Unpopular Motorsport Opinions
- Thread starter Liquid
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There's also been 5 different combinations of venues for the first 4 races in that time, though '16-'17 shared the same four races (Australia, Bahrain, China, Russia)
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16 introduced 3 tyre compounds, and also included the 2016 Chinese GP which holds the record for the most overtakes ever as Hamilton, Vettel, Raikkonen and Ricciardo had to battle from the back to the front in fast cars after a chaotic lap 1
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- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
The first 4 races of 2016 had a lot of first lap incidents, so depending on how overtakes are counted that could account for the figures. The first couple of rounds also has that short-lived and very unpopular elimination style qualifying format which means cars could have started futher down the grid then they normally would.
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Even without significantly more passing, the cars are following closer so there is a higher sense of jeopardy? Albon holding off Ocon in Australia was a bit of an edge of seat 15 laps or so expecting Ocon would have got him...
Depends if the audience attention span is for more than just overtaking and drama...
I think the porpoising looks so stupid they should have some emergency test sessions to sort that out, already RBR claims one mechanical fault due to it... anyone think that it could escalate to be considered a safety issue - for the driver directly, or by causing a fault with brake or some safety related system - and require teams to work together to fix?
Depends if the audience attention span is for more than just overtaking and drama...
I think the porpoising looks so stupid they should have some emergency test sessions to sort that out, already RBR claims one mechanical fault due to it... anyone think that it could escalate to be considered a safety issue - for the driver directly, or by causing a fault with brake or some safety related system - and require teams to work together to fix?
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They are better for racing. Battles can actually last longer than a few laps now, the races have so far all been okay to very good. It's just that dirty air was part of the problem and not the actual problem itself. The cars are still far too big and too heavy, and the FIA has always ignored those issues until now.
Also, look at the increase between 2014 and 2016 despite there not being substantial regulation changes. Regulation changes always lead to the grid being less competitive in the first year or two. Even for the awful 2017-2021 regulations the amount of overtakes increased a lot after the first year.
And it should be noted that these regulations were extremely overhyped. DRS was never going to become obsolete. non-works teams were never going to have a shot at being world championship contenders, and there were never going to be different sets of drivers competiting for the win for each race. It was still going to be F1, just somewhat better.
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Pete05
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So Teams finding their feet really & discovering through trial & error what works.
I've been telling fringe F1 watchers that with the new regs being so different to what has come before, the development curve will never be steeper. In 6 races time, the running order we've seen so far could be turned on its head.
All it takes is that little discovery/tweak & any team could spring so far forward they're out of reach. A bit like Brawn did with the double-diffuser.
As for the porpoising, one would think a little research of the previous ground-effects era would uncover what the teams did back then to remedy the situation.
I've been watching races from that era (1978-1982) recently & haven't noticed anything as severe as what some teams are suffering this time around. Having said that, the front & rear wings back then were nowhere near as big as their current levels.
Depending on the circuit, some teams didn't even run with their front wings in place.
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I think they probably never had to remedy the situation because they didn't get to the same situation consistently... They did have many situations that were considerable safety concerns.
The porpoising just looks like a safety consideration for causing unnecessary vibration and fatigue in the driver, it just looks wrong.
In this interest of Fl racing as a sport the teams should act together .. also Ferrari are able to get great performance despite still being affected, so at the moment it perhaps not the biggest performance issue...
If they did raise the ride height, they will just have red bull style flexible wings / suspensions that will perform differently in the garage an on track... until the there are standard control components handed out for all Fl competitors to use the same suspension, spring and damper components and that's not likely for a while.
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- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
The cars ever since the hybrid era are massively long compared to what they were like 40+ years ago. That longer wheelbase can only exagerate the porpoise effect, i imagine, and especially when the downforce from the wings, even in 2022's reduced form, will also be much greater.
Wouldn't raising the (minimum) ride height just negate the ground effects effect?
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Correct, therein lies the catch-22 - the strength of the underfloor aero effect is what is causing the porpoising, but it is also the source of the car's aerodynamic performance. Every bit of ride height you give up for less porpoising also translates into less downforce, as the cars were built to run slammed to the floor.
Pete05
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Ah yes, I didn't consider the length/wheelbase of the current cars.
1 - 1.5 metres longer now in some cases.
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Late 1970s/early 1980s ground effect cars had skirts to seal the airflow. The issue with this is that when you run over a rumble strip it disturbs the sealed airflow, causing a sudden, gigantic loss in downforce at that moment. So, they could bring back skirts, but likely will have to either remove or flatten the curbs on circuits, since racing drivers tend to be creatures of habit. As it is now, it is a half-baked attempt at bringing back ground effect.
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- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
Good racing =/= loads of overtaking
DRS solved a lack of overtaking in Formula One in an instant. That doesn't mean that the quality of the racing also increased. The quality of the battle is more important than the quantity of overtakes.
DRS solved a lack of overtaking in Formula One in an instant. That doesn't mean that the quality of the racing also increased. The quality of the battle is more important than the quantity of overtakes.
Tired Tyres
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The 1999 Mercedes CLR, not the Toyota TS020, would have been the most iconic car from the 1999 race had it won LeMans and not crashed. It would have been remembered as the most beautiful car in LeMans history.
About 1/3 of the drivers in F1 are the best in the world. The rest wouldnt particularly stand out in other elite racing categories.
DRS is the best technical change to improve racing, ever.
More Road racing in NASCAR is dumb and has done nothing to improve the sport.
Danica Patrick was the best on-road female driver ever.
Currently Indycars are gutless and an embarrassment in terms of pace. 5-7 seconds slower then F1 is fine, 15+ is pathetic, even for a spec series.
If Indycar is ever going to revisit the 'glory' days it needs to grow out of being a spec series.
Josef Newgarden, not Colton Herta is America's best driver. Herta does have a higher ceiling though and could be better then Newgarden in 2 years.
About 1/3 of the drivers in F1 are the best in the world. The rest wouldnt particularly stand out in other elite racing categories.
DRS is the best technical change to improve racing, ever.
More Road racing in NASCAR is dumb and has done nothing to improve the sport.
Danica Patrick was the best on-road female driver ever.
Currently Indycars are gutless and an embarrassment in terms of pace. 5-7 seconds slower then F1 is fine, 15+ is pathetic, even for a spec series.
If Indycar is ever going to revisit the 'glory' days it needs to grow out of being a spec series.
Josef Newgarden, not Colton Herta is America's best driver. Herta does have a higher ceiling though and could be better then Newgarden in 2 years.
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- ScottPuss20
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Weight Ballast system > BoP
Seems BoP can become a victim of bias and sandbagging pre tests to not get hit with it for the race (I remember the controversy of the Ford GTE program from this). Not to mention the politics behind it all like what happened in Supercars with the Mustang and Commodore ZB in Gen2
If you construct a Weight Ballast like Super GT (weight added based on point total and to prevent intentional sandbagging, the weight is halved for the penultimate race and fully removed in the finale), you get a lot less politics and rule bias going on due to more concrete guidelines and still a racing season with more interesting results.
Shame it's criticised to death when the idea is mentioned to other series elsewhere (I can understand why you don't want it in something like F1 but not else where)
Seems BoP can become a victim of bias and sandbagging pre tests to not get hit with it for the race (I remember the controversy of the Ford GTE program from this). Not to mention the politics behind it all like what happened in Supercars with the Mustang and Commodore ZB in Gen2
If you construct a Weight Ballast like Super GT (weight added based on point total and to prevent intentional sandbagging, the weight is halved for the penultimate race and fully removed in the finale), you get a lot less politics and rule bias going on due to more concrete guidelines and still a racing season with more interesting results.
Shame it's criticised to death when the idea is mentioned to other series elsewhere (I can understand why you don't want it in something like F1 but not else where)
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- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
Well... it didn't win the race. And neither did the TS020 so what's stopping the CLR from being 'iconic'? Oh right, a near-fatal design flaw which makes it a laughable deathtrap instead. The TS020 also had a design flaw - there was a problem with the downforce acting on the wheel arch hence the triple punctures for all three Toyotas - but not severe enough to make it infamous rather than famous. If anything, the BMW V12 LMR should get more credit and fame for actually winning rather than two cars with inherent problems.
You might as well say that Ralf Schumacher would be considered an all-time F1 great had he won seven titles and not Michael. It just isn't true even if you want it to be.
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I really wish that V8 Supercars had weight penalties but it won't happen after the tyre allocation debacle from 2020. Teams and drivers complained that restricting the tyre allocation created "fake racing" and I'm sure the same complaints would arise if success ballast was a thing. I actually liked the tyre rules that were put in place for a while there because of the entertainment it provided. Seeing different drivers out front was good to see but Supercars are stuck in the past and the big teams have too much sway in the running of the championship, so they'll never adopt such ideas again to "improve the show".
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Weight Ballast worked really well in BTCC for years*, but they have 3 races on race day, so it may not work quite as well on a single, longer race format.
* they've dropped it this season as they've introduced a mild-hybrid system instead where in place of of ballast they are appointed less laps with available 'boost', which i feel is a bit more convoluted.
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Haas' old livery was aesthetically (and I cannot stress that enough) the second best of the entire grid, behind Alfa Romeo, before they removed the blue.
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