Why do you watch?

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

Do you feel the same way about single make series, or ballast weight, a thing found in all sorts of series?

Single make series? Zero issue with that. When you say "ballast weight", I assume you mean situation in which winners are given ballast to reduce their performance? That is not racing and is theater IMHO, I prefer movies and books for that type of fictional entertainment. Why "reward" excellence with punishment?

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

For me BoP simply equalises the cars a bit, and is very much adjustable.

BoP works to do that. I think what rubs me personally the wrong way is that BoP takes the benefit of a spec series but tries to have a facade of engineering competition. So if a Porsche wins one week, the Porsche fans and beat their chests and if Ferrari wins the next week, the Ferrari fans can beat their chests. And the problem is... from a constructor or marque perspective, it's 100% fake. Now from a team and driver perspective, there is racing.

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

DRS on the other hard makes the basic point of racing, overtaking a total and utter farce.

With DRS you still have to have a good car, and you still have to be quick enough to get close, but the actual art of passing has been totally lost. I admit I do not watch F1 enough now to know if real passing truly occurs as it once did.

So as you call out, you really don't watch, so you can't really back up your opinion. It is your opinion and some here have similar ones. But you can absolutely watch F1 and find examples of the following...

1. Pass was easy due to DRS
2. Pass was down to driver skill
3. Pass not doable even with DRS.

If you have been following F1 recently you would now about examples such as Kevin Magnussen who was at the front of a train of cars. He didn't have DRS (meaning he couldn't deploy it), but there was a line of cars behind him that did have the DRS advantage and they couldn't pass him. Or it took a really really long time to do so.

Love it or hate it, DRS is actually not a pure black and white situation in which.. "I want to pass, so I can pass!"

Do I like DRS? Not particularly. I think most everyone here is not particularly a fan. Am I curious to see F1 without DRS? Yes! What do I think would happen if the current cars had DRS disabled on the entire 2024 calendar? Races would likely be worse than they are because the natural speed and pecking order would create highly processional racing. I view it as a necessary evil. I hope they eventually figure out technical regulations that reduce or eliminate the need for something like it. But that is a whole entire topic that is beyond the scope of this.

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

Also, I am not really old enough to really have gotten into WEC before this was a big thing. I will admit for me it has largely ruined GT3 racing, but the trouble is without it, manufacturers might get a car wrong, be trounced and leave, in this day and age and with motorsport on the cusp in some ways of becoming irrelevant, do you really wish that?

This is exactly why F1 would not survive if the technical regulations were unrestricted.

It's hard to create rules for GT racing because manufactures will always game the system. A distant cousin of "BoP" is rules that try to create equivalency between different technical concepts. Such as trying to balance NA vs turbo cars. Even in the recent golden age of prototype racing, they had what I think was called "equivalence of technology" in which they tried to balance diesel vs. gas/petrol solutions (think Audi, Toyota and Porsche prototype battles!)

If you just started watching WEC then you missed earlier (and IMHO more exciting) period with GT1 and GT2 cars (with GT2 eventually becoming GTE) in which the cars were built to rules (generally ) vs. being "balanced" by the organizers.

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

I do not know if you watch series like IMSA or WEC, but the BoP really does make it a bit more of a lottery, that is something I find enjoyable, I utterly hate, loath and despise predictable results, it is anathema to me sorry. I understand the purist might cringe at that, but for me saying F1 is pure when part of it removes the most vital aspect of racing, is hypocritical, not you, I am not saying you, but anyone saying F1 is pure when DRS exists surely.

First, I don't know who is saying F1 is "pure". I think many like to pretend it used to be that way yesterday, last week, or a decade ago. It might have been for about five minutes many decades ago. But no top series is pure these days.

I would argue that the IMSA or WEC stuff is predictably random (that is not a complement). So why bother cheering for any one team? That maybe is an unfair comment, but it comes down to a desire (or not) to be interested in engineering competition. As I somewhat mention above, it is the fact that these series "pretend" to be engineering competitions is what bothers me so much. I am a massive Porsche fan. I would love to watch and cheer Porsche on. But if they win or lose, is it more down to the driver and the team or because it was a "Porsche" vs. whoever else they are racing against. I think any given marque is BoPed up or down to create it's performance. They might as well be racing spec cars that just have stickers on them that says Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Ford, etc. Isn't that pretty much NASCAR (I am offending everyone today!)

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

I will offer an olive branch. I follow MotoGP quite closely, currently dominated by European factories, and the two large Japanese makes have been given dispensation to test more, make more changes to try and close the gap. Does this make you pull back in the same way? Or like me are you more relieved that the Japanese factories who once were dominant, and begrudgingly allowed Ducati, Aprilia and KTM this extra room to develop years ago now have the chance to eat humble pie and do the same!!!

I don't follow MotoGP only because I just don't have much of an interest in two wheel motorsports. But F1 also has some level of helping hand like you mention. It's just not mentioned or talked about as much. I don't think it's as strong as what is in MotoGP

Anyhow, sorry for the rant. As much as you might be dissatisfied with F1, I feel the same way about prototype and GT endurance racing. I am relatively involved here in the F1 forum on 10/10th, but I used to be nearly equally involved in the Prototype/GT endurance side on 10/10ths. But I walked away from it all at the end of the LMP (Audi/Porsche/Toyota) and GTE era and I am still bothered by that. I didn't leave endurance racing, endurance racing left me.

Richard

[S griffin]

The fact that lap times were spread out is why we used to have more overtaking. Drivers could use their car advantage more

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by S griffin

The fact that lap times were spread out is why we used to have more overtaking. Drivers could use their car advantage more

If you qualify in rough order of pace, and there is large disparity in performance across the field? How does that equate tom more overtaking short of overtaking while lapping?

Richard

[S griffin]

Originally Posted by Richard C

If you qualify in rough order of pace, and there is large disparity in performance across the field? How does that equate tom more overtaking short of overtaking while lapping?

Richard

It means cars coming through will find it easier to pass

[flatlandsman]

Richard, I think really you and I are at disparate ends of this.

I lost interest in F1 for all sorts of reasons, and that is a formula where success is not really hampered in any way, so you can end up with years, almost decades of potentially one team even driver dominating.

I stomached Schumacher endlessly winning, his team-mate being the only one who retired, he hardly ever did, Bridgestone testing endlessly to make tyres for only one man. I then endured Vettel after a brief period of time when it seemed there as some variety in winners, champions. Then the cars changed, the sound went and another team dominated for years, now we have the same.

That for me is not racing I can watch. I detest domination, and that is partly why I asked this question, what on earth keeps a fan entertained when you pretty much know who is likely to win?

You will say how can you watch a series when the competition is all slightly hampered and slowed down, I say I do not give a toss because it is entertaining, relatively unpredictable and still teams can come up with slightly different ways to tackle the way the formula works, again something F1 has lost, everyone uses the same engines, they all sound and look the same.

I will let you into a little secret. The car that massively got me into WEC was the front wheel drive Nissan LMP1, it was useless, it was a failure but it was so out there, so almost ridiculous, I felt I had to learn more and get into this more, I was lucky WEC was in a boom time followed by a huge drop, where I admit I went away a little again.

But that variety still sort of exists, to me it simply does not in most single seater racing.

[GingerPixel]

I detest this rose tinted attitude that dominance is a new thing in F1. Drivers/teams have been winning the majority of racs and driving away from the field since the inception of the sport.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by S griffin

It means cars coming through will find it easier to pass

Coming through because why? They qualified poorly? The stopped for tires or fuel? Why do these cars have a slower car in front of them?

Richard

[flatlandsman]

Ginger

Dominance for very many years largely by one driver and team is relatively new. And I mean here Schumacher with Ferrari, Vettel with red Bull, Hamilton with Merc and now Verstappen with Diabetes in a Can!

There are not many periods in the past where one driver and team dominated for maybe 4 or 5 years and won the vast majority of the races. You could argue Prost int he mid 80's with McLaren until 89, but he did not really dominate, he was just better than everyone else most of the time and the car certainly was no dominant apart from 84 and 88/9. And please realise I am not talking about 1 or 2 years here, I am talking a good half decade of sustained winning, successive titles etc.

[S griffin]

That’s the thing. It was harder for teams to dominate back in the day because reliability wasn’t the greatest thing in those days

[flatlandsman]

I also think in certain periods, notably the DFV period there were numerous cars that could win from teams like Tyrrell, Lotus, McLaren, Brabham, Williams later on, all using the same lump so one aspect was usually very equal, until Cosworth came out with the uprated DFV for silly money!!

But yes the turbo era really did add huge jeopardy to every race. Reliability, fuel use, all played a part. The racing was often very average but the fact you never really knew who would win because of these issues somehow made it more interesting.

[chavez]

Originally Posted by GingerPixel

I detest this rose tinted attitude that dominance is a new thing in F1. Drivers/teams have been winning the majority of racs and driving away from the field since the inception of the sport.

I agree, but the dominance tended to not last as long. One team would dominate such as Lotus in '78, then within a year they had lost their way.

[Alan52]

Originally Posted by chavez

I agree, but the dominance tended to not last as long. One team would dominate such as Lotus in '78, then within a year they had lost their way.

Mercedes was the first time in the last 50 years at least where dominance was maintained for more than 2 years.
Even in the Vettel 4 in a row so there were 2 of those where the title came down to the last race against a different team.In the Schumacher Ferrari years there were numerous times when Hakkinen and Williams cars were faster.Championship results suggest dominance but race by race analysis not always.2004,2011 and 2013 were years of dominance.
I always thought that a car would find it much harder to sustain dominance in an aero formula like we have now compared to the engine formula of the Mercedes era.I was wrong.

[Skam85]

Originally Posted by Alan52

Mercedes was the first time in the last 50 years at least where dominance was maintained for more than 2 years.

Not to be pedantic but Schumacher from 2000-02 was another example.

[crooky]

Originally Posted by Skam85

Not to be pedantic but Schumacher from 2000-02 was another example.

Schumacher only won the championship in the penultimate race at Japan so that wouldn't count as domination.

[flatlandsman]

I think the reason I raise Schumacher is that he was always among the fastest, he never had a poor race when he was miles off the pace and it was probably tyres or bad luck that prevented him from winning far more titles. I recall that time as him largely dominating, agreed, not in the same way as Vettel, Mercedes and Red Bull more recently, but still far more dominant than at any time before that with any driver really.

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Alan52

Mercedes was the first time in the last 50 years at least where dominance was maintained for more than 2 years.
Even in the Vettel 4 in a row so there were 2 of those where the title came down to the last race against a different team.

I agree that the Vettel years were not a 'dominance' by a single car.

But - I think the following periods do show a level of dominance from a single car:

McLaren 1988-1990 48 races, 31 wins, 64.58%
Ferrari 1997-2013 300 races, 113 wins 37.67%

You are right though in the need to look further back than the last 50 years to see:
*1 Ferrari 1951-1953 22 races, 17 wins, 77.27%
*2 Alfa-Romeo 1946-1950 20 races, 13 wins, 65.00%

*1 – includes WDC seasons of F2 regulations
*2 – includes pre-1950 results

[S griffin]

It’s a cliche to say, but the main about McLaren and Merc domination is that they let their drivers race or at least had two drivers capable of beating each other. Despite Checo’s best efforts, Max is just out of his reach. So it’s just not the same

[GingerPixel]

Originally Posted by S griffin

That’s the thing. It was harder for teams to dominate back in the day because reliability wasn’t the greatest thing in those days

Right!?

I had a look back through a few different season's race results before I made my sweeping statement, and was really surprised by the number of non-finishers! 1991 for example was half the field in nearly every race.

[S griffin]

I think fans want to see more unpredictability. It’s too controlled these days with rules. Seems too many rules and regs leave less room for ingenuity

[flatlandsman]

Part of my point Ginger, I know I keep using the word, but there is no jeopardy in modern F1 racing, the cars are now heavily neutered as they can only use half an engine a decade or something.

Has all this stuff really reduced costs? I doubt it as that cost has just moved elsewhere, rather that onto another engine when modern teams have upwards of 1000 staff I find it rather at odds with reducing costs and being green! they all have to drive to work, more then ever fly to races, build monstrous willy measuring things in the paddock. Having 500 races a year also does not help!

It is a little bit laughable at times. But as I say it must be working and I must be wrong as it continues to thrive despite this.

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

That for me is not racing I can watch. I detest domination, and that is partly why I asked this question, what on earth keeps a fan entertained when you pretty much know who is likely to win?

Up to you, but Red Bull Racing kept chipping away at it for 9 years and eventually they got back to the position of winning consistently.

I'm not going to tune out just because Mercedes GP always wins!

It's interesting to see Red Bull Racing develop their car, perfect their pitstops, develop the quite extreme high rake design that (in their opinion) best optimises the compromise between having forwards centre of pressure in low speed (oversteer) and rearwards centre of pressure in high speed corners (understeer).

As we see right now, McLaren have more or less caught Red Bull and Ferrari are not far behind either. On their own merits, no BOP rubbish. It's very impressive and exciting!

Getting those two-three wins off Mercedes GP per season were so sweet for Red Bull Racing and Ricciardo and Verstappen. I imagine it is the same for McLaren and Ferrari fans in getting the wins they do get these days!

While 2024 WDC is gone, it is very presumptuous to assume McLaren or Ferrari won't be able to compete for the 2025 WDC. I think the hope is there amongst McLaren and Ferrari fans and it is justified and plausible.

Don't forget that Ferrari came out of the gate with the new 2022 regulationss very strongly but they were set back by Technical Directive 039, and have now developed their car back into a position of competitiveness which is exciting. You don't have such interesting narratives in BOP series or spec series.

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by S griffin

I think fans want to see more unpredictability.

Strongly disagree. The highly random and unpredictable nature of Indycar racing (or NASCAR racing etc) is very offputting.

People like F1 because there is a clear sense of order. It's clear that McLaren and Ferrari are closing in to Red Bull on their own merits. It was a big deal when Williams-BMW (re)joined the big two and made it a big three in 2002. Or when Renault rose to the upper midfield taking the odd win in 2003-2004 and then became a top team in 2005-2006.

If it was Indycar where all you can change is the car setup and Colton Herta qualifies 12th one week, pole the next, 18th the one after that, 4th the following -- it's very hard to decipher what is actually going on.

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

I lost interest in F1 for all sorts of reasons, and that is a formula where success is not really hampered in any way, so you can end up with years, almost decades of potentially one team even driver dominating.

It was pre-F1 but surely the dominance of Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz was at a far greater level than ANY modern Grand Prix dominance?

It only ended before "decades" of German engineering superiority exhibition, as the Nazi government lost interest in funding Grand Prix racing propaganda and concentrated on other ambitions...

But the same point stands, that Scuderia Ferrari, Nuvolari and their Alfa Romeos were able to win even one race against that, with no BOP ballast or any such things slowing down the German uber-cars is, is MORE impressive not less.

[S griffin]

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

Strongly disagree. The highly random and unpredictable nature of Indycar racing (or NASCAR racing etc) is very offputting.

People like F1 because there is a clear sense of order. It's clear that McLaren and Ferrari are closing in to Red Bull on their own merits. It was a big deal when Williams-BMW (re)joined the big two and made it a big three in 2002. Or when Renault rose to the upper midfield taking the odd win in 2003-2004 and then became a top team in 2005-2006.

If it was Indycar where all you can change is the car setup and Colton Herta qualifies 12th one week, pole the next, 18th the one after that, 4th the following -- it's very hard to decipher what is actually going on.

Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. It's got too sterile now. You hardly ever see an underdog nip one out the bag and the current reliability means there's less chance for surprises

[flatlandsman]

I think what we are seeing here is a clear divide in what certain people enjoy about F1 and what certain people do not.

And what is clear also, is that some people enjoy the order of F1, the obvious have and have nots, the real and true level of dominance some teams have.

I could not be less motivated to watch a series like that, I like it when things get shaken up by weather, huge rule changes, I am not a huge fan of Indycar but here we have a guy saying that the randomness is off-putting, that is fascinating!!

It truly is, as it is exactly what I want in a race series, I wonder how one gets to that level, without wishing to be too intrusive, but how can anyone find a series truly interesting when the likely winner is known months in advance?

I am guessing the motivation is engineering and an appreciation of doing a job very well, but unless you work in the team how can you feel you share in that and enjoy, some people must do clearly, I find that truly fascinating as it is almost to me like calling yellow and saying it really is red!!