Does racing need fixing?

[Purist]

I'm sorry to belabor the point, but in your proposal, unless the privateers are enough better in the corners as to be able to pass on the outside, it won't matter. The factory car can just park the trailing car through the apex, and then disappear off down the subsequent straight.

Without making the factory cars so deficient as to be uncompetitive everywhere, the more powerful cars will obliterate the higher-downforce cars at 9, or possibly 10, of the 21 venues on the 2018 calendar, in race conditions. Those would be:
Baku
Montreal
Paul Ricard
Monza
Singapore
Sochi
Austin
Mexico City
Interlagos?
Abu Dhabi

Only 4 of the circuits seem like they would/could give a real advantage to the other group. Those would be:
Melbourne
Monaco
Hungaroring
Suzuka

So then, the most balanced group of tracks would appear to be:
Bahrain
Shanghai
Catalunya
Red Bull Ring
Silverstone
Hockenheim
Spa-Francorchamps

Having said that, Shanghai has single-kine corners leading onto three of the main "straights". Catalunya has that chicane leading onto the longest flat-out section. And Hockenheim has that single-line sequence onto the longest stretch, and then a tight hairpin onto the second longest blast.

The reason the power cars may well murder the downforce cars at Interlagos is the run from Juncao to the Senna S, which is flat-out all the way, and uphill. Some ground will be made up in the Senna S, and then more lost on the Reta Oposta. Again, downforce will claw back some at Descida do Lago, before the power cars get one more burst before the heart of the infield. So heading into Ferradura, the power cars will have built up quite a sizable gap overall. That will have to be closed before overtaking is even a possibility.

[wnut]

Could always drop the minimum car weight to 500 kg and make the running of KERS optional.

Would allow others to enter as engine manufacturers and eliminate the expense for many of the competitors.

On a separate note:
The Indy car experiments indicate that fairing the rear wheels cleans up the wake turbulence and makes it easier for them to follow one another.

[Kempi]

And would further enhance the overtaking issue. If you drop the minimum weight the cars will be even faster in turns where the majority of time is won. This means the gap between low weight cars and heavy weight cars will increase in the turn making it harder to overtake. Also, lower weight takes less distance to brake, making it harder to pass on the brakes.

[Casper]

The list of things needed to make racing more interesting is so long they may as well throw the rule book out the window and start again. I have said this before and it bears repeating the primary reason reason is time, the cars are too quick and the circuits they are racing on have never developed to accommodate the speeds and short braking distances that they are now achieving. F1 is using circuits that were used in the 1950's and the new present day circuits artificially try and re-invent good racing in a stop/go fashion. As time compresses due to lower lap times then the opportunities to race in a fashion that would see two or three cars fighting for a corner disappear but the highly paid managers of our sport fail to see that and the fans always think that faster is better. They got faster this year but it sure ain't better.

[jmlima]

Originally Posted by Casper

... F1 is using circuits that were used in the 1950's and the new present day circuits artificially try and re-invent good racing in a stop/go fashion. ...

The only circuit in use today that was present in the 50s, in a recognizable way, was Monaco. All the others (that existed in the 50s) have changed beyond recognition.


(But I agree re throwing the rulebook away and start from scratch)

[Casper]

Yes but for the most part the specifications of track width, length etc have all remained about the same and the cars now stick to the road and corner at far higher G's, the time spent in the corner is far far shorter and the braking distances are many times shorter all without really designing tracks that allow for this huge increase in performance. Racing suffers because of this because effectively leaving the circuit design at this level compresses time and racing is all about time. The cars have advanced hugely and the tracks have not advanced to present a tougher challenge in fact by making tracks billiard board flat they have presented less of a challenge, a few tracks with elevation changes, off camber corners etc would make it all a bit interesting. Baku presents a challenge due to it being different and so does the US track and let's ignore Monaco altogether for this discussion.

[chillibowl]

in the fear of being repetitive on this issue, im not convinced solutions requiring millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars to accomplish is an effective way forward.

even scrapping the rule book to start again would be incredibly costly and is no guarantee that the sport wouldnt find itself back in the same situation several years down the road.

a new financial structure has to be addressed before any other meaningful changes can be implemented imo.

dont get me wrong as i would like to see many of the changes mentioned happen just cant see them working until they tackle the financial elephant in the room first.

[S griffin]

I think some tracks on the calendar aren’t worth going to, but others are good enough. I feel it’s good to keep the historic tracks of Monaco, Silverstone, Spa and Monza on the calendar

[Purist]

Tracks have gotten significantly wider since the 1950s, in general. Also, the laps have in fact gotten shorter. Furthermore, race distances have gotten shorter.

A number of tracks from the 1950s to the '70s were significantly longer than today's average of 3.224 miles, and more than a couple were over the current highest value of 4.352 miles. Here they are:
Reims- 4.865/5.187/5.159 miles
Bremgarten- 4.524 miles
Spa-Francorchamps- 8.774/8.762 miles
Nurburgring Nordschleife- 14.167/14.189 miles
Pedralbes- 3.925/3.936 miles
Monza Combined- 6.214 miles
Rouen-les-Essarts- 4.065 miles
Pescara- 16.032 miles
Porto- 4.602 miles
Ain Diab- 4.724 miles
Avus- 5.157 miles
Sebring- 5.380 miles
Clermont-Ferrand- 5.005 miles
Hockenheim- 4.219 miles
Osterreichring- 3.673/3.672/3.692 miles
Interlagos- 4.946 miles
Buenos Aires- 3.924 miles

It's not lost on me that most of those are public road circuits of a breed we'll never see again. Also, Hockenheim started in the 1930s as a public road circuit, too.

And really, in the last 15 years at least, cornering and top-end speeds have hardly moved. Just about all the time gain for a while now has been made in acceleration and braking.

Also, if the current crop of circuits don't work for the current cars, what would? What does Casper think such a track would look like? I'll preface this by saying that I think we all know it's pretty impractical to have every track be as wide as the runways at Cleveland, or the banking at Brooklands.

[Oldtony]

Going back to the title of this thread I wonder if anyone can agree on what a "Fixed" F1 race series would look like. Would passing be the prime requirement? Edge of the seat tension? Demonstration of the ultimate in driving skill? A showing of technical superiority or a demonstration of mechanical sympathy?

The list of circuits in the post by purist shows another variable, the variation in circuit type and length has diminished over the years. That in turn has led to focus on designing cars for a small variation in engineering solutions. The circuits have become optimised, and the cars have followed suit.

It is fashionable to criticize Monaco, but at least it is a design challenge outside the Tilkedrome norm. Maybe to get a variety of competitive cars we need a variety of competitive circuits.


To produce a truly interesting season maybe we need to bring back circuits with "fly zones" like Rhiems, tight little villages linked by long straights like Pescara, Long and twisty circuits like Nordschliefe, or rough and bumpy like Pau.

Different engineering solutions would probably ensure different winners and thus a more unpredictable season.

With that range of circuit types maybe Bathurst would get a guernsey

[S griffin]

I think we should see cars that are able to run close together, thus creating more opportunities to pass and most of the action happens on the track rather than the pits

[wnut]

I guess you can also blame the cars for not fitting on the circuits
.
A 1961 Ferrari 156 F1 weighs 460 kg, has a wheelbase of 2300mm a width of 1396mm and a length of 4060 mm.

The 2018 Merc W09 weighs 733 kg, has a wheelbase of 3823mm a width of 2000mm and a length of 5700mm.

Percentage increases, weight 59%, wheelbase 66%, width 43%, and length 40%.

Road car comparison

1966 Mini weighs 942 kg, has a wheelbase of 2035 mm a width of 1410 mm and a length of 3054mm.

2018 Discovery Sport SE weighs 1785 kg, has a wheelbase of 2741 mm a width of 1724 mm and a length of 4599 mm.

Percentage increases, weight 89%, wheelbase 35%, width 22%, and length 51%.

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by wnut

I guess you can also blame the cars for not fitting on the circuits
.
A 1961 Ferrari 156 F1 weighs 460 kg, has a wheelbase of 2300mm a width of 1396mm and a length of 4060 mm.

The 2018 Merc W09 weighs 733 kg, has a wheelbase of 3823mm a width of 2000mm and a length of 5700mm.

Percentage increases, weight 59%, wheelbase 66%, width 43%, and length 40%.

Road car comparison

1966 Mini weighs 942 kg, has a wheelbase of 2035 mm a width of 1410 mm and a length of 3054mm.

2018 Discovery Sport SE weighs 1785 kg, has a wheelbase of 2741 mm a width of 1724 mm and a length of 4599 mm.

Percentage increases, weight 89%, wheelbase 35%, width 22%, and length 51%.

Sorry but comparing a Mini to a Discovery Sport??? Not even apples to oranges, that's apples to cows.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Sorry but comparing a Mini to a Discovery Sport??? Not even apples to oranges, that's apples to cows.

Very much like comparing a modern F1 with an early 60s F1 though, it was an illustration of how far apart the cars have grown.
In some of the areas the difference in size in the modern cars is greater than the difference in size between two hugely different road vehicles.

If you don't like the analogy, be my guest and just ignore it.

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by wnut

If you don't like the analogy, be my guest and just ignore it.

It would probably make more sense if the comparison had been made with the modern day equivalent:

1966 Mini weighs 942 kg, has a wheelbase of 2035 mm a width of 1410 mm and a length of 3054mm.

2018 Mini 3dr weighs 1165 kg, has a wheelbase of 2567 mm a width of 1727 mm and a length of 3821 mm.

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

It would probably make more sense if the comparison had been made with the modern day equivalent:

1966 Mini weighs 942 kg, has a wheelbase of 2035 mm a width of 1410 mm and a length of 3054mm.

2018 Mini 3dr weighs 1165 kg, has a wheelbase of 2567 mm a width of 1727 mm and a length of 3821 mm.

That's what I was referring to, compare F1 to F1 so Mini to Mini. Not Mini to something that was never the size of a Mini. Or compare old Range Rover to new but don't mix.


Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

[wnut]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

It would probably make more sense if the comparison had been made with the modern day equivalent:

1966 Mini weighs 942 kg, has a wheelbase of 2035 mm a width of 1410 mm and a length of 3054mm.

2018 Mini 3dr weighs 1165 kg, has a wheelbase of 2567 mm a width of 1727 mm and a length of 3821 mm.

What I was going for, is that the F1 has evolved into an entirely different article that actually has just about nothing in common with the original, hence Mini to Range Rover (they have nothing in common), and the fact that the percentage difference in the change is smaller or comparable between the Mini and Range Rover and the 156 Ferrari and the W09 Mercedes. Like comparing FF to truck racing.

Guess it fell flat.

[E.B]

Originally Posted by wnut

What I was going for, is that the F1 has evolved into an entirely different article that actually has just about nothing in common with the original, hence Mini to Range Rover (they have nothing in common), and the fact that the percentage difference in the change is smaller or comparable between the Mini and Range Rover and the 156 Ferrari and the W09 Mercedes. Like comparing FF to truck racing.

Guess it fell flat.

Im more confused now than I was with the original Mini/Range Rover analogy!(Which worked for me)

[Armco Bender]

Does the Discovery Sports weight include the tow truck pulling it?

[coppice]

To the list of long circuits of the past may I add the 41 miles of Mugello ?

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by wnut

What I was going for, is that the F1 has evolved into an entirely different article that actually has just about nothing in common with the original, hence Mini to Range Rover (they have nothing in common), and the fact that the percentage difference in the change is smaller or comparable between the Mini and Range Rover and the 156 Ferrari and the W09 Mercedes. Like comparing FF to truck racing.

Guess it fell flat.

I also completely missed the syntax of the underlying metaphor.

[mini1400]

And if your comparing against a 196 mini at least get the specs right...

Weight 636Kg....

[wnut]

OK lets say running a modern F1 at Monaco compared to running a 156 Ferrari at Monaco is like running a 1:24 scale car on a 1:32 scale track.

[Purist]

Coppice, for the list, I specifically stuck to tracks that F1 had used for points-paying Grands Prix. Obviously, if we throw in non-championship races, or venues that hosted the old World Sportscar Championship, that list gets longer.