[Rules] Todt: "new tracks must create passing"

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by bella

you do have to protect jobs though, and to impose such a strict set of regulations on f1 would be the equivalent of making a very very significant percentage of the workforce unemployed.

What!
F1 teams have agreed in principle to reduce budgets somewhat to more reasonable levels than the $200+ million some teams and automative firms were spending on F1, especially in areas where the research and development was unproductive in any field other than F1 and you are telling me the firms and the FIA have a responsibility to continue with the present regulations in order to protect peoples jobs?

I am all for full employment for everyone but running wind tunnels 24/7 with a cadre of personnel just to make f1 cars go 3/100 of a second faster around a 5km strip of tarmacadam is a wasteful use of resources, both human, engineering and in terms of wasteful energy consumption. All for no real useful purpose.

The reality is if F1 is primarily entertainment, also a sport, an exhibition of skill (and not just bravery), and an engineering exercise with some practical everyday outcomes of relevance that can be applied to the real world of automative engineering, then some significant and useful revisions can and should be made.

The present regulations divert an inappropriate amount of researcha nd development into aerodynamic solutions, development and research that have little proctical application outside of F1.
The skills, intelligence and creativity of those human resources would be better employed in developing technologies involving mechanical grip, reduced fuel consumption, alternative forms of enrgy cuse and consumption, human safety design and development, etc.

Restrictions on the use of wings, or implementing a standard wing package for all teams, along with restrictions on the design and shape of underbodies, floors and how much floor etc can be employed around the rear of the car (I'd eliminate much of it) could give us significantly improved 'racing' and eliminate much of the wasteful spending from F1 by diverting it to engineering tasks with more practical outcomes for road car engineering.

While employment is important as a social issue it shouldn't cloud judgement on what is best for the sport and for engineering outcomes or lock companies and the FIA into a position where it becomes a governing factor in the development of the sport.

Thatys a response to what could be a serious comment. If however bella has given us a cyncial comment than we should all have a laugh about it.......

[bella]

you missed my point and clearly didn't see the effects last time there was a personnel exodus from f1. the redundancies at the top level have a cascading effect all the way down the ladder, as it did last time when the test teams were cut, or when super aguri disappeared and all of a sudden they were on the job market as well, or when brawn/honda had to cut half its workforce.

it's not the social considerations, it's the impact on the surrounding relevant industries.

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by bella

you missed my point and clearly didn't see the effects last time there was a personnel exodus from f1. the redundancies at the top level have a cascading effect all the way down the ladder, as it did last time when the test teams were cut, or when super aguri disappeared and all of a sudden they were on the job market as well, or when brawn/honda had to cut half its workforce.

it's not the social considerations, it's the impact on the surrounding relevant industries.

OK, I understand your point but life in the present world is constant ly changing, nothing remains the same.

While a reduction in staffing at the F1 level will see a tightening of the job market and a reduction in the number of personnnel employed across the teams and the supporting industries changing the direction the supporting companies specialisation we all have to adapt on an everchanging basis.

I have never stayed in the same job for the same employer more than 4 years, resulting in constant adaption and change. The expertise lies with people within an industry not with the companies.
Contraction in one area doesn't precude expansion in another.

[Purist]

Open wheel cars are utterly impractical on the road, so one of the primary tenets of the series is pointless when it comes to the road-going public.

Most of those other systems you mention are irrelevant on both sides, at least in so far as making an argument based on them. Safety systems on F1 cars are probably about as good as our technology can allow them to be. The only areas where they aren't so much anymore are in electronic devices, which would make the cars bigger, heavier, slower, less reliable, and make the drivers more careless. Not to mention, those gizmos would make the driving easier, and thus make the racing worse.

There's no need to make mechanical grip on road cars any better; they're already TOO EASY to drive at regulated highway or road speeds as things have stood for over a decade now.

Racing cars, in order to be more competitive, MUST maximize efficiencies in all areas. Therefore, when taking into account how much full-throttle running they do, their engines are made as efficient as the rules will allow anyway. And the day motorsport loses its real sound is the day it loses its soul, and its days are numbered (talking about electric cars, and probably some other options too).

Also, the people driving/riding in road cars are becoming more sedentary (fatter), more willfully ignorant, and less attentive than ever, the opposite of what is REQUIRED to be a racing driver. Really, any "practical" road car is becoming more and more the antithesis of every racing car.

And frankly, racing exists to test the limits as much as people are willing to allow, NOT dumb the stuff down to the lowest common denominator, because that's just the easy way out. The only way racing breeds better roads cars is if there is something from the race car is just adopted on a road car, because the technology became such that they could just do that. All this stuff about road relevance in racing is stupid, untrue the way it's being done now, and thus goes the opposite direction of what it's supposed to mean. That is to say, we haven't been transferring race car technology to road cars lately so much as we've been forcing road car technology into race cars to dumb them down.

At their height, F1 team budgets weren't $200 million, they were as high as $700 million annually.

The racetrack rules under the FIA, in conjuction with how insurance in racing works, are against the changes you guys propose. The explicitly written track regulations put far greater emphasis on top-end speed at the end of a straight being the determining factor in run-off area size than in corner speed determining run-off size. Also, the insurance agents are more wary, rightly or wrongly, of high top-end speeds than high cornering speeds. In other words, it's far easier under current rules to just go ahead with tracks with some long straights, but an abundance of slow and medium speed corners to warrant higher downforce, coupled with high downforce cars to race on them, than it is to push through low downforce cars with high top-end speeds running on tracks that DEMAND a low downforce setup to boot.

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by Purist

Open wheel cars are utterly impractical on the road, so one of the primary tenets of the series is pointless when it comes to the road-going public.

The racetrack rules under the FIA, in conjuction with how insurance in racing works, are against the changes you guys propose. The explicitly written track regulations put far greater emphasis on top-end speed at the end of a straight being the determining factor in run-off area size than in corner speed determining run-off size. Also, the insurance agents are more wary, rightly or wrongly, of high top-end speeds than high cornering speeds. In other words, it's far easier under current rules to just go ahead with tracks with some long straights, but an abundance of slow and medium speed corners to warrant higher downforce, coupled with high downforce cars to race on them, than it is to push through low downforce cars with high top-end speeds running on tracks that DEMAND a low downforce setup to boot.

Yeah we know all that.
My point is that millions spent on aero is a waste and its counter productive to close racing. We know the arguments about insurance, the FIA and all that.
I much prefer single seater racing to ton tops and touring cars so there is no argument against pure racing cars, just the economic decisions teams are forced to make becauise of the lmited avenues of development the current rules packages teams are forced to compete under.

[jab]

Originally Posted by dyewat808

Well I've read your 'F1 manifesto' jab and I agree with it completely.

Thanks. Wasn't necessarily intending it to be for public consumption - was mainly for me to just get my ideas straight and down on...a computer

As for the subject of dumbing F1 down, I think we have to be realistic. While the teams have made a decent effort to bring the costs down, I don't think they've done enough. We have to think about the long-term effects - another bad year for Mercedes and they may be gone, at least as a works team, while Renault are teetering too. If it continues like this - with loads of money being poured in and poor racing - F1 could easily end up as an Arab play thing in a decade or so, or dead altogether. It's not as secure as you might think

The main thing is we have to get the manufacturers back, and they'll only come back if they get value for money - if it's cheap and they can broadcast themselves to as many people as possible. This won't happen while the costs are so high and if less people are watching if the racing's poor. So, if that means "dumbing F1 down", so be it - F1 has to be pragmatic about it

[Purist]

Nice sentiments, but where are the visible, positive results from them?

So far, we've gotten less attractive, inferior-sounding, harder to overtake in cars racing on less spectacular, harder to overtake on circuits by being "pragmatic".

Compromise means that, while you don't get all you want, you at least get something, but all we seem to be doing is losing everything we want the sport to be.

If you can show me some real positives that have come out of being "pragmatic", in F1 or in life, be my guest. If not, and being pragmatic is the only way F1 can survive, well then, LET IT DIE.

[jab]

Originally Posted by Purist

Nice sentiments, but where are the visible, positive results from them?

So far, we've gotten less attractive, inferior-sounding, harder to overtake in cars racing on less spectacular, harder to overtake on circuits by being "pragmatic".

The reason the cars are harder to overtake is because the teams agree on a set of rules and then their aero guys spend the whole team getting around them, and because the aero rules don't go far enough - they need to attack the whole problem in one go, not bit by bit

And as far as the attractiveness of the cars, I do think what the car looks like is important - in fact, I'd rather they prioritise aesthetics. The best option for cars that race well may be cars without wings, but F1 cars have to be slicks-and-wings racers - there's an image to uphold. So I'd rather see a compromise of attractive-looking (and sounding - which you'd get from turbocharged road car engines) cars that race well - may have said it before but something that looks like the GP3 car would be ideal for me, as that is just about perfect

Originally Posted by Purist

Compromise means that, while you don't get all you want, you at least get something, but all we seem to be doing is losing everything we want the sport to be.

All well and good, but who's 'we'?

Ultimately, the people who really matter, who F1 depends on and without whom the sport would die, are the casual fans - the vast majority of the people that watch F1, but also the silent majority as they never feel strongly enough about F1 to register on a forum to express their views

I'm sure if you offered those a choice between "dumbed down" cars with good racing, and "pure" cars with poor racing, they'd take the former - the majority of people that watch F1 prioritise good racing over anything else. In fact, there are many who would rather the teams dump technology in favour of a sport where the driver has a much greater role

We, as the hardcore fans, don't matter. We'll watch whatever happens, and there aren't many of us. I'd rather they prioritised the show instead of the "purity" of the sport (although it lost its virginity many years ago so it's a moot point) for the sake of attracting more fans, because that will be the key to attracting investment and securing F1's future

[Purist]

I didn't mean to take anything out on you. I'm just frustrated more than anything else.

The trouble is, EVERY bloody series is becoming more "spec", and those who watch still aren't happy it would seem.

BTW, if the driver was the main point, you'd think that IROC wouldn't have died out. They had decent enough looking cars, and with just spoilers and not full-on wings, big name drivers too, but the series still croaked.

[Quintin03]

Originally Posted by Purist

The trouble is, EVERY bloody series is becoming more "spec", and those who watch still aren't happy it would seem.

At least the IRL has seen the light, although not taking very large steps yet.

[jab]

Originally Posted by Purist

The trouble is, EVERY bloody series is becoming more "spec", and those who watch still aren't happy it would seem.

But look at what the best series are for racing - the best single seater series are spec series; GP2, Superleague, FRenault 3.5

I am a big fan of the FIA GT1 World Championship at the moment, which is great because the cars are equalised in overall performance terms but each car has its own strengths, which comes from having different engines. Same for something like Grand Am - the DP chassis are heavily restricted but enough is left for them to look and be unique, and it's the engines that are most significant element (although they are rev limited which I don't like)

That's what F1 needs - it needs differentiation and restriction, but they've just got it the wrong way around at the moment. They're emphasising the pointless nuclear arms race in aero, and yet restricting what could be relevant to the real world and create more overtaking

Originally Posted by Purist

BTW, if the driver was the main point, you'd think that IROC wouldn't have died out. They had decent enough looking cars, and with just spoilers and not full-on wings, big name drivers too, but the series still croaked.

But IROC isn't F1

Come on, look around the forums. Look around this forum. Look at what people are talking about. It's the drivers they care about. Only 1 team has more support than the drivers, and that's because they extend beyond F1 and have a great history in the sport spanning over half a century

People don't care about technology. They just want to see great racing. They want to be on the edge of their seats. And people's attention spans are shorter too. The demand is for exciting sprint races, not endurance races

And on the IRL, I'd like to see something close to that (albeit still with individual chassis), although I gather the aero kits include wings as well, though I'm sure they'll be heavily restricted. Difference with F1 is even if something's very restricted, the designers will still plough loads of effort and money into tiny areas - look at the RB6's front wing. There's no need for that

[Purist]

There's a need for it if it gives them an edge on the competition. Hey, the sponsors are willing to pay for it, and so long as that happens, the teams WILL FIND WAYS to sped that money in any and every area they are permitted to to get every ounce of speed possible.

Most of the driver stuff I see is about seats shifting as far as which driver is where. That doesn't equate to a huge personal interest, on the part of the fans, in a particular driver or drivers. It's just relaying the latest information on the lay of the land as far as who is driving for whom.

I don't get into tabloidal smut. I just don't care. It's the drivers' lives; it's their business, not mine.

Anyway, my two original favorite drivers have disappeared, and no one since has quite, fully taken their place. Dale Sr., well, no explanation needed there. And Al Unser Jr. just fell into relative obscurity before finally retiring.

The easiest element for me to identify and differentiate in racing is the cars; it's just that simple. Since I have quite poor eyesight, by "normal" standards, I simply can't identify individual people at all easily. I can't identify anybody, even people I know very well, from any "significant" distance. Therefore, I use the cars as identifiers, reference points, what-have-you, because that's all I have.

Just something that you and others clearly have, and take for granted, but that I don't really possess, and cannot take as a given.

[duke_toaster]

I would be interested to see what the following rules would do to overtaking. I can't think of a way to describe my views in principles, so here's some outlines on what could happen. Any new set of rules should be tested in simulators to see if they are any better though.

Larger (width and diameter) rear tyres, same size fronts, larger aspect ratios (same complete wheel size, but 15 inch rather than 13 inch rims on the front, pro rata on the rear).
Two elements in the front wing maximum, no 3D endplates. Full width though.
Current height and 20cm wider rear wing, but limited to two elements.
190cm track, full width bodywork between the wheel centrelines.
Some form of venturi tunnels to maintain current lap times due to the front and rear wing reductions.
More KERS power than 2011 proposals, but limits on numbers of systems used like engines.
1600cc twin turbo engines, with maximum restrictions on life and boost pressure but not RPM, to stop cars. Variable valve timing, direct injection and other similar technologies permitted.

I'm not sure if this is the answer, but it could be worth a try.

[Pingguest]

Although I posted it in another topic earlier, I think the link below has major relevance for this topic too.
http://www.divergentgovernance.co.uk/

[ECW Dan Selby]

Nice idea - How can I support this?

Selby

[JamesH]

Perhaps they should just allow fan cars. Then you don't need wings, you don't need as much power (because there is less drag), the grip levels stay the same. Should allow more overtaking as there is less aero interaction with the car behind.

[ECW Dan Selby]

Would sitting behind a fan car be difficult to overtake?

Selby

[bella]

there's a TERRIBLE pun to make about drafting in fan cars but i refuse point blank to make it

[ECW Dan Selby]

What, but drafting them in would be a breeze, bella..!

Selby