If Ferrari ever left Formula 1, would you stop watching?

You forgot "hire Alonso" biggest joke ever!

 

..or is using his brain....

 

Merc was smart when the FIA opened up that loophole they took advantage of it the others did not. Merc knew that the oil consumption would cause an X amount of performance loss under the new regs. The FIA left a door open Merc decided to use that door..

Actually if you read the F1 sporting regulations a lot of the rules are quite vague in defining what is legal and what is not.

This is directly from the 2017 sporting regs dealing with aerodynamic wind tunnel testing. Looks fairly water tight?? Actually there is nothing that states that a team cannot accept wind tunnel testing results from a "Bored Aerodynamics engineer" Or Aerodynamics Major at a university working on a term paper. Since they are not "associated with that competitor" there is nothing restricting the team from using that result on there own car. The only way the FIA could control this is by watching every wind tunnel out there and every computer running CFD simulations that is impossible as some in classified govt facilities. Is this happening?? I cannot say but if I was the head Aero guy at a F1 team I wound possibly take a "Recruting" trip to a university and say "you might want to look at F1 car aerodynamics as I plan on hiring some brilliant minds in a couple of years" and I am willing to give you some creative input on your studies.

Did the aero guy sign a contract with the students? No. Are the students working for the team? No Can this be called tutorial work? Yes Can the aero guy use the students work on the teams car without violating the sporting regs? Absolutely.

There will always be grey area in the rules. The teams that work the grey to there advantage leads until the others catch up or the FIA cuts out the grey area in question.

 

Two things would make me quit watching F1. Ferrari leaving and constant change of the rules the way they do in the past 5-10 years.

 

The reality is F1s rules are much more stable than many other formulas. Look at WEC for an example of our too much rule changing can ruin the formula. The manufacturers have all given up and rushed for the exit because of this...

F1 has always had a major rule refresh every few years and minor updates from time to time. Its the way it has always been. It's never easy, but I have confidence a fresh agreement will be reached... eventually...

 

This was not the question as I agree that it is not Mercedes´ fault...unfortunately you left out my next sentence were I asked for what reason the FIA gives such an answer when specifically asked about hte problem?

 

The only people that can answer that is the rule makers at the FIA or any sanctioning body for that matter. Sometime I wonder if the sanctioning bodies hire the dumbest people they can find to write the rules. A lot of times they make knee jerk reactions to the rules to outlaw a specific item IE oil consumption but don't spell it out in full detail allowing for loopholes. If the FIA simply said at Spa and beyond if your engine consumes more than X amount of oil in a race you will be disqualified! that would have been the end of it.

I was called out at a IJSBA jet-ski national about running "Illegal fuel". I was required to submit a sample for testing and the result came back that the fuel was legal by the scope of the rule book as they could not find sufficient quantities of methanol ethanol or nitro methane in the fuel sample that was forbidden by the rules.They did find NitroPropane2 in the fuel sample that was a performance enhancing compound but not listed as forbidden by the rule book. Prior to the world finals that year the IJSBA issued an addendum to the fuel rules banning NitroPropane2 several racers myself included withdrew from the finals as we lost our competitive edge. The next season we were running a different fuel mixture that gave us a nice performance boost. Where did we come up with these witches brews? from a chemistry professor at NMSU that wrote the regulations for NASCAR, NHRA, IHRA Etc. but not the IJSBA. He clued us into the compounds to use we had to figure out the jetting, ignition curve and compression ratios to make it work.

 

I guess you are right. However, the upesting part about changing the rules lately has to do with these hybrid technology engines. I'm not a big fan off it as well as many here. I would like to see them going back to the V8s (at least).

 

agreed.

It's also not fair that a manufacturer has a 3 to 5yr development(when compared to the other manufacturers) lead and once the rules and regulations go there way, that lead time in development furthers their dominance i.e. 2014 engines set in place but the lead manufacturer is already working on 2015 or 2016 engine due to their lead time in development and reliability. Its catch-up for everyone else.

 

Totally agree. These super complex engines add nothing to the show. The fans don't give a fig about that. Zero. All they do is limit the potential for anyone except the richest mega corps to compete. They have to go.

 

Honestly I enjoy the technical challenges that go along with the current engine formula. I would like to go back to the V-10 and V-12 days as those were ear candy at wide open throttle. Honestly the FIA needs to come up with an equivalence formula to allow the teams to run different engine designs at the same time while Merc and Renault might run V6 turbo hybrids, Ferrari might want to go with a NA V12 and RedBull decides to run a V8 with KERS. Honda goes with a inline 4 supercharged system. All of them will be restricted to a max horsepower peak as well as a reliability standard. This way each team has more flexability in designing a total package to win the world championship. a V6 might allow for a shorter wheelbase car but the turbo raises the CG of the car and has higher cooling demands. A V12 require a transverse gearbox to shorten the wheelbase but allow for better cooling and aero flow around the car.

Makes for much different car designs from each team and less copy cats on bodywork and aero as what works for a v6 turbo wont work for a v10.

 

Suggestion: Why not run a different series in F1. One for the big Manufacturer's to do all the high tech wizardry it wants for road car relevance and the other (3rd car maybe) would be from a motorsport perspective? So instead of 21 cars on the grid, we go to 30 cars on the grid. Just suggesting.

 

Nice idea, but there would be issues of holding up cars between the classes, leading to numerous moans, it's bad enough having to lap the slower cars now, without another 10 cars tooling around

 

MotoGP tried that with the CRT {Claiming Rules Team} Provision in an effort to allow smaller teams with a smaller budget to race. It was a flop lasting only 2 seasons.

 

Ferrari and F1 are synonymous. If Ferrari leaves, F1 will lose some fans, but I would still watch. I love to watch the racing, and hope to see greater competitiveness among the teams. When 1st to 3rd are within a second of each other, that is good racing. Finishing 15 seconds ahead of 2nd, is boring.

 

I watched the Singapore Grand Prix this year - Right up to the second corner when both Ferrari drivers were climbing out of their cars!

I switched the TV off at that point and went outside to wash and polish My car instead, as that instantly became a better use for My Sunday afternoon.

If Ferrari were to leave F1, My car would look a lot better for it!

 

Bernie believes the Ferrari threat could be real . . . .

https://www.formula1blog.com/f1-news/ecclestone-ferrari-threat-is-real-if-regulations-prevent-winning/

 

Of course it's real. When we had testing and development, teams could catch and pass the best cars, and vice versa. The rules at the moment prevent that, the fastest car in 2014, race one, is STILL THE FASTEST CAR, at the penultimate race of 2017. It's ridiculous. It's not racing, it's demonstration driving, with the odd upset. Why should ferrari stay, I want to know, unless the rules allow competition

 

The reason to turn off your set was because after that incident, it was obvious Hamilton was going to cruise around to a victory for the next 80 minutes. That's been the problem with F1 for 6 years now.

 

Ferrari leaving would suck...however, it would leave a vacuum that others would fill. Porsche and who knows what other teams. Ferrari would be the big loser if they left F1.

Maybe the real question should be would you leave Ferrari if they left F1. For me, yes. F1 makes Ferrari special. Without F1 Ferrari is just another luxury car brand.

 

F1 is already dead. The solution would be fewer if any rules (excluding safety). Remove all electronic driver aids. Then give a displacement size (with a turbo equivalent) and that's it. No other rules. Design and run the engine you want, design the car however you want, use suppliers if you want to instead of building your own parts. and everyone go racing. If some teams go bankrupt, so be it. But all this won't happen. I'll watch the last two races of this year but next year, with or without any particular cars participating, I probably won't be back. For me, it has lost its magic and its appeal.

 

That's a bit pre-emptive

I agree with a lot that you say re the rules as you only have to look at the stupidity of the front wing designs to realise the teams need to spend more money on the engines and less on esoteric artwork called aerodynamics.

As Enzo once said, aerodynamics is for people that can't build engines

Mind you he eventually put wings on his cars, put the engine in the middle and even put disc brakes on after the Jags clobbered his cars at Le Mans

 

A bit, but the writing is on the wall. Viewership continues to evaporate year after year, and FIA's only response is to do nothing. This is the same FIA that killed WRC and chased off all the majors players in WEC but one. Now there's a new commercial rights holder that is doubling down on things that don't work.

Ferrari in general can do very well without F1. It's obvious from annual sales that losing in F1 hasn't done a single thing to harm their sales figures. There would be massive layoffs on the F1 side of Ferrari if they left F1...which they won't do unless Uncle Morris pulls his sponsorship and Liberty starts hacking away at their participation bonus. F1 is a handful of key events away from turning into a smoldering crater, and no one at the FIA or Liberty realize this.

 

Exactly right.

FIA is basically a cancer for motorsport. Let them play with their scalextrix and pretend racing is green. What we need (desperately) is a motorsports governing body that also cares about the sport and entertainment factor of it all.

In the 80s when the FIA said we should all go to turbo engines for cost and safety reasons, F1 became massively expensive and the cars incredibly fast. Then they finally said ''listen guys, it was our bad it became so expensive, now we'll go to NA engines''. Will history repeat itself?

Watch any youtube video of pre 2014 F1 and all you'll read is ''such great sounding engines please have them back''. Any post 2014 it's ''these engines sound like ****''. Back in the 2000s it wasn't perfect, of course. We already started to see the effects of ever complicating aero, the engines with their massive traction control. This can all be fixed of course.

Simple maths dictates that over 1000bhp should be easily possible with rev capped engines. Using the V8 era's 750bhp at 18000 rpm as a benchmark, going to 3.2 liter V12 will see us crack 1000 already. The V8's never had direct injection, mind you...say the revs are dialed back a little bit to 16000 RPM 1000bhp would be easily attainable.

Maybe engine layout should be free again. Back in the late 90s Ferrari had a V12 back in development, but then in 2000 the ban on anything other than V10 came so the project was scrapped. IMO there should be some rules to prohibit cost spiraling out of control, such as imposing a minimum weight of engines and materials used. I do think we'd see a mix of V10 and V12 engines. V8 I'm not sure, maybe now we'd see a V8 here or there since it does have the aerodynamic advantages. Put a cap on overall revs (say 18) and 2 weekends per engine unit minimum, and cost cap on the engine, a maximum amount which they can sell for.

With simplified aerodynamics making the sport competitive again, and not near as much as teams can spend, fans coming back to watch, sponsors coming back....it has potential. But the way F1 is going now? I doubt it.

 

I started watching in 2005 after I bought a Mondial. I was bought a book (because I had a Ferrari) Christmas 2004 - "Ferrari in F1". Because of that book and the car I decided to give it a try. First year Ferrari failed to win a WDC with Schumacher, my fault

I only watch it because I like and own one. Over the years the watching has degraded to only watching it recorded. This way I can fast forward through the dull bits (most of it).

Linked with F1 becoming pay per view only in 2019 (UK) and/or certainly if Ferrari leave F1 I will not be watching F1. I do indeed watch it purely because Ferrari are in it. If they enter another global series then that is what I will watch.

The way I understand this disagreement is Liberty/FIA wanting to change the engine, leaving out bits and adding bits. As I understand it Mercedes and Renault are also not keen on it. It will possibly mean yet another re-design and engines from different manufacturers will be similar making it more like GP2.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/41857101
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/41833948