The Overtaking Debate : does Mike Gascoyne have the answer - the calendar?

[old man]

We come back to this topic all the time, there is no doubt in my mind that the current regulations are giving us a spec formula and that variety is the spice of life but, given the budgets and brains available to the teams they would very quickly home in on the quickest specification however you opened up the rules.

The days many of us can remember as providing variety were before the engineers had such detailed knowledge of what works best. In those days guys like Colin Chapman had lots of new ideas, not all of which worked, but now, like all specialism we have eliminated the big gains and are working on the small ones. The F duct was a big thing but how much time did it actually bring, fractions of a second. The new cars last year were way off the pace, in reality a few MPH on average

And yet, despite the overtaking problems we just had one of the best (most interesting?) seasons most of us can remember

[wnut]

Originally Posted by old man

And yet, despite the overtaking problems we just had one of the best (most interesting?) seasons most of us can remember

Especially Alonso and Webber, 2 of the most experienced and aggressive drivers in F1 trapped behind Petrov's Renault that was at least 1.2 secs per lap slower than either of them.

[Purist]

I doubt we're anywhere near scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of sweeping, fundamental things that could be done to the cars to get loads more downforce at a fraction of the cost compared to those tiny things we've seen sprouting up all over the cars in the last decade. It's just that the rules don't allow for those changes to be made.

The F-Duct made enough of a difference that Button did NOT need an ultra-trimmed-out wing set-up at Monza last year.

Guys, you also have to consider that whatever changes are made, there's NO WAY in Hades that they're going to slow down the cars enough that any other category of circuit road racing car will be very close to F1 in terms of lap times.

[Oran Park Forever]

Originally Posted by wnut

Especially Alonso and Webber, 2 of the most experienced and aggressive drivers in F1 trapped behind Petrov's Renault that was at least 1.2 secs per lap slower than either of them.

Yeah "trapped behind".........the staple mind set of the modern F1 "driver" (as opposed to "racer")

The only "interesting" thing about the 2010 season was watching the top 4 (in the points) trip over themselves whenever they had the points lead..........more like "Wacky Races" than FIA World Championship. So the 'interesting' aspect had nothing to do with the racing......& as if it isn't hard enough to watch already with the cars so breathtakingly ugly!

Makes you think the designers ARE the type who buy Penthouse only to read the articles!


.

[NaBUru38]

Originally Posted by Oran Park Forever

as if it isn't hard enough to watch already with the cars so breathtakingly ugly!

Yeah that.

[Bononi]

Originally Posted by Oran Park Forever

Makes you think the designers ARE the type who buy Penthouse only to read the articles!.

Certainly they are, otherwise they wouldn't be working.

[davyboy]

Nah, I'm sorry guys... the problem's squarely with the cars and there's just no getting away from it.

A rather poignant recent quote from an outstanding Grand Prix driver who never shyed away from evaluating his need for speed in many different facets of motorsport.

Originally Posted by Robert Kubica

The best form of racing is karting... because there is no aero and there’s so much mechanical grip. I would love to have F1 races like karting where you battle intensely from the first lap to the last lap but, unfortunately, that is not the case.

Get well soon Robert.

Original article here.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by davyboy

Nah, I'm sorry guys... the problem's squarely with the cars and there's just no getting away from it.

A rather poignant recent quote from an outstanding Grand Prix driver who never shyed away from evaluating his need for speed in many different facets of motorsport.



Get well soon Robert.

Original article here.

Thanks Davyboy! Great article.

It seems everyone knows what the problem is and yet we are still trapped in the surreal and flawed world of F1 - unreal!

Even Adrian Newey the great god of aero likes his racing cars (GT40) pre-wing.

Who else has said aero sucks? Kubica, Jean Todt, De la Rosa, Schumacher, Barrichello, Gilles Villeneuve, ...

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by old man

We come back to this topic all the time, there is no doubt in my mind that the current regulations are giving us a spec formula and that variety is the spice of life but, given the budgets and brains available to the teams they would very quickly home in on the quickest specification however you opened up the rules.

I think the rules changes we had a couple years ago gave a hint that this isn't true. Suddenly the top six places were inverted, because of the first significant aero rules changes in years. The improvement in lap times teams make over the course of a season and changes in who's strong and who isn't show they didn't show up on the grid with a car completely optimized to the current, very restrictive, rules at the first race. The truth is, as more things are open, the options increase by multiples. It's not possible to number crunch your way to an optimum design, and more of it has to be based on the designer's instincts.

Sportscar racing has rules that are a little less restrictive and you see cars that are faster on a straight line and cars that make their time up in the curves and a lot more passing. *

Then there's Spec Miata, where they are all pretty much the same car but the racing is fabulous. Yeah, some of it's due to driver mistakes but the half dozen in the front tend to be quite competent and go at it hammer and tong lap after lap, sometimes with more than one change of places in a lap. Hmmm, why would that be? Maybe no aero?

* Yes, I agree not having open wheels allows drivers to take bigger chances, but that's only part of the story.

[Oran Park Forever]

Originally Posted by Bononi

Certainly they are, otherwise they wouldn't be working.

We need just one maverick designer to read his Penthouse 'properly' during his lunch break, then in the afternoon develop an aesthetically pleasing chassis that works most effectively in dirty air.
Result? The best looking car starting rear of field & passing the 'ugly train' one by one!

He'd become an instant (& satisfied) hero!


.

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by davyboy

Nah, I'm sorry guys... the problem's squarely with the cars and there's just no getting away from it.

Although this is true it also misses the bigger picture. If you stop designing the tracks to suit the cars and have a genuine variety of challenges it will force car design to change and open up areas of compromise that might even lead to a little more variety, provided the regulations allow it of course. My point is that yes it is the cars, but its not just the cars, it is more to do with a lack of variety across all aspects of F1 including the cars, tracks, tyres, drivers .....

The sport needs to throw away the cookie cutter and make each event different this will make it much more likely that the teams will produce a variety of cars and use a variety of strategies provided the regulations are opened up in sensible ways to allow it.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by fourWheelDrift

Although this is true it also misses the bigger picture. If you stop designing the tracks to suit the cars and have a genuine variety of challenges it will force car design to change and open up areas of compromise that might even lead to a little more variety, provided the regulations allow it of course.

Nah it doesn't. The problem is quite simple and so is the solution.

If cars are almost totally reliant on aero for performance, then the state of the aero environment around them will massively effect how they perform and cars will be unable to run close together. This is what we have now. Remove it and that problem goes away.

But the track with the worst overtaking record is Monaco and its not a recent design. It was originally configured a long time ago when cars were narrower and smaller than they are today. If we would like cars to overtake at Monaco, we just need to make the cars narrower and smaller and that problem goes away.

A clue to the solution lies in the most pure form of motorsport - karting. The F1 drivers know that, which is why most of them have spent the winter racing and testing karts - Michael Schumacher even took in a championship.

The teams know that too but while they're predominantly made up of aero specialists, they will never 'design' their way out of this debacle. They need to be force regulated out of it by somebody ballsy enough to override so many vested interests.

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by davyboy

Nah it doesn't. The problem is quite simple and so is the solution.

If cars are almost totally reliant on aero for performance, then the state of the aero environment around them will massively effect how they perform and cars will be unable to run close together. This is what we have now. Remove it and that problem goes away.

But the track with the worst overtaking record is Monaco and its not a recent design. It was originally configured a long time ago when cars were narrower and smaller than they are today. If we would like cars to overtake at Monaco, we just need to make the cars narrower and smaller and that problem goes away.

A clue to the solution lies in the most pure form of motorsport - karting. The F1 drivers know that, which is why most of them have spent the winter racing and testing karts - Michael Schumacher even took in a championship.

The teams know that too but while they're predominantly made up of aero specialists, they will never 'design' their way out of this debacle. They need to be force regulated out of it by somebody ballsy enough to override so many vested interests.

A part of what was in my mind when I mentioned variety is bumps and undulations that have all but disappeared from F1 tracks, why? because they make it difficult to make the car work so the engineers don't like them. If you have to deal with this type of thing you have to make a more compliant car which is less pitch sensitive, if it's more compliant it will shift the emphasis towards mechanical grip, if less pitch sensitive it will also be less wake sensitive and have be less aerodynamically efficient overall, just one example of how shaking things up a bit will give the effect you want.

Someone posted a fascinating analysis of the average speeds of circuits and how the spread across the venues on the schedule has narrowed over the years almost every current track would have been considered 'medium speed' twenty five years ago. Lets have some really fast circuits and some really slow ones, some with a bit of each and everything in between and, yes, some that are not billiard table smooth. Currently we seem to have three types of track Monaco, Monza and all the rest and this last group all make very similar demands on car and driver.

F1 doesn't just need a shake up of the cars but a shake up of everything, the whole culture of F1 is one of standardisation and conformity it's time for a complete change which includes the culture, the circuits, the way it's promoted and the cars, but it is so not JUST the cars.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by fourWheelDrift

F1 doesn't just need a shake up of the cars but a shake up of everything, the whole culture of F1 is one of standardisation and conformity it's time for a complete change which includes the culture, the circuits, the way it's promoted and the cars, but it is so not JUST the cars.

Yes I agree with you there. When you have Williams' Sam Michael telling F1 fans that if they want to see overtaking, they should visit Shennington [a kart track near Oxford] and that F1 is not about overtaking - you know that vested interests take priority over fan's interests.

Yes we had an exciting championship battle and large viewing figures... but too often the dry weather races were uninteresting processions and they could be so much better.

[Purist]

Davyboy, the bit you seem to be overlooking is that the cars are designed such that they are EXTREMELY similar in EVERY area of performance. Okay, so we take away the aero to a large extent. What does that matter when my car brakes virtually identically to yours, so I can't physically outbrake you? What happens when, on the straight before that corner, our engines are so identical in power/torque levels and curves that when I pull out of your slipstream, I just stall out, or maybe even have to back out a touch because I'm slamming the rev limiter?

There has to be enough variation between the cars that drivers actually have an envelope in which they can find areas to take advantage of their opponents. Even without so much aero influence, I'm not convinced current F1 cars have enough variation to make for good racing.

Having a variety of tracks throughout the calendar means that it's very possible that there will be multiple ways of attacking the season that will have roughly the same theoretical outcome. If most of the tracks are very similar, well, then there will be just one "right" design approach, regardless of how open the rules are or how much aero you're allowed to have. And having just one "right" design philosophy will hurt the racing.

[davyboy]

@Purist... take a look at a kart race or a MotoGP event and you'll machines of similar performance engaging one another and not just overtaking... swapping places.

Its because when there's complete reliance on mechanical grip there can actually be many more variables during a race on the same type of vehicle including for example driving style, tyre wear, suspension, set-up, mass location, weather, track surface, corner radius etc... etc...

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by Purist

Davyboy, the bit you seem to be overlooking is that the cars are designed such that they are EXTREMELY similar in EVERY area of performance. Okay, so we take away the aero to a large extent. What does that matter when my car brakes virtually identically to yours, so I can't physically outbrake you? What happens when, on the straight before that corner, our engines are so identical in power/torque levels and curves that when I pull out of your slipstream, I just stall out, or maybe even have to back out a touch because I'm slamming the rev limiter?

There has to be enough variation between the cars that drivers actually have an envelope in which they can find areas to take advantage of their opponents. Even without so much aero influence, I'm not convinced current F1 cars have enough variation to make for good racing.

Having a variety of tracks throughout the calendar means that it's very possible that there will be multiple ways of attacking the season that will have roughly the same theoretical outcome. If most of the tracks are very similar, well, then there will be just one "right" design approach, regardless of how open the rules are or how much aero you're allowed to have. And having just one "right" design philosophy will hurt the racing.

The reason I don't buy your argument purist is that during the early Cosworth DFV era ('kit car') before aero became so important (even in the wing car era it was still possible) everyone had much the same brakes, tyres, engine and gearbox, and we still had overtaking between cars and a driver made a huge difference.

What we now have is an aero package that creates interference before a car gets within striking distance (and that distance is shortened by higher cornering speeds requiring less braking distance) so even if there is less difference in performance between the cars there is no place to 'strike' or attempt the pass. Thats the issue, not the actual amount of passing that takes place.
It consigns many races to nothing more than processions...

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Teretonga

The reason I don't buy your argument purist is that during the early Cosworth DFV era ('kit car') before aero became so important (even in the wing car era it was still possible) everyone had much the same brakes, tyres, engine and gearbox, and we still had overtaking between cars and a driver made a huge difference.

What we now have is an aero package that creates interference before a car gets within striking distance (and that distance is shortened by higher cornering speeds requiring less braking distance) so even if there is less difference in performance between the cars there is no place to 'strike' or attempt the pass. Thats the issue, not the actual amount of passing that takes place.
It consigns many races to nothing more than processions...

I remember many a race in the DFV era being very processional. For the first 15 laps or so there would be alot of place swapping and then the race would settle down to an attritional procession.

Regarding the striking distance and the current aero packages creating interference, I think you are spot on.

[cmotd]

I was quite surprised by Gascoyne's pie-in-the-sky comments concerning the circuits in F1 being responsible for the lack of excitement in the sport. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to hear in a conversation at the pub

each curcuit has a different owner, they aren't part of some kind of F1 franchise, and they have to host other races throughout the year to survive financialy. he FIA can't just issue some blanket demand that they all do this or that.

what Purist says about a variety of tracks making car design (and racing) more interesting is probably true, but it's also MASSIVELY impractical. it requires completly centralised ownership and control of the circuits and enough money to buy vast amounts of land, build tons of new tracks and keep them open. there is no point in dreaming about perfect-world what-ifs, we don't live in a dreamworld, we live in the real world

as others have said the gp2 and other class cars can overtake with no problems on nearly all the tracks, which is proof on it's own that it's the F1 cars that are the main problem not the tracks

however the FIA can't make F1 cars like gp2 cars (or like go karts davyboy), F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport NOT an open wheel version of NASCAR, so they have to find a compromise, and i think the flappy rear wing brought in this year is a promising step

it will probably need a bit of tweaking after some actual race experience but it allows the cars to continue to be highly advanced aero machines while also providing more opportunities for passing

PS. fourWheelDrift - bumps in circuits are the result of the friction transfered to the track in braking zones. the cars litteraly drag the bitumen towards the corner as they brake. These build up over many many years, that's why the new tracks don't have any

[JeremySmith]

I hardly think one can call Gascoyne's comments "pie in the sky" that makes him sound like he has no clue at all. We know better than that though don't we!

Don't we or are we just.....

[cmotd]

Originally Posted by JeremySmith

I hardly think one can call Gascoyne's comments "pie in the sky" that makes him sound like he has no clue at all. We know better than that though don't we!

Don't we or are we just.....

i should have added "if taken at face value..." in Formula 1 whenever someone from a team says anything you always have to consider the political aspects of what they say, as the intention isn't always what it seems on the surface. there are a lot of new tracks in the works at the moment which may mean that eventualy a few older ones will get dropped. mike's comments may be designed to push certain people in the direction of dropping some of the more boring tracks if that's the case

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

I remember many a race in the DFV era being very processional. For the first 15 laps or so there would be alot of place swapping and then the race would settle down to an attritional procession.

.

That was true of some races bj,just as it has always been true. However I don't ever recall me sitting back in the knowledge that if driver A caught driver b he would get no closer than a slipstream because he would be unable to pass.

You always knew that if someone could close up on a driver ahead then a pasing attempt was on and it had an even chance of being successful.
You always knew that if they were close to each other you had a race on your hands, not a procession.

[Teretonga]

double post...!

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by JeremySmith

I hardly think one can call Gascoyne's comments "pie in the sky" that makes him sound like he has no clue at all. We know better than that though don't we!

Don't we or are we just.....

Mike Gascoyne has a personal agenda. He is about to witness Team Lotus having one of those 'state-of-the-art' wind tunnel things being built in the grounds of the Team Lotus factory.

At this point in the development of Team Lotus, Mike Gascoyne isn't going to be a Turkey intent on voting for Christmas, because the more you restrict downforce the less point there is in having a 'state-of-the-art' wind tunnel thing.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by Marbot

Mike Gascoyne has a personal agenda. He is about to witness Team Lotus having one of those 'state-of-the-art' wind tunnel things being built in the grounds of the Team Lotus factory.

At this point in the development of Team Lotus, Mike Gascoyne isn't going to be a Turkey intent on voting for Christmas, because the more you restrict downforce the less point there is in having a 'state-of-the-art' wind tunnel thing.

Exactly right. Rule number 1 is that you need to take something a person with an agenda says with a bit more than a pinch of salt. Imagine the effect on Lotus and all of the other F1 teams if the FIA decided to neutralize aero in F1 by mandated a spec. aero envelope for all cars ? Overnight, most teams' current resources would be superfluous and they'd be inadequately equipped to develop in the other areas.