2009 and 2010 regulations to be released today.

[Glen]

I said don't tend to be, not exclusively aren't.

And F3 certainly is slower than F1!

And my main point was the last one. The argument has been misunderstood.

[Mekola]

Even F1 had two classes some times, when they raced alongside F2 in the 50s and 60s, and even in 1987-88 there were two championships, one overall and other exclusively for aspirate-engined teams.

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by Glen

I think people have misunderstood the safety issue over tyre warmers - it has nothing to do with the skill required too keep the car on the road. It is about having slow moving cars randomly mixed in with cars going at race speed, which most definitely is dangerous.

Yes it is more dangerous so consequentlythe ALMS and Le Mans are far more dangerous than F1. However before tyre warmers everyone coped admirably and it was one of the skills a driver had to develop.
For years they were banned by CART and at Indy yet cars were not flying into walls or tripping over each other because it took the driver a couple of laps to get the tyres up to operating temperature.

In Max's latest tirade he says he doesn't want drivers conserving their tyres and brakes as they did in the 70's and 80's. He wants them flat out all the time.

I thought conserving your car was a part of your strategy and driving skill but if it is it is one Max doesn't appreciate...

[Peter235]

The matter of tyre warmers may not be so obvious.

By prewarming tyres to near their operating temperature it is not just the rubber that gets hot and softens for working grip. With soft sidewall radial tyres it is the whole mechanical configuration of the tyre that is allowed to come up to a safe working temperature/pressure, thereby allowing the tyres to properly support the weight of the car with its enormous downforce at racing speeds.

There isn't a quick solution for this apart from going away from radials and back to crossplies which were universally used in the 1970's. The problem with overtaking isn't just downforce and turbulent airflow affecting the car behind but is also that radials only allow very limited yaw - driving sideways - hence the reason F1 (and everything else) looks slow through slow corners.

The whole configuration of modern racing cars is to have them never in yaw, but also on a perfect corner line. With all the cars in this state, and with radials being very unforgiving so that being off line is a disaster - what a surprise! No overtaking!

When Michelin introduced radials in the 1980's for obvious marketing reasons they pretty much started the decline in spectacle because, on a clear lap with no traffic, they were sufficiently faster that no one wanted to use crossply tyres any more, also for pretty obvious reasons, but it stopped the spectacle of energetically driven cars drifting on the limit stone dead.

Anyone old enough to have been privileged to watch Jackie Stewart qualifying in the 1970's will know what I mean. The car simply never ran straight - MAGIC! One car on the track being driver this way was simply awesome. Now the cars look far too easy to drive and have been designed to make the most of the tyres at proper pressure and temperature quite properly. It just isn't downright spectacular any more.

[Glen]

Nice, interesting post Peter.

Another point to throw in about cold tyres and safety - the last death of an F1 driver was linked to those conditions… All very well saying "they should damn well cope… what about the good old days etc" - in the good old days drivers got killed.

[ECW Dan Selby]

Originally Posted by Glen

Nice, interesting post Peter.

Another point to throw in about cold tyres and safety - the last death of an F1 driver was linked to those conditions… All very well saying "they should damn well cope… what about the good old days etc" - in the good old days drivers got killed.

.. Senna? Was that not a broken steering column?

Selby

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Glen

Nice, interesting post Peter.

Another point to throw in about cold tyres and safety - the last death of an F1 driver was linked to those conditions… All very well saying "they should damn well cope… what about the good old days etc" - in the good old days drivers got killed.

I can't remember any driver being killed due to the lack of tyre warmers.

Originally Posted by ECW Dan Selby

.. Senna? Was that not a broken steering column?

Selby

The exact cause of Senna's fatal crash remains unknown. But it is most likely that the accident was due to a broken steering column. Cold tyres and an already very low ride height made the car to bottom out very violently, finally causing the badly manufactured and hence too fragile steering column to break. The tyre temperatures were very low because of the Safety Car that went out after a start crash. That Safety Car (for the second time it was used in modern Formula 1) was far too slow.

[ECW Dan Selby]

Yeh I remember hearing various theories. When I was first getting in to F1 my Uncle was my source of information on just about any question I threw at him. Curiously as a young lad I wanted to know about some of the more dangerous elements to it and learn about some of the history of how we got to today (1998). He explained that only 4 years prior he'd watched one of the greatest of all time crash out fatally at a track I knew on F1 '97 called Imola. I was fascinated as to why this "great driver" * had lost his life in F1, and how. He could only explain so much, and from there on I tried to find out more myself a few years later when I was a little more mature and understood more terminology. The ultimate conclusion appeared to be the steering column, but I can see how those other factors played a huge part in why it actually broke. I understand Ayrton was also not happy with how the Williams handled and asked for his column to be re-adjusted. I can see how this welded pieces of metal could snap under the extreme forces of a Grand Prix car thats bottoming out on cold tyres through some unbelievably quick sweeps (the old Tamburello & Villenueve).

Selby

*In no way do I mean this sarcastically, it's just at the time to a young brain who knew nothing of motorsport it was merely a label - I had no proof

[Pingguest]

Well, Senna's crash had nothing to do with the lack of tyre warmers. They were already common for almost a decade.

[Glen]

Originally Posted by Pingguest

Well, Senna's crash had nothing to do with the lack of tyre warmers. They were already common for almost a decade.

I never said it was.

It was associated with cold tyres though.

[ECW Dan Selby]

lmao Glen, you've been very misunderstood in a few of your last posts, havn't you...

Selby

[Ogami musashi]

Originally Posted by Peter235

The matter of tyre warmers may not be so obvious.

By prewarming tyres to near their operating temperature it is not just the rubber that gets hot and softens for working grip. With soft sidewall radial tyres it is the whole mechanical configuration of the tyre that is allowed to come up to a safe working temperature/pressure, thereby allowing the tyres to properly support the weight of the car with its enormous downforce at racing speeds.

There isn't a quick solution for this apart from going away from radials and back to crossplies which were universally used in the 1970's. The problem with overtaking isn't just downforce and turbulent airflow affecting the car behind but is also that radials only allow very limited yaw - driving sideways - hence the reason F1 (and everything else) looks slow through slow corners.

The whole configuration of modern racing cars is to have them never in yaw, but also on a perfect corner line. With all the cars in this state, and with radials being very unforgiving so that being off line is a disaster - what a surprise! No overtaking!

When Michelin introduced radials in the 1980's for obvious marketing reasons they pretty much started the decline in spectacle because, on a clear lap with no traffic, they were sufficiently faster that no one wanted to use crossply tyres any more, also for pretty obvious reasons, but it stopped the spectacle of energetically driven cars drifting on the limit stone dead.

Anyone old enough to have been privileged to watch Jackie Stewart qualifying in the 1970's will know what I mean. The car simply never ran straight - MAGIC! One car on the track being driver this way was simply awesome. Now the cars look far too easy to drive and have been designed to make the most of the tyres at proper pressure and temperature quite properly. It just isn't downright spectacular any more.

Kudos to you! That's surely one of the main problem; to be more specific i think the narrow slip angle operating range made a "higher grip" line mandatory to overtake while it was not the case before IE. you can now overtake only if you have more grip, then comes the problems of aerodynamic losses.
The fact that the tyre's grip gives away suddenly is an added problem. Unfortunately i'm not quite sure next year slicks will help in that way..