Wet start and safety cars rule tweak

Good idea but girly man Whiting will shoot it down

 

It's an improvement for sure. Charlie is unfit to determine how to start in the wet and always leaves the safety car out too long. Silverstone was a disgrace and Charlie's decisions actually caused a massive safety risk in the pits with cars diving in and out and nearly crashing into each other all over the place as they all came in to change to inters

 

Charlie should retire

 

Whiting had another excellent weekend, Jenson's penalty was a joke and he seemed more preoccupied with guys running wide at a couple corners to actually hand out a deserved penalty to Verstappen for jinking around.

I never remember any "wheels off track" warnings during the race prior to the last couple years. Enough with the micro managing. It's laughable.

 

I'm not for an open-cockpit wet parade behind a safety car. Other racing classes have their own crews dry the track with jet drier trucks before the start of the race.
If it's pouring, that's another issue to solve.

And, of course Lewis Hamilton says he loves rain. That's because he is usually at the front and out of danger from more than one other guy. A wet start can eliminate many of the other cars before the first turn. Will LH be praying for rain when he takes his grid penalty and has to start at the back row? No.

Also, fuel is conserved to have only a drop when crossing the finish line.

Why enforce each each team to use these super sponge tires after this parade? Team tire choice is part of the strategy. One team may think the track will be dry in 3 turns, while another may think 3 laps. That's why weather is monitored by each team.

Perhaps that guy you always see holding an umbrella above a driver, can run alongside the car as the drivers are drying the track.

 

We are in full agreement

The stupid micromanaging is killing the sport

 

So true. Jenson's brake failure was an extreme safety issue which warranted radio communication. Max got away with nasty driving and took arguably fair advantage of a poorly designed track with too many chicanes with no room for passing and short DRS zones.

Because of the tight chicanes, white lines were crossed by everyone. Because of the tight track, blue flags were called for by everyone. You can't blue flag a train car.

I'd take Valencia on a nice hot sunny day over this circuit.

 

It's official- Beginning with the German Grand Prix, only wet standing starts from now on. All radio communication is on about anything again (with the exception of the normal radio silence before the start.

 

Stupidity never cease to amaze me....it would be funny to hear Ickx, Gilles, Ayrton, Michael and Alesi on the subject!!!

 

Exactly!!

"jet drier trucks"

I cannot understand why FOM that flies hundreds of tons of equipment around the World at each GP don't have them.

Or why Ecclestone do not require them on his contract with track owners.

 

Maybe because he understands that wet races are a big part of the show, and that most fans love them....

 

Bingo

 

You cannot have it both ways:

- or you like wet races, accept they cannot be started safely in some instances (lack of visibility, acquaplanning zones, etc...) and hope for the best

- or you accept that starting behind a safety car after several laps for the drivers to adapt to the conditions, spot the puddles, and to disperse the water is reasonable to avoid the risk of pile-ups when the track is still waterlogged.

 

Bernie needs to have a word with his former mechanic employee, Whiting, and explain that. Bernie has often half-jokingly suggested having sprinklers on a track to randomly wet the track to create more exciting races... But if he did that, Charlie would throw out the safety car until the sprinklers stopped and the track was nearly dry again anyway!

I started suggesting last year that the highly respected Whiting wa beginning to lose the respect of the drivers, teams, and fans because he had started to make seemingly random, unpopular, unjustified decisions. That tendency, including sudden rule changes and sudden reversals or reinterpretations of sudden rule changes even more frequently this year, just highlight that Whiting has delayed his retirement by a year or two too long, and has now damaged his legacy. He's no Bernie, he does have a "best before" date, and it was 2014. (Well, I believe Bernie has exceeded his best before date also, but it's not impacting the racing as directly)

 

Truth is, F.1 seems to be governed by the biggest bunch of amateurs on earth....the level of profissionalism from teams and drivers could not contrast more with the lack of it from whiting the FIA and the rest of the clowns that run the show!!!

 

This

 

So, what do you suggest?

Do you think they should have a vote from the people in the grandstands if the race should start of not?

 

Untill this year it seemed to work...why change it?

 

Trying to improve safety by clearing the track maybe?
Who knows? The track was waterlogged.

But I think people nowadays are too prone to resist any change and find a scapegoat.

 

No, they are realists. F1 has raced in wet weather for decades. Now they don't anymore, simple as that.

Most are clever enough to figure out that it is a knee jerk reaction following Bianchi's death (although the safety car BS started a few years prior, it's just much worse now)

 

Yes, but F1 today are not designed to race in the rain! It's as simple as that.
Rule makers allow engineers to design cars to go faster in the dry, with no concern about how they perform in the wet, or in heavy rain.

Since the 60s, tyre width has constantly increased, making the car shifting an enormous amount of water and leaving almost no visibility.
Next year, the tyres will be even larger, which means that the spray will be even worse.

BTW, enclosed wheels would reduce the spray (but not the aquaplanning), but this, like the halo is resisted by the "purists".

Also, large tyre provoke more aquaplanning than narrow tyres. That will not get better in future.
So the safety aspect is getting worse, year by year, IMO.

Finally, if racing in the wet was so good, why do they delays the start sometimes? or why do they red-flag a race in heavy rain? or why some series do not race in the wet?

 

What he said.

 

They can "figure" that out, yet the real cause of Bianchi's death was that he was driving much too fast through a section under double waved yellows. Yet we had the scenario last week with double waved yellows in Q3, Rosberg lifted just the minimum to slow by 2/10, and that was fine...