A short distance downstream of the chicane, at the closest wide & safe section, paint a line dividing a portion of the track off the racing line, and require any driver who has put all 4 wheels off the track at the chicane to remain one side of that line and below a certain speed. Similar idea to a stop-and-go penalty but much less drastic - enough to create (say) a compensatory but not harshly punitive 2 second delay (and an easy pass for anyone close behind). Taking the mild compensatory penalty immediately is voluntary - driver can initially use his own judgment about whether all 4 wheels were off track. But failure to do so if stewards later judge you did go off would result in a harsher time penalty (say, full stop & go in pits). Thus, most excursions would be rapidly compensated by the drivers themselves in a predictable and fair fashion without even having to wait for stewards. In other words - somewhat similar to what is supposed to happen now in voluntarily giving up position, but formalized.
Well, despite a lot of sound and fury, nothing really changed at the top. Hamilton and Rosberg both did what they needed to do to extend the championship to the final race.
Brilliant drive by Verstappen, but I thought the commentators totally whiffed on what was, or could have been. They seemed to assume that he’d still be in second if he hadn’t come in for intermediate tires, but there was a safety car after that which would have closed him right up to Hamilton’s gearbox. Does anyone think he wouldn’t have gone for the lead after the restart? On the other hand, as Verstappen was passing people left and right during the closing stages, no one pointed out that he was on much newer rain tires than the cars he was catching.
As good as he is (and he is very good) judging by the times Hamilton was doing whilst pretty much coasting I don’t think Verstappen could have passed him.
No way to know, of course. I think he sure would have tried; would have been on equal tires with Hamilton and restarting right behind him. How aggressively would Hamilton have been able to defend, knowing an accident almost certainly would put him out of the championship?
Well, it would slow them down a lot - mechanical grip only gets you so far. Nearly all forms of racing have some form of wing providing downforce. It would probably make the cars more equivalent in lap times to, say, GT3 racing. See also: the early 1960s.
Not exactly topical, but I found it interesting so you guys might: apparently, the owners of the Circuit of the Americas (which, for the record, I think is a fabulous track) might have circumvented Texas law with the governor and attorney general’s help (and at least one Democrat, Wendy Davis, to keep this non-partisan) when soliciting state funding.
I actually found this by accident while looking up F1-related US campaign contributions because of an “ethical purchasing guide” which suggests they are Republican donors. For what it’s worth, I think to the extent that’s true it seems to be because most Texas officials are Republicans and COTA is there. I couldn’t find any evidence that Bernie Ecclestone or FOCA or anyone else involved with F1 proper donates to US political races.
Lewis can be happy the he basically lost the title on reliability issues, but I doubt that will be much comfort. I’m a bit glad to see Rosberg win; I think he might not have recovered if he lost this one.
Maybe, but Rosberg was in a position where finishing second would win him the championship. If the points had been closer, Rosberg may well have pressed harder and won one of those races.
I’m happy to see Rosberg win. Hamilton certainly knows that luck plays into anything even when you win, and luck wasn’t on his side this year.
Well, the quality of the racing would almost certainly go up. The aerodynamic advantage to the car in front in F1 is vast.
Well, it would slow them down a lot. I’m not certain how much of a problem that is. Tires and engines are far more advanced than they were in '68 when the wings caught on. So, it would be somewhat faster than '68. OTOH, since the cars would be slower, you could remove a bunch of the chicanes and other “features” that they’ve been puting in tracks such a Monza to slow them down.
But rather than ban wings and aerodynamics altogether, I’d rather seem them quantify and measure the turbulence the cars make behind themselves, and limit that. Since the turbulence is the issue, rather than the downforce, you’d be addressing the actual problem.
It’d be tough to do right, though. The rulebook can’t just say “no wings” or “no turbulence”. It always reads like something cooked up by a lawyer and an engineer who didn’t like each other; “the bottom surface will be flat up to a transverse line 15cm ahead of the rear wheel centerline,…” And still the designers make millions finding loopholes. What is the definition of a “wing”, anyway?
I’m curious what they’d come up with if they didn’t have endless aerodynamic fiddlybits to obsess over. I don’t think you could eliminate the turbulence behind a fast-moving car; better to design the cars so a following car isn’t negatively impacted by the turbulence. Who knows if it would make for better racing. As long as each team builds its own car, some are going to be better than others.
I don’t know that they’d get rid of the chicanes. Cornering speeds would go down (with less downforce), but top speeds would go up (with less drag). And braking distances would be longer.
True, they ended up coming up with a plank to limit the amount of ground clearance in a dynamic suspension. But you can limit the turbulence behind the car to some percentage of the turbulence entering it.
I wouldn’t suggest even trying to eliminate the turbulence behind the car, but you can limit the turbulence behind the car (I’ve spent a few minutes reading up on measuring turbulence just now). You measure the turbulence of the air in front of the car in an agreed wind tunnel, and measure it behind it. If it’s more turbulent upon exit than the rules allow, it’s not allowed. You can’t realistically limit how much money the teams spend on fidding with aerodynamics, the shape of the car’s body and suspension can always be used for downforce even if you could come up with a meaningful definition of a wing. You can realistically limit the dirty air coming off of the car and affecting the other competitors.
This would still allow downforce, wings (if you can manage it within the spec) and technical innovation, but would limit its effect on the other cars. This would allow the car pursuing to be able to close and pass more easily. I don’t see how that wouldn’t amount to more exciting racing, providing that the teams could compete under this aerodynamic regime. Since they can under the current regime, I don’t see why this would be any worse.
You have to remember, straightaway speed is dependent on other things, too: how early you can begin the drag race out of the corner, and at what speed you’re going when you start it. That’s dependent on the entry and steady-state speed through the corner, and how much your available downforce is preventing you from losing traction when you floor it.
Possibly. But his qualifying times were close enough to Hamilton’s that I think he was trying to win about as hard as he would have anyway. It’s easy to say that he perhaps didn’t fight Verstappen as hard as he could have, but there was no reason for him to avoid tangling with Hamilton and the safest way to run a race is from the front.
