Formula One Shifting - Yes or No?

[Raglanparade]

I would love to see H patterns back in F1, and manual clutches.. it would be so nice, but heaven forbid that
we allow these overpayed drivers to actually earn there money.
Blokes like Clark, and Brabham, Lauda, Moss, Fittipaldi, they all made there names on car control, not the best software... bring back more driver input and then you will see more passing, more excitement, more everything !
drivers are more likely to make errors then programmable software (well depends if its apple or IBM but thats a different argument!)..

-jason

[Hazza]

Yes, but Jason, Montoya and Schumacher are still making their name on car controll aswell.
And take a look at Champcar - that isn't exactly a passing-lovefest is it?
[/nitpick]
Okay, i'll goto bed now

[chunterer]

I'm all for manual boxes too. However everyone's got so used to the tech aids that the cars would likely be a real handful without them now cos of the huge power outputs!

Give full control back to drivers, it the best way. People like montoya are spectacular with cars as they are. Imagine what he would be upto with a basic F1 car?!!!

[Tiptop]

Hmmm what's the point in rising through the ranks of fford F3 frenault all much harder IMO than F1 because you don't have traction control, paddle shifts,launch control etc..

I think all the lower formulae is a much better representation of talent than F1. Years ago F1 still had manual gears, clutch no power steering and MUCH more talent

Still F1 still is the pinnacle of the sport and I can't see them digressing

[Glen]

Originally posted by Tiptop
…fford F3 frenault all much harder IMO than F1 because you don't have traction control, paddle shifts,launch control etc..

All much harder - oh yea, I completely agree - apart from the minor matter of three or four times more horsepower, huge levels of extra grip (and hence vastly faster corner speeds), four or more G-force of braking, much longer races, much more marginal cars, fifteen or more of the very best drivers in the world (admittedly there are a few journeymen, but there again even Alex Yoong has shown himself to be an excellent driver by other standards than the ridiculously demanding F1), massive rewards for success, massive pressure in the case of failure... you get the picture. In every single way, with the exception of changing gear and modulating the gas for traction, F1 is vastly more difficult than any other racing formula. You don't ever hear a guy getting his first test and saying how easy they found it.

And. If F1 no longer contains the best drivers doing the best driving how come these other drivers with more talent don't emerge from the woodwork and take the F1 world by storm?

The fact is that a lot of you guys are judging driving by extremely limited criteria - changing gear, and not stepping on the gas too hard, are hardly the entirety of what driving is about. The presence of aids such as semi-auto shift and power steering merely allow the driver to focus his skill in other more critical areas, such as being inch perfect every corner every lap and still having the ability to deploy racecraft and strategy. Look a little harder, think a little more - then you'll see the bloomin' obvious; F1 contains the very best drivers and these days they are better prepared and trained than ever. These are the best ever, and as long as the money and fame are there they will continue to get better whether you like it (or accept it) or not.

[golem]

Actually, I'd like to offer this as insentive, myself:

Weight penalty for technology:
t/c - 25kg
l/c - 10kg
active suspension - 40kg
auto-box - 40kg
semi-auto / sequential box - 10kg
no clutch - 10kg

So, taking launch control, traction control, and a clutched sequential setup, 40kg on top of the minimum weight. (Which is a fair chunk.) You could apply this kind of 'weight for tech' to a few options. At least then the teams who can't really afford the tech's can get some kind of alternative to muck about with.

[Raglanparade]

personally i would like to see the weight thing come in, but i think you will need a little more weight then that.
10kg isnt going to add huge chunks to lap times.
maybe launch control should have 20kg, and tc have 40kg.
that way the teams can still run all that **** but the incentive is there to go the other way :P

[oziengineer]

I think that manuel, whether it be a stick or a paddle is the way. Auto is not motorsport, even if it does use manual downshift. It makes the racing dicier.

[Hazza]

Originally posted by Glen
The fact is that a lot of you guys are judging driving by extremely limited criteria - changing gear, and not stepping on the gas too hard, are hardly the entirety of what driving is about. The presence of aids such as semi-auto shift and power steering merely allow the driver to focus his skill in other more critical areas, such as being inch perfect every corner every lap and still having the ability to deploy racecraft and strategy. Look a little harder, think a little more - then you'll see the bloomin' obvious; F1 contains the very best drivers and these days they are better prepared and trained than ever. These are the best ever, and as long as the money and fame are there they will continue to get better whether you like it (or accept it) or not.

[Kirk]

Glen, I must disagree. Driving is ALL about those things you stated. NOT just concentrating on the more critical aspects. Take away all driver aids and such aspects as fatique, errors under pressure, missed shifts and braking points etc. play a much larger role. Technology is fantastic to a point but I have heard that today's F1 car could be driven remotely by computer. Do we want to catch a team employing this option before outlawing it? I say drop all electronic driver aids forever, bring back slicks and lets go racing. In fact as demanding as F1 racing is, lets make it for the truly elite. These days drivers are barely working up a sweat in some of the venues. Lets increase the distances / time to 2 1/2 hours. Maybe this way F1 will not be just about the car!

[Glen]

Originally posted by Kirk
Glen, I must disagree. Driving is ALL about those things you stated. NOT just concentrating on the more critical aspects. Take away all driver aids and such aspects as fatique, errors under pressure, missed shifts and braking points etc. play a much larger role. Technology is fantastic to a point but I have heard that today's F1 car could be driven remotely by computer. Do we want to catch a team employing this option before outlawing it? I say drop all electronic driver aids forever, bring back slicks and lets go racing. In fact as demanding as F1 racing is, lets make it for the truly elite. These days drivers are barely working up a sweat in some of the venues. Lets increase the distances / time to 2 1/2 hours. Maybe this way F1 will not be just about the car!

First, I never said that it was purely about the "critical aspects" - what I said was that there was much more to driving than changing gear and bing delicate with the gas.

Secondly, this bunkum about cars being able to be driven by computers entirely - this is ne of the biggest problems for modern F1... not that it is true, the fact that so many people are ready to believe it. The millimetre-perfect judgement that a GP driver employs many times every second is far beyond the reach of any computer - no way has been invented of visually capturing all that ever-changing data and interpreting it in real time as humans take for granted every day. No robot has been built that can even walk in a genuinely convincing human gait... let alone drive at 200+mph.

Your remark about waiting for a team to get caught gives the game away a bit I'm afraid - that kind of computer assistance is already banned and no electronic control of steering or brakes is allowed. Not sure how you think they are going to drive a car without feeding control to the steering and brakes.

Drivers who fail to work up a sweat these days are simply fit beyond the imagining of drivers of a bygone era. Schumacher has re-defined the level of concentration and perfection that can be expected over a race distance and the best of the new breed of drivers have taken that example and built on it. New drivers in F1 are never allowed or able to hop in a car and do a long session - it takes months of specific training on top of an outstanding athletic physique to drive these cars for a full race distance.

F1 is emphatically not all about the car - the evidence for that is very clear to see and understand. There is a consistent difference in performance between drivers in the same car - obviously the driver input still counts or this would not be the case.

Whilst I accept that nothing is ever perfect and F1 will continue to refine its rules, it annoys me no end to hear people running the sport down without paying the slightest attention to the evidence - rather falling in line with this tabloid mentality that would have us believe that these guys aren't really driving at all.

[Kirk]

No one is questioning the driver talent. But they aren't perfect and it seems the days of a great driver winning in an inferior car are all but over. And I think you would agree that the driving gizmos are levelling the playing field. This begs the question in my mind: what is better for the sport? And I continue to come up with the same answer and that is no electronic driving aids, period.

[Glen]

The great days of a driver winning in an inferior car are indeed long gone - but that is to do with the vastly improved science in every sense. Take off the TC and LC and the Williams will still be consistently faster every lap than the Jaguar, for example. There are no longer any miraculous seconds to be found because the cars are already just about as good as they can be. Te race pace too, is now very much more consistent from start to fnish because the whole race is a series of flat out sprints - they are driving closer to limit all of the time now and the cars are at maximum all the time.

[Mattracer]

Originally posted by Glen
F1 is vastly more difficult than any other racing formula. You don't ever hear a guy getting his first test and saying how easy they found it.

I recall the comments by the son of one ex-champion (who it was escapes me at the minute) who claimed that it was pretty much like his playstation, or words to that effect.

Seriously, I agree with everything you said Glen, however the notion or the impression in the big wide world is gear changes are now made by computer and the mere pressing of a button. Myths are created, though I wish that scenes or Senna's on-board qual lap of Monaco in '90, oversteering out of the hairpin while changing gear and the fabulous downchanges executed to perfection into the chicane after the Tunnel could be commonplace again. I never tire of that lap on video.

[golem]

My reasoning's are straightforward:
Electronics cost lots of money to continually improve, which they generally can, and recalibrate for changed cars, which they continually do. To reduce F1 costs, kill off electrics.
Drivers in sport should test their skills, like any other athlete/competitor. No red-dot laser sites in archery, just manual physical aiming devices. Machined perfect maybe, but still simple devices, and the archer has to do everything he did before. Throttle control is one of THE skills in many categories, and has defined great drivers. Same as Brakes. My thought is, if you have no ABS, why have T/C? They're much the same idea.
Finally, they've been introduced, tested, refined and now exist on road cars but F1 is better off without them and can still advance without them. They're actually easy items to check for with very simple monitoring devices the FIA could get a hold of very cheaply.

[Glen]

Nico Roseberg I think, Mattracer. Drivers find them easy to drive in a basic sense, but the limit is much harder work - and long sessions are not possible without specialist training.

[Glen]

Originally posted by golem
They're actually easy items to check for with very simple monitoring devices the FIA could get a hold of very cheaply.

The reason we still have TC is the teams, nothing to do with the FIA. The teams insist on keeping the technology.

[BootsOntheSide]

Marko Asmer, who had enver driven anything abov Formula Ford, also commented that keeping the car on the road was easy. Although finding the limit of performance is clearly another amtter, I think it's bad enough when drivers can pus for the limit and be 99% sure that they'll stay on the track for the whole lap.

Essentially Glen's understanding of the changes in Formula 1 in terms of teams dominating is quite accurate. The key thing to me is that smaller advantages are being found through trial and error. With 1/10th of the budget, Mianrdi can get to within 95% of Ferrari's times, even though their personnel are all theoretically less capable.

[chunterer]

In car shot of Senna at Monaco! A driver in his element at work!!

That's surely the only way to judge if auto aid gearboxes should be outlawed!

[Glen]

Take a driver that, through the course of his career, used fully manual ("H" pattern) gearboxes with clutch on the floor and then semi auto in a much more sophisticated package - take Senna for instance. Did he suddenly become less of a driver the better his car got? Was his skill less evident? Did he start winning less because his advantage was lost? As far as I recall, no - he still had unmistakable style and appeal, which was still evident on TV, and he still gave 100% and still won.

[DriverT]

Glen you are right, except for the bit about the computer driving the cars. They could do that in 1992.

[chunterer]

Yeah but watching the driver change up or down with gear stick much more entertaining to watch!

There's little dount that the more manual input the driver has, the more he'll express his skills.

[DriverT]

Yes indeed, manual is good!

[Glen]

They most certainly couldn't do that in 1992 - not to a racing pace, or anything like that. The cars from the active ride days knew where they were on the track, but they couldn't pick braking points and racing lines and adapt their behavious for prevailing conditions.

The more manual input, the more he'll express his skills - I agree. But what you fail to see is that the luxury of spare driver capacity (say from not having to try quite so hard at changing gear) allows the driver to express himself MORE fully in other aspects of car control. That is a key reason that it is faster with, for example, auto or semi-auto.

[chunterer]

Have you heard of Juan Pablo Montoya?

He'd change manually and still find time and presence of mind to do everything else with the car, ie be quick! I'm not too fussed if the aids help a car be quicker i'm more interested, just as they are, in seeing the car moving around and the driver's hands working inside the cockpit