Unpopular Motorsport Opinions

[-Fred-]

Saturday in Monaco is the day when Formula 1 drivers show their true skills. Nothing on the calendar compares to a Monaco pole lap. Fact.

Absolutely. Claiming pole at Monaco is an achievement, no doubt about it.

But 2018 perfectly demonstrates what I feel is inherently wrong with Monaco as a racing circuit... In laymen's terms, a broken car won the race because no one could get past it. While nursing home a broken or damaged car is a staple of motorsports heroics, there's absolutely no way Ricciardo would have won with similar damage at any other track on the calendar. Yet it's something that's frequent with Monaco, faster cars and drivers being held up because there's simply nowhere to go; Verstappen last year with Hamilton's shot tires, Coulthard and Bernoldi in 2000, Eddie Irvine and everyone in 1996, etc etc etc. I'm always up for a good battle that involves defending to the very last inch, but Monaco offers little (basically none) chance for the attacking driver to strike without damaging his car, or both. The cars are also now much bigger than they used to be 30-40 years ago, yet the track hasn't changed much since then. I simply think F1 has outgrown the circuit.

It's arguably the most glamorous and iconic venue on the calendar, it's probably the most challenging track for drivers too, but the racing sucks.

 

[MisterWaffles]

So you'd rather drive on a track that is completely sterile and void of any real challenge or consequence?

There are plenty of tracks on this planet that offer plenty of challenges for a driver, yet also allow for close racing during much of the lap. I wouldn't equate challenge to smacking into a wall or being held up because there's only one lane of racing traffic for the majority of the lap. When I watch racing I want to see action, and Macau does not produce much action or close racing due to the nature of the track, that's why I think it's a bad track.

 

[Jimlaad43]

If you want an overrated track that can't produce good racing, I give you Suzuka.

The straights are all too short, and the longest two head into flat out corners - T1 and 130R - meaning there's no outbraking overtakes. Passes at the hairpin have to be as clunky and dodgy as the Loews hairpin. The Esses just spread the cars out, and the bridge is about the only interesting thing about the circuit. It's too narrow, the final chicane ruins the flow of the whole circuit and overall, it's a track that's only good for driving, not racing.

Fuji is a far superior circuit for F1. It held two races in 2007 and 2008, both of which were better than every single Japanese Grand Prix since.

 

[Roger the Horse]

Suzuka is a track I can see producing much better racing under the new regulations. Watching older races at the track or races in other disciplines which are less aero dependent it is possible to have good racing there. Sadly though something like 2005 would be unable to happen today because the aero dependency (and equally significantly the way that effects tyre management) makes the type of overtakes which are possible at Suzuka a lot less viable.

Fuji of course has another ace up its sleeve in that it seems to have the most unpredictable inclement weather of any track I've ever been aware of. Lying at the base of Fujisan presumably is responsible for that. But with all the talk of F1 needing more wet races and occasional murmurings of randomly turning on the sprinklers at Paul Ricard to spice up the racing, there's surely a strong case for bringing back the Pacific Grand Prix for a round at Fuji?

I'd actually be interested to see a breakdown of which tracks around the world are moist prone to seeing that sort of unpredictable weather that makes for the best racing. It's not like weather measurements aren't a thing that's comparitively readily available.

The unpredictable part is significant. A wet race with predictable weather can easily lead to a scenario where there's a single obvious strategy everyone winds up following and wont necessarily be any more eventful than a dry race would be.

 

[MaxAttack]

If you want an overrated track that can't produce good racing, I give you Suzuka.

The straights are all too short, and the longest two head into flat out corners - T1 and 130R - meaning there's no outbraking overtakes. Passes at the hairpin have to be as clunky and dodgy as the Loews hairpin. The Esses just spread the cars out, and the bridge is about the only interesting thing about the circuit. It's too narrow, the final chicane ruins the flow of the whole circuit and overall, it's a track that's only good for driving, not racing.

Fuji is a far superior circuit for F1. It held two races in 2007 and 2008, both of which were better than every single Japanese Grand Prix since.

Now that's a proper unpopular opinion there. I think it's more down to the current issues with the cars and regs than the track itself. Cars should be able to race at Suzuka, and drivers clearly still enjoy the circuit with at least Vettel consistently naming it as his favourite on the calendar.

I'd be up for seeing what Fuji can produce but i'd loathe losing Suzuka, but then again in my opinion, if Bahrain, Russia and Abu Dhabi deserve GPs for whatever reason, the motorsport-mad, mass car-producing and F1 obsessed Japanese could justify having two - keep Suzuka at the back end where it traditionally belongs, and give us Fuji earlier in the season, instead of any number of quantifiably crap tracks.

 

[Liquid]

Bring back the Pacific GP and race at both.

 

[Jimlaad43]

I'm currently practicing for a league race on Assetto Corsa Competizione at Suzuka this week in GT3 cars. I have no idea how we're supposed to race here. The cars are so wide on the narrow circuit, meaning defending is going to be super-easy. The best way to overtake in these cars is a good exit and to get alongside well before a corner, but all the big acceleration zones are all curved, making the racing line naturally defensive. The two out-braking zones are the hairpin, which has a kink beforehand so the racing line naturally stops that being an out-braking zone; and the final chicane, where the track seems to both bend to the right in the braking zone and narrows into a clunky chicane with corners that aren't close enough together that they can be navigated in one go, but aren't far enough apart that you can treat them as separate corners. The mess of other layouts meeting up at that point makes the pinch-point of walls even more confusing to navigate - and people have the affront to say Paul Ricard's multiple layouts are confusing!

Suzuka has 1 DRS zone on a short layout. DRS can be used a total of 51 times in a race down a short-ish straight into a flat out corner. That comes to about 36km of DRS in a whole race. Monaco has 33km...

This is why F1 racing sucks at Suzuka. The track is too long and there isn't enough DRS. Silverstone has 100 possible DRS activations, Bahrain can use it 165 times and the Red Bull Ring has a massive 207 possible DRS activations per car per race. For comparison, that's 145/305km of the Austrian GP in which a driver could use DRS.

Put it simply, when was the last time - apart from 2005 because of a messy qualifying - there was a good F1 race at Suzuka because of overtaking, not just because of the championship battle? The famous Senna/Prost crash at the chicane in 1989 was because there was nowhere to pass on the track and Senna had to try a suicide dive at the chicane from too far back.



Actually that's a good unpopular opinion. Senna and Prost's championship deciding crash at Suzuka 1989 was all Senna's fault. He dived from way too far back and wasn't making the apex. He was going to hit Prost, regardless of if Prost turned into Senna or not. Yes, the disqualification Senna got was complete bull, but Ayrton was the cause of the accident. Prost had a maximum of 5% of the blame for that one.

 

[Liquid]

Actually that's a good unpopular opinion. Senna and Prost's championship deciding crash at Suzuka 1989 was all Senna's fault. He dived from way too far back and wasn't making the apex. He was going to hit Prost, regardless of if Prost turned into Senna or not. Yes, the disqualification Senna got was complete bull, but Ayrton was the cause of the accident. Prost had a maximum of 5% of the blame for that one.

I've always felt this as well. Coupled with his actions at Suzuka the next year, I've always found the senna_gap_no_longer.txt quote to be a bit of an eye roller.

 

[Jimlaad43]

To spark some proper debate about circuits on the F1 calendar, here's a Tier list I've just made up.
https://tiermaker.com/create/formula-1-circuits-2000-2019-403085
It includes all circuits Formula 1 has raced on since the 2000 season, including (most) significant circuit changes.

Feel free to use whatever criteria you want to categorise them, but follow the link, stick all the tracks you know in the categories and share the finished tier list here with us.

(The pictures are quite small, so for example Spa and Singapore are quite hard to tell apart, but they're chronological. The first of each is the original Bus Stop, and the proper triple chicane Singapore Sling version respectively)


This is my version

 

[Liquid]

I should have trademarked this thread.



Unpopular Motorsport Opinions © Liquid, User #167130 MMXVI

 

[TenEightyOne]

Actually that's a good unpopular opinion. Senna and Prost's championship deciding crash at Suzuka 1989 was all Senna's fault. He dived from way too far back and wasn't making the apex. He was going to hit Prost, regardless of if Prost turned into Senna or not. Yes, the disqualification Senna got was complete bull, but Ayrton was the cause of the accident. Prost had a maximum of 5% of the blame for that one.

Agreed, but I think the "Prost's Fault" views grew in popularity after the Senna film which portrayed Prost as the bad-guy-and-enemy that he never was... or if he was it was in equal measure to Senna.

My own unpopular opinion is that Senna's belief in his own infallibility was reaching a zenith and that if it hadn't been for his own dreadful accident at Imola he would, eventually, have killed somebody else on the track .

 

[Liquid]

Agreed, but I think the "Prost's Fault" views grew in popularity after the Senna film which portrayed Prost as the bad-guy-and-enemy that he never was... or if he was it was in equal measure to Senna.

Agreed about Prost being portrayed as a bad guy, even before the Senna film. Also worth remembering that Prost outscored Senna both years they were teammates. He only lost the '88 championship on dropped scores in which Prost dropped a staggering 18 points (105>87) compared to Senna's 4 (94>90).

You have to acknowledge that yes, Prost did race longer but still, Prost was better than Senna by every quantifiable metric (championships, wins, podiums, fastest laps, career points) except poles. Obviously you can still choose your preferred driver on a personal, qualitative metric.

I don't know if there's a recognised term for it, premature death mythos syndrome, but we all know how it works and has worked for many, many people. It becomes all too circular.

Edit: Just to satisfy my own curiosity, and this one could be one for the stats or trivia threads, but the only seasons in which Prost failed to outscore his teammate was his debut year in 1980 where Watson scored one more point and 1984 when Lauda beat him by half a point.

In thirteen seasons he outscored his teammate in eleven of them. Quite astonishing, to be honest.

 

[Roger the Horse]

Yeah, while Senna was undeniably an extremely talented driver, the degree to which he has been mythologised as some sort of motor racing saint following his death is frankly bizarre. Watch any contemporary coverage from before his death and it's very obvious that he was at best a polarising figure within the world of Formula 1 and honestly a lot of the time his detractors are the ones whose arguments seem to hold more merit.

He notoriously drove recklessly on numerous occasions, Suzuka 1990 being the most obvious, and while there is a fair argument that Senna was generally the fastest driver of his era others were clearly at a similar level of talent, with Prost in particular matching or besting Senna in numerous other aspects of racecraft.

Also the whole thing where the only reason why everyone singles out Senna's first lap at Donnington 1993 and not Barrichello's (I think?) is that Senna was the one who was showing up on the TV cameras.

Of course this is all before my time, so my views on the matter will be limited by my particular perspective.

 

[Liquid]

Also the whole thing where the only reason why everyone singles out Senna's first lap at Donnington 1993 and not Barrichello's (I think?) is that Senna was the one who was showing up on the TV cameras.

In those days even cars fitted with OBCs wouldn't have them switched on for the whole race. As a cost-saving exercise, the director would only instruct there to be a signal to/from it when he wanted it to.

Case in point: Christian Fittipaldi had an OBC when he flipped at Monza in 1993 but as far as anyone has been able to find out, the camera was not broadcasting at the time and thusly the footage does not exist.

 

[Jimlaad43]

Donington 1993 is a joke because everyone goes "oh wow he overtook 5 cars in one lap". No, he lost a load of positions off the line and got them back later in the lap. He only technically made up 2 places before the end of lap 1.

 

[Liquid]

Donington 1993 is a joke because everyone goes "oh wow he overtook 5 cars in one lap". No, he lost a load of positions off the line and got them back later in the lap. He only technically made up 2 places before the end of lap 1.

Never really thought about it like that. Barrichello went from 12th to 4th which... at Donington certainly was no easy task.

 

[Roo]

Donington 1993 is a joke because everyone goes "oh wow he overtook 5 cars in one lap". No, he lost a load of positions off the line and got them back later in the lap. He only technically made up 2 places before the end of lap 1.

Senna started 4th, dropped to 5th of the line (so a loss of 1 position), before passing 4 cars - a net gain of 3 places from his grid slot - to lead at the end of lap 1.

Never really thought about it like that. Barrichello went from 12th to 4th which... at Donington certainly was no easy task.

Drivers who gained more places than Senna on the first lap at Donington are the aforementioned Barrichello's 12th to 4th (5 overtakes, 2 places gained from the Andretti/Wendlinger collision, 1 from JJ Lehto starting the spare Sauber from the pitlane), who passed Alesi, Schumacher, Berger, Herbert, and Patrese; and the Minardi of Fabrizio Barbazza, in only his 3rd GP start, who went from 20th to 12th, passing Alliot, Christian Fittipaldi, Katayama, Boutsen, and Comas. Barbazza ultimately finished 6th to score his first ever point after a drive that gets even less attention than Barrichello's does.

 

[Jimlaad43]

1990s F1 cars didn't look good until the 1998 rule change that narrowed them and brought in grooved tyres. The mid-90's cars with wheels on long, spindly suspension looked awful with the high noses and basic front wings. When the profile of the tyres became "squarer" and closer to the cars,cthey looked so much better.

 

[Liquid]

I like the high-nose cars. A lot. One of the bigger changes came in 1996 when needle noses were banned in response to the 1995 McLaren, which was hardly a threat in the first place. And the cars were narrowed slightly. 1996 is also when the front wings were blunted and simplified to reduce the chance of debris puncturing a front tyre.

I like the look of both pre- and post-1998 cars. 1997 has a very, very handsome grid.

 

[Eh Team]

The Marlboro livery is vastly overrated. The only reason it became so popular is because a maniac who made a questionable quote drove it. The livery is uninspiring at best, it was just the chevron on their boxes repeated in alternating white and high vis orange. Adding to the uninspiration is the fact that there's vitually 0 other stickers on the cars. There are a sum total of 4 different stickers placed so sparsely you could be forgiven for thinking it was an unsponsored car. I know that this was what Marlboro said to do but dang if it wasn't crap.

 

[Liquid]

The Marlboro livery is vastly overrated.

it was just the chevron on their boxes

That's the McLaren Marlboro, sure, but what about Ferrari Marlboro liveries?

 

[Eh Team]

That's the McLaren Marlboro, sure, but what about Ferrari Marlboro liveries?

Pretty uninspiring as well, but points for creativity on getting around the tobacco advert ban with barcodes. Ferrari is just red with a bit of white, they're certainly easy to see on track, but not much reason to look any harder than that.

 

[Downhill Dino]

Sounds like it's more of an issue of not liking a plain livery and/or over exposure. The Evo's application was the best one anyways.

 

[DriveSpark]

I was under the impression that Suzuka was primarily a bike track.

 

[Liquid]

I was under the impression that Suzuka was primarily a bike track.

It was designed by Mr Honda before Honda started making cars, so that's not untrue.

I still think it's a fabulous track for four-wheelers as well though.

 

[TenEightyOne]

It was designed by Mr Honda before Honda started making cars, so that's not untrue.

By Hugenholtz, I think, a Dutch designer. Iirc its completion coincided with Honda's first van/car projects, I'd always thought the two went together. I may be wrong, as everybody knows

The Marlboro livery is vastly overrated.

No.

Spoiler

No no no no no.

Spoiler

No.

 

[Liquid]

Iirc its completion coincided with Honda's first van/car projects

Designed before, construction completed during.

 

[Vinylshark]

Don't know if that opinion is really (that) unpopular, but I believe that people should stop tracking and comparing drivers with records.
Motorsport has changed way too much to compare the achievements of drivers with the ones from 5, 10, 20, and-so-on years ago.

For example F1's "Most points in a single season" record: in 2019 you got 25 points for 1st place. With 21 races that season you could score a maximum of 525 points. In 2009 you got 10 points for 1st place. With 17 races you could score a maximum of 170 points (355 less than in 2019). 1999 10 points for 1st. 16 races for a maximum of 160 points (365 less than in 2019 and 10 less than in 2009). 1989 9 points for 1st. 16 races for a maximum of 144 points (381 less than in 2019, 26 less than in 2009 and 16 less than in 1999). That's just the points and amount of races. Now take into account on how cars and tracks changed over all those years. Cars have become more reliable with the years going by and especially today with nearly all tracks having tarmac runoff, driver errors barely result in your race being over, because you can't get stuck in gravel, or slide over grass into a tire barrier.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

1990s F1 cars didn't look good until the 1998 rule change that narrowed them and brought in grooved tyres. The mid-90's cars with wheels on long, spindly suspension looked awful with the high noses and basic front wings. When the profile of the tyres became "squarer" and closer to the cars,cthey looked so much better.

Your opinion is just wrong. All 90s cars are just magnificent.

 

[MatskiMonk]

pfft... 90's F1 cars looked like cheap toys...

... the apex of F1 car design came in the late 2000's.

MMOOOARRRR AERO DEVICES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously though, I love this car, especially in light of everything since the end of the '08 season looking like total garbage.