5th gear (?) at Barcelona in 1997(?) He still came 2nd
Dunno if anyone else wants to fill in the rest?
Anyways, i am personally against dumbing the sport down in terms of H-shifters. Just bring back ground effect. Or stick massive fans on the cars to suck them to the ground.
one obvious difference between now and the last time we had refueling is the fact that the teams are forced to use both compounds. get rid of that and then see what happens if they can run either one and change them as often / little as they want. that way we may see differing approaches to how to win a race. sure bridgestone will need to provide more tyres on a given weekend but bernie could afford to sweeten the deal for them
you can do alot of things to improve overtaking but the turbulence is still going to be the major factor, Would it be possible to cap how much turbulence they make from their car as a regulation?
Or atleast other Tyre war is needed, and the both compounds rule is a joke, and has always been since it was implemented.
Ive been reading this thread lately and thought id share my two cents on my opinion about F1. Buddy, i spent about 20 hours then, writing a 100,000,000 word essay on my opinion (exageration) and almost hit post, but thought id check this page to see if anyone wrote anything similar. Your 1 paragraph pretty much summed up my whole opinion. Way to go!!! :@
Well said too, agree with the shifter etc, but more that F1 is about innovation, and clever people beating less clever people etc.
Why are you mystified? The f-duct is legal as no parts of the car move. The diffuser hole was meant to allow access for the starter motor, and wasn't meant to be used, via an elaborately shaped starter motor, to increase performance.
f duct is a nice new inovation, double diffusers should have been banned for 2010 not 2011, there was no logical reason to retain them for a second season as the cars rear ends were all being redesigned for the new fuel regs and most of the teams had drawn up their original 2009 rears for single diffusers anyway and the rulling was made early enough in 2009. additionally they should have seen the starter access being a loophole and specified that the starter had to enter above the diffuser which would also have had the effect of lowering diffuser height.
somehow the FIA lost track of the fact that the 2009 regs were designed to reduce downforce, in particularly rear downforce and that the double diffuser meant that had not been achieved and as a result did nothing to correct it
Indeed, but technically speaking there has been no breach of the rules here. There are no shape or size restrictions stated in the rules, so one assumes that it has been deemed illegal because it contravenes the 'spirit' of the rules.
"The size of their starter motor holes was believed to be excessively wide, which, although not in breach of the regulations, was reckoned to be going against the spirit of the rules."
Hence I'm mystified about how the decision was made in favour of McLaren's F-Duct:
"The air tunnel is believed, however, to have a hole in it that the drivers are able to block on the straights - using either their knees or elbows. When this hole is covered, the air pressure inside the vent is changed - and this helps stall the rear wing."
In this case, there are no moving parts on the car (the driver provides that part), thus making it technically legal, but presumably the 'spirit' of the rule is to prevent any alteration to the air flow either over or through the car during the race, in order to enhance performance.
Admittedly it's an incredibly innovative solution, but the spirit of the rules seem to have been forgotten in this case.
Hmmm, that's an interpretation I guess. I see it thus:
1. Starter motor holes - the rule is to allow the otherwise 'seamless' diffusers (i.e. non-broken surfaces) to have a legal hole in them for starting. The rule is there not for performance reasons, but to allow the cars to be started. The current interpretation is using that hole allowance as a performance creator - against the spirit...
2. F-Duct - the rules state no part of the car must flex or be moveable, other than steering, suspension movement and the adjustable front wing flaps etc - this is to avoid 'weak' parts causing rear wings to fall off (previous cases), wings directing loads straight into the suspension (previous cases) etc. The current rules were not intended to stop the airflow being man handled in various ways. This the f-duct is entirely (in my opinion) within the spirit of the regs.
"The engine isn't supposed to be a key performance differentiator and therefore hopefully the ruling body will balance out somewhat the differences there at the moment."
So that in essence is calling for spec engines which is just pathetic.
On a similar note, bikers also sit up to use 'body breaking' when approaching corners.
I suspect that F1 drivers might be allowed to stick their heads up a bit to increase breaking effect, assuming their neck muscles can stand it. Presumably though they'd have to keep their mouths shut so the guy with the biggest mouth doesn't have an unfair advantage!
Won't be possible unless you've got a neck long enough so your head can reach the air box (since the rear wing is stall-able for all F1 cars soon. Extending your head upwards isn't going to do anything more to slow you down, all you would be doing is stopping the air that is hitting the helmet from hitting the part of the car the helmet is concealing. On bikes you are putting your body into a void where there is no bodywork behind you, in an F1 car, air is always hitting the bodywork of the car above your head (even if it goes into your airbox)
Well we are increasingly seeing a single make spec series push from the FIA on all levels. I am sure the FIA have a 'bigger picture' in mind with all these changes.
The FIA have announced a new single-engine make karting championship for under 18s which a lot of the manufacturers are not happy about. The FIA have branded professional karting which sees technical skill and innovation as 'outrageous'. The manufacturers have responded by boycotting CIK events.. so there is hope. Then we have Formula 2 which is another dull spec series. I think the FIA are going to seriously push for a spec Cosworth engine package, and an increase speccing of aerodynamics in F1. We've already had the 'world engine' spoken about.
I reckon the FIA want their own platform that goes
Under-18 World Karting Championship. Probably call it F4 n a few years
F3 - F Renault pace cars -18-20 yr group
F2 - What we have now - 20-23 yr group
F1 - Spec engine limited Aerodynamics - 23+
The reason they are doing all this is because they want utter control over the car racing market. Once they get this they can feasible reduce the speed of F1 through spec components without making F1 slower than lower formulae. The constant war on technical freedom in motorsport is happening at all levels
So which of you wants to join me when I launch my new motorsport championship, at the international level, without anything to do with the FIA?
It could be called Formula Ace, and will have the loosest possible technical regulations (a state that will be written into the charter of the company) that allows technical freedom, innovation, cleverness, with the restraints and constraints required to provide good racing, vaguely sensible budgets (although I still think that if the sponsors WANT to pay £200m per year, who am I to stop them?), and a policeable, consistent set of rules.
There will be certain regulations to ensure compliance, which will include a spec datalogger system to monitor performance, and mobile dyno stations on which all engines must be run before they can be used. Results will be confidential, but will be used to ensure that nobody is "cheating". Power regulation will be via fuel flow rates, so that a certain amount of energy is allowed, per second, to reach the engine.
Over-body aerodynamics will be regulated to ensure that it provides a minority of the total grip, whilst still allowing the cars to be different and for shapes to evolve.
Ground effects will be allowed and, indeed, encouraged.
There will be no gimmicks - no push to pass, no KERS, no mandatory pitstops, no refuelling.
Races will be at least 300 miles.
Brake regulations will ensure a certain maximum performance, designed to increase braking distances. This may be by limiting the diameter of the discs, rather than the material, to encourage innovation whilst massively reducing the braking torque possible.
That and all this world engine lark, its about time there were grids with varying engine configurations again.
The way things used to be you would have several car designs that followed different approaches to the same problem; how to make the fastest car. And so of course you ended up with cars that although quite evenly matched overall in terms of outright pace, had varying characteristics such as straighline speed or grip or a tendancy to oversteer or blow up quite often.
Standardising everything is not the way to good racing, yes the field may end up being close together on the time sheets (as we have seen in F1 lately), but there will be little overtaking because the cars have virtually the same charcteristics , the only way past is by force (as we have seen in the BTCC).
But then its quite clear that the FIA's aim isn't to improve racing, what they say is just a thin desguise for the fact that its all being done to save money and maximise profit.
This can only go on for so long, hopefully some day in the future there will be some kind of change whether it be within the FIA or elsewhere. It would take one hell of a lot of time and effort to gain the support of so many people but these things don't happen if you sit around being pessimistic all the time. The first people to mount a serious challenge or make a proper push for change within intenational motorsport will have my complete support (what little I can do anyway).
You must post that on every outlet you can find. Newspapers, forums, websites, twitter, blogs... Get those very words out there, as you speaketh the truth.
Maximising profit and saving money isn't an inherently bad thing. That's just good business. At the moment we are not currently obliged to race with the FIA's structure and I can imagine soon with the increased speccing of the FIAs series we'll see more breakaways... hopefully
