Formula Renault 3.5 @ Monaco

[Formulahistory]

It's a shame that also in Monaco there was just a 21 car grid. Hoped that we will see some guest starts as Rosenqvist in the second ISR car or something like that...

[bella]

i don't think it's a shame - if that's all the series can sustain at the moment then it's better it does that than end up costing teams money they can ill afford running someone for the sake of it.

if rosenqvist or anyone else for that matter can afford one off and remainder of the season drives then that'd be great but i'm not in any way shape or form going to be pro-guest drives that aren't funded by *someone* other than the team.

hopefully the grid size won't go down at spa, if marksenko feels able to return to racing.

on another note, i'm a little concerned that there were back injuries resulting from both high profile street races in the past month. perhaps safety research needs to be in the direction of making sure something in between the drivers spine and the floor of the car absorbs any sharp and sudden impacts rather than the driver themselves.

[verde]

I'm more of a reader than a poster here but something really intrigues me about people's negative opinions on GP2 here.

Frankly, GP2 has the best car, the same tyres as Formula One, the same paddock, the best media coverage and also had an improvement talent-wise since last year. The unhappy days of Serenelli and Teixeira seem to be gone and this year we had guys in the likes of Marciello, Vandoorne, Pic and Ellinas making the big leap. After having showed an somewhat arrogant demeanour, Bruno Michel finally decided to shrink costs by removing the Asian rounds from the calendar and keeping the same chassis for the next years.

I understand people prefer WSbR for this or that reason, this situation isn't much different from that of 2002, in which everybody worshipped World Series by Nissan and bashed Int. F3000 simultaneously. But I really see no point in considering WSbR that much better than GP2 specially in a year in which the former struggles to put at least 22 cars on track. If WS, even being cheaper and "better to prepare drivers for Formula One", isn't more attractive than the overpriced and decadent GP2, there must be other reason for this than just "a bad moment".

[Go_For_Pole]

Spot on!

[wsrgo94]

When Vandoorne, Marciello, Rossi, Evans, Nasr and Abt were announced in GP2 this year, I was ecstatic. I thought that this would be the beginning of something new, a return to the old days of GP2 when rookie drivers like Rosberg, Kovalainen, Hamilton and Hulkenberg all managing to be competitive from the get-go. And when Vandoorne won at Bahrain, a track where he'd never raced before, I thought GP2 was finally going to witness another special rookie. How wrong I was.

I look at the standings today and I see a World Series driver, who, in three years, finished 23rd, 8th and 8th in the final standings in 2011-13, having fifteen points more than the guy who finished runner-up in his rookie year. Yes, I'm referring to Arthur Pic. Campos are by no means the best team around, in terms of expertise, ART are certainly better than them. But as it stands, Pic is beating Vandoorne, and even without Vandoorne's bad luck (ART making that insane strategy call in Monaco comes to mind) Pic isn't too far off him, which wasn't the case in World Series. And it needs to be remembered that Pic moved up to WSR from FR2.0, just like Vandoorne.

GP2 has a long list of problems and it's tough to know where to begin. There's a steep gradation in car competitiveness, which should really not be there in a one-make series. I remember a friend of mine hailing GP2 over F1, saying 'this is how racing should be, drivers in equal cars'. While it's never possible to have EQUAL cars with different teams, as there will obviously be different setups and stuff, GP2's car gradation is nothing short of a joke. DAMS are dominating like hell, to the extent where guys like Stephane Richelmi (having done nothing of note prior to his first GP2 season) are at the sharp end. Jolyon Palmer has done nothing of note before GP2, participating in championships run by daddy dearest and even failing to win those. In two seasons of F2, he had an anonymous first season, and in his second he was showed up by a rookie who had finished fourth in Formula Renault UK the previous year. Palmer has been beaten by all his teammates in GP2 up to this point, and all of a sudden, he gets a DAMS seat and et voila! He's set to win the championship by a record margin.

But car gradation is not all. Another factor which spoils races are slow pitstops and poor strategy calls. World Series, which also have pitstops, have rarely seen the fortunes of a driver's race turn on a single call. Aside from Lotus/Charouz's miscalculation w.r.t. timing of Stanaway's stop at Spa, strategy calls are rarely bad. Contrast that with what befell Vandoorne in Monaco, where he was set to finish fourth or fifth in the feature, instead finished fourteenth and that ended his weekend pretty much.

If it had been the 2 by 2 format of a World Series weekend, the Belgian might still have had a chance to recover, but GP2's reverse-grid format ensured that not only would he not finish in the points in race 1, he would not get points in race 2 either, starting 14th in a circuit like Monaco!

The reverse grid system has a two-fold requirement: force drivers to overtake, and avoid the possible monotony of one driver winning all the races. But the system is flawed in the sense that if someone retires in the feature race, that person's race is done. Why reverse only the top 8 places and not all the 26? That would ensure even less monotony!

A better option is to keep the reverse of top 8 intact for the sprint, and have a separate quali session to decide positions 9 to 26. That way, if a top driver retires in a feature race, he'll have a chance to fight back in the second race for some points, and not have to endure a pointless weekend just because someone else crashed into him.

I could go on about all the other problems (tyres, driving ethics..) but I'll need to write a blog about that..