@Tristan
4WD, TC and turbos will make the racing in F1 SOOO MUCH BETTER and will really show how good the drivers are and how its not like slot car racing...
I haven't read most of this thread but my thoughts on this are:
It all looks pretty good to me, apart from the TC bit. I say allow 4WD, it'll get teams like Audi in. Have a 3 litre V6 with the 10k RPM limit, should give about 900hp(?) and not be too heavy either. I don't really care about the biofuel so that's ok. Powerboost isn't bad but I say don't allow the person in P1 to use it. Could be hard to control though.
To sum up:
Allow 4WD
Take away TC
Use 3-litre V6s with sensible RPM limit
Allow more teams, have Saturday races. Heck, even have regional championships for a place in the world championship if there's too many teams.
F1 could - easily - run a race a week in Europe. I suggest the season should look like this. Possibles in brackets
Bahrain
(If wanted, another middle east venue)
Turkey
Valencia
Monza
French GP at a Paris street circuit
Monaco
Ochersleben or Extended version of Norisring
(Austrian circuit of choice)
Brno
Zandvoort
Spa
Silverstone
Donington Park
(Irish GP)
(Swedish GP)
(Finnish GP?)
--
(Australia (night))
Suzuka (night)
Singapore (night)
Shanghai (night)
(Laguna Seca, morning or night)
Sears Point (Morning or night race, i'm not sure about the time zones)
Indy
Foxboro street circuit, Watkins Glen or an East Canada venue.
Why is it all a different order?
TV and costs. The season would start in and around Europe, and after the end of the European season all other than the top 20 of the WDC, top 10 of the WTC (make a team's championship rather than a constructors championship) freeze after Donington.
The season would end with 3 races in North America, so that the final race would happen to be primetime TV in Europe.
I see what you mean about the 4WD and I suppose there are good and bad things about it. F1 should be the most powerful and fastest series. The cars should be able to go near 200mph at almost every track they go to. It's part of F1
There are no tracks big enough for F1 class cars in Finland.
You need not just the track, but also all other facilities. Parking lots and public transport etc.
There was the Keimola circuit between 1966-78 and they drove e.g. F2 and F3 class races. It was used for international events too and some famous racers drove there. The track died partly because of insane traffic jams in and out of parking lots and nearby people complaining about noise.
No one seems to have picked up on the most scary part at the bottom of the article hinting at a single chassis. F1 is not a spec series and the cars should be radically different, the number of cylinders and certainly a rev limiter shouldn't be set the aerodynamics should be fairly free and mechanical grip should be allowed to reach its natural limit not some artificial one manufacturer level. Works and private teams should both be allowed but the suggestion a works team has to offer customer cars/engines is silly.
I'd like to see completely free 4 litre engines, or 2 litre turbos if they really want to pander to the green people but the number of cylinders and basic design of the engine should be down to engineers not the FIA.
F1 is meant to be the forefront of motorsport from a technological stand point as well as just being the biggest series so IMO whilst driver aids like TC should be banned aerodynamics should be fairly free, TBH if teams are given more freedom cars will have different strengths and characteristics meaning finding an opportunity is easier and teams should be free to build 4WD cars if they so desire but I think you'd find they'd only actually run them by choice at Monaco.
I don't see the need for the constant campaign to slow the cars down they are already one of the safest formulae and race on very safe tracks, the best way to make motor racing safer is to not crash in the first place and compared to their predecessors the current F1 drivers are pretty good at having big avoidable crashes.
In return to a few of Duke's points:
Just no
I dislike the notion of forced customer cars, seems a bit single make ish.
Absolutely not teams must be free to develop their cars if an F1 car looks anything like the car it started as then there hasn't been enough development and innovation in my book. Also note the practicalities, you cannot just keep patching up carbon tubs.
...and go back to the dark ages? Live brake bias adjustments have been around for ages.
...and a ban on pressurised refuelling, huge cost cutting and discouraging refuelling, races are still far too dependant on pitstops.
On grounds of? No point putting them in single seaters they add weight and because they'd have to be in the sidepods provide an aerodynamic packaging issue.
yikes. F1 should be an open class, with as few rules as possible. Rules should be focused on safety, with just one rule designed to create a level playing field, that being the fuel allocation.
Well, these possible new regulations are just ridiculous. There's no other way to say it.
Reducing the number of people making the pit stop could make it interesting, and less of a "machine-like" process.
Air jacks for pitstops have been in SS (CART, IndyCar, etc - american SS series) for years. And they are placed in the "center" of the car, front and back).
And they got 1500 brake out of a 1.5 turbo in the 80's
Do you like the idea of forced customer tyres? The rule used to be that tyre manufacturers had to supply everyone who wants them (or was it so many % of the teams, depending on how many makes there were). It would increase grid sizes, and we're all for that, aren't we
Whilst there would be some practicality issues, I do think that F1 should have more cost control. OK then, instead of 1 per season maybe ... 2 per season? I swear F3 car use 1 chassis per season or so (the old GP2 cars are going out to Asia, and I doubt they are getting a full retub!!!)
I'm not sure how long live break bias adjustments have been around for, but it is getting silly when we have suspension tweaks doable from the cockpit.
Pit stops for refuelling are a good idea as it adds a strategy element, tyres should be changed. If you want to discourage pitstops, increase the maximum fuel tank size.
25 rounds??? The first thing to do when trying to reduce costs is to cut the number of rounds. The current championship has 2 great circuits (Spa and Suzuka) and 3 sad reflections of previously great tracks (Silverstone, Monza, Nurburgring). Compare that to the '67 season 11 tracks, 9 of them all time great circuits (Monza, Silverstone, Spa, the 'ring, Zandvort, Watkins Glenn, Mosport, Kyalami) that's 81% all time great circuits compared to 11% today (or far less with your calendar).
On your list of great tracks what happened to Monaco, that absolutely wonderful new circuit in Turkey (turn 8 is just great) and Interlagos (as good as the circuit is, the facilities are laughable)?
Also, why on earth do people (including GPL fanboys) bang on about 1967 as if it was some magic season? New technologies were introduced the year after and there have been plenty better seasons, from 79 to the early 90's the championship was clinched at the last or penultimate race every year. In addition the cars didn't look like glorified Formula Fords
Yeah a bit, it's a difficult area determining between technology, I have no issue with things like active suspension for example and things that just take the skill away.
I was in favour of reducing the number of pitstops and each to their own over airjacks teams should be allowed to use them if they wish to but I doubt many would, so long as they're not forced where's the issue.
...and CanAm cars were producing figures close to that 35 years ago, time to move on don't you think? Having more power doesn't instantaneously make a car dangerous
That's a difficult question seeing as the tires are so fundamental to the car unlike any other car in the world where you don't have to redesign it when you change supplier. It seems sensible to force tire companies to make their tires publicly available although I don't think having a (forced) single supplier is right.
Even in F3 the tub will be a replaceable item if it gets damaged they'll just bolt everything to a new one. They may repair and reuse damaged tubs but structural composite repairs are always a dodgy area and a potential catastrophic accident waiting to happen. A current F3 car has very little that's fundamentally different to Tristan's car but a competitive car costs £500000 a year to run, I would of thought Tristan would be pretty worried if the costs entered 5 figures. Pretty much everything is readily available but the single make formulae spectacularly fails to lower costs because the cars just get driven harder and parts replaced more often.
Any race series has a natural budget set by the source of finance and be it a one make series or a total free for all teams will spend the same amount, forcing a level playing field does anything but cut costs, if everything is supposedly level the team with the biggest budget can refine more and more if the design is pretty free anybody can come up with a brilliant idea and run away for a couple of rounds before the rest of the competition catch up. So design freedom can let smaller teams become more competitive with good innovations.
Having a single large tank and no (or heavily disadvantaged) refuelling would be a good engineering challenge. F1 is not endurance racing and the races should not be won and lost in the pitlane and on strategy.
Monaco has always been about the glamour and the event as a circuit it's not that great a good circuit but nothing compared to somewhere like Macau or Clermont Ferrand. Interlagos is a very nice circuit definitely one I wouldn't mind having a drive round but it's not an all time great in my book. Turkey is a fairly boring new track which has one good corner, even turn 8 wouldn't feature in many peoples top 20 corners.
It marks the end of the pre-downforce era and is the only proper 3 litre year before F1 lost its innocence with the arrival of sponsorship, it also had the introduction of the most important engine in the history of motorsport and what is believed to be the last F1 victory on pump fuel (67 Spa).
It had 11 rounds, which illustrated my point nicely, all the great circuits were circuits that people know today, some of the obscure 60s East German tracks were absolutely fantastic but they've been pretty much forgotten about and didn't had any of the duff rounds that were introduced in the 70s, when the drivers not just the tracks made the racing great.
The 67 championship was won at the last round btw.
The Eagle Weslake is unquestionably the most attractive racing car ever built IMO. Tell me it doesn't look awesome
More power does, though, increase the straight line speed. I would guesstimate that 2 litre turbos would produce in the region of 2000 horses or so. Before we get to the other issues, I would like everyone in this thread to read this very interesting article at F1technical regarding why we have technical regulations in motorsport. The only option to keep these horses in check would be to increase the minimum weight, which would be dangerous (especially with today's rather stupid trend towards tarmac runoff) as the car has more kinetic energy to stop it. Whilst it is a bit of a tangent to go off on, I personally think that tarmac runoff is dangerous in case of a stuck throttle or similar, it would be safer to use gravel followed by SAFER barriers. What might help is some form of remote kill switch on the car which can be operated by the marshalls if need be. With drive by wire, some form of mechanical kill switch that would just cut the wire could work (I am not a mechanic, but it could be an idea)
If you are accusing me of it, I would not like to see F1 become a single make series. With the greatest respect to its drivers, Monoposto for all intents and purposes similar to FGP/EuroBOSS (a semi-historic series) but with smaller cars.
I would like to see some form of control on the number of tubs used. A restriction should be placed on, maybe not a hard cap, but the tub should have to be replaced when dangerous and not replaced every 15 minutes.
It would, and a Group C style fuel limit would be a great engineering challenge, however I personally think that prototypes would be a better arena for that sort of technology, it has more potential to be a development series for road car technologies, as a road car doesn't have to drive for at tops the 300 kilometres of a GP.
It's just a personal opinion, but IMO single seaters without wings look goofy and too feminine.
Oh yes, and the history, the unique challenge, the dramatic setting, the fact that it is probably the only universally popular circuit in F1 ...
Turn 8 is a standout corner and a unique challenge in F1 - 4 apexes, high g-loads on a left hander ...
Too narrow, too short. You might as well demolish the whole lot and start from square 1.
In late 1990s was a DTM race in Helsinki... I think there have been some talk about getting it back but DTM is DTM, you can forget F1. We don't even have that many club tracks and none of them is no way near F1 spefications
And that Keimola track hasn't been used since 1978 when it died. And then it died again, literally...
FYI: some idiot put on fire 150 000 tyres (track area was some kind of tyre dump since it was abandoned) in 2004 and destroyed the remaining facilities of the track (surveillance/spectator tower). Amazing picture.
Not terribly interesting, whilst the whole drivers not being able to cope with it theory is good I still don't believe drivers would actually be the limiting factor in an unrestricted formula.
Tarmac run off areas have the massive advantage that they don't damage a car, when a car goes into the gravel it gets everywhere, partly because they use fine gravel to reduce the damage done by flying gravel. The gravel traps can also pull off timing belts from single seaters. On a safety note cars dig into gravel traps and can easily roll, especially a problem with vintage cars. Gravel has the advantage in being able to absorb more energy more quickly meaning in short run off areas it is probably a better choice. I fail to see how a stuck throttle makes tarmac run off areas dangerous.
You've either missed the fact that all competition cars have to have an external kill switch or are suggesting some kind of remote control kill switch, which is pointless, silly and just bound not to work.
I doubt most teams would choose to replace a tub that wasn't damaged or showing signs of lost rigidity when tested, after all the more you can keep the same the better a driver can get to know a car, Alonso only used one tub last year for example because he never damaged it, Ralf on the other hand...
Endurance racing shouldn't have anything to do with road cars either. Just like I think trying to put road relevant technology into F1 or any other motorsport. Motor racing is about developing cars to do one job and if it accidentally finds ways to improve road cars that's great if not it hasn't failed its primary purpose as a sport.
You've just explained why Monaco is highly regarded but isn't a great track, it's a good circuit and the old chicane was a brilliant challenge but it's the fact it's the only street circuit used in F1, the history and the fact that it's Monaco that make it highly regarded not the actual track itself.
Like I said it's a good corner on an above average circuit but it's not going to be remembered in history as one of the great circuits.
and the part about TC in the new article confirms that the powers that be don't take into account the effects of modern technology on the actual sporting element of motorsport which is the driving.
I can understand that motorsports has to change if it wants to survive, that means it should look at becoming more enviromentaly friendly and relevant to technology outside of racing. But at the same time it is important to keep the fans interested and to make sure it stays an actual sport which means driver helping systems must be restricted. If electronics are going to make the car go through corners with the driver doing little more than requesting the turn direction of the corner then there won't be much point in keeping F1 alive.
I wonder what mondello park would make of that 
