[Rules] Future Rule Changes

[Sodemo]

...which is why we need fully manual starts back. The opportunity now for a leading car to be 9th or 10th into the first corner now is pretty low. I remember Jacques Villeneuve starting at the Japanese GP 1996, he was on pole, but fluffed his start and ended up 6th or 7th into turn 1. How often does that happen now? We then saw a great fightback up through the field.

[S griffin]

Agreed. We don't need WWE gimmicks, we just need cars that can overtake, less reliance in pit stops and manual gearboxes.

[bjohnsonsmith]

I'd like too see tyre warmers got rid of, so when a driver does their stop they've got to be careful not to over do it and spin the car but at the same really work to get the tyres up to temperature.

[S griffin]

Seeing the Indycar drivers in Toronto cope without tyre warmers there's no reason F1 drivers can't either.

And RE the point about drivers making bad starts and having to work through, well that's what makes MotoGP exciting

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

In pretty well all major competitive speed events, the fastest qualifyers always start from the prime positions. So, for example, in athletics and indeed swimming, the fastest start in the middle lanes which to start.

100% agreed.

there is a certain logic to how all races on tracks are run and if you remove that logic or try to change that logic then it doesnt matter what other changes happen because no one will watch because no one will understand what the heck they are watching.

people need to accept the fact that race orders are organized by who is fastest and usually that means the race will end in the order of who is fastest (shockingly) which is usually exactly the same order as who was fastest to begin with.

[Paradise City]

Reverse grids, I stop watchin' F1. That's a red line there. F1 doesn't need that garbage.

[ASCII Man]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

people need to accept the fact that race orders are organized by who is fastest and usually that means the race will end in the order of who is fastest (shockingly) which is usually exactly the same order as who was fastest to begin with.

That would be true, if not for the Trulli factor. Fast over one lap but not much in the race.
But yes, let's not get into all of that reverse grid crap.

[bjohnsonsmith]

One thing I really would like to see addressed are the penalties. AFAIC, there are just too many and it detracts from the sport. Today's penalties handed out to McLaren are a good example; 25 place grid penalties for both Alonso and Button, that's absurd. Even Bernie is concerned.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119596

[wnut]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

One thing I really would like to see addressed are the penalties. AFAIC, there are just too many and it detracts from the sport. Today's penalties handed out to McLaren are a good example; 25 place grid penalties for both Alonso and Button, that's absurd. Even Bernie is concerned.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119596

Agreed BJ, turns the racing into a complete joke:

Ricciardo: 10 place grid penalty (first time a fifth power unit element has been used)
Alonso: 20 place grid penalty (first time fifth power unit elements have been used)
Button: 25 place grid penalty (first time sixth and fifth power unit elements have been used)
Kvyat: 10 place grid penalty (first time a fifth power unit element has been used)
Alonso: 5 place grid penalty (replacement gearbox)

from Pitpass.

Can they now just develop the engines as they see fit and start from the back of the grid?
They will clearly be starting there for the rest of the season. Does Button's penalty carry through to the next race?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by wnut

Agreed BJ, turns the racing into a complete joke:

Ricciardo: 10 place grid penalty (first time a fifth power unit element has been used)
Alonso: 20 place grid penalty (first time fifth power unit elements have been used)
Button: 25 place grid penalty (first time sixth and fifth power unit elements have been used)
Kvyat: 10 place grid penalty (first time a fifth power unit element has been used)
Alonso: 5 place grid penalty (replacement gearbox)

from Pitpass.

Can they now just develop the engines as they see fit and start from the back of the grid?
They will clearly be starting there for the rest of the season. Does Button's penalty carry through to the next race?

Button's penalty carries through as a timed penalty, like a stop go or extended pitstop. The whole thing really is ridiculous.

[wnut]

This provides a good summary

Bernie's Ratner moment.

http://www.pitpass.com/54131/Has-Ecc...-Ratner-moment


"We need to have a very, very good look at all our sporting regulations. Don't go over the white line, don't do this, don't do that. If you change your engine you go back 20 places. It's not what the public understand. They don't understand and when they do understand they don't care basically."

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

One thing I really would like to see addressed are the penalties. AFAIC, there are just too many and it detracts from the sport. Today's penalties handed out to McLaren are a good example; 25 place grid penalties for both Alonso and Button, that's absurd. Even Bernie is concerned.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119596

It is not that absurd when you think about a bit longer. In case a car does not comply with the technical regulations, its driver will usually be disqualified, although he had no control over the infringement. When a driver uses too much consumables - e.g. fuel or tires -, he will be out of the race or disqualified.
The current technical regulations limit the number of consumables per season, in this case: the number of engines. If a driver exceeds that number, he would logically be out of competition. However, as a concession they allow drivers to participate, albeit under condition of being penalized. In relation to being out of competition a grid and/or time penalty is actually mild.

[ScotsBrutesFan]

The rules need to be there
Infractions of those rules need to be penalised

But the penalties need to be sorted out.

I'd suggest a maximum of 10 place grid drop - no matter how many engine bits changed.
If you can't drop all 10 (qualify 11th or worse) then you start from the pit lane and the remaining grid slots that haven't been dropped equate to 1 second per place time penalty to be served during a pit stop.

The constructor would also receive a constructors points penalty and this would range depending on the number of bits used over the limit.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Pingguest

It is not that absurd when you think about a bit longer. In case a car does not comply with the technical regulations, its driver will usually be disqualified, although he had no control over the infringement. When a driver uses too much consumables - e.g. fuel or tires -, he will be out of the race or disqualified.
The current technical regulations limit the number of consumables per season, in this case: the number of engines. If a driver exceeds that number, he would logically be out of competition. However, as a concession they allow drivers to participate, albeit under condition of being penalized. In relation to being out of competition a grid and/or time penalty is actually mild.

I know why and what penalties are intended for but the rules don't differentiate between a technical problem and a rule infringement and they don't take into account the current technical complexity, of a PU or gearbox.

If either goes wrong and they need replacing, the rules automatically deem this as an infringement, even though it wasn't. Basically the rules haven't caught up with the technology and because of this, penalties are far too frequent and this is having a negative impact; even Bernie's concerned.

Over the years, F1 has borrowed and tweaked quite a lot from CART/IndyCar, like tyre stops, fuel stops, option tyres, pitting under caution. So with regards to penalties, say for example a gearbox change, why not deduct points from the constructor rather than penalise the driver?

[Taxi645]

Engine distribution proposal.

In three to four years any engine from a manufacturer that is also supplied to customers will be distributed randomly to the teams which have a contract with this engine manufacturer (including the top teams themselves) by the FIA. Any engine upgrade therefore only makes sense for ALL engines including customer engines.


This will have several consequences:

Top teams won't have the latest and greatest while the customers have B-spec engines: result, more competitive field. Also it will be easier to attract sponsors for the smaller teams if they know you'll have a competitive engine equal to the A-spec from the top team.

Any investment by a top team, benefits all customers. Therefore it becomes less logical to invest huge sums in engine development. Result costs go down.


If the manufacturers decides on this bases they don't want to supply engines to customers, fine. They will lose a highly lucrative business model and that means more equal distribution of cash between top teams and the rest.

If the top teams don't want to supply engines any more there will be room for independent engine suppliers. The advantage for them and the smaller teams will be that any engine development can be spread over a large customer base, so there will be enough funds to create a competitive engine.



Sure the strategy group won't like it, but screw the strategy group. They're killing the sport. Include all the teams in the decision making or none.

[wolfhound]

Christian Horner has come up with a suggestion that somebody that is independant come up with new rules to improve F1. His suggestion is a certain Mr Brawn.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/220330/...f1-future.html

The idea has a lot of merit.

[mikuni]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

Christian Horner has come up with a suggestion that somebody that is independant come up with new rules to improve F1. His suggestion is a certain Mr Brawn.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/220330/...f1-future.html

The idea has a lot of merit.

Thanks for sharing. The idea does have merit. I would just add that a couple of others could possibly sit alongside to avoid any crazy ideas rolling through.

I have a huge amount of respect for Gary Anderson, however his recent proposals seem absolutely bazaar for someone from a chief design engineer position. Reverse qualifying positions and all that rubbish is the last thing true motorsport enthusiasts want to see.

The just need to tweak the basics and scrap some of the crap around the sides, retain the proper tracks and have realistic ticket prices that people can afford, with coverage going out free to air, downloadable or on an ad free pay TV channel world wide.

F1 is not as broken as some people on here make out when you look at the world at the moment (most sports are struggling from what I can see), they just need to go back to basics to move forward.

[wolfhound]

Another person who springs to mind is Max Mosley although his closeness to Bernie might not be a good thing. I think a group of three people maximum who know the business two people from inside plus an outsider who has some knowledge of the sport but would see it from a fans, sponsor & TV side of the equation.

[Sodemo]

For me, they do finally have the right ideas in terms of whats needed chassis wise. Wider cars would generate more drag, plus also would help with raising corner speeds, particularly lower speed. Wider rear tyres would make the cars more spectacular and allow drivers to be more aggressive assuming the tyre slip angles were wide enough.

I still think we need to massively cut down on the front wing elements and allow venturi underbody aero as a compromise.

All of this should result in cars that handle better at low speed, drivers can wring the necks of, and passing should be easier, then you could do away with the ridiculous things like DRS.

[Taxi645]

If I understand correctly part of the "cars are unable to follow each other in medium to fast corners" is because of the fact that current cars are aerodynamically too sophisticated.

The front of the car, with all of it's small aero surfaces, is used to manipulate the air (vortexes) in the best possible way around the following part of the car in order to maximize downforce and minimize drag.

This level over ever increasing sophistication of the aerodynamics makes it increasingly sensitive to disturbance of the air by a car in front. Hence why following a car through corners becomes more difficult.

So reducing the amount of sophistication of the aero (less and simpler aerodynamic surfaces) would increase the ability to follow the car in front. So that would be desirable. However simplified aero would also result in less downforce and increased drag, which we don't want because of increasing laptimes and fuel consumption.

Now here comes the idea; Why not compensate this increase in drag and reduction of downforce from these simplified surfaces aero with flexible wings?

Flexible wings which bend due to aerodynamic pressure would reduce drag on straights and increase downforce in corners, exactly compensating the downsides of simplified aero. The wings angle of attack would be higher than currently, but gets pushed flatter the faster you driver. If you drive behind someone and an aero surface has less aero pressure due to the disturbed air, the surface partly compensates this auto by having a steeper angle of attack.

The flexible wings would obviously flex passively not actively, as a result of the chosen stiffness of the construction itself, so the team nor the driver can manipulate it when the car is on track. So no artificial push a button and overtake crap like with DRS.

A positive by product would be that less sophisticated aero means a significant reduction in cost.

[Taxi645]

And yes, I know there have been experimenting with them in the past and also accidents have been linked to flexible wings, but a stiff wing is not inherently stronger than a flexible one. Past experiences with flexible wings have been trying to work around the rules where there was little control over their influence on the strength of the part. If it is within the rules you can also built in requirements into the rules to assure the integrity of the part.

Perhaps this along with slightly increasing possibilities for ground effect would makes the cars insensitive enough to disturbed air to have proper multi corner battles.

[wolfhound]

If one takes Gary Anderson's (mentioned earlier in this thread) idea for reversed grids teams would have to design their cars to be able to follow others closely in order to give their drivers a chance of getting to the front.

[chillibowl]

sure but they would have to stop calling it a 'race' which i suspect would be more problematic in the long run.

im probably going to far but putting the weakest at the front is the worst aspect of this politically correct culture taking over. whats next...get rid of podiums and institute the World Championship of Participation?

love the idea about Ross Brawn and a few other independent luminaries taking over the role of rules makers though.

[Greem]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

im probably going to far but putting the weakest at the front is the worst aspect of this politically correct culture taking over.

Older historic/vintage clubs have been running races that way for donkey's years. The first time I ever flagged I was handed the blue flag for a VSCC handicap race at Donington Park; it was certainly challenging!

The difference there though is that there are cars of 40 years age difference and massively different power & handling. Given all the differences in current performance, I don't think there's a 30-40 second/lap difference between the current F1 cars!

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

I know why and what penalties are intended for but the rules don't differentiate between a technical problem and a rule infringement and they don't take into account the current technical complexity, of a PU or gearbox.

If either goes wrong and they need replacing, the rules automatically deem this as an infringement, even though it wasn't. Basically the rules haven't caught up with the technology and because of this, penalties are far too frequent and this is having a negative impact; even Bernie's concerned

The regulations actually differentiate a technical problem from a rule infringement, as a broken part of the power unit does not automatically result in a penalty. The regulations have split the power unit in a number of specified components and all are limited to four units per driver per season.
However, a technical problem being a rule infringement at the same time, is not something new. The regulations do not tolerate a car to be underweight due to a leakage either.

Under the current regulations the power units have to meet a number of standards. These standards include the use of certain consumables. As using an excessive amount of fuel will automatically and regardless of its cause result in a disqualification, using an excessive number of specified power units parts will only result in grid penalty and potentially in an additional time penalty. Hence, failing to comply with certain aspects of the regulations is penalized unequally.

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

Over the years, F1 has borrowed and tweaked quite a lot from CART/IndyCar, like tyre stops, fuel stops, option tyres, pitting under caution. So with regards to penalties, say for example a gearbox change, why not deduct points from the constructor rather than penalise the driver?

You complained about the current regulations not differentiating a technical issue from a rule infringement. I cannot see any different in that respect between the current regulations and your proposal.