[Official] European Grand Prix 2016: Grand Prix Weekend Thread

[bella]

giving away free tickets for something one year makes it much more difficult to get people to pay following years, particularly for the main feature. and especially in the first year of an event.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by spider

Fantastic track but shoddy attendance :/

I'm not surprised.

[Taxi645]

If it would be decided that after the race the straight is too long and in the process they want to brake up the straight-90°corner-straight-90°corner character of part of the track they could do the following (without being hindered by any knowledge of the local practical and logistical situation):



1 Coming up the straight, why not use the existing round about? Avoids another 90°corner and makes it more interesting. Seems to remain enough run-off towards the water, just have to think about how to arrange the stands.

2 Shorten the main straight by 350m by rerouting the track behind the government building. Another advantage would be that you can avoid another 90°corner at T1 and reshape into two corners to allow for more interesting fights for position through corners one and two. Another advantage would be that the current again 90°corner T2 would be the second part of a sort of double kink corner.


Of course you would have to look what you would do with the pits placement and perhaps the ultra long straigth will become appreciated as the defining characteristic of the Baku Circuit and rather left as is.

[bjohnsonsmith]

A clean start. Though it looked like one of the Renaults went off.

[canamman]

Very impressed with that start.
Lots of tire smoke an a few wings clipped.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Vettel's up to 2nd but Nico has an 8 second lead.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Don't understand why they not give away free tickets.

People need to appreciate at least two things about this event. Firstly, it only exists because it is a vanity project for the President and his family, who have amassed huge wealth from the natural recourses that the country has; unfortunately, that wealth has not been shared equally with the local population.

It was not designed with spectators in mind; there are only spaces for a maximum of 10,000 to view the race, and it must be remembered that there are only about 5,000 hotel rooms available of which about a half are occupied by drivers, teams, officials and marshals.

Secondly, it has only come about due to the greed of Mr E and the FOM, who saw this race as a golden opportunity to line the coffers of both FOM and CVC.

However, the country is beginning to suffer (not only from it's lack of human rights) from the worldwide glut of oil, and this is highly likely to seriously affect the country's ability to continue funding this extravaganza. On a sadder note, this problem may also cause similar problems in Brazil in the near future, apart from it's current political instability which is partly connected to financial problems with it's own oil industry.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

People need to appreciate at least two things about this event. Firstly, it only exists because it is a vanity project for the President and his family, who have amassed huge wealth from the natural recourses that the country has; unfortunately, that wealth has not been shared equally with the local population.

It was not designed with spectators in mind; there are only spaces for a maximum of 10,000 to view the race, and it must be remembered that there are only about 5,000 hotel rooms available of which about a half are occupied by drivers, teams, officials and marshals.

Secondly, it has only come about due to the greed of Mr E and the FOM, who saw this race as a golden opportunity to line the coffers of both FOM and CVC.

However, the country is beginning to suffer (not only from it's lack of human rights) from the worldwide glut of oil, and this is highly likely to seriously affect the country's ability to continue funding this extravaganza. On a sadder note, this problem may also cause similar problems in Brazil in the near future, apart from it's current political instability which is partly connected to financial problems with it's own oil industry.

That's a pretty good synopsis.

[FIRE]

Boring...

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Boring...

It is somewhat, though I have to admit I have been distracted with what's been going on at Le Mans.

[FIRE]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

It is somewhat, though I have to admit I have been distracted with what's been going on at Le Mans.

Me too so maybe that's the reason I can not fully concentrate on the race and conclude it's boring.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Me too so maybe that's the reason I can not fully concentrate on the race and conclude it's boring.

Then again, if the Baku GP were more riveting, Le Mans wouldn't be as distracting.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Congrats to Nico. Looks like he may have restarted the Rosberg Juggernaut.

[canamman]

That gave me great pleasure to see Perez get
a podium after Rosberg gave him a little
dis at the post quali interview. Proud of all the drivers
for a clean race. I enjoyed this new venue.

[Richard C]

No rate race thread. I would give it a generous "3". Lewis and Kimi radio conversations was most interesting part of race.

Richard

[chunterer]

A great track like that with a huge straight and plenty of hard braking zones and even the DRS doesn't liven it up?

Get the bloody aero off the cars ffs!!!

When will these tools wake up?!

However, Nico mullered the race. Great drive. Seb did all he could and Checo is again reminding us all that 2013 was an anomaly in his career....

How did RB and ST get that so wrong?

Did Bernie not want them to figure this weekend?

[sparkione]

Originally Posted by S griffin

If you want to be a good driver of a new one for this weekend and next year, you will be a good one and only one, who is a great driver of a new one for this weekend, is going to be a good one for the next few drivers and the rest of the field to beat

Priceless! You win 'Gobbledegook Of The Week'!

[P38 in workshop]

While I am aware that there might be all manner of political and human rights issues in the background,I thought a track that gave the speeds of Monza within the confines of a Monaco like setting was much better than the endless Tilkedromes we have been afflicted with.I hope the venue returns for several years to come.

[Razzzor]

Originally Posted by sparkione

Priceless! You win 'Gobbledegook Of The Week'!

LOL I think if you keep reading it, eventually it might just click what he's trying to say. I reckon it's about Hamilton's upcoming rap album.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by chunterer

A great track like that with a huge straight and plenty of hard braking zones and even the DRS doesn't liven it up?

Get the bloody aero off the cars ffs!!!

When will these tools wake up?!

However, Nico mullered the race. Great drive. Seb did all he could and Checo is again reminding us all that 2013 was an anomaly in his career....

How did RB and ST get that so wrong?

Did Bernie not want them to figure this weekend?

Is it that great a track? It certainly gave the drivers enough problems during the Qualifying sessions but come the race, no. Not one major incident.

[Purist]

Chunterer, aero doesn't have a damn thing to do with it, well, except for making the slipstream stronger. Even in low-downforce trim, there weren't any quick corners that ended up not being flat.

The problem is the compression and stretching in the physical gap between cars that occurs when the speeds swing wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other. If you have one car-length from your nose to the leader's tail in a 55-mph corner, and you go up to 220-mph, but the time gap holds, your nose is now SEVEN lengths behind the leader's tail. (The time difference is measured by the transponders, which means that time gap at 55-mph represents TWO car-lengths.)

One thing people forget about those wingless F1 cars, is that they raced on tracks like the old Zandvoort (with NO chicanes), the old Monza (with NO chicanes, and the old, faster Lesmos), the old Spa-Franorchamps (where the 1970 fastest lap was 152-mph average), and even Monaco (with NO "Piscine" complex, NO Rascasse, a FAST chicane, and a faster Ste. Devote). Passing on the Nordschleife in the old days wasn't the easiest thing. The trouble now is, you aren't allowed to build new tracks that would actually suit good racing for cars like those old ones, and the required run-offs are prohibitive, because that would take up WAY too damn much land to be practical. (BTW, run-off size is dictated by terminal velocity on the preceding straight, and with low drag (no wings) and long straights, those top speeds are going to be fairly high. Low drag also means that stopping distances for cars become longer, including cars that leave the track for whatever reason, which means run-offs need to be that much larger.)

There's another key safety concern with those old cars, however. They were often lift-producing while going forward, or were quite aerodynamically neutral, which means they were unstable. They're easier to launch, less predictable when in the air, and have little in the way of any self-righting mechanism just using the air flowing around them. In this day and age, that won't be acceptable.

[chunterer]

Very interesting points Purist.

To an extent the increasing number of 'long' radius corners leading onto a straight (or off it in some cases) ads to the unable to follow principle.

However to say the overrelliance on aero is not a huge problem in modern F1 does not add up at all.

[Purist]

Actually, most of what we see with having trouble closing a gap is exactly for the reason I described. That is, the corner leading on to a straight is so slow, that the physical gap grows massively on the following straight. Furthermore, if you're close at the end of a straight, into a slow corner, but are unable to make a pass, you are forced to give up time in order to avoid hitting the car in front.

With a fast corner, since the compression due to speed reduction is less, the visible closure of the gap will be less, but you'll stay closer heading on to the subsequent straight, and be traveling at greater speed. This makes the power of the slipstream substantially greater even earlier along that straight, increasing the overtaking potential.

Even in corners like Eau Rouge/Radaillon or Blanchimont, you don't see the snap that you can see when an Indy Car loses the air off the nose in the banked corner of an oval. The F1 cars are more pinned down than the Indy Cars in super speedway trim, and none of the corners in F1 that are close to requiring a lift are as fast as those large oval turns.

It's actually those corners with really abrupt, almost angular, apexes that are the most problematic. Those tend to be at least a bit slower at apex, and are more difficult, if not impossible, to maintain more than one viable lane through them. A longer, smoother inner radius is better for the racing, both in reducing the compression issue, and in allowing side-by-side running.

At Baku, part of the problem is that, for the power cars, overtaking is so easy, the field gets sorted out quicker. After that, it's hard to make anything happen. Also, early pit stops broke up some of those slipstreaming trains that kept groups of cars closer together. Look up video of Italian Grands Prix at Monza from before 1972 (when they started adding the chicanes); you'll see how the field held together with the tow, and with basically all the corners being taken at high speed, compressions and separations were minimized, keeping those trains of cars more intact for longer. And routine pit stops mid-race didn't exist back then either.

On today's Monza, even wingless cars wouldn't be appreciably better than the current machinery at staying together over the course of a race. In fact they might be worse, with even greater separations occurring at the Lesmos and what is now Variente Ascari than would have been the case decades ago.

[TrapezeArtist]

Originally Posted by S griffin

If you want to be a good driver of a new one for this weekend and next year, you will be a good one and only one, who is a great driver of a new one for this weekend, is going to be a good one for the next few drivers and the rest of the field to beat

I understand every word you say. Individually. Put together, I haven't a clue what you're on about.

[GT6]

Had to watch highlights this morning as on way back from le mans, but did not know result and enjoyed that one, a bit like a certain other race but with overtaking