Obviously you have to do both - attract sponsors and work on the car. That's what they do. They don't have damper engineers recruiting money; there are different people for different functions. The teams are hundreds of people. The notion that one detracts from the other is flawed unless the team is poorly managed. Poorly managed teams should fail. Now in terms of driver quality, obviously sponsorship money can get some not-so-deserving drivers into F1. But honestly, that is not a new development. You can go back to the 70s and that trend was already alive and well. Maybe earlier, but I don't know that era well. I find it curious though that you think the right recipe is: -Let just the ultra-afluent participate or finance -Keep it bleeding edge tech -Forget about sponsors You think that is going to bring the quality of racing up? Sounds like a recipe for the end of F1 to me. I also doubt there is enough private money, with interest in racing, to finance F1 teams as it stands today. Liberty will have to show that they can generate revenue, else you are looking at a terrible investment. Likewise, the larger the pool of drivers in motorsport, the higher the driver quality. Just like every other sport on the planet. If you tilt the system towards private money, it will get even worse than it is today.
F1 aiming for simpler and louder engines after 2020 Excerpt: Further details will be decided over the coming years, but the FIA said the manufacturers and F1's stakeholders were aligned on the following points for the post-2020 engine formula. -A desire to maintain F1 as the pinnacle of motor sport technology, and as a laboratory for developing technology that is relevant to road cars -Striving for future power units to be powerful, while becoming simpler and less costly to develop and produce -Improving the sound of the power units -A desire to allow drivers to drive harder at all times Sounds good to me. Wait 2020? ; (
You make many good points, and I accept that I don't really want only the rich to play but I did prefer the sport BEFORE sponsorship became the driving force. Even in the 80's sponsorship was just sponsorship but now the reason for F1 is so they can be mobile bill boards. I believe the pressure on drivers to keep the cars going is immense and this is why we don't see real racing into the first corner like we used to in the 70's and 80's, ie. the team manager has been in the drivers ear and said "mate our sponsors need the TV time, make sure you get through the first corner" So racing comes second. Regarding bleeding edge; F1 has always been bleeding edge. It is an engineers series not just a drivers series, and to be 100% honest why I keep up to date when I lost a lot of my interest in the actual racing years ago. I love these new power units and it reinvigorated my interest in F1. F1 was pushing the boundaries and making more performance from otherwise wasted energy. Pretty bloody clever and if you added this technology to the old v10's the cars would be faster, so it is NOT just to save the planet it is also to make the most efficient use of energy possible ... to go fast. What I hate about F1, and again I have to blame Bernie because I'm sure he applied his pressure, is the overly tight rules. It is ridiculous that the cylinder bore centres, number of cylinders, and so much more are set. Just imagine what we would now be racing if the rules were like the 70's? Pete
I don't have enough perspective and didn't follow back then as I wasn't born, but it seems like an amazing era from what I watch and read. I can understand the nostalgia for it. Being involved in racing myself now, almost every good "retired" driver I know ran out of sponsorship before he ran out of talent. A lot of the guys are still young also - mid 20s to mid 30s tops. It's a depressing story that is repeated 99% of the time. The people that continue have family wealth, racing heritage, or are very good at marketing. Obviously something like .01% are so talented that they might get free rides. But there is virtually no incentive for a race team to put a driver in their car for free (sans sponsorship) until you get to the highest levels of racing. Forget about a salary. It's upside down vs. most sports. I don't see a clear solution personally. I don't know if that is reality - you really think so? I mean I get that the sponsorship is huge...that's why you see mental cases like Maldonado racing beyond his shelf life in F1. People like Max Chilton on one of the best Indycar teams with very little talent or results, etc. That's the most egregious stuff to me; more so than any team actions or lack of aggression. At least in my opinion. I'm interested in F1 for similar reasons. I honestly prefer the actual racing in Indycar, but the new F1 cars are so fast this year that they are appealing despite a potential for less passing than last year. I miss the sound badly though, and the cars are too composed in race trim. They aren't easy to drive; but the drivers cannot push all the time to the max - look at the difference between qualy and the race in lap times. That is depressing to me. I could definitely do with looser rules. My only point was that it is still far from a spec series. But to loosen the rules more for bigger variance? I'm all for it.
FChat member The Mayor posted this link in another section and I thought I'd share it here. It's not exactly what we are talking about in this thread but it is still somewhat relevant... Is this the start of the slow march to all electric F1 racing? I doubt it but I never thought Ferrari would ever get involved (or even consider getting involved) in an all electric motor racing series...so who knows? Ferrari 'needs' to be involved in Formula E, says CEO Sergio Marchionne
With these new tyres they can push considerably harder longer than they did last year with the "tyres designed to drop off so quickly". IndyCars sound like poo to me also and to me they look somewhat strange ... my father enjoys it though as he is a fan of Dixon. DreamCarrera, F1 will be fully electric one day. It has to be to be relevant. You cannot be purchasing fully electric road cars and other things are racing. I've already said somewhere in this site that Formula E will become F1 one day and anything IC will be confined to historic racing ... but FE has a lot of work to be done to make it ready for the title of F1. One day FE cars will be lapping faster than the almighty 2004 F1's. Pete
That´s easy to say from your armchair. The guys who design and build these cars want to get paid every month, and carbon fiber, wind tunnels and dynamic engine test benches are expensive. Money = speed. I guess probably in the 60s someone complained about that Graham Hill appeared on too many oil advertising posters in petrol stations, and that he should concentrate in racing.
Years ago, I was invited in the McLaren hospitality suite at the German GP at Hockenheim, courtesy of Shell with which I had some business. What I witnessed was that most people attending the hospitaly suite were not F1 fans, but corporate guests, treating the occasion as a social event. Many were invited by suppliers, or McLaren sponsors. Most were not interested in the guided visit of the pits, the presentation by Ron Dennis, and some didn't even bother to watch the race!! But the champagne was flowing, there were photo sessions with the drivers, and plenty of food at the buffet. That's what most were interested in. For many well-heeled, a GP is just another occasion to be seen, to parade their trophy wives and to show off their expensive cars in the reserved car park. Really, it looked more like Royal Ascott on Ladies' Day than a motor race. The real F1 fans were seated in the grandstand, having pay an exorbitant price for their ticket and queued up hours at the wheel of their Golf or Fiesta to enter the muddy car park. Really 2 worlds apart.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/verstappen-hopes-f1-brings-back-v10-engines-in-future-888912/ Verstappen joins those in wanting V10s back.
yup.....Vettel said he would like V-12's back before the Melbourne GP....wishful thinking going forward and into the future? So far the "TALK" going for 2021 is for: simpler engines, some more noise than what they are now, and lower costs on the PU's; whether that means just to stay relevant with the current PU's as extending the battery life and making them lighter in that dept thereby making them less costlier than previous iterations.
Who knows. But unless they develop a new battery technology the batteries won't get much extra range or that much lighter. There may not have been a racing way for battery technology but certainly there has been a technology war between companies to make light and high performing batteries. If there was a way for them to perform even 25% longer we'd have someone right now with a phone and laptop that could do that, as they'd make a killing. Sadly it's not there, so that's kind of the end of that IMO. IMO battery technology should be explored in Formula E. Currently they do 50km on a run (at far lower speeds than F1). No way they'll get up to 300km.
It's definitely a step in the right direction I agree. If you are interested in innovative engineering, you will find it boring. Dixon is a beast. The new Indycar for 2018 looks amazing though and has proper aero from the floor, so should result in even better racing. I don't believe road cars or race cars will ever be 100% electric across the board.
True, but that's because their capacity is limited by the rules, and so is their output. If they were to free the rules, allow bigger batteries, more powerful motors, we could see some progress in Formula E. At the moment, the level of performance is probably between GP3 and GP2, well short of F1. In fact, I don't understand why people compare FE and F1.
I don't think you fully comprehend how big the battery in a Formula E car already is. Growing it by twice the size would mean carrying it behind you like a caravan! More power? Again need even bigger batteries for that, because more power = quicker draining batteries. They're not even close to GP3 speed, let alone GP2 (now F2).
I never underestimated the battery problem, but progress will only be made through competition, that's why I watch Formula E with interest. Also, electric motors will become more efficient, and use less energy. Compared to an IC engine, an electric motor is already more efficient, but energy storage is still to be resolved. But think about the instant torque !!!
Batteries haven't had a racing war or a real war, but they've had (and are having) a real techno war between all the companies. Lithium is getting to near the end of it's development. The electro motor? Well how much can really be done with it still? They're already ''pulsing'' instead of one continuous supply of power. There's not much more in it. The instant torque? Great. Formula E already has it and it's dreary as ****.
I once read in a science magazine, that scientists were researching electricity supply without cable. For example, you could recharge the batteries on an electric car, just by parking it on a source of power, without the need to plug. There was also a project where they were trying to power an electric vehicle, by transferring the electricity from cables running under the road. That could solve the battery problem by doing away with them! That could be the solution they are working on? I don't think there are limits to progress, but our problem is that we cannot imagine it, so most people oppose it. Who would have imagined maybe 150 years ago, that airwaves could one day allow the transfer of sound and image? But the radio came about, the wireless, the TV, GPS, etc...
I have also read that battery technology is limited. Even in research labs battery tech doesn't seem to have a long range answer. Just like the subject of hydrogen and fusion, all sounds good but not practical. IMHO as far as full electric cars replacing I/C completely I don't think it will happen. With multiple drivers you can drive an I/C vehicle back and forth across the country non stop.
Maybe the research should be oriented towards quick charge, instead of higher battery capacity. After all, IC vehicle stop for 5 minutes to refuel when they reach their range limit (300 or 400 miles range), but to charge a battery on an electric car like a Tesla takes a bit longer, although the range is similar. If we could shorten the battery charge to 5 minutes, it would become more practical to take electric cars on long journeys. In Europe, they recommend drivers to have a break every 2 hours of driving on long distance; imagine if you could plug your electric car at every stop! Also, most cars are only used for short distances, like 50 miles per day to go to work, or shopping; the electric car can easily cope with that - they are ideal town cars.
Is it possible that hydrogen will win? What?; we all know that hydrogen takes more energy to make than it can then give back so my comment that hydrogen will win obviously seems silly, but ... If we used solar energy to create hydrogen then we have hydrogen made for simply the cost of the solar plant and it's maintenance, the actual solar energy is there for free. This makes producing inefficient hydrogen suddenly cost effective and plausible. The advantage of hydrogen is that current car and energy transporting methods could remain with relatively minor changes. Although personally I'd like to rid the world of the energy wasting ships that transport currently gas and oil all around the world ... The big negative to hydrogen is it takes water, I believe, to create it and using a life sustaining product to create energy to power our iPads, TV sets, etc. seems pretty silly ... It is a complex problem and the difference is now we have the knowledge and intelligence to make a more informed decision when back when the IC engine was developed it was a case of "heck we have made an engine", back slapping all around ... now what can we do with it Pete
In the early years of motoring, the IC engine wasn't the obvious winner. Many early cars were electric or steam powered in fact. What happened is that once the gremlins on the petrol engine were solved (ignition and lubrication mostly) it was seen as vastly superior to the others by the buyers of the time (mostly rich people or aristocrats) and the development was abandoned on steam and electric power. The first car to go over 100km/h was electric, and the first car to go over 200km/h was steam powered, I believe. Early steam cars benefitted from the technical knowledge gained on the steam engines before them.
Singletrack, this post of yours from above includes a quote from me, yet those are not my words...somehow things got mixed-up (I don't think you did this intentionally, I think it's probably a problem with the software) and it looks like I said something I never said. Worse yet, I don't fully agree with the quote that appears to come directly from me...LOL It's hard enough keeping track of these conversations as it is, now we have to contend with the software mixing-up peoples quotes?!
You know what? It's all about one thing and that's entertainment. You can have the competition part without entertainment. If you want F1 to be more like golf or baseball, then so be it... that's what it will become. The masses have spoken... long live the masses. But if you want to retain the actual true factor why F1 became a success in the first place, you cannot ignore the sound and fury of the engines... you can't !! Not possible !! Anyone seen an action movie with a car chase lately that uses electric vehicles (unless it's a comedy)? Think about why that is. The most famous chase scenes were those with screeching tires and howling engines. It's entertaining ! You can justify anything in this world: Vacuum cleaner engines, "relevant" car design? Sorry but nobody is going to convince me that screaming engines and a danger of missing a shift or lack of traction or crapping out your standing start isn't a part of F1 (ergo racing) mystic. I was there in Formula Atlantic support races in Canada when F1 was there circa early 1990's and Holy Jesus you could be sitting all the way up in the stands and still need ear plugs as the cars screamed off the hairpins. You could smell the exhaust everywhere. Your hair would stand on end. And we should dump that for "what" exactly? Mediocrity? Blandness? Some Orwellian utopia of electricity and pablum that doesn't offend anyone because it's somehow not politically correct? **** politically correct!! How many times do we need to remind ourselves... the CO2 from 20 race cars running for say, 8 hours a weekend is so insignificant to the health of this planet it's an insult to say otherwise, while VW created so much NO2 from it's cheating diesel engines that Europe ended up with more noxious polution in it's major cities than in the U.S. Really people? Dammit all... the human race is indeed not going to go out with a bang, but with a whimper... or think another way... if we *are*to go out with a bang, then why whimper like sheeples until we get there !!! And we call ourselves Ferrari owners? We talk about legendary and history and what makes the brand great, while at the same time, blabbing and humming and hawing and justifying ourselves into accepting what "teacher" says is "responsible". Bull*** on that.
