So just getting back into F1 for the first time in years...

It's all in the car. The Mercedes is incredible, Ferrari's lead designers' wife died after the first race, so when he was in mourning and sorting out life with the kids (kids suddenly alone in Italy moving back to UK), he was doing insane hours dabbling work and family. He then had a fall out with the idiot in charge (marchionne) around June, they parted ways...so not only was car updating delayed (understandable given the circumstances), it was then completely ****ed because he left.

Red Bull started the year somewhat behind Ferrari, but they have an incredible, level headed team with 2 incredible drivers. They won the development race of not only Ferrari but IMO out-engineered Mercedes. Mercedes is still ahead of Red Bull simply because of their engine advantage (around 50 hp difference...which is huge), which they got because they did their homework pre-2014 but also FIA has a massive hand in this by not allowing normal engine development in such a huge rule overhaul.

 

Autosport/Motorsport are great for factual news, and I have a few inside F1 sources

 

Motorsport.com and autosport.com. Hopefully next year should be more competitive; it's become a technology/engineering championship more than anything....

 

Bad time to come back.... f1 is dying in my opinion, it's a bit like two and a half men when Charlie left.... fake version of the show continues since the hybrid rubbish came in, but it ain't the same and never will be The days of stars like schumi and Senna are over

 

Ferrari's season in a nutshell

Not dying so much as homogenating.

With ALL the data from telemetry all the drivers are basically equal, they know where they are slower, braking too late/early, apexing slightly worse than their team mate.

This makes them all VERY even , just look at the positions after qualifying to see all the brands sitting next to each other in most cases.

I'm tossing up whether to go to the Aussie GP next year but probably will as I'm an eternal optimist, hoping the new formula will favour Ferrari.

But, if Australia wasn't the first race , and Ferrari failed badly in the preceding races, I wouldn't go, been through the 21 year drought, have no desire to do it again and live it in the flash

The real problem is that the xbox generation think THIS current rubbish is racing

 

This is key for a longer term understanding.

Mercedes enlisted waaay too many high powered people.....at least that was the feeling by many. Turns out they were the only team that recognized how much work there was to be done(or maybe they had the budget to get more done). They did the work, and continue to reap the rewards.

 

Take the token rubbish out of the equation and Ferrari would have historically made a better engine which would have made a world of difference to someone like Kimi

 

Not the best time to return to F1. It sucks huge and is steadily going downhill. On the other hand, there's more room since many are vacating.

If you want good racing, you should try Moto GP.

 

They put the FIA under pressure (together with Renault) for this formula...they had their engine and systems well together whilst Ferrari & Bernie where against it and squabbling over at least getting decent cilinders in the sport. Mercedes had a great concept, working, so where just working on perfecting it.

Bernie & Ferrari where on the right path, the I4 and V6 proposed wouldn't be great for F1 as it wouldn't produce an exciting sound. FIA, Mercedes & Renault pulled it off and pushed their formula through, and worst come to worst, the development freeze come februari 2014.

I praise Mercedes for doing their homework (by far) the best, they deserved their success, I truly do. However, I deeply condemn the FIA and Mercedes for continuing the freeze, only opening it up with a dumb token system. It was a step forwards but still very much with the cards stacked in favour of the Mercede. With their massive engine advantage, Mercedes had all the time to focus on the other aspects whilst the rest was playing catch up to the engine, nevermind the rest of the cars...

Early testing 2014 the FIA should've realized that the engines had a HUGE disadvantage between each other and taken action. They didn't. FIA only emply a 1% stake in F1 commercial $, so their loss wasn't that big if they lost or gained 100m viewers. They got to push their green agenda which is all they cared about.

If the FIA had a bigger interest in the viewership numbers (therefore $) they would care more about the rules they implement.

Some people may argue that the Mercedes dominance isn't any different to the Red Bull or Ferrari dominance, they simply did the best job and that's it, and that I'm only whining because it's not Ferrari winning...but the big difference between the Ferrari/Red Bull dominance vs Mercedes dominance is simple: ''back then'', especially for Ferrari, it was very much an open field. Anyone could develop their engine, chassis, aero, freely. There was testing. Did richer teams enjoy an advantage? Sure. But for Red Bull, there was no testing, and they actually had the weakest engine in a development locked era (even if the difference between best and worst was only ~20bhp). Their success was purely because of chassis and aerodynamic development, something available to all (still is).

And that's where the FIA went wrong. By locking up such a huge element to performance of such a complicated formula, they gifted the championships. Had they opened up the engine development freely from the get go, I wouldn't have much of an issue with it.

 

Come on boys, although the engines are muted, they are making record amounts of power, record amounts of efficiency and with next years unlimited development/huge tires....cmon!!!! It's going to be amazing!! Anyone of the current drivers would likely crush our heroes from the past and the vehicle dynamics are unprecedented. I'm a fan and have witnessed first hand the v10 era....miss the sound but it would be pummelled by these new generation cars/drivers.

 

Since the MB dominance and the FIA rule stupidity have turned me off to F1 recently, here is a question: is testing permitted next year? Did someone at FIA grow a brain and at least allow testing the day after GPs the way MotoGP does it?

 

Er, nope I cannot agree. The turbos of the 1980s were pushing 1,500 bhp in qualifying. Just this week Magnusson said the current F1 cars are "Formula Ford cars are made easy" and. Verstappen said the transition to F1 not that difficult because they are not that physically demanding to drive like the past generations. This current generation of Formula 1 is the least compelling I have watched in the 42 years I have been following Formula 1.

I truly hope that next year is better. I have actually missed several races live and watched the tivo version later for the first time ever. I have attended 26 races in person, but will not waste the money or vacation time on this version. Malaysia is not interested in renewing its contract, Germany cannot sell enough seats to warrant a GP, Singapore is reconsidering its commitment, all is not definitely well with F1. Again, I really hope it gets better next year before F1 suffers the same fate that ruined American open wheel racing.

 

What is 'token rubbish'?

'Ferrari would have historically made a better engine'...? So........history demands that Ferrari always win....... or..........?? Please explain.

 

The NA V12s, V10s, and V8s that followed put out ~650bhp... and lapped faster. The turbo cars of the 80s with their on-off throttle response were just not as controllable as the NA cars that followed. It is no surprise that the current generation are even easier to control... and I know that makes for significantly less compelling viewing.

 

I don't give a **** about efficiency. It's like knowing who has taken the fewest breaths in a 400 meter sprint. It's irrelevant and pointless information.

With next year fuel allowance goes up to 105kg, but that's negated by more () aero and fatter tires, so don't expect 1400bhp engines.

Record amounts of power? Only very briefly, and they're still 50 (in Mercedes' case) short of the V10 peak of 1050bhp.

 

F1 for the last few seasons should be referred to as "Ersatz F1".

F1 doesn't suck because of the power units or the aero regulations (or perhaps the lack of)…

F1 sucks due to the lack of testing,… restricted development,… and forced reliability.

In seasons past…

If you showed up at race 1 with an inferior car you got to work and fixed it. This requires that testing is allowed and development is essentially unrestricted.

Now on to forced reliability… In the 80's,… 90's,… and 2000's,… including the years of Ferrari's dominance,… wins were never assured the way they are in the current "Mercedes era". There was always excitement even on he final lap because cars failed. Engines were on the limit and exploded… regularly. Any mechanical device being pushed to its limit is at risk of failure. This was a huge part of the excitement in years past. Today,… failure is the exception,… and when something does fail,… it usually electrical grumbling or hydraulic pressure failure.

Consider top fuel drag racing… Clutches are 1 pass items. Engines are torn apart after each pass. That's less than 4 seconds of use under full load. Thats under 1000 engine revolutions.

F1 markets itself as the pinnacle of motorsport. Not in 2016.

 

+1

Bring back the sound, please.

 

(a) There goes your credibility.

(b) How do you know? You can bring back, Fangio, Clark, Senna, etc. in their prime??? You should market that technology.

 

How does "ALL the data from telemetry" make all the drivers nerve endings, reflexes, reaction times etc. the same?

The cars start near each other because that's what they are capable of in regard to the other teams. If the drivers were all the same, the team cars would always start right next to each other on the grid, not just "near' each other.....

 

To put my comments into context,
A. I'm talking about "race" horsepower, not "one-off" qualifying engines. Anybody could bolt a turbo the size of a garbage can onto an engine and run a super toxic witches brew through it. The horsepower quotes of 1050 for the v10 were not race trim. I would suspect the torque of the modern engines along with electrics also exceeds the old stuff.
B. Fitness levels. Schumacher started this trend.

Disclaimer: I much preferred the v10 formula, louder/more exciting.

 

Over a race these engines have far less peak hp than V10 formula. V10 2005 they would turn the engine down by a few hundred rpm, meaning they had very close to 1000hp available.

These V6 in are just at 1000hp in quali trim (for Mercedes factory team only), race they're far less as the ERS can't run at full power the entire lap. With medium generating (sapping power) and 50% battery use it's sustainable for double figure laps not really needing to recover much in between. If defending or attacking it's different again, they want recover more energy making the car even slower and use less energy for a lap before attacking with full power at the right spot...

But 1000hp in race trim? No chance. Accurate guess around 800-850.

 

Today's cars are less about the headline grabbing horse power figures, and more about the massive amount of torque that they can generate.

The old V12's/V10's and V8's were completely gutless when it came to torque output, whereas today's V6's (with the help of the electrical energy generated), have some serious low-end grunt now that absolutely fires them out of corners (as demonstrated by the number of times we have seen the cars spinning up the rear wheels at races).

I remember reading an interview with Jenson Button where he said he loved the torque the cars now have and they way they accelerate out of the corners.