Your worst nightmare might just come true: Bernie and teams are currently discussing weight penalties for winning drivers.
You're joking right?..... That really would be the end of it for me. I've tried to be 'supportive' and to see things 'their way' over the years, but surely there's not a true racing fan alive who could support that, is there? Talk about a 'show'.... May as well watch the wwf or some other scripted BS! "Say it ain't so!" Cheers, Ian
Team bosses keen on success ballast for F1 | Adam Cooper's F1 Blog Read it and weep. Apparently meeting is underway at this moment.
Unbelievable! Don't know what else to say beyond I would be 100% sure to never pay it any attention again. If I want to watch a show, I'll go to the theatre. Ian
Keep punishing success, let's have a secondary championship for participation too. Unreal. I went from watching live to recording each race but now I won't waste recording space if this farce continues.
I'll seriously only watch GP2 (as long as they don't have stupid weight penalties) as my only source of OW racing. Blancpain GT, 24h series etc will get priority. All on youtube, excellent everything. On the Nismo feed you can actually choose which camera you want currently (choice of 5 so far). All the live timing you need, on the 24h series you can even get an interactive map showing all drivers on their exact position on track!!!
Fakecharlie whiting on twitter wrote: @charlie_whiting: “Success ballast?” That would be the final straw. I’d be done with #F1. Enough of this madness. Team bosses keen on success ballast for F1 | Adam Cooper's F1 Blog
We need a what idiocy is next poll/thread. Better they should be rethinking the Russian and Baku races.
So sucess ballast is evil but BOP and everybody with the same car and engine is right? Mmmmm.... P.S: I don´t like ballast either.
F1 I supposed to be individual teams trying to outdo each other. Not for it to then get limited by throwing stones in their luggage to make them slower again. GP2 has always been the same car/same engine so that's acceptable to me. BOP has with the new GT3 series since the get go as well, everyone knew this going into the series. F1 has never been about equality. Call it weird or whatever you want...it's just how I see these things.
Not arguing with that. It´s just that while everybody here seems scandalized, everything is relative. I´m against ballast but I´m willing to discuss it here. Right now they already are using DRS, that for me it´s almost worse. Also ballast was used in several highly regarded GT and touring car championships and fans didn´t complain. P.S: must be noted that BOP is not only a GT3 thing, it´s applied with a bit more of subtlety in almost every kind of touring cars, GTs and even prototypes.
If they are considering this, why don't they just consider trying to increase the talent pool. They could force the chassis to be accommodating for larger drivers and use the ballast to equal out weight.
Nascar tries to balance things by giving out the spring//shock/static camber/toe, etc, from the winning car when they take it apart. Weighing up winning driver's has no business in a series with a "constructors" championship. Only a spec series.
More than scandalized! I'm ****ing DISGUSTED that they can even *consider* it! It simply goes against *everything* that F1 is (or should be) all about IMO. I've said many times, and I guess I'm in the minority here, if you build a better car & win every race I'm not bored, I'm impressed. They should doff their caps and try and do better next time. (Accepting this is hard with the stupid no testing rule, but apparently Bernie raised that little topic in the same meeting this morning too....) With my 'purists' hat on, I'd agree. But it hasn't, as many of us feared, resulted in constant 'back & forth', which would be a joke too. Rather, what it has done with these incredibly aero sensitive cars is make overtaking *possible*..... Previously, unless you were a couple of seconds (at least) quicker passing was more or less impossible. And as we know, pretty much the entire grid is covered by a couple of seconds..... Very true, and one of the reasons I, personally, don't much follow it. I understand they're tying to level the playing field given the diversity of PU's allowed etc, and that's fine. But what I do object to is the constant 'tweaking' between every race.... I build a better car and beat you, I get ****ed next time out! No thanks, not for me. Take F1 down that path and I'm done with it. Cheers, Ian
DRS is an ignominious band aid, everybody knows it. But it had to be done, because nobody had the b@lls to do the radical changes to aero regulations that were needed. So I understand their logic about the ballast. There should be radical changes to the testing limitations, to the engine freeze, to the limitation of number of engines and gearboxes per season, to the money distribution... but nobody has the b@lls to do them. As things are now, teams can´t recover from mistakes, small teams can´t stand a chance against the big ones (and now all but 3 or 4 teams are small, and probably Mercedes is outspending even the big ones). Ballast is a sh*t, but it is the sh*t that this F1 deserves.
