Formula 1 Thread

#1,226
#1,226
Nerd-Vol said:
Careful what you wish for. You could get a 1988, where there was no passing because of the dominant Honda turbo V-6.

I do miss the creativity of having different engines among the teams, but it does greatly increase the price.
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Price? They race in freaking Monaco. That has alway been a weak excuse. I don't care if teams dominate. That just makes the other team work for it more
 
#1,227
#1,227
JL 103 said:
Price? They race in freaking Monaco. That has alway been a weak excuse. I don't care if teams dominate. That just makes the other team work for it more
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There is a reason why:

Honda
BMW
Jaguar
Toyota
Yamaha
HRT
Jordan
Super Aguri
Pacific
Tyrell

and many others left F1. Stuff is really expensive. That's why F1 has taken drastic steps over the past decade to reduce the costs of the sport.


Also, no thanks on domination.

I don't want to endure what we had in in 2000-2004 of simply tuning in to see who took 3rd place.


Unless it's Lewis Hamilton doing it.
 
#1,230
#1,230
Nerd-Vol said:
There is a reason why:

Honda
BMW
Jaguar
Toyota
Yamaha
HRT
Jordan
Super Aguri
Pacific
Tyrell

and many others left F1. Stuff is really expensive. That's why F1 has taken drastic steps over the past decade to reduce the costs of the sport.


Also, no thanks on domination.

I don't want to endure what we had in in 2000-2004 of simply tuning in to see who took 3rd place.


Unless it's Lewis Hamilton doing it.
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Toyota went to NASCAR, BMW went to DTM, Honda got an exclusive contract with IRL. And the rest got bought out abd are still around. Tyrell was great, the four wheel front was an interesting design.
 
#1,231
#1,231
Toyota going to NASCAR has zero to do with them leaving F1. Their NASCAR effort is Toyota NA bankrolled. Toyota left F1 because KERS got nixed for 2010, and they wanted a place to showcase their hybrid tech, which is why they were in sportscars. BMW left for largely the same reason. Honda left because of 2007 when they were supposed to have a world title car, it flopped, and then they hired Brawn and absorbed some Super Aguri guys, and the 2008 car was still noncompetitive.


None of these manufacturers are leaving F1 solely because of the costs, it's because they come into F1 thinking that they can showcase different technologies, and then F1 hits them with an engine freeze and then allows Ferrari and Renault to upgrade engine parts to get some more power, but when Toyota(might have been Honda?) and BMW tried to do so the FIA put the brakes on it. The engine freeze is a big reason those three aren't involved and FIA politics is THE reason they left.
 
#1,233
#1,233
ptclaus98 said:
Toyota going to NASCAR has zero to do with them leaving F1. Their NASCAR effort is Toyota NA bankrolled. Toyota left F1 because KERS got nixed for 2010, and they wanted a place to showcase their hybrid tech, which is why they were in sportscars. BMW left for largely the same reason. Honda left because of 2007 when they were supposed to have a world title car, it flopped, and then they hired Brawn and absorbed some Super Aguri guys, and the 2008 car was still noncompetitive.


None of these manufacturers are leaving F1 solely because of the costs, it's because they come into F1 thinking that they can showcase different technologies, and then F1 hits them with an engine freeze and then allows Ferrari and Renault to upgrade engine parts to get some more power, but when Toyota(might have been Honda?) and BMW tried to do so the FIA put the brakes on it. The engine freeze is a big reason those three aren't involved and FIA politics is THE reason they left.
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I respectfully disagree on the underselling of the costs factoring into those teams leaving.

Look at:

1. Most of what was being printed at the time.

2. When they left (at the height or start of the economic crisis of 08-09).


So it was an easy decision for these teams to withdraw their support back when they needed to save a nice slice of money. Especially when they were dropping over $200 mil a year (more for toyota) and they only had 2 wins between the 3. So I think it was much more of an equal mix between cost and performance.



In terms of why I think the sport is just fine in its current state, there is a really nice article from the folks at F1 Rejects which is worth a read.

Three races into the start of the 2011 Grand Prix season, and that sound you hear is the sound of people on the streets, in pubs and cafes, around water-coolers, talking about Formula One in enthusiastic terms. F1 is generating a buzz that hasn’t been seen in ages, with the amount of overtaking and on-track action in the Malaysian and Chinese GPs in particular seemingly making up for the lack of action in the last two decades. Spread the word: F1 is becoming unmissable viewing.
Not everyone is entirely pleased, though, and their views should not be dismissed in the tide of positive opinion. Their argument is that the high-wear Pirelli tyres, KERS and the DRS - the very factors that have created this level of excitement - are too artificial, and an example of the rulemakers legislating to create drama. In the same way that NASCAR, for example, tweaks the rules so that there are 88 lead changes amongst 26 cars, and eight drivers within 0.15s at the finish, as there was at Talladega recently.

The current rules to some extent turn the sport into a lottery, so the argument goes, and it does not reward the best teams and the best drivers as a relatively unconstrained let-the-teams-make-the-cars-and-let-the-drivers-get-in-there-and-drive-the-wheels-off-them formula would. The so-called purists would also argue that whilst things such as KERS and the DRS enforce certain variables upon the teams, technically the rules also inhibit innovation and dumb-down the cars in the name of entertainment.

I can genuinely sympathise with that view. Perhaps it is just a function of nostalgia, but I started following F1 in the late 1980s and those years from the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s remain my favourite period in all the years I’ve seen so far. Those years also represent the high watermark for comparatively ungoverned F1 regulations. It is arguable that up to the end of 1993, apart from rules setting engine formulae and the dimensions of the cars, it was by today’s standards a free-for-all.

Within that broad framework, Cooper designed a rear-engined car, Lotus came up with wings and ground effects, Tyrrell put six wheels on a car, Renault prepared a turbo engine, Brabham tried mid-race refuelling, and Ferrari made a semi-automatic gearbox. It was the infamous clampdown on gadgetry and the reintroduction of refuelling in 1994 that marked the beginning of the FIA not only establishing stricter technical boundaries but also determining the strategies by which the game would be played.


Since then, it has been a case of the governing body tweaking and re-tweaking the rules until, in 2011, they have seemingly got it right. But has that really been such a bad thing? Or do we view the years before 1994 with rose-tinted glasses? What one needs to remember is that by 1993, F1 had become an arms race with teams spending massively - by the standards of the day - developing technologies such as traction control, active suspension and ABS brakes that turned Grand Prix cars into robots that ran on rails.
The global economic recession of the early 1990s made F1 people realise that unfettered investment on unrestrained cutting-edge technological development was unsustainable. Notwithstanding the fact that budgets continued to increase until the recent financial crisis finally brought about a resource limitation agreement, much of that spending has gone into refining existing concepts and eking out performance. Imagine the spending if designers and engineers had had the freedom to explore whatever ideas as they pleased.

What many also tend to overlook is that by the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Grands Prix had often become processional. Just consider the McLaren domination of 1988-89 or the Williams juggernaut of 1992-93. The speed difference throughout the grid was often enormous; at the 1992 British GP, the top six on the grid were separated by over 4.5 seconds! Such was the stability of the leading cars that they did not even look fast, even though, for example, the records set by Williams at Magny-Cours were never broken.

What made the racing in those days appear interesting and unpredictable was the relative lack of professionalism of teams challenging at the front, let alone the midfield teams or the backmarkers. There were any number of teams that lived such a hand-to-mouth existence that today’s Hispania would have looked like a well-organised machine. Even the better teams of the day would only have had the levels of preparation and operation that you would find in a lower-midfield outfit today.

The result was that performance levels could fluctuate wildly from race to race. Points scorers and podium finishers one race could fail to qualify at the next. Stefan Johansson was 3rd for Onyx in Portugal in 1989; he failed to pre-qualify at the next round in Spain. The Leyton Houses DNQed in Mexico in 1990; at the next round in France they ran 1-2 mid-race. Cars were more unreliable and retired more often. It was more common for drivers to be out-of-position and to have to charge through the field.


In short, there were always great human and sporting stories to be told up and down the grid. But from the 1990s onwards we have seen the ever-increasing media saturation that has since spawned the internet and all that that has entailed. All sports have become more professional, and all teams have become more well-drilled, in the knowledge that well-presented outfits and individuals market well, and well-oiled teams gain success that markets even better.
Arguably, as F1 teams maximised their potential more and more, the racing was only going to be more processional and something would inevitably have to be done to ‘spice up’ the action. For the other thing about increased media coverage is that sports must - rightly or wrongly - pander to the demands of the viewership, and society these days – again, rightly or wrongly - demand instant entertainment and have little time for the nuances that afficianados adore. Just take test cricket versus Twenty20, for example.

And so, from that point of view, you could say that the FIA, Pirelli and the teams have finally, after over a decade of trying, found a way to successfully adjust to modern realities. And ironically, arguably what they have done is to ‘artificially’ recreate what happened ‘naturally’ in the mid-‘80s. That was a time when tyre conservation and strategy could decide a race - like Mexico 1986, for example. Today’s KERS and fuel mixtures are like the turbo boost and fuel management challenges 25 years ago.

Whilst the DRS today has no equivalent with yesteryear, in its ability to help cars draw alongside each other it compensates for the longer braking distances of the past that we don’t see any more. In that sense, perhaps F1 today is no more artificial than what it was in the past. And even if it was, it is because the sport is bending to meet the challenge that the changing world has set over the last two decades. If that gets more people interested in Formula One going forward, that can only be a good thing.
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#1,234
#1,234
Also, the only change I would really make in F1 is allowing 3rd cars back like we had in the mid 2000's where you could have your test driver run on Friday.

This solves many issues:

1. Brings back testing essentially, as you can put in more mileage, but it is cheaper than having to do a dedicated test session.

2. Value for the fans, as it encourages teams to put in a bunch of laps on friday.

3. Much needed seat time for young drivers. I think a lot of the sloppiness we saw this year has to be due to the lack of seat time these young drivers get in an F1 car. Just a few years ago an F1 rookie had many thousands of miles under his belt because there was much more testing freedom, plus the old third car.

4. They will be the reserve cars during the races. Back a few years ago, if there was an incident during the first lap of the race, and it stopped the race, the race controller had the option of allowing the use of back up cars. What this probably means now is that Romain GrowShaun can take out the entire field twice!

WHO WOULDENT WANT THAT!?!
 
#1,238
#1,238
Nerd-Vol said:
Also, the only change I would really make in F1 is allowing 3rd cars back like we had in the mid 2000's where you could have your test driver run on Friday.

This solves many issues:

1. Brings back testing essentially, as you can put in more mileage, but it is cheaper than having to do a dedicated test session.

2. Value for the fans, as it encourages teams to put in a bunch of laps on friday.

3. Much needed seat time for young drivers. I think a lot of the sloppiness we saw this year has to be due to the lack of seat time these young drivers get in an F1 car. Just a few years ago an F1 rookie had many thousands of miles under his belt because there was much more testing freedom, plus the old third car.

4. They will be the reserve cars during the races. Back a few years ago, if there was an incident during the first lap of the race, and it stopped the race, the race controller had the option of allowing the use of back up cars. What this probably means now is that Romain GrowShaun can take out the entire field twice!

WHO WOULDENT WANT THAT!?!
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F Growshawn. Screwed McClaren twice last year. Which means he will get a contract from ferrari or AMG.
 
#1,239
#1,239
JL 103 said:
F Growshawn. Screwed McClaren twice last year. Which means he will get a contract from ferrari or AMG.
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He screwed a lot of people this year.

McLaren screwed themselves a hell of a lot more. I have never been more frustrated as a fan than I was last year.
 
#1,241
#1,241
Nerd-Vol said:
He screwed a lot of people this year.

McLaren screwed themselves a hell of a lot more. I have never been more frustrated as a fan than I was last year.
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They made alot of mistakes last year. But some couldn't have been avoided.
 
#1,242
#1,242
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