I don't see the fascination with 3 pedals - I know in the dark ages that I love so much it showed the skill of the driver being able to manage the gears while airborne sideways in the rain (and why Frank Gardner realized he wasn't going to make it as an F1 driver) has absolutely no relevance today (unless you live in a third world country) the manual gearbox is dead! John
I think flappy paddles are great for racing but I see your point...a great driver can make a difference on a track by being great at shifting with an H gate and a mistake made in a dog fight will actually be punished now...The rare mistakes drivers make these days mostly go unpunished because of the idiotic runoff areas et all. RE drivers sweating, they are much more fit these days than back then so it's a little irrelevant, but I see your point. IMO they need to give a set amount of fuel (lets call it 140 liters) + 10 extra put in so that they run rich the entire race so there's little fuel saving etc.
I remenber when Ferrari tried automatic gearboxes during the 80 season...Gilles said he would never touch the damn thing..and they forgot about it..
I think you really have hit one of the key elements with this comment. What made F1 exciting was 2 things, obvious racing and unbridled creativity in engineering. A few years back people made the mistake of thinking racing = passing, so we came up with a series of Nintendo solutions to ensure more passing. They even "proved" how successful they were telling us how many more passes were completed. But watching a highway pass, unfortunately wasn't "racing". You see, I used to love watching two evenly matched cars and drivers slog it out for multiple laps, even if no pass was achieved. So did everyone else, because that was "racing". What we did with the DRS and KERS etc was tantamount to making the goals 20 feet wider in soccer or the lowering the basketball hoop by 24 inches. 79 French GP battle for 2nd/3rd place between GV and RA was epic, both the passes and the defenses. The second part to making GP racing riveting is getting rid of the mountains of rules. These are there purportedly to "prevent" costs from climbing too high, yet, like the American Football "prevent defense" all it seems to "prevent" is winning
I'm throwing in the manual gearbox for sheer skill and real challenge. It's probably to tough these days anyways, and as many said, it's outdated. Personally, i drive a damn auto car, but i will never hesitate for one second to drive a manual. Besides traffic, such joy, being in control of the car, and not some computer. Regarding sweating, the cars are easier to drive these days Bas. Remember how Mika was sweating profusely 1999 Malaysian GP, while MS stood looking fresh as a flower? How often you see these kind of things these days? Now it's all about trying to win, by driving as slow as possible. Was it last year or so, when Hamilton said on the radio...'I can't drive any more slower man...' It already shows the current state of F1.
I remember that comment so well. It made me think of sprint cycle racing, perhaps the silence lovers and green fans will be ecstatic when we reach this level of economy [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cL1lXDNSJQ]Racing?[/ame]
Yes agree with both, but drivers also sweat a lot less now because they're all under very strict training. The more fit a driver is, the fewer mistakes he will make...Schumacher learned it from Senna and perfected it. Now all drivers have their own fitness guru with them at all times.
Great post. I hope this "more power" scenario happens because it absolutely needs to. And do something about the noise, dammit. More revs and more fuel should help.
