this always seems to happen with new rules and / or any inovation. the trouble is F1 has this stupid system of two layers of legality, the FIA may say it's legal and the race stewards may still throw it out. it should be simple and straight forward, you design something, submit it to a central stewards body who then rule on it. the same stewards body should also rule on legality at races, not local stewards.
as it is it just causes confusion and costs the teams money, in the past we've had ferrari disqualified over barge board size before being declarred legal on appeal and mclaren invested time and money in their second brake pedal system before being told they had to stop using it.
the other problem is that teams are not reqired to run legal cars at testing so none of these issues can be clarified till a race meating. whilst this does allow interim cars and designs, such as mclaren using last years rear wing, there should be a cut off point so that cars have to comply with regs before the last tests.
EDIT it was alot worse in the 70s, in italy cars got their qual runs thrown out 1 year because their fuel was too high an octane rating, the limit being decided by being within a certain distance of the highest octane fuel on sale for road cars, at the time italy had lower octane fuel than other countries so their limit was lower and the fuel was illegal despite being legal at every other gp that year. mclaren in 76 were disqualified from a race result because their car was too wide under the new regs brought in to limit car width. the actual max size was was decided on by using the widest car currently racing which was the same mclaren but despite the car being identical, local stewards disagreed on how wide it was due to the tyres having a slightly different sidewall shape and the extra "width" offering no gain. this was later overturned, possibly due to it being pointed out that ferrari had been running their oil cooler in an illegal position for half the season. as james hunt said, it also gave ferrari no advantage and was simply a case of one race's stewards believing it to be legal when ferrari changed its position only for it to be pointed out it was not some races later
one good thing is that presumably brawn, williams and toyota have had enough warning about other teams concerns and will have made plans in case they fail scrutineering
as it is it just causes confusion and costs the teams money, in the past we've had ferrari disqualified over barge board size before being declarred legal on appeal and mclaren invested time and money in their second brake pedal system before being told they had to stop using it.
the other problem is that teams are not reqired to run legal cars at testing so none of these issues can be clarified till a race meating. whilst this does allow interim cars and designs, such as mclaren using last years rear wing, there should be a cut off point so that cars have to comply with regs before the last tests.
EDIT it was alot worse in the 70s, in italy cars got their qual runs thrown out 1 year because their fuel was too high an octane rating, the limit being decided by being within a certain distance of the highest octane fuel on sale for road cars, at the time italy had lower octane fuel than other countries so their limit was lower and the fuel was illegal despite being legal at every other gp that year. mclaren in 76 were disqualified from a race result because their car was too wide under the new regs brought in to limit car width. the actual max size was was decided on by using the widest car currently racing which was the same mclaren but despite the car being identical, local stewards disagreed on how wide it was due to the tyres having a slightly different sidewall shape and the extra "width" offering no gain. this was later overturned, possibly due to it being pointed out that ferrari had been running their oil cooler in an illegal position for half the season. as james hunt said, it also gave ferrari no advantage and was simply a case of one race's stewards believing it to be legal when ferrari changed its position only for it to be pointed out it was not some races later
one good thing is that presumably brawn, williams and toyota have had enough warning about other teams concerns and will have made plans in case they fail scrutineering
Last edited by tinvek, .
anyone else read in autosport how kubica's height may mean he has to run without Kers whilst heidfeld runs with it due to centre of gravity issues ?
we'll probably see a lot more of this type of things as the new wings opperate partly in ground effect which is the fist time for a long while that teams have been able to do this. as they get used to it we'll see a lot more variations on design
agreed i'm always finding i can push further over the kerbs than i naturally do and still not get an incident point. a good example is the first right hander in the maggots / becketts complex this week in the mazda series
i never liked oval racing on LFS but after the mazda last week at milwakee i cant help thinking that all those requests for a short oval on LFS had a good point
what could hurt brawn due to their lack of preseason testing is not pace but reliability, cars that appear late have an anoying habit of failing under race conditions for a couple of races, add in a new engine and transmission which the car was originally not designed for and they may have problems though at least the merc is supposed to have good heat rejection figures and need less cooling than the ferrari engine for example
anyone else remember 98 when mclaren were supposed to be struggling in pre season testing and then lapped the whole filed in the first race?
hope to god they're not about to do the same, the last thing we need is a dominant year by any team
hope to god they're not about to do the same, the last thing we need is a dominant year by any team
if the brawns are this fast then there are going to be some very red faces at honda when the japanees race fans start asking questions like "did you pull out just as you developed a winning car or is it just that the mercedes engine is lot better than honda's ?"
trouble with cars is how do you define where they are from? eg is a prodrive subaru from japan or britain ?
fair play to barrichello, he's obviously racing because he enjoys it and not just for the money. always nice to see people who don't throw a wobbler and disappear the moment they can't earn mega money
no more than williams, mclaren, ferrari, jordan, sauber, brabham etc. all named after their owners though it has to be said they founded the teams rather than buying them
a few years ago they held a meeting in Flint, north wales, and were very upset when their leader was told to stick by his own policies and **** off back to england. 
what confused him even more was that this was shouted by a female resident of flint and if you live near there you'll know that for some strange reason the flint accent is identical to a very strong scouse accent
what confused him even more was that this was shouted by a female resident of flint and if you live near there you'll know that for some strange reason the flint accent is identical to a very strong scouse accent
this may have something to do with the fact that one of the requirements for saubers wind tunnel was to be able to run 2 half size cars behind each other to measure the effects of wake on each other. logically BMW should have been able to use this to optimise their ability to stick close behind with the adjustable wing
if senna is any good then he will find a drive next season if only due to the fact that his name brings a lot of sponsorship. in fact not being signed and so missing a season in an undeveloped car with not testing time to get used to it may actually be a good thing for him. if he had a disaster this season people would only see his results not the car problems
the problem is that with the testing ban senna would have 1 session to not only get used to an F1 car but also to decide what areas he felt should be developed. then he would be visiting a fair few new circuits in a car he wasn't that familiar with at a level he was not familiar with. barrichello has a proven development record especially with brawn and can bring a car home which is what the honda team desperatly need this year ( what are they calling themselves now? i assume it's not honda as it the "honda powered by mercedes" bit would be very embarrasing )
button has a reputation (true or not) for letting his head drop if the car's not competative and last year barrichello outscored him (yes the podium was lucky but so was buttons only F1 win and they both had to get the car in the position to benefit ). also if senna was with him, he would have no one to judge him by apart from a driver with very little time in the car and i suspect his team need to measure button's desire before next season. if he fails to beat barrichello this year then questions will be asked.
finally of course, if senna with his lack of experience damaged a few cars heavily it would offset some of his sponsorship money and the team would be labled as one who chose drivers on size of their (sponsors) wallet rather than ability plus the knock on effect of spending time and resources repairing rather than developing.
button has a reputation (true or not) for letting his head drop if the car's not competative and last year barrichello outscored him (yes the podium was lucky but so was buttons only F1 win and they both had to get the car in the position to benefit ). also if senna was with him, he would have no one to judge him by apart from a driver with very little time in the car and i suspect his team need to measure button's desire before next season. if he fails to beat barrichello this year then questions will be asked.
finally of course, if senna with his lack of experience damaged a few cars heavily it would offset some of his sponsorship money and the team would be labled as one who chose drivers on size of their (sponsors) wallet rather than ability plus the knock on effect of spending time and resources repairing rather than developing.
nice to see someone who watches the old stuff, have you ever seen the remake called lifepod? from 1993 (not the horrible film of the same name that i recorded by accident the other day thinking it would be the one i wanted) it gets a lot of stick but once again it's pretty good on the charector stakes and the way the villain dies has semi haunted me since i saw it.
with my wii i didn't bother with their usb connector as i have a wireless router, i just set up the connection no problem the wii found the network, i entered the pasword and away it went
i went to london last year and, despite having used my capital one card to book the hotel 2 months earlier with the usual authorisation bit on the web site, when i got there and tried to check in capital one blocked the transaction as it was an unusual location. i couldn't be bothered phoning them till i got home so i used my debit card but the strange thing was that on 3 seperate occasions whilst in london i spent larger amounts on the capital one card, expecting trouble, and they went through without any questions !
autosports article was interesting, pointing out that with a tv money advance, bruno senna's sponsorship money and the sponsors they have, they could do the season with the merc engine package for the same aprox cost as the target figure for F1 running costs in the future, £45 million per season. that makes a managment buy out feasable as i'd assume they can raise the nominal £1 to buy the team. what could cause them problems is the lack of testing coupled with the new in season testing regs.
scrutineers to probe jenson's virgin
headlines will be great if this comes off
"button stuffs virgin in tunnel"
"button says he couldn't come first as his virgin was screwed "
"lewis slips inside virgin as soon as he has chance"
"button confirms he will be in virgin for next 3 years"
"button and senna looking forward to sharing virgin"
"button happy after first session with virgin"
and my favoutire
"button misses chance with virgin after his rubber fails"
"button stuffs virgin in tunnel"
"button says he couldn't come first as his virgin was screwed "
"lewis slips inside virgin as soon as he has chance"
"button confirms he will be in virgin for next 3 years"
"button and senna looking forward to sharing virgin"
"button happy after first session with virgin"
and my favoutire
"button misses chance with virgin after his rubber fails"
when i had the garage john our original local snap on rep was one of the longest serving in the uk, the advice he gave the new mechs was to buy a set of cheap tools first and then when something broke replace it with a snap on item, that way they didn't pay for expensive stuff they didn't need, if a cheap socket or spanner was srong enough they could use it, if it broke, like most cheap ratchets do, then get a snap on item. their sets may not have looked as flash as some but they did have a reasonable set of tools right from the start rather than the 1 new spanner a week sets you saw so many have or the full set which was costing them half their wages on snap on's credit. plus when they did the enivitable and lost tools it didn't cost them a fortune ( i used to go around the finished cars engine bays and collect tools, at the end of the week i'd give them back to people who'd swear they hadn't lost anything 
)
the guys who have the garage now use a mix of snap on and mac. i never had much to do with mac but that was more to do with the local rep who when he was with snap on after john died was only interested in getting the new starters to buy a nice shiny cabinet with about 10 spanners in it on credit and never wanted to do any repairs to ratchets etc prefering to "send them away" despite having the gear to do the job on his van, he only lasted about 6 months with snap on.
)the guys who have the garage now use a mix of snap on and mac. i never had much to do with mac but that was more to do with the local rep who when he was with snap on after john died was only interested in getting the new starters to buy a nice shiny cabinet with about 10 spanners in it on credit and never wanted to do any repairs to ratchets etc prefering to "send them away" despite having the gear to do the job on his van, he only lasted about 6 months with snap on.
i went awol from LFS and iracing for 3 months and when i came back a couple of weeks ago i had a couple of surprises, the fist was how quiet some of my favourite LFS servers are now and the second was how many more racers there are on iracing both when i come home from work at 6am and at 8pm.
hopefully the LFS numbers will pickup with the new patch but of course from the devs point of view the number that matters is the number of new licences sold each month so while the numers of current drivers may affect how attractive LFS is to possible buyers it may well be that, despite numbers of active drivers falling, the licences are still selling at a satisfactory rate.
hopefully the LFS numbers will pickup with the new patch but of course from the devs point of view the number that matters is the number of new licences sold each month so while the numers of current drivers may affect how attractive LFS is to possible buyers it may well be that, despite numbers of active drivers falling, the licences are still selling at a satisfactory rate.
under rated game ? well you may have noticed the air attack LFS servers and wondered where the name comes from
Air Attack, WW2 flight sim that was the original version of fighter ace, still going online after 10 years despite being optimised for a P90 and a dial up connection and it has survived noves from uk to german to south korean servers to it's current home back with Ketsujin who run fighter ace.
details and game footage here
http://www.airattack.co.uk/portal/
why is it so popular still with such simple graphics and a simple flight model ? game play ! by being so simple it has allowed people to play n differing styles and has allowed organisers to come up with differing events ranging from 1 v1 and 2 v2 to 4 squad battles, air races and historical re enactments. 616 squadron named them selves after the squadron of johny johnson and douglas bader and used real life tactics as much as possible, their leader ended up being invited to meet the real life survivors.
also the game could suport up to 160 players in one arena even back in 1999 on dial up with little or no lag issues. when andy the leader of Zulu squadron (Zulu 9) was killed in a car crash in 2000, we organised a fly past with 160 planes in tribute, which actually got a mention and a screen shot published in the business section of "the times " and the devs surprised us when the next update was released by creating the " Zulu 9" memorial by the side of the GB runway. how do i remember ? he was my squadron leader and got me through a very sticky real life period.
in fact with such a strong community and gameplay being valued over flashy, air attack was / is very similar to LFS and also it's free having originally been provided by BT on a charge per minute played on your phone bill (which resulted in someplayers getting bills of over £600 a quarter in 1999 ! )on top of the per minute charge that was the common ISP business model back then. that people were prepared to run up and pay these costs tells you all you need to know about its appeal
Air Attack, WW2 flight sim that was the original version of fighter ace, still going online after 10 years despite being optimised for a P90 and a dial up connection and it has survived noves from uk to german to south korean servers to it's current home back with Ketsujin who run fighter ace.
details and game footage here
http://www.airattack.co.uk/portal/
why is it so popular still with such simple graphics and a simple flight model ? game play ! by being so simple it has allowed people to play n differing styles and has allowed organisers to come up with differing events ranging from 1 v1 and 2 v2 to 4 squad battles, air races and historical re enactments. 616 squadron named them selves after the squadron of johny johnson and douglas bader and used real life tactics as much as possible, their leader ended up being invited to meet the real life survivors.
also the game could suport up to 160 players in one arena even back in 1999 on dial up with little or no lag issues. when andy the leader of Zulu squadron (Zulu 9) was killed in a car crash in 2000, we organised a fly past with 160 planes in tribute, which actually got a mention and a screen shot published in the business section of "the times " and the devs surprised us when the next update was released by creating the " Zulu 9" memorial by the side of the GB runway. how do i remember ? he was my squadron leader and got me through a very sticky real life period.
in fact with such a strong community and gameplay being valued over flashy, air attack was / is very similar to LFS and also it's free having originally been provided by BT on a charge per minute played on your phone bill (which resulted in someplayers getting bills of over £600 a quarter in 1999 ! )on top of the per minute charge that was the common ISP business model back then. that people were prepared to run up and pay these costs tells you all you need to know about its appeal
the trouble with testing is you never know if the cars legal or not, eg ferrari have been using an illegal exhaust this year as they didnt have the 2009 regs one available. more seriously in the past teams have run under weight to make the car faster and keep sponsors happy and unlike ferrari's exhaust they don't bother to tell anyone. unless anyone does a long run you cant be 100 % on how heavy is their fuel load either and some teams in the past have run their cars wth full fuel whilst pretending it was light fueled just to hide an advantage they had.
given the new regs and how confident some teams are in the computers doing fluid dynamic calcs i won't be surprised to see a few new wings appearing at the last possible moment
given the new regs and how confident some teams are in the computers doing fluid dynamic calcs i won't be surprised to see a few new wings appearing at the last possible moment
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG