DRS to be banned....

[Bononi]

Right.

So, let's forget about all the technology and go back to real racing.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Bononi

Right.

So, let's forget about all the technology and go back to real racing.

I don't think that it's the actual technology that's causing the problem.

Typical OWG technical meeting.



Ross Brawn: "The most obvious thing that is required to make racing better and has been discussed numerous times on many F1 forum sites is, of course,.....more buttons on the steering wheel."

Paddy Lowe: "I can only agree with you whole-heartedly there Ross."

Adrian Newey: "Oh yes, lots and lots of buttons. Lovely, lovely buttons".

Aldo Costa: "Possibly a Ferrari boost button?"

Adrian Newey: "Not bendy enough! Buy me a new wind tunnel, now! erem!" *receives mobile phone call*

Geoff Willis, Nick Wirth: "Excuse me, but why is there a ******* great Elephant in the room!?"

All others: "Some of those biscuits Geoff and Nick are having please."

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by SALEEN S7R

Take off the restrictors of the LMP1's though and then I think you would see faster times than in Formula 1 at the moment.

Back to the topic.

Sometime within the last year, there was an article in F1Racing with Adrian Newey iirc (or maybe it was Pat Symonds) that stated that, change the current rules and if the drivers bodies could take it (which they can't so the rules won't be changed) that the current F1 cars could go faster by upto 20 seconds a lap on some circuits.

Wether that's true or not, i don't know, but then, who am i to question AN or PS?? But the point i'm making is, change the rules and everything can be made faster.

[Marbot]

If F1 car designers had been able to go about their business without the constant regulation changes that we have seen, then a very long time ago there would have been a situation where the driver who could sustain the most g-force would have reigned supreme.

[garcon]

Permission to steal that picture for frequent use at work...

[SALEEN S7R]

Originally Posted by Mr V

Wether that's true or not, i don't know, but then, who am i to question AN or PS?? But the point i'm making is, change the rules and everything can be made faster.

I agree, but that wasnt the point i was trying to make. All I was saying is that if you took off the air restrictors that the current LMP1 cars have then they would be quicker than F1 cars at a lot of circuits, and as fast at others. Just emphasising the point that nothing would need to be done virtually to make a LMP1 car quicker than a F1 machine. Now to make a current F1 car faster than it is on the other hand would require signifcant changes, whether it be areo or installing a larger engine. My comment was made in fun really rather than to be taken seriously.

[Bononi]

The whole point is that all this "trouble" is the very reason we have so many threads for so many years going on internet forums.

We need them.

That's what keep us going on and on and on...

We need them.

Nothing will change, hopefully, or the F1 forums will go to extinction.

We need them !

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by garcon

Permission to steal that picture for frequent use at work...

No prob.

Do you have an Elephant problem too?

Note the use of larger eared African Elephant, as using the smaller eared Indian kind doesn't put the point across quite so well.

[Purist]

Well, to put a period on the point, I believe it was a Matra-Simca, 3.0-litre, V12 sportscar that holds the outright road course record with a 3:12.7 on the old 8.762-mile Spa-Francorchamps circuit, set in qualifying for the 1973 1000km race (163.691mph average).

Also, before they were emasculated and killed off, Group C sportscars were getting rather close to F1 speeds, and GTPs had gotten to the level of being faster than Indy Cars on road courses by 1992.

[Andy77]

Originally Posted by E.B

I have just noted a few comparisons of lap times between F1, LMP1, and Moto GP at the circuits they all use or have recently used. The F1 lap times are taken from qualifying in 2010, as are they all where available and relevant (ie if it was a wet qualifying I have used the race fastest lap.

Silverstone (All used the new layout last year)
LMP1 (2010 Silverstone 1000k pole): No. 7 Allan McNish Audi Sport Team Joest 1:43.475

F1 Lap Record (2010 pole): Fernando Alonso Ferrari Ferrari 1'30''874 233.374 Km/h avg

Moto GP Lap Record: Jorge Lorenzo Fiat Yamaha Team Yamaha 2'03.308 172.3 Km/h avg 321.8kph max

Catalunya
F1: 2010 Pole Mark Webber Red Bull Renault 1'19''995 209.488 km/h avg.

MotoGP
Jorge Lorenzo Fiat Yamaha Team Yamaha 1'34.515 303.6 173.0 kph ave 308.6 kph max

LMP1: A bit out of date, but the LMP1 lap record (from 2008 LMS race) is 1’31.875

Hungaroring
LMP Record (2010 H'ring 1000klms) LMP1 Jean-Christophe Boullion Rebellion Racing 1:32.888

F1 2010 pole: Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Renault 1'18''773 200.216 km/h

Spa
LMP1: (Pole 2010 Spa 1000KLm) No. 3 Sébastien Bourdais Team Peugeot Total 1:57.884

F1 2010 pole: Mark Webber Red Bull Renault 1'45''778 238.371 km/h avg

Sepang
F1 (race f/l): Mark Webber Red Bull Renault 1'37''054 205.605 km/h avg

MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo Fiat Yamaha Team Yamaha 2'01.537 164.3 Km/h avg 309.2km/h top


In terms of top speeds ever....

* F1 fastest ever speed reached was Montoya at Monza, recording IIRC 374 kp/h. (Practice, Monza 2005)

* In LMP1/Sports Cars, on the original Mulsanne the highest speed ever achieved was in 1988 by Roger Dorchy in a WM Peugeot P88, at either 405kph or 407kph, (250mph in approx UK speak) depending on where you read it. Michelin supplied special narrow tyres to aid the drag reduction.

* The fastest ever average speed for an F1 lap was back in 2004 at Monza..... Rubens Barrichello, in his Ferrari F2004 V10 averaged 260.395 km/h on his pole lap. There have been marginally faster (maybe 1/10th) laps in practice or Q2.

Incidentally, you mentioned the Ulster GP, Mosport & Le Mans as being the fastest tracks (average speed per lap) of all time. Hmmm, not really seeing it to be honest.....

Looking at the Ulster GP website even now, the fastest ever lap of all classes (on the current 7.401 mile circuit) is recorded at 133.997 mph (say 216 kph) ..... That is slower than Spa.

It is only dubbed as ‘the world’s fastest road race’ by the organisers.
Perhaps they mean actual fastest for a public road based course, not including pukka purpose built tracks exclusively used for racing. There claims just dont stand up.

The Ulster GP fastest ever all classes average speed of 133.997mph is marginally faster than the outright fastest lap on the Isle of Man TT layout, which currently stands at 131.511 miles per hour (211.646 km/h). With the IoM TT layout being public roads also, although the speed is fast, it is certainly slower than the Dunrod track now used by the UGP.

Or maybe the UGP refer to the original circuit used for the event, pre moving the event to Dundrod in 1953..... the original circuit being the 20.5 mile Clady Circuit, although I very much doubt that even with the 7 mile straight lap speeds would have been much slower given the bumps (one reason the Clady Circuit was dropped) and of course the potential speeds given the relatively limited technology of those days. .

Le Mans is of course also a public roads based circuit...... the fastest ever lap speed there was set by Hans Stuck in 1985, driving a Porsche 962 to a lap of 3:14.80 (average lap speed of 251.815 km/h)

Still short of Barrichello's 2005 Monza lap, and indeed short of just about every dry Monza GP since 2000.

So those two tracks I can understand that they might be specifically 'public road racing tracks'. However, I dont understand the Mosport Park claim to top 3 highest average speed at all..... I am pretty sure it is not a road (as in public road) track, so does not fit in with the road race category of track such as the Ulster GP at Dunrod. It certainly does not seem to haave hosted any spectacularly fast lap speeds compared to other tracks.

Specifically, Mosport Park claim the fastest ever recorded lap of the track was by Rinaldo Capello, in an Audi R10 TDI, in qualifying for the 2008 Grand Prix of Mosport, with a time of 1:04.094..... Certainly reasonably fast as thats an average speed of 138.116 mph (223.75 kp/h). But certainly not the stuff of records amongst other bespoke racing circuits.

In fact, based on last year F1 qualy times the alleged Mosport track record mentioned is certainly slower than quite a few F1 races.... for starters faster GPs include Spa, Monza, Albert Park, Silverstone (current track), and Suzuka.

TBH, I don't think the Moto GP times are that close at all in terms of average speed, although they do quite well in terms of actual top speeds achieved, MotoGP are seemingly comfortably slowest of the F1 LMP1 and MotoGP categories.

For instance you will see they are 'quite a lot' slower in the comparisons I listed above. As a further example, at Phillip Island last year, Casey Moaner's Moto GP pole lap time of 1'30.107 is about on par with times set by 40 year old F5000's from the PI Historic meeting last month, and barely faster than a V8 Supercar lap time. (V8SC are within 2 seconds of Moto GP times.)

Im not sure that Moto GP would be troubling either F1 or LMP1 cars on the same tracks in terms of lap times.

I would bet that if race cars (f1 or lmp) would do the Ulster GP that we'd have a much higher average speed per lap than motorcycles could do. That said, your MotoGP times are not really of use since MotoGP guys don't do road races.
As far as I remember, practice times do not count at all either

[Purist]

Also, at least for MotoGP, average lap speeds must not exceed 200km/h, as per FIM rules.

[Tourer]

We have kinda gone just a teensy weensy bit off topic here haven't we but really enjoying this discussion.

My 10c worth on the difference in speed between the different classes of racecars and bikes is that it's all well and good to say (for example) that LMP cars without air restrictors would be as quick as F1, but the point is that they have those air restrictors so it's a non-point.

"If" is not a word that really is much help in racing - but you do hear it a lot - if only my tyres lasted better, if the engine had more power, if the car was more reliable etc - all pointless comments because "if" doesn't count in the real world.

Ultimately, cars are built to a set of rules and designed to do the best possible in the type of races that they compete in. An F1 car might be faster over a single lap than an LMP1 but I don't know that it would be competitive over 6, 12 or 24 hours. Likewise, I don't know how an LMP1 would go with a full on F1 standing start - that alone might shorten down the car's endurance quite a bit.

To add fuel to the fire, my understanding was that the late, great Mark Donohue held the outright closed circuit world speed record for a couple of decades in the 917-30 Canam car and that his time was beaten officially by Mario Andretti in a CART car towards the end of Mario's career. Could stand corrected on that last point though - could have been Gugelmin who beat it.

The average lap speeds attained by those two cars in the states were way higher than the speeds mentioned in this thread. Maybe that leads us down a path of "if LMP1 or F1 raced on ovals what speeds would that do". Again, that "if" word raises its ugly head.

To get back on topic, I'm really still not convinced about DRS - seems to me like a copout solution rather than implementing real change. We say in China that a line of cars all (other than the lead car) deployed their DRS together so in many instances it had not nett impact. On other occasions of course, it did help - I mean, how screwed would Mark Webber have been so far this year with unreliable KERS if DRS wasn't in place? (whoops, "if" word again).

I can understand them considering the non-use of DRS at Monaco - don't know that it is going to have much impact there and in prac and qual could be pretty wild. I personally still feel that it shouldn't have the free use that it does in prac and qual, but that's just me.

[browney]

Originally Posted by SALEEN S7R

Take off the restrictors of the LMP1's though and then I think you would see faster times than in Formula 1 at the moment.

Take off the rev-limits and the restrictions on engine life and F1 cars would be faster again.

Each series has rules to work within, which exist to keep the speeds down to a limit that the organisers beleive is safe and financially viable.

[duke_toaster]

Originally Posted by Purist

Also, at least for MotoGP, average lap speeds must not exceed 200km/h, as per FIM rules.

That's not a surprising rule, there are obvious safety reasons why MotoGP bikes should be slower than F1 cars, you're in an F1 car, but crash a bike and you're not going to be in a carbon fibre bathtub.

On the original subject, the lack of DRS in Monaco might not make too much of a difference, as everyone is using it in the same place as qualifying, and in the race there isn't really going to be anywhere long enough, and I doubt it would be too effective at creating overtaking, the run down in to Sainte Devote isn't very long, and is curved, as is the tunnel (the highest speed corner on the circuit). In Valencia they'd probably stick the thunderzone in the run down to T12. Singapore has several options, not sure where they would put the DRS zone there, although there seems to be an if in doubt, main straight policy - Sepang could have just as easily put it on the run down in to the last corner. Perhaps one thing that would be interesting is allowing the DRS to be used by the trailing car once per lap, but in a free location.

My main gripe is that the TV graphics should indicate use of DRS and KERS more, or they should have some form of light based system to indicate when it's used, like a line of contrasting colour LEDs in the rear wing endplate being on when it's armed and flash at 2-3hz when it's used, not sure what for KERS (similar, but in the nose cone or TV camera housing?).

Originally Posted by SALEEN S7R

Take off the restrictors of the LMP1's though and then I think you would see faster times than in Formula 1 at the moment.

Off topic comment alert I have to type this or my brain will explode! Wouldn't a key reason for that be the closed wheels on an LMP1, meaning they're much more slippery? Grand Prix cars have open wheels, that's a fundamental thing about them, barring the streamliner W196 and other similar aberrations. Thanks for reading, you've been a wonderful audience. Don't forget to try the veal and tip your waitress. We now return you to the topic

[ECW Dan Selby]

Duke, some good points there:

*I feel the tyres and the DRS/KERS should be pointed out to us much more than they are. Next to the initials of the drivers/order, why can there not be a small gold/silver square for tyres? The background can simply glow green when a driver is able to use DRS/is currently using DRS. KERS, perhaps maybe even a 'K' next to it?

*DRS at Monaco - I've been to Monaco a couple of times and I can't help but feel this is a slight cop out, and very much reminds me of the arguments that were bought up last year in regards to qualifying (being 'too many drivers on track in Q1', despite there being over 24 cars in previous years). The run through the tunnel is the only place for an overtake at Monaco, but it doesn't happen enough. I seriously think that added bit of boost could be enough for drivers to at least have a go, or have a better chance of being able to have a go.

As previously mentioned, the drivers are not forced to use it. If they feel in their personal opinion that it's dangerous, there's no one pushing their thumb down on to the button, is there?

At the end of the day, no one wants to see anyone hurt or worse still, killed. But you also have to say that safety has come on leaps and bounds (and yes, I am aware this was the case back in 1994, too. I saw some footage of the San Marino '94 practice session the other week, and (horribly) ironically, John Watson and Ben Edwards were discussing just how safe these new monocoques are, as Ratzenberger had his accident at Villenueve.).

Technology has come on so much since then. We now know why these incidents happened and what we can do to prevent them. Plus, the drivers now are earning more than ever in sponsorship and salaries. To not use this technology that's been developed would be a poor move. The device was created to enable overtaking, so to not use it at the place where it's needed the most is sad.

Selby

[Julio]

If the sudden rear downforce reduction would be unsafe through the bend through the tunnel, I still think they could have used it down the pit straight. Yes I know the straight's not very long, so the DRS isn't gonna have a great effect, but surely if it's used straight out the final turn, there will be some benefit. We sometimes see attempts into T1 anyway, so this would surely just give people a better chance.

[ECW Dan Selby]

But if the DRS 'activation zone' is some way before the right curve in the tunnel, then it wouldn't be necessarilly switching it on half way through the corner.

I do see your point, but I think with a bit of thought and consultation, it could work quite nicely.

Selby

[luke g28]

Unlimited use throughout the race the same as practice and qualy....the drivers control it, they turn it on when they want to use it. Even for the sole reason that it keeps cars closer together and stops such a big gap forming on straights, this will help overtaking on its own.

All this talk of it being too much for them to handle sounds like a load of old women.

[ECW Dan Selby]

Trouble with letting them do it wherever they want is that it just wouldn't make a difference any more.

Sure, they could probably follow ever so slightly closer than they could without it, but the whole point of this device was to simulate a slipstream, as the slipstream effect has been weakened over time.

Selby

[ASCII Man]

The slipstream effect hasn't weakened over time, its that same slipstream effect that makes it impossible to follow closely during cornering. (which was possible before the mid to late 90's)

DRS doesn't solve that, at all.
It's just a snoopy band-aid like they always do. (lol, a hole in the airbox)

[ECW Dan Selby]

It is in a way, yes, definitely.

Elephant in room etc - heard it all before.

The problem is keeping up appearances. F1 can't just shed all that aero or the pace will be pathetic. It's a comprimise.

Selby

[luke g28]

Originally Posted by ECW Dan Selby

Trouble with letting them do it wherever they want is that it just wouldn't make a difference any more.

...good point well made.

Ill rephrase that a little then how about its armed whenever they are within a second of the car in front so that they can use it on any section of track they wish. I think some of the best overtakes come in places that traditionally aren't popular overtaking spots

I guess this would also allow the driver being overtaken to activate his drs if the straight was long enough and possibly retake the place? not sure if thats a good thing but I think it is.

[ECW Dan Selby]

I think the way it's used now is good, but perhaps a comprimise would be allowing them to use it within a second of the driver infront, wherever on track (as opposed to just 1 straight).

I think that's what you're saying anyway If that is the case, I think it's a very good idea.

I know alot of people's gripe is the whole "can only use within a second" thing, but I think they're missing the point. It really would be completely pointless if it was unlimited.

Selby

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by browney

Each series has rules to work within, which exist to keep the speeds down to a limit that the organisers beleive is safe and financially viable.

More recently keeping team budgets down has been about giving all the teams more of a level playing field. Financially very few teams could compete with Ferrari, for example, if there was no budget cap.

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

However, if Pirelli can manufacture tyres "for the show" as they do now. Whats stopping them from developing a tyre with a huge slip angle in mind?

Developing tyres to artificially 'spice up' the race is a slippery slope, harming the creditability of the series.
However, if the early-1980's tyre width would be re-introduced, going off the racing line could well become impossible due to marbles.