[Official] Hungarian Grand Prix 2020: Grand Prix Weekend Thread - Round 3

[Armco Bender]

To me there is a big difference between the engineer telling the driver how to optimise settings for the start and a strategy call by THE driver and engineer where they actually lose track position by a pitlane start.

Put it in gear...let the clutch out......

[Adam43]

Scenario 7.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Adam43

Scenario 7.

Is that like Multi-21?

[Adam43]

It’s a Renault code for engine at full beans. Best used with Norris on the last lap of a GP in Austria. Told to him over the radio by his engineer. A driver aid that means he should get a penalty? Except it didn’t happen on the warm up lap.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Adam43

It’s a Renault code for engine at full beans. Best used with Norris on the last lap of a GP in Austria. Told to him over the radio by his engineer. A driver aid that means he should get a penalty? Except it didn’t happen on the warm up lap.

So Scenario 7 is code for the engine at full beans, like Heinz Beans 57 Varieties, which is also full of beans. Multi 57 then. This Formula 1 is quite complicated.

[dsg]

Originally Posted by Moneyseeker

F1 could do with bonfire of red tape and regulations, all these post race protests make a mockery of the races when F1 is trying to re-build the season.

A bit of consistency/common sense in the regulations wouldn't go astray.

This was painfully obvious.
https://www.racefans.net/2020/07/19/...gal-ricciardo/

And how is telling a driver to change from wet tyres during the formation lap deemed as using an illegal driver aid but telling a driver to use DAS to warm the tyres during a formation lap legal? Doesn't pass the sniff test.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Knowlesy

Bottas is getting a penalty for that start surely.

You would think.

How does Bottas get away with these starts?

No stewards document at all, so no investigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KhJUWlNnCk

At 1:23 put the replay speed on 0.25 watch the lights and keep Bottas' front tyre in your paripheral vision. Clearly moving before the lights went out and just continues to move through the start.

Jumped start - Nothing?!

[Moneyseeker]

At least F1 has discovered the ultimate budget cap.....Just hire a village hall in March, put on a buffet, invite 20 per team and then...give all the trophies to Lewis and Mercedes. The season could be over by 4pm and cost £50 per head.

[Knowlesy]

Originally Posted by wnut

You would think.

How does Bottas get away with these starts?

No stewards document at all, so no investigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KhJUWlNnCk

At 1:23 put the replay speed on 0.25 watch the lights and keep Bottas' front tyre in your paripheral vision. Clearly moving before the lights went out and just continues to move through the start.

Jumped start - Nothing?!

He keeps falling within the tolerance somehow!

Quite amazing luck, you can't really plan that kind of thing.

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by wnut

You would think.

How does Bottas get away with these starts?

No stewards document at all, so no investigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KhJUWlNnCk

At 1:23 put the replay speed on 0.25 watch the lights and keep Bottas' front tyre in your paripheral vision. Clearly moving before the lights went out and just continues to move through the start.

Jumped start - Nothing?!

It was explained on the coverage I saw that: at the time the lights went out, he was stationary and inside his box.

He moved before the lights went out, but stopped again.

[GT6]

Well one thing everyone can agree on is that he did not gain any advantage and that he he had a disastrous start, why would he need to be penalised further..

[Knowlesy]

I totally agree with that BUT I don't think the rules are always applied in that way, if ever.

Ruining your own race is punishment enough but you can argue that is only fully clear in retrospect (for example you might end up with superior track position for making strategy calls in a mixed race or it might cause a safety car to fall more kindly for you).

Irrelevant here given that Bottas made a legal start!

[crmalcolm]

Race Director, Michael Masi said: "There are two parts to that. The means by which a false start is determined is actually clearly determined in the sporting regulations, and has been the same process for a number of years, which is the transponder that's fitted to each car is the judgement mechanism. There is a sensor in the road, in the track, as well. There's a tolerance within that, and as we saw in Japan last year, that is the determining factor. So there was nothing further to have a look at, we spoke to the timekeepers immediately, and they reviewed all the data, and that was the end of the matter."

[wnut]

So in essence if the grid sensor is defective, which in this case it clearly is, then you can just pull off as early as you like.

Mr Massi's own words.

[chillibowl]

Lots of sensors giving up false positives these days.

2020 just wired wrong.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by wnut

So in essence if the grid sensor is defective, which in this case it clearly is, then you can just pull off as early as you like.

Mr Massi's own words.

Could you provide a link to those words?

Did a transponder fail in this example? I don’t see that in the quote above from Masi? They just said they reviewed it and it was within the definition.

More generally do these transponders for this fail often? Would a driver know if one had and then could take advantage? If we know that we can start to judge if this is an issue.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by GT6

Well one thing everyone can agree on is that he did not gain any advantage and that he he had a disastrous start, why would he need to be penalised further..

Originally Posted by Knowlesy

I totally agree with that BUT I don't think the rules are always applied in that way, if ever.

Ruining your own race is punishment enough but you can argue that is only fully clear in retrospect (for example you might end up with superior track position for making strategy calls in a mixed race or it might cause a safety car to fall more kindly for you).

Irrelevant here given that Bottas made a legal start!

I agree. You are right no actually problem here.

However if there was I would have liked this to have not been punished. However F1 wouldn’t be able to win here as the fans wouldn’t be able cope with someone making a judgement as to whether there was an advantage or not. So the governing body has fallen back on just applying a rule. So, I fear, if someone does technically jump the start, but still fluffs it and loses loads of places they will still get a penalty.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Masi refers to Vettel's jump start in Japan last year. In this article it says:

"The rule is quite vague, as usual with Formula 1 rules. While the article states that the judgement would be made by an FIA approved and supplied transponder fitted to each car, it doesn’t say anything about an “acceptable tolerance”. To make things worse, the article is completely nonsensical. The judgement cannot be made by a transponder, only by the stewards, based on the data provided by a transponder."

https://f1bythenumbers.com/2019-japa...s-false-start/

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by wnut

So in essence if the grid sensor is defective, which in this case it clearly is, then you can just pull off as early as you like.

Mr Massi's own words.

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

Masi refers to Vettel's jump start in Japan last year. In this article it says:

"The rule is quite vague, as usual with Formula 1 rules. While the article states that the judgement would be made by an FIA approved and supplied transponder fitted to each car, it doesn’t say anything about an “acceptable tolerance”. To make things worse, the article is completely nonsensical. The judgement cannot be made by a transponder, only by the stewards, based on the data provided by a transponder."

https://f1bythenumbers.com/2019-japa...s-false-start/

Yes, roughly this same group of people here on this forum discussed this heavily with respect to the 2019 GP. Below is two of my posts in the 2019 thread which included some detailed info regarding how it works...

https://tentenths.com/forum/showpost...2&postcount=88

https://tentenths.com/forum/showpost...6&postcount=89

Without rehashing that entire thing (which I might accidently do), it's not as easy as everyone claims it would be. It is difficult if not impossible to expect the cars to be "100%" still and not moving. The issue being the level of accuracy that is to be expected by the sensors and the potential for some movement (such as vibration) that can be expected by the cars.

As mentioned last year, they don't publish the exact specifications as to how much movement it "too much" as that would result in teams gaming the system to try to extract an edge. By keeping it a bit ambiguous (and frankly slightly looser than the regulations probably imply/say) then it makes it risky for teams to exploit. I think we also touched upon (in 2019) that the way the regulations are written does NOT match with how the actual process works.

The regulations say/imply one process while another that is slightly different is used. I think the response I read (hopefully I am not just repeating my own thoughts!) somewhere is that they like to have flexibility on "how" they measure some of these things vs. the method being encoded directly into the regulations. Because it prevents them from making improvements to the system if they want. But I do feel the regulations could/should be worded better.

Given the recent history of two events, it sounds like the start, stop, (lights go out), then a second start. Seems to be OK as long as you are within a physical and time "box" that is purposefully not communicated to teams.

What we should complain about is a scenario in which I don't think has happened in recent memory for me. That is for someone to start moving and NOT stop before the red lights go out and NOT get penalized. Then the question would be to examine how far they moved before the lights went out and if everyone feels that distance was not reasonable. Clearly some want/expect zero movement.

To summarize, everyone would like to see completely stationary cars, but that is harder to do that everyone might think (without really stepping it up from a monitoring perspective). In the end, I think the fans are more upset about this than the teams as I expect the teams understand "why" it is the way it is.

Richard

[chillibowl]

in fairness, false starts also affect others on the line whether it causes another to flinch and false start or in this case starting, stopping and the restarting means you have a car in front travelling far too slowly.

but that has to be balanced out with safety (and of course entertainment) concerns by the time it takes to reform the grid, damage to engines running without proper airflow and tire temps etc.

there has to be some leeway here for some unintentional movement.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

To summarize, everyone would like to see completely stationary cars, but that is harder to do that everyone might think (without really stepping it up from a monitoring perspective). In the end, I think the fans are more upset about this than the teams as I expect the teams understand "why" it is the way it is.

didnt see your post, but yeah exactly this for me.

now im going to go back and see what my position was last year...hope it was the same.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

in fairness, false starts also affect others on the line whether it causes another to flinch and false start or in this case starting, stopping and the restarting means you have a car in front travelling far too slowly.

but that has to be balanced out with safety (and of course entertainment) concerns by the time it takes to reform the grid, damage to engines running without proper airflow and tire temps etc.

there has to be some leeway here for some unintentional movement.

and me from the 2019 japanese gp thread...

Originally Posted by chillibowl

For me a flinch is a flinch...sure his error cost him more (as it should) but the potential that his error can cause another to move is one of the reasons false starts rules exist.

That there are secret tolerances of allowable movement is a fairly goofy explaination imo. A race is a race and the start procedure needs to be clear and obvious especially after 1014(?) races right!

and it was not the same.

interesting that i began out with a similar line of thinking and used the same word but ultimately came up with a different conclusion.

[Richard C]

I think what is difficult is that you view the videos and say "they car clearly moved". And that is true. Could they do a better job and tighten that box? I think so, but who knows whatever issues they are juggling that prevents them from making that box smaller.

My second post I linked above from 2019 basically says that they are NOT using the transponder loop under each grid box. In my 2019 posts I link to a thread in F1technical.net. For anyone who is curious about this topic, you should read that thread. Below is a link for a page late in the thread in which I am talking back and forth with someone who is most likely part of FIA (and other series) T&S and he is purposefully vague about how it works (because he has clearly been instructed to NOT provide details publicly OR contradict steward decisions!), but it is an interesting read.

https://www.f1technical.net/forum/vi...26569&start=75

Quotes from one of the responses in that thread...

Without being specific, there are beacon positioning systems that can triangulate approximate position of a signal within it's range, but the accuracy of such approximation is relative to other factors and therefore cannot be relied upon to be accurate in the case of millimeter movement at all times.

It has been my experience that even though a rule is written to include the use of a specific sensor/piece of equipment, without another correlating signal/data/evidence, the officials rely heavily on the eyeball.

Richard

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

It is difficult if not impossible to expect the cars to be "100%" still and not moving. The issue being the level of accuracy that is to be expected by the sensors and the potential for some movement (such as vibration) that can be expected by the cars.

This - I think - gets to the heart of what was said after Bottas' incident this weekend.

If you put a car on the grid, engine running, swirling wind, held on the brakes, it would move by an amount that a sensor could monitor. It would even do so if the wheels were not turning.

An example of movement can be seen if you drive a car with an electronic parking brake. Apply revs, release the clutch and there is a time before the brake releases when the body of the car moves but the wheels don't.

One thing I am not certain about, having heard a couple of explanations as to why Bottas was not penalised, is whether the recording from the sensor(s) is taking at an instantaneous reading at the instant the lights go out, or whether it is for a certain span of time ahead of the lights.

I know in athletics, a false start can be called even if the first movement is after the gun. They have a certain time-span that they assume to be the absolute minimum possible for the sprinter to have reacted to the start, rather than anticipating. Does F1 also include such a metric?

[S griffin]

He didn't really gain an advantage, if anything it gave him a disadvantage. I think it's good to have a bit of tolerance. After all, most creeping doesn't put them over their grid spot. It's tough to keep these things still I imagine

Also Bottas didn't hit the gas till after the lights went out and even then it was about a second after everyone else just to be sure. It's better also to have electronic sensors, in case some false starts are called incorrectly or they miss a false start. It's tricky enough without needing arguments over how long you need to wait. Correct call at the end of the day