Quote from amp88 :

1976 too. Lauda's accident mid season then the final soaked race at Fuji where Hunt only just won the title.

... and he punctured too.

1986 and 1994 stand out in the memory, but I think that has a lot to do with races in the middle of the night - just makes the mood different, especially a title decider.

1997 too. The top 3 cars all got exactly the same qualifying time - you couldn't make it up.

I didn't realise you were one of the Devil's Children, Brad.

I mean, I know you joined dbp, but left handed aswell?

I wonder if they'll try to make Brundle go to the Hungarian GP this year? It is an event that he has avoided for a number of years now.

Watch out for Open Wheel Racing League's MRT Cup which traditionally runs for a couple of weeks after Christmas.

Keep checking http://www.owrl.de for announcements (you'll need to register to join the league.

Remove all the wings and let them have ground effect - loads of downforce that is not so badly affected by turbulence and the cars wouldn't look ridiculous.

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

I'm sure there was a race with the best of WSBK and best of 500cc GP riders one year, or am I confused?

Not thinking of the Transatlantic Trophy are you? I think that was long gone before SBK arrived though.

500s would have less power, but it's not as smooth on a two stroke.

Just because we have reached Patch Z doesn't necessarily mean the next step is Beta.

Go get them Andy!

I'd go with everything Mazar says.

One other thing to add - I would say that drivers who wish to compete in the oval races (the 500 excepted which has its own criteria) should race and complete a certain percentage of laps of the preceeding road course races. This would keep the races as part of the championship and not have them invaded by oval "specialists".

My dream team:

In the Box - Toby Moody (Eurosport MotoGP commentator) & Martin Brundle (natch - do people still say natch?)

In the Pits - DC (as he knows exactly what is going on down there)

Presenting - Anyone, don't care as I only turn on during Marty's gridwalk and miss all the tedious "lifestyle" reports ("at home with the Hamiltons" etc)

Quote from wild :

I think it would be more sensible to implement this in 2010. The FIA are introducing Standardised Engines then so there wont be no more KERS. Pretty much of a waste of time adding Kers for one year then taking it out.

KERS is not part of the engine and they did state that if they went for standardised engines then KERS would be one of the factors to provide performance differential.

Standardised engines is just a threat to concentrate FOTA's minds to producing cost saving ideas. It won't happen but even if it did then of course KERS would stay.

Back on Topic...

An up to date F1 car (licensed or just based on the regulations - it doesn't matter) would be a good thing.

Quote from .deFINe. :

This was a nice race. I didn't have the pace to keep up with FiredUp, but I had fun defending my position against storm_cloud who somehow ended up behind me at one point. It probably would've been close if he didn't have to leave.

Thanks for organizing.

Always a pleasure to fight with a professional like a spdo driver

Quote from S3ANPukekoh3 :

I bet my house the FIA will penalise Hamilton for SOMETHING in the last few laps, or even after the race, That will decide the title

I'll take that bet. Where is my new house?

Heikki and Lewis are gong be trying so hard not to hit each other and also neutralise Alonso that they could hit problems. It's probably harder to avoid problems at the start if you are driving to avoid problems at the start, if you see what I mean. It may be less instinctive so more hesitant.

Changing compounds would be a disaster and make the series gimmicky and seem more like "Whacky Races". If you were to equate F1 tyres back to the LFS nomenclature then if prime is R3 then the option would be R2.6 or R2.7.

R2 are qualifying tyres for FO8 now. R3 and R4 would be less ridiculous, but there would still be no strategy in it as you would just run R4s for the shortest possible period.

As for the warmup lap - we tried that in OWRL F1 and it didn't really serve the purpose. Tyres were not warmed significantly and there are all the disadvantages (warmup lap crashes, drivers in wrong order, no native jumpstart penalty).

Good luck Kris! Well done on getting into CoRe

Quote from chunkyracer :

I see a problem with that. If a driver disconects he could be having problems with his Internet conection, or for example a electricity failure that prevents him to rejoin the server. In that case a disconection would mean race over for his team, so that can´t be an ideal solution...

Yes that's a problem, but then to fix that you would have to find a way of assigning different drivers to cars and there are no team affiliations coded into LFS.

Easiest thing where someone suffers connection problems is the current situation and that would have to be handled by trackers or replay examination.

Why can't the server just recored the number of completed laps and the returning disconnecter picks up his car from the pits with all the same damage, fuel etc as he had at the end of the last completed lap. It is probably too difficult to code all the different scenarios around driver takeovers, so the guy driving the last completed lap should return, even if he is handing over the car on the next lap.

Quote from Forbin :

I've never seen anything like this in motorcycle racing (e.g. MotoGP). Teamwork just never really comes into play on the track. In the garage, some data may be exchanged between the two sides of a garage, but once they get out on the track, it's every man for himself.

Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden - Valencia 2006. Dani let him blow past - partly team orders and partly because he took him out at the previous GP.

Why would the teams want shorter races? That equals less TV time so F1 would be worse value for money for their sponsors.

Don't forget there's a race on this weekend

On the one hand I don't think Hamilton is mentally ready to be world champion. On the other hand winning it may just calm him down a little and take the pressure off.

Mind you - the pressure on him must be enormous. There's only Heikki who is remotely on his side and he just dutifully follows him around at a respectful distance. Look at Alonso's comments - "I didn't see it but I'm glad he got the penalty." and also Kubica, Webber etc criticising him. With the whole grid against him he might just implode this weekend.

Exactly. So the FIA set a tariff of say £5m for a chassis and £1m for an engine. At the end of the weekend you can go to Ferrari's garage (or whoever) hand them over a cheque and they remove Kimi's fluffy dice (and hip flask no doubt) from the car and you take it home.

Quote from tinvek :

it'll favour the drivers that use their brains, no one will be able to drive at 100 % all the race and expect their brakes etc to be in perfect condition at the end.

you'll get a mix of tactics, do you go off like a bat out of hell at the start and hope to hang on at the end or do you take a "prost" approach of taking it a bit easier while the cars heavy and then push at the end, last time you had no refueling the cars that paced themselves were often up to 3 secs a lap quicker than the leaders in later parts of the race so you should get some good end of race battles.

That's just thinking back to what happened in the 1980s and it wouldn't apply today. Brake technology and materials are 30 years more advanced. and the races would be flat out sprints to the end with consumption controlled by computer (a la MotoGP).

Here's the big problem: they spend 2 days practicing and qualifying, then they put the fastest guys at the front and we expect the slower cars that start behind to overtake them. Fuel stops are the only saving grace at the moment because it means you can go light in Q3 and mix the grid up a bit.

If they want to cut costs and level the playing field then they should try the "claiming" rule that they are going to use in MotoGP 600 (or whatever the replacement for the 250s is called).