[Rules] Future Rule Changes

[bjohnsonsmith]

I take it the fuel stops, are to coincide with the tyre stops because just for a moment, I thought they had a novel idea?

[AoB Special Stage]

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/wo...-are-too-high/

[Razor]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

From my reading of the new rules there is no cost savings to be seen anywhere in them. If fact all that I can see are cost increases for anybody building an F1 car.
The changes as I understand are.
More powerful engines via greater fuel flow.
Wider tyres.
New wider wings
More aggressive looking cars.
The cars are to make more noise.
They willl also be allowed to rev higher.
A greater choice of tyres.
In race refuling

Will these rule changes make the cars more spectacular I doubt it, as wider wings and tyres give them more grip to harness the greater power.
They will be faster is that a major advantage if they are not more spectaular as in more difficult for drivers to control?

All that I see these rule changes doing is increasing costs putting furter pressure on the independant teams.

To make matters worse for the independants a new team can come in, buy a customer chassis from Mercedes or whoever is the top team and blow them into the weeds. The budget of a customer team will probably be about 1/3 of a current midfield team.
That means for a non CBT team the only way to survive in F1 is to become a customer team. You now have about 200 excess employees who will loose their jobs. Multiply that by the number of midfield teams becoming customers and it is a lot of jobs gone.

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

Customer cars + No cost savings + A lot of change that will require costly redesign of existing solutions.

I wonder if it is all a combined strategy. Small teams can't afford the existing cost, plus the new costs so they are forced to support customer cars.

Richard

Well, I think it's a case of "can't please everyone". There's only so much cost containment without the entertainment factor is diminished. Customer cars will be a good idea. Also, customer/sharing engineering parts and ideas will be a good solution. (such as hybrid electronics, gearboxes/diffs/transaxles, etc) F1 has always been a playground for technicians and engineers where money has always been rather second fiddle.

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by AoB Special Stage

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/wo...-are-too-high/

Refuelling in a 2 to 3 second stop, well when it took ten or so seconds we had a number of nasty accidents, I guess they think that in 2 to 3 seconds there isnt time for anything to go wrong.

[Mike Harte]

Apart from the very obvious safety concerns that surround F1 refuelling, one of the main drivers behind the decision to ban it was that dragging the refuelling rigs around with the rest of the circus was adding unnecessary costs, especially on the fly away races.

[wolfhound]

From what I can see in these rule changes will be faster cars costing a lot more and having to carry a lot more kit around costing more money.
However nobody has mention will we see better racing or will all the overtaking happen in the pits?
The other thing is they seem to be designed to put the independant teams out of business as there has been no effort at cost saving or revenue redistribution.
I wonder will anybody bother to promote this new faster F1?

[wnut]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

From what I can see in these rule changes will be faster cars costing a lot more and having to carry a lot more kit around costing more money.
However nobody has mention will we see better racing or will all the overtaking happen in the pits?
The other thing is they seem to be designed to put the independant teams out of business as there has been no effort at cost saving or revenue redistribution.
I wonder will anybody bother to promote this new faster F1?

Just a thoroughly disappointing and depressing future presented by a bunch of muppets!

[steve_r]

Refueling. Words fail me. Why.

Dangerous. Pointless with hybrid cars.

Have the F1 teams wanting this gone mad? They are Hybrid cars.

[wnut]

You have to love the picture of the F1 strategy group here:

http://www.pitpass.com/53882/Strateg...d-no-substance

[stripedcat]

Originally Posted by P38 in workshop

Nothing said about dumping DRS.

Or perhaps sort of limiting it to certain amount of times it can be used on each circuit. Sort of like in IndyCars "push-to-pass" system. I sort of agree with you - I'd like to see it gone. It all depends on the teams taking off the downforce from the underside of the car - that seems to work better for racing and reducing the dreaded "dirty air" problem.

[Sodemo]

It seems like refuelling is frequently used as the cure and at the same time the problem with the "racing". Refuelling was re-introduced back in 1994 after a period of allegedly stale racing, it was then dropped in 2009 as it was argued that it would force drivers to make a pass on the track rather than waiting for pitstops. So the reason for bringing it back now is to make the racing more exciting? It doesn't make sense.

I agree with wider tyres, one thing I don't agree with is wider wings. The front wing especially, is wide enough as it is. If anything, massively reduce the number of multistory stacked winglets which have sprouted up year after year. The rear wing should be re-widened back to the 2008 levels, but have its current height retained. If they need to actually increase downforce levels, let them use ground effects.

It seems like F1 is slowly morphing back into the 1997 cars.

[Casper]

Limit the refueling equipment to dry break fuel churns and let's see how keen they are on that idea. No fuel rigs to cart around the world then. The teams need to be put in a position where whatever they do as far as strategy goes has a trade off and nothing is guaranteed but of course they will not put themselves in that position.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by wnut

You have to love the picture of the F1 strategy group here:

http://www.pitpass.com/53882/Strateg...d-no-substance

Haha!

This last paragraph in the article is rather scathing and says it all: '

'So, at a time the sport is haemorrhaging spectators, viewers and sponsors, and in danger of losing a couple of teams, rather than focussing on what is really needed the sport's powers that be are focussing on something that will probably prove to be even more of a turn-off.''

[Casper]

I wonder if any of the bright sparks who manage F1 have worked out why shorter lap times are self defeating in creating more interest in the category. The shorter the lap time becomes the less time there is for passing, out braking other cars etc and it is this that people would like to see more of. As an illustration take the extreme case of a ten second lap against a five minute lap, which has the most opportunity to allow passing? Why would we want faster lap times if this is what causes mediocrity in the racing due to lack of time? I have long advocated that less braking time is one reason that cars do not routinely pass under brakes any longer as they used to in past years, the braking time simply does not allow it. I note that Toto Wolff has proclaimed the new cars coming in will be faster than ever and this is in reality the last thing we want.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Casper

I wonder if any of the bright sparks who manage F1 have worked out why shorter lap times are self defeating in creating more interest in the category. The shorter the lap time becomes the less time there is for passing, out braking other cars etc and it is this that people would like to see more of. As an illustration take the extreme case of a ten second lap against a five minute lap, which has the most opportunity to allow passing? Why would we want faster lap times if this is what causes mediocrity in the racing due to lack of time? I have long advocated that less braking time is one reason that cars do not routinely pass under brakes any longer as they used to in past years, the braking time simply does not allow it. I note that Toto Wolff has proclaimed the new cars coming in will be faster than ever and this is in reality the last thing we want.

Valid point Casper!
The rules are facilitating time trial machinery, they are very fast around a specially prepared super smooth circuit, but, they are lousy racing cars!

With the bigger horsepower cars, there must be less downforce! Still believe they should just ban any wing in front of the front axle!

[chillibowl]

I had to read that post a few times because it seems on the surface to be counter intuitive but maybe it's the logic of faster lap time which is counter intuitive.

Really sharp point Casper!

[Casper]

Yes, there is more to creating a race than just going faster. I bet a grid of racing Citroen CV's would put on a better show than F1 cars on the right circuit.

[Tucky]

I know there's a number of people (some of you are probably reading this now ) who can't stand F1 in the late 90's/early 2000's when the cars were at their fastest, but just watching the difference between then and now, it's not so much the speed to me but the effort needed to drive the car.

A lot of people are saying "we've made F1 better by making the cars harder to drive", but IMO there's a difference between pushing/fighting the car around the track lap after lap, and trying to make the tyres last, carefully getting on the throttle so you don't spin out.

The way I see it is if they secretly made the cars 2/3 seconds faster but didn't tell anyone, without looking at the timesheet, how many people would really a) realise, and b) make a big song-and-dance about how great F1 suddenly got.

[chillibowl]

For sure but there are several issues reducing the effort required to drive these cars.

After reading Casper's post though, maybe the question should be is speed/lap time (and to a lessor extent the sound level) really the magic bullet cure the powers that be are hoping it will be?

I guess time will tell.

[wdave0]

Lap time is much like the magic 1000hp or 300 kph - bragging rights. The rulesmakers think the punters will be impressed and flock to see the cars because of these numbers, even though you really can't tell from outside. Think of the old days when you could tell J. Stewart was on a flyer because it looked like a warmup. The illusion of speed would be better served by putting them on Formula Ford tires hard enough to last the whole race. Granted, pit stops are part of the show but should be secondary to the actual racing

[AoB Special Stage]

If you really want drivers to fight each other, give them TCS and ABS so they can focus on fighting one another.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by wdave0

Lap time is much like the magic 1000hp or 300 kph - bragging rights. The rulesmakers think the punters will be impressed and flock to see the cars because of these numbers, even though you really can't tell from outside. Think of the old days when you could tell J. Stewart was on a flyer because it looked like a warmup. The illusion of speed would be better served by putting them on Formula Ford tires hard enough to last the whole race. Granted, pit stops are part of the show but should be secondary to the actual racing

Tick! +1

[wnut]

Originally Posted by AoB Special Stage

If you really want drivers to fight each other, give them TCS and ABS so they can focus on fighting one another.

WRONG!

With driving aids, driving becomes less skilful with less chance of making a mistake so the ability to race is reduced.
Racing should be about men competing against one another, not who has the best computer!

[AoB Special Stage]

Originally Posted by wnut

WRONG!

With driving aids, driving becomes less skilful with less chance of making a mistake so the ability to race is reduced.
Racing should be about men competing against one another, not who has the best computer!

But if the whole race is fighting your car around, passes become dependent on the person ahead of you making a mistake.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by AoB Special Stage

But if the whole race is fighting your car around, passes become dependent on the person ahead of you making a mistake.

Yup, so the best driver who is capable of driving the fastest with the fewest mistakes wins, I thought that was what motor racing was about, or should be anyway!

Currently, he who arrives with the best computer wins even if he makes a bunch of mistakes and visits the paved run offs on multiple occasions.
Gravel traps at least trap the cars and penalize the mistakes!

If you run off a road driving a car at high you probably won't finish your journey, that is how it should be in racing!