interview he seems to think F1 is up a blind alley and needs to go abck a few decades in terms of entertainment 

 

https://www.autocar....s-and-elon-musk

Thanks for the link. Unlike Michael, I find something interesting to read in every BCE interview!

 

Interviewer: Have you ever been one to look back?

BCE: No

 

That is so obviously contradicted by Ecclestone's response to the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans or by his personal racing car collection. If he is just wheeling and dealing, why is his choice so eclectic?

 

(See also: Henry 'history is more or less bunk' Ford, and the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.)

[Michael Ferner]

That's what I meant - that interviewer is so full of himself ("why-oh-why did I crack that joke!") that he forgets to ask interesting questions, or to question un-interesting answers. A twelve-year-old could've done a better job!

[mariner]

I would agree that Historic racing is as much a centre of team expansion as F1 in many ways. The pro support teams seem to have lot of people as well  as all the  latest tool box systems etc.

 

In part it may be they are new to the cars and have limited truly top level experience so they pack in resources to do the best job they can for guys paying a lot of money to them.

 

I well remember at Silverstone Classic seeing a huge pro Historic team with all it's kit filling a bay in the Bernie building whilst across that paddock on old guy was adjusting a Lotus 25 mirror with just a Philips screwdriver. The point being his name was Bob Dance and he had years of top flight F1 knowledge inside him. So no criticism   of the big pro team but a guy who has strapped in World Champions is very hard to replicate.

[D28]

Corona would be a good excuse to get rid of these stupid and pointless pit stops - social distancing at work! Really, changing wheels in nought-point-something belongs on the circus stage, not the race track 

But that would leave the TV producers without a major source of interesting shots. They now cover most every tire change, even for back markers, what would they concentrate on, the racing?

Edited by D28, 04 May 2020 - 14:20.

[john aston]

I gather Silverstone uses around 1000 marshals alone for the British GP. If that's the sort of figure required just for marshals the F1 circus is going to be quite a large bubble.

They'd need far fewer if half of them weren't deployed on binocular duty , spotting what's happening on the Tarmac beyond the run off areas