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30 Jun 2011, 17:16 (Ref:2908741) | #126 | ||
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30 Jun 2011, 17:53 (Ref:2908776) | #127 | |
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30 Jun 2011, 18:20 (Ref:2908811) | #128 | ||
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He's talking about NON-NASCAR series, which means IndyCar/CART, ALMS, Grand-Am, etc. And a lot of those cars DO have rather little ground clearance, yet they still run in the rain, at least on road/street courses.
And YES, Marbot, eliminating wheels flying around and potentially hitting you DOES substantially reduce the danger! And I don't automatically agree with the premise that a crash is inherently more likely in wet conditions. Yes, wet weather makes doing some things less advisable. However, the wet also makes it possible to come back from things that, in the dry, would be unrecoverable. |
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30 Jun 2011, 19:03 (Ref:2908842) | #129 | ||
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLwbwmRqJsM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59x-FM17pLc&NR=1 Do me a favour. |
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30 Jun 2011, 21:12 (Ref:2908893) | #130 | ||
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Surely its a double edged sword? If you had full wets on, they automatically raise the ride height of the car due to the increased tread depth. Regarding ride height, the drivers moan that they need more downforce in the rain, as it makes the car drive better and cope with standing water. However, the more downforce you put in a car, the greater risk of the car bottoming as the ride height of the car decreases with speed. So on one hand you want lots of downforce for the grip it offers, on the other hand you don't want a lot of downforce because it squashes the car into the ground and makes aquaplaning / bottoming more likely...
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30 Jun 2011, 23:15 (Ref:2908955) | #131 | |
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Couldn´t the ride height/downforce/other wet settings issue be solved by allowing the teams to adjust their cars to wet setups during sunday?
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30 Jun 2011, 23:18 (Ref:2908957) | #132 | ||
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IIRC from my injuries, concrete is slippier than tarmac when wet... |
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30 Jun 2011, 23:22 (Ref:2908963) | #133 | |
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Sometimes the amount of water just simply overcomes the grip of the tyre, and you aquaplane on the track, just as you would on the road in a road car. Add into that, peaky power delivery and hair trigger brakes, and it's not difficult to see why many wet races get red flagged.
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30 Jun 2011, 23:29 (Ref:2908966) | #134 | |
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Looks like tarmac to me. They were going off the track everywhere IIRC. Tarmac can vary in grip from track to track, and on different parts of a track. As can concrete!
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30 Jun 2011, 23:30 (Ref:2908967) | #135 | |
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Gold Coast Honda 300 surfers paradise 2002
Look at these 2 clips and tell me there is any reason for open wheelers to run in the rain! It isn't even that wet! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7nOWoVnX9w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS5Y-vkn1DI&NR=1 You cannot see in an open wheeler and it is just plain stupid! |
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1 Jul 2011, 00:56 (Ref:2909005) | #136 | ||
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Fine, I will tell you! It tests wet weather driving skill, and the visibility is the same for everyone except the leader. Yet many in the pack did NOT themselves make mistakes. Getting caught up in someone else's incident happens wet or dry, and is a fact of life; deal with it!
My intuition will NEVER accept that racing in the rain is impossible! It has been done by virtually every category of racing car for decades already! Therefore, not racing in the rain at all is unacceptable! And apart from that, NONE of you can give me a consistent, concrete dividing line between what is a test of skill and what is stupidity. Besides, it's all relative, for plenty of people would tell you that racing at all is stupidity! Finally, for a bit of perspective, the people in my family who nurtured my love for racing tow harder lines on the issues of rain racing and on-track contact than I do! |
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1 Jul 2011, 01:19 (Ref:2909008) | #137 | |
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From the camera angle here you can see how innocuous the conditions look that resulted in the footage on pst #135 above.
http://www.v8central.com/cart/racenews.asp?newsitem=194 Michael Andretti and some of the others say that they could not see anything! If you can't see it it is no longer skill it is just a game of chance and the drivers are playing with their lives! This is not an under tyred over weight touring class, they are top line single seaters. Once a car begins to aquaplane at racing speed the driver is in the lap of the gods and skill ceases to have anything to do with the result. Running at speed into accident debris (anything) you cannot see is stupidity! When a set of conditions and circumstances exceed your ability to react to a likely and predictable situation you are involved in stupidity! Last edited by wnut; 1 Jul 2011 at 01:26. |
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1 Jul 2011, 01:33 (Ref:2909013) | #138 | ||
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Then racing on ovals is default stupidity, because once that smoke cloud goes up, visibility is just that bad trying to navigate a wreck in progress ahead of you.
I've seen plenty of cars, including F1, recover quite smartly from lurid slides in the wet, slides that would NOT have been recoverable in the dry. And I'm still not sold on the visibility issue. I can see a bit from those onboard shots, and my eyesight is utter crap compared to "normal" vision. That's one of those impasses though. You can't accurately show me just how well, or how little, the drivers can see in the rain, and since I can even see anything on those onboards in the wet, I'm pretty well convinced that the drivers MUST be able to see well enough, even in those conditions. |
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1 Jul 2011, 05:38 (Ref:2909056) | #139 | |||
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1 Jul 2011, 08:00 (Ref:2909107) | #140 | |||
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Of course wet weather make accidents more likely - I cannot understand how you can believe the opposite. Both on road and on track, accident levels increase with rain levels - for a number of reasons - wet weather reduces visibility. Wet weather makes grip more unpredictable. Wet weather makes people make more mistakes. I've raced in the rain in a Caterham 7 style car (see avatar), which is practically open wheel. Rain wasn't that bad but there was already a dramatic reduction in visibility caused by spray. Grip was all over the place, and people aquaplaned off the track in the previous race - on the straight. And how to can see enough at 150mph with the levels of spray seen in an F1 race is beyond me. Now, I'm not saying racing in the wet should stop, but there comes a level where the amount of rain/standing water makes the racing very dangerous, and the design of F1 and other open wheelers with high downforce means that level is quite low. |
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1 Jul 2011, 11:59 (Ref:2909281) | #141 | ||
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Its about striking a balance, and recently in the last year or so, F1 has lost the balance. If other series can race in the rain, in much worse conditions, why not F1, with its better drivers, more downforce and better brakes etc?
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1 Jul 2011, 12:51 (Ref:2909307) | #142 | |
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Down force and better brakes can work against you in the wet, particularly if you're heading into a puddle or a stream of water. The Canadian race had streams of water going across the track. I think it might be a good idea for some to go and look at those images again...
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1 Jul 2011, 13:29 (Ref:2909341) | #143 | |||
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Why take full wet tyres if they aren't going to race on them? |
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1 Jul 2011, 13:54 (Ref:2909361) | #144 | |||
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Locost #54 Boldly Leaping where no car has gone before. And then being T-boned. Damn. Survivor of the 2008 2CV 24h!! 2 engines, one accident, 76mph and rain. |
1 Jul 2011, 15:45 (Ref:2909442) | #145 | ||
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I'd love to be a driver, but lack of eyesight means I can't even pass the eye exam to get a road license, much less a competition one (poor eyesight due to optic nerve damage, NOT due to poking an eye out as it were). Of course, if I listened every time someone told me that I shouldn't even comment because I can't do or see something, I'd never say a word in my life!
And like I said, I've seen some lurid slides in F1 cars in the wet, that in the dry would have meant a spin off the track. Also, in the wet, you are more vigilant, because there are things you take for granted in the dry that you cannot when it rains. Therefore, since you're paying closer attention, you make fewer mistakes. Now, on the road, people just don't pay attention, rain or shine, and I'd like to see more arrests for reckless endangerment on our public highways. Thankfully, F1 drivers do NOT have navigational systems, cell phones, and fast food and coffee in their laps to distract them from their driving. |
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2 Jul 2011, 01:35 (Ref:2909686) | #146 | ||
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If you have not experienced it you just have no idea! Like wrapping a towel round your eyes and sprinting through a messy workshop. Nothing like doing over a ton and looking at the trackside scenery to gauge your position! If its on the track and stopped / slower you are going to hit it and may never even know what it was. The old story - race driver arrives at the Purley Gates and St Peter says StP: "Are you a Jehovah's witness?" RD: "Don't know, I didn't even see the bloody accident!" |
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2 Jul 2011, 03:40 (Ref:2909713) | #147 | ||
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We seem to be extrapolating arguments out to the worst conditions.
Obviously if the conditions are terrible and dangerous they should not race. Having drivers hurt from racing is not what any of us want. However, in the last wet race it appeared that the safety car stayed out way to long, to the point where people were thinking or even going on intermediates. This seems wrong. They maybe just need to have a think about allowing racing in slightly worse conditions than they appear to set as the benchmark in the most recent few cases. |
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5 Jul 2011, 09:54 (Ref:2922217) | #148 | |||
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Many people here will have raced in worse conditions than the safety car laps in Canada. As an amateur you have the option of staying in the paddock if you don't fancy it, or slowing down if that's your thing. Meanwhile a few hundred spectators huddle together for cover. Millions of people around the world are watching F1 however, it's not the same. We are entitled to expect paid professionals to race in conditions such as those under the never ending safety car laps. It's not a case of wanting to see people hurt, of course not, it's just showing a modicum of respect to your audience, who in the end pay the wages. |
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5 Jul 2011, 10:19 (Ref:2922231) | #149 | |
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If, as race director, you think that there is more than an even chance that there will be a safety car deployed in the first few laps - you play it safe. We may not like that, but that's how it is when you have millions watching something that could cost someone their life.
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5 Jul 2011, 12:01 (Ref:2922287) | #150 | |||
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