Short of wider tracks (which is never going to happen), the only way overtaking in F1 will ever increase is a blanket ban on aerodynamic aids. No front or rear wings, no diffusers, just like Formula Ford (is that even still around?)
I’d also junk the other bans on driver aids- ABS (is that banned?), active suspension, traction control and so on, so there would still be plenty of room for development.
Purely mechanical grip was good enough for Fangio.
From how I understand it, the reason they had to back off on the change is because they announced it too late. But if Bernie wants his new system for 2010 he can announce it tomorrow and there won’t be anything the teams can do to stop him.
Or by juggling the grid, so that the fastest cars aren’t necessarily in front (they’ve made some effort in that direction in recent years, but not enough). The most enjoyable F1 race I ever saw was in France, when Hakkinen had to start from the back because of some qualifying issue, and picked his way through the entire field to win. 1998, I think. Anyway, adding more randomness to the starting order will make a difference, however else it happens.
Or by reducing pit stops. Eliminating refueling, starting next year, will help that.
Or by adding more yellow flags. No, wait, forget that, nobody wants that.
Doubt that will make a difference. Refuelling was reintroduced fairly recently- 1994 or thereabouts, and it made no appreciable reduction in overtaking back then. That said, I’m all for banning it on safety grounds.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone had to run on ultra-soft compound tyres (what they used to call “D” compound back in the day), but could only make two pit stops.
You’d have lots of cars with fresh rubber catching cars with old rubber, which would definitely up the amount of overtaking.
TC and starting aids (which the Renault excelled at from '04 to '06) have been banned. Last year was the first in quite some time without TC.
That said, I do believe this thread has run its course as per the OP. If a mod would close it, fine by me if no one objects.
Further discussion of the 2009 season to continue here:
That’s sort of what I was getting at in post #13. I don’t know if it’s good enough to just say “no wings”, though. You have to go into deep technical legalese, specifying, in detail, exactly what is and isn’t allowed. I would love to specs that would make the driving more tactical and less about instantaneous reactions, and I’d love to see the engineers try to beat each other in designing to those specs.
The real drag (sorry) is that I’ve heard the teams will never let wings be banned, not for technical reasons, but because the sponsorship space is too valuable.
I see F1 as a constructors’ competition, not a drivers’ competition.
Is there any other elite sport in the world where competitors don’t have equal access to the best available equipment? (Other than motorsport). Watching Ferraris “race” Minardis to me would be like watching a 5 v 4 basketball game.
If I was in charge, I’d just say, “we’re going to put your car in a wind tunnel. If it generates downforce, it’s banned. Lift is okay.”
Any other form of motorsport that isn’t a one-make series; cycling; swimming (witness the recent flap over the Speedo bodysuit thingies).
In any more general sense, any team sport that doesn’t have a salary cap, like baseball in North America or most sports elsewhere. Ferrari v. Minardi is no more lopsided than Yankees v. Rays; Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia will be paid more this season than the entire Rays team. Chelsea FC had a payroll of 115 million GBP in 2005; West Bromwich Albion (in the same division) had a payroll of 11 million.
While no salary cap allows you to buy better players, the contest on the park is still decided by who plays better on the day.
Not the case with motor racing, where some drivers are in clearly better cars than their “opponents”.
Yeah, but it’s decided by which team plays better, not which player- and the better team is the one with better players. Minardi used to pick up the occasional podium finish, just as the bottom-feeding clubs occasionally beat the ones with money.
Anyway, the best drivers usually end up in the best cars, just as the best players usually end up on the best teams.
Cheaper teams beat more expensive teams because they outplay them.
A Minardi driver can “outdrive” a Ferrari driver and still lose.
A team can outplay another team and still lose. If Team X dominates possession but hits the posts and the crossbar a dozen times, and Team Y gets slapped around but scores one fluky goal, Team Y still wins.
Anyway, you’re drawing a false equivalency. You can’t consider the drivers in a vacuum; the car is part of the deal. It’s Minardi Guy AND Minardi Car competing against Ferrari Guy AND Ferrari Car. F1 is, after all, a team sport.
It’s like saying that soccer is unfair because one goalkeeper can outplay another but still lose.
Doesn’t FOTA give the teams a little leverage to get their opinions heard?
Realistically, a Minardi driver only had a hope if some very weird things happened to the rest of the field - a rainstorm that sent the fast cars off the track, a mass wipeout that let them catch up, that sort of thing.
Don’t forget the rest of the team, too - the races were driver AND car AND tiremaker AND pit crew AND strategist AND everything else … team vs. team. Now, you’ll really see driver vs. driver, because all other variables will have been neutralized, as they are already in US racing.
I’m still gonna watch the Indy 500 in the hopes of seeing the hot babe win … and get warm, white milk dribbling down her face … Oh, yes, sorry.
I would like something done about the vulnerability of the aero packages to damage. It can be the effect of just a couple of barge boards or the whole front wing.
How many races have we seen where the event was completely compromised because leading drivers had to have a nose cone replaced after the first corner incident?
It hurts the mid field particularly hard as that’s where these incidents occur, and yet its from the mid field where you get some of the best drives, and its in the mid field you tend to get themore unusual strategies to try make up places, and then to have this innovation spoiled by a first corner twitch is pretty poor.
I really would like to see more mechanical grip and far less aero grip. This should reduce the dirty air syndrome that prevents overtaking.
Probably wouldn’t hurt if they would go and remove those mid-straight chicanes that FIA started mandating 20-odd years ago.
Yes, that will sometimes happen, but it’s the exception, not the rule. In team sports where players have equal access to the best equipment, the better team will win most of the time.
In motorsport, it’s impossible to tell if the Minardi driver was better, unless you look at how much he lost by. The Minardi driver could literally do everything better than the Ferarri driver - everything - and still lose. That simply can not happen in team sports where competitors do not have an inferior-equipment handicap.
That’s why I stated earlier that I view motorsport as a constructor’s competition. If you still take issue with what I’m saying, how much faster would Ferraris (or any other car) have to be before you would acknowledge that the “sport” has become instead a spectacle? 5 seconds per lap? 7 seconds per lap?
Sporting contests should be set up in such a way the the result is determined as much as possible by the skill and play of the competitors alone. Motorsport is much like a handicapped golf tournament, or a staggered-start sprint race.
You’re missing the point. The chassis/engine/suspension/aerodynamic engineers are competitors. They work with the driver to go around the track as fast as possible.
Righto, well, I think they shouldn’t put so much emphasis on the driver’s championship, nor give the driver so much of the fanfare, then.
I think that’s just because drivers are interesting and exciting and live in Monaco with supermodel girlfriends, while Peter Wheeler, Ross Brawn, Ron Dennis et al are boring moustachioed men who wear tweeds or sponsor-approved polo shirts and talk about drag coefficients and dynamic ride height adjustment and so on.
Drivers are like the quarterback/striker/point guard.