Indeed.
But now I'm wondering, will Schumi ever have corners named after him?
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2007 Formula One Thread
- Thread starter R.Youden
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Taaaaaaaaaaaa-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
The griping continues over the distinguishability of the hard from soft compounds. The little white dot Bridgestone used was worthless in Melbourne (you could tell it was a half-arsed, last-minute fix), though this cracked me up too:
Oh, FFS!
itv.com/f1 said:
Oh, FFS!
The griping continues over the distinguishability of the hard from soft compounds. The little white dot Bridgestone used was worthless in Melbourne (you could tell it was a half-arsed, last-minute fix), though this cracked me up too:
Oh, FFS!
I think the best suggestion I have heard was to paint the groves in the team colours. Red for ferrari, Orange for Renault, Silver for McLaren, White for BMW, little islands of green on a blue background for Honda...
i don't give two hoots how much it costs Bridgestone, if i pay £200 to go to Silverstone I want to know what is happening.
Or they could just use a different colour rubber all together...
I honestly just don't see the f**king point of distinguishing the difference between the compounds anyway.
F1 has managed perfectly well without this bollocks for the best part of 6 decades.
What we actually want.
Simplified Aero.
Big, f**k off fat slicks.
Stupidly, ridiculously high levels of engine power.
What we have.
Bitching about what colours to paint the f**king tyres, like a bunch of girls deciding on what eyeshadow to buy at an Avon Party.
It's beyond crap.
I honestly just don't see the f**king point of distinguishing the difference between the compounds anyway.
F1 has managed perfectly well without this bollocks for the best part of 6 decades.
I guess I don't care about whether you can distinguish one tire compound from the other, but F1 has more important things to worry about IMHO.
I have to agree that the engine design freeze is a bummer - they always target the engine whenever they want to slow the cars down, when grip is what matters.
It's crap.
We need less aero and more mechanical grip, and lots more power. So much power that even big f**k off fat slicks can't cope. That's what we need.
I just hate this artificial crap that's creeping in to F1 at the moment. It's just like putting weights on horses, or a handicap in golf. It's artificial. And more importantly. It's crap.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
It seems as if they've switched from saying "We need to keep speeds down for safety" to "We need to keep speeds down to level the playing field, lower the cost, and save the Earth".
This may be a long ramble so please bear with me...
The reason that the FIA want to slow the cars down is not a direct result of any 'safety' or 'green concerns'. Formula One is a business (like all major sports these days) and it gets very boring if one team wins all the time.
If one team (in the last few years Ferrari) wins every year then fans stop watching. If fans stop watching the revenue goes down and in turn (this is the big one) manufacturers leave the sport. Why did jaguar (Ford) quit a few years ago; because they where not doing any good. If they had been competitive, which in turn makes it financially viable, then they would have stayed.
What the FIA have to do is try and make the sport as exciting for the fans whilst making it competitive so that companies stay involved. If teams are given a free budget and no restrictions (eg the engine freeze) then it will be a case of the team with the biggest budget wins (Ferrari) so the other manufacturers leave.
Now whilst I agree that these new regulations have 'neutered' the sport they have achieved what the FIA wants, manufacturers to commit long-term futures to the sport.
The engine freeze is, for the FIA, the most logical way of cutting costs. If you can make one engine then you already have the infrastructure to make 10. Therefore with this engine freeze you are not limiting the workings of the team, only maybe a few design staff. Now if you make an aero freeze then these teams that have invested millions into wind tunnels (Honda have just spent £36million on a new tunnel) will be left with a very large and very expensive air conditioning fan! This will annoy the teams who will threaten to pull out.
The point about big fat slicks is a common misconception too. If you think about it a spinning wheel generates a lot of air turbulence which in turn effects the aero of the car behind (less of an effect if they use 'complex' aero) so you get LESS overtaking. I agree that we should have fully slick tires, (just not ones that are 3 foot wide) and I believe that this maybe happening soon.
So for the FIA it is a very fine line. Improve the racing and loose manufacturers, which will loose interest and money, or keep the big names with not such great racing which annoys the fans (who the FIA doesn't really care about anyway).
I said it would be long!
The reason that the FIA want to slow the cars down is not a direct result of any 'safety' or 'green concerns'. Formula One is a business (like all major sports these days) and it gets very boring if one team wins all the time.
If one team (in the last few years Ferrari) wins every year then fans stop watching. If fans stop watching the revenue goes down and in turn (this is the big one) manufacturers leave the sport. Why did jaguar (Ford) quit a few years ago; because they where not doing any good. If they had been competitive, which in turn makes it financially viable, then they would have stayed.
What the FIA have to do is try and make the sport as exciting for the fans whilst making it competitive so that companies stay involved. If teams are given a free budget and no restrictions (eg the engine freeze) then it will be a case of the team with the biggest budget wins (Ferrari) so the other manufacturers leave.
Now whilst I agree that these new regulations have 'neutered' the sport they have achieved what the FIA wants, manufacturers to commit long-term futures to the sport.
The engine freeze is, for the FIA, the most logical way of cutting costs. If you can make one engine then you already have the infrastructure to make 10. Therefore with this engine freeze you are not limiting the workings of the team, only maybe a few design staff. Now if you make an aero freeze then these teams that have invested millions into wind tunnels (Honda have just spent £36million on a new tunnel) will be left with a very large and very expensive air conditioning fan! This will annoy the teams who will threaten to pull out.
The point about big fat slicks is a common misconception too. If you think about it a spinning wheel generates a lot of air turbulence which in turn effects the aero of the car behind (less of an effect if they use 'complex' aero) so you get LESS overtaking. I agree that we should have fully slick tires, (just not ones that are 3 foot wide) and I believe that this maybe happening soon.
So for the FIA it is a very fine line. Improve the racing and loose manufacturers, which will loose interest and money, or keep the big names with not such great racing which annoys the fans (who the FIA doesn't really care about anyway).
I said it would be long!
But the history of F1 is littered with periods of domination by one team over not just an era, but successive decades, yet it's still experienced near unparalleled growth over the last 30 years.
Ultimately though, F1 is a sport first, and entertainment second. The FIA's attempt at artificially creating closer competition is more closely related to the latter than the former.
Just look at what artificial meddling has done to the BTTC for example, and it looks like the same is going to occur in the forthcoming ALMS series too.
History suggests otherwise. Consider the near total domination of the McLaren and Williams teams in the 1980's and 1990's. This certainly has not had a detrimental affect on the subsequent influx of manufacturers in the the 21st century (BMW, Honda, Renault, Toyota).
And revenues are increasing, not decreasing... a contributing factor to this is the eagerness of developing economies and countries to host a GP, which obviously is a massive incentive for the manufacturers, if not quite the same reasons for privateers.
Again history suggests that this is not the case. For example, consider Renault's success over the last two seasons. Or Benetton's, McLaren and Williams in the 1980's and '90's, when Ferrari arguably had the largest budget of all the teams.
But, it's also worth considering that Ferrari have not, according to Business F1 magazine, had the biggest budget for some years. With McLaren, Toyota, Honda, and BMW all having greater ones.
Honda and Toyota especially, are proof that huge budgets do not equate to success.
But the teams will spend whatever money they can generate, testing restrictions, engine restrictions, etc etc will make no difference at all. The money will just be diverted elsewhere. If a team can procure $400 million a season, then they will spend $400 million a season, regardless of any restrictions, and there has been nothing to suggest otherwise.
Whilst what you are saying is true, it's ignoring the fact that todays cars generate more of their grip through aerodynamic downforce, then the less aerodynamically sensitive cars of say 15-20 years ago, which had higher levels of mechanical grip, (slicks, increased width, lower ride height etc).
Because of the changes in the regulations, we've seen the FIA reduce grip from the tyres (narrower, grooves), we've seen them narrow the cars, and increase their ride height, which have seen a subsequent and significant reduction in the levels of mechanic grip, whilst they've increased the aero-dependency of the cars which has made it increasingly difficult to overtake, and because of the FIA's changes, they do not have the mechanical grip to compensate for this lack of downforce when attempting to closely follow the car in front.
So yes, whilst adding big fat slicks would be detrimental to current F1 cars overtaking, it would of course need to be balanced out by a reduction in the dependency and complexity of the cars current aerodynamics to generate sufficient levels of grip to allow for more overtaking opportunities.
I hear what you are saying, but almost every argument starts with "History suggests otherwise". This is the big problem. Formula One is hugely different from what it was 20 years ago (people enjoyed watching Prost and Senna win 15 out of 16 races because is was entertaining), it is even different to what it was 5 years ago.
It is not controlled by Bernie and Max in their ivory towers anymore. The manufacturers have so much input into the regulations. It will be impossible to reduce the aerodynamic properties of the car as it is such a complex area and so much money has been spent on it. Teams are not going to vote on scrapping aero development after they have spent millions of pounds on wind tunnels and such like.
I agree that in an utopian state formula one would have loads of overtaking but someone (I think it was Eddie jordan) said. If you put the fastest car at the front and the slowest at the back then you are never going to get much overtaking are you?
It is not controlled by Bernie and Max in their ivory towers anymore. The manufacturers have so much input into the regulations. It will be impossible to reduce the aerodynamic properties of the car as it is such a complex area and so much money has been spent on it. Teams are not going to vote on scrapping aero development after they have spent millions of pounds on wind tunnels and such like.
I agree that in an utopian state formula one would have loads of overtaking but someone (I think it was Eddie jordan) said. If you put the fastest car at the front and the slowest at the back then you are never going to get much overtaking are you?
The FIA have started to dick with the rules yet again.
From 2008 traction control will be banned (in principle I agree with this but it opens up so many options on cheating, but with the single ECU this isn't too much of a problem I suppose).
They are not making the cars any wider (which would have given them more mechnical grip and hopefully encouraged overtaking).
They are not going to used slick tyres (this isn't really an issue with a single tyre manufacturer as they could give them less / more grip than the grooved if they wanted)
And they are going to allow some changes to the engine.
Change for the sake of change.
From 2008 traction control will be banned (in principle I agree with this but it opens up so many options on cheating, but with the single ECU this isn't too much of a problem I suppose).
They are not making the cars any wider (which would have given them more mechnical grip and hopefully encouraged overtaking).
They are not going to used slick tyres (this isn't really an issue with a single tyre manufacturer as they could give them less / more grip than the grooved if they wanted)
And they are going to allow some changes to the engine.
Change for the sake of change.
I'm not happy. Maybe we'll have a spec engine soon, who knows? I privately hope the spec ECU fails miserably.
This is the standard ECU:
The problem with the ECU is that it is made by McLaren and from what I could gather they are limited to running the same style of sensor that only Mclaren run. So if Renault wanted to run a specific sensor and McLaren don't support that type of sensor then they can't run it.
There will not be an issue with reliability as both McLaren and (I think) Spyker use this ECU at the moment.
The problem with the ECU is that it is made by McLaren and from what I could gather they are limited to running the same style of sensor that only Mclaren run. So if Renault wanted to run a specific sensor and McLaren don't support that type of sensor then they can't run it.
There will not be an issue with reliability as both McLaren and (I think) Spyker use this ECU at the moment.
I can't see the other teams not flipping out about this though - McLaren will have great experience with software development on this ECU, while the other teams will have to pull all-nighters reading the manual before they have the same proficiency. Advantage: McLaren.
I would think they'd go with a third-party component to avoid squabbles...
I would think they'd go with a third-party component to avoid squabbles...
From the way I can remember it working to was like this:
When the FIA said they wanted to run a standard ECU and they would open it to bids the three big ECU suppliers to Formula One, TAG Electronics (McLaren), Magneti Marelli and Pi Research all agreed not to run so there would not be a single supplier if no-one submitted an offer.
At the last minute it was announced that a small ECU maker had submitted an offer so all the other companies had to do the same. Therefore the contract was offered to TAG.
As far as changing over to the TAG electronics I don't think it is a huge issue. They will have the units by now. Most of the code will be written in MATLAB Simulink so the Control engineers will know what is going on. Who will have to do the hard work is the guys who run the electronics at track side and use the software. I think the TAG software is called ATLAS.
It is not a huge technical issue but what the teams are concerned about will be the limitations that are imposed on them and how information gets back to McLaren.
Which is a fairly significant issue...I dunno, I guess I'm used to manufacturers getting their backs up over the smallest thing, but they all seem to be swallowing this horsepill in relative silence.
I think part of the reason there isn't much publicity over this move is that electronics is very "cool". I think that there is going to be slightly more ability to have a closed system where not too much information goes back to McLaren.
There will be the usual NDA but Formula One is one of those industries where almost every team will have some employees that have worked for every other team. At Honda I knew of at least 4 or 5 guys that had worked for McLaren in terms of electronics / control so they shouldn't have too much trouble.
One issue will be what happens when a control unit fails and has to be shipped back to McLaren for service still fully loaded with software and logged data...
R.Youden said:
It's not a big problem. It was to demonstrate that what you were saying had no historical basis or merit, whether it be 1 year ago or 20, because what you were saying was not new to F1.
R.Youden said:
I am not suggesting that aero development be scrapped.
What I am suggesting is that regulations be changed to reduce the cars dependency on aerodynamic downforce to generate grip whilst there is a change in the regulations that allow for a corresponding increase in the levels of mechanical grip.
And it's not impossible to reduce and simplify the aerodynamic properties of the cars at all. It's completely feasible and achievable. Windtunnels will still be just as important in developing, refining and optimising the aerodynamics of the car. It's just that they won't be the singularly most important one.
R.Youden said:
Has F1 ever really had a surplus of overtaking? I don't think it has. And I know I certainly wouldn't want it to become like NASCAR where there's so much overtaking as for it to become meaningless.
But with the current regulations, we're in a position where cars with a 2 second a lap advantage struggle to overtake slower cars (Massa Vs Button Australia 2007) and there's next to no hope of teammates overtaking one another when one is slower than the other (Barrichello Vs Button, Australia 2007).
And this is down to the current regulations favouring the importance of aerodynamics, whilst not allowing for corresponding levels of mechanical grip to balance out the performance of the cars.
R.Youden said:
I think I agree in principle too, though I'm certainly expecting some interesting (and innovative) mechanical solutions to maybe try and replicate primitive traction control functionality.
R.Youden said:
They've made a big booboo here IMHO.
R.Youden said:
I think it's a massive issue. A wide slick tyre, of the same compound as a narrower grooved one provides more mechanical grip. To compensate for the lower levels of grip provided by a narrower, grooved tyre you need to soften the compound, which then has the unwanted side effect of producing more marbles off line, further reducing overtaking opportunities.
With the introduction of slicks, whilst this will increase cornering speeds (see Ferrari's recent test with GP2 tyres), if we saw a reduction in the aerodynamic dependency of the car, then this would cancel out that speed increase.
If we then saw changes to the regulations that widened the cars, lowered them, allowed flat undertrays etc we'd have cars that are not so easily disrupted by turbulence. Well... it worked alright in the '80's.
R.Youden said:
Me neither.
Unless McLaren start dominating all of a sudden.
Considering the level of technical expertise present in F1, I'm surprised they had such a hard time coming up with a tire that meets the distinguishability rules. It shouldn't even be news that they finally figured how to paint a bloody white line on the tire!
I can't give a toss anyway, since right now I can't see the races on TV (no satellite/cable )
I wonder if the ruling against BMW/Ferrari's spring-loaded floors will show in their pace though...
I can't give a toss anyway, since right now I can't see the races on TV (no satellite/cable
)I wonder if the ruling against BMW/Ferrari's spring-loaded floors will show in their pace though...
Seems like the most reasonable way to solve this problem. It will be a interesting to see whether the grooves stay visible as the tires get dirty after a few laps...
Well qualifying is over for the Malaysian Grand Prix and it was pretty much as we expected.
Winners:
Toyota did better than expected.
BMW carrying the good work.
Losers:
Honda just can't push the car to the limit.
Renault not at the races at all.
The new white line in the tyre groove looks to be working well. Should be an interesting race tomorrow.
Winners:
Toyota did better than expected.
BMW carrying the good work.
Losers:
Honda just can't push the car to the limit.
Renault not at the races at all.
The new white line in the tyre groove looks to be working well. Should be an interesting race tomorrow.
I'm excited.
The four McLaren and Ferrari drivers are giving us a great show so far - any one of them seems able to challenge the others. Great competition!
The four McLaren and Ferrari drivers are giving us a great show so far - any one of them seems able to challenge the others. Great competition!