Brawn Wants to Experiment with Race Formats

Cars used to be as light as 1200 pounds,
Now they weigh as much as IRL cars.

 

If it introduces more strategy and allows us to see different teams try different things - yes, why not? At the moment, the races end as they started in general, mainly two by two, due to the removal of any reasonable strategy. The most we get is the odd red bull trying different tyres at a certain pitstop, but it makes little difference. Adding in a little danger and the option to spread the fuel out in different degrees allowing sprints for periods might give us a bit more interest. Remember France when Schumacher had not chance against the mclarens that day, they set up for four pit stops and he ran most of the race in 'qualifying mode', and won against the odds. When did we see anything like that in the last ten years, let alone these boring hybrid ones where unless a merc breaks down the result was decided in MARCH IN AUSTRALIA

 

I agree. Let's see more strategy games and multiple factors that will make someone win the race. Otherwise it's boring and very predictable like it has been for the past 10+ years.

 

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that F1 cars have the onboard capacity to complete a race without refueling, or that they are permitted only a certain amount of fuel to complete a race distance. But, that refueling is permitted but not required. What would a team's strategy be? Start the race full of fuel and not add during the race. Start half full and add fuel during a one-and-only pit stop, which would be 10 seconds rather than 3? Start with 1/3 load and plan to add fuel during each of 2 pit stops which would be 5 seconds long? Would the light load of fuel more than offset the extra time spent in the pit? Who could guess which team was on which fuel strategy?

BTW, I know it can be difficult keeping up with FIA regulations, but the minimum weight is to be measured without fuel.

"ARTICLE 4: WEIGHT
4.1 Minimum weight:
The weight of the car, without fuel, must not be less than 722kg at all times during the Event."

 

Human memory is a remarkably inaccurate. We often tend to have distorted and romantic view of the past. I remember the races from the mid 2000s. They were as processional as they get and it's reflected in the data. The car behind would catch up, get within 1 sec of the following and that would be the end of it. The only really great races were in the wet, which were thankfully still unneutered back then. After all the problem so bad that fans complained so much that we ended up with DRS. I'm afraid we may return to the racing of that era in 2017 in terms of having no passes in corners.

How often do we actually see remarkable feats of strategy? Refueling ruined on track racing far more than we saw wondrous feats of strategic brilliance. There's a reason that was banned as well, it wasn't just safety. They race against a virtual clock rather than each other. We view the past with rosy tinted glasses. At the end of the day, a slower car is more often than not going to stay behind a much faster car by the end of the race regardless of strategy. The solution in the grand scheme of things is a tighter field of performance. Most of it is technical, but also what feeds into it is more equal payout terms from FOM/Liberty to enable this.

Ultimately the ingredients you need for good racing and unpredictable seasons are minimally turbulent aero wakes, PU/engine parity and some tire degradation. PU/engine parity is particularly important because 1.) when there isn't, the spread is far more than there is with chassis and aero performance and 2.) the development and manufacturing lead times are way way WAY longer than aero and chassis.

This is a must read article for any F1 fan, particularly since as a bunch we tend to complain regardless of the current rules. Article from a year ago, Paddy Lowe discusses the aero side of overtaking.

Paddy Lowe on the science of F1 overtaking and what it means for 2017
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+1

We DON'T need refuelling in F1; the races are short enough, and the cars light enough to run on one tank full.

Refuelling is just like mandatory tyre changes: unnecessary gimmicks to spice up the show.

In F1 it brings all sorts of tactics and make the race difficult to follow.

Make the racing interesting and don't add artificial elements.

 

Why not?

Because we don't want to see tactics!! We want to see racing !!

We want to see a grid of cars driven "all balls out" from start to finish, and not managed by some pit tacticians telling them when to stop .

It's a drivers championship, and it shouldn't be decided by team tactics. It's not a refuelling championship, or a pit crew championship ...

It's up to the teams to prepare their cars to race from start to finish, and in the words of the late Jack Brabham "when the lights goes off, the bullsh*t stops !!"

 

+1

 

Unless refueling takes about 30 seconds it will always be faster to refuel at least once and it would mean drivers will always have faster, lighter and more responsive cars and won't need to go into fuel saving modes, lift and coast or any of that BS.
The question is not why introduce refueling back but rather why keep the ban on it instead.

 

The answer is easy: refuelling will bring back more tactics.

Tactics are not a measure of the drivers' skill.

The rules should be that a GP should be ran with ONE set of tyres, and ONE tank full of gas.

 

I don't think F1 was ever meant to be just a way to find out who the best driver is or it would be boring as hell. Speed, tactics, technology, team effort amd large amounts of money involved are what make it more special than any other racing series

 

It was created as the World Drivers Championship, and it worked quite well doing just that !!

Later it became in parallel a Constructors Championship, then a support for advertising and finally a media business.

F1 should go to its roots, and forget about the ads-on.

Tactics should have no place in races that are in fact sprints.

 

Well, at the moment, a lack of variables means that the same cars win every race unless they have a mechanical issue, which in itself is getting as rare as rocking horse ****, so I'm afraid if you want to see a race, better introduce something that allows teams to do different strategies to attempt to do so, cos right now, f1 couldn't get much more boring

 

Who says f1 is a sprint? 200 miles may not be Le Mans, but it ain't the 7furlong championship either. No one drives balls out for the race, no one has the fuel for this, and no tyres could provide good grip for 200 miles of balls out racing William, and you know it.

F1 at the moment is a procession, and with reliability at an all time high, it will always be most likely unlike the old days when you always had some attrition. So in order to make it more interesting, you have to introduce something that allows the most switched on teams to use alternative strategies to try to win, especially when the best car is so far ahead and testing is banned

 

Is it really? When was the last time a driver became WDC just because of his skills?

If you want to have more impact of the driver then first bring back testing...let a driver develop a car together with his engineers over the season and his input in the car will be much more than right now.
Look at the current testing: out of the box the Mercedes and the Ferrari look good without the drivers having done anything about it over the winter, the RB and certainly the McLaren not so much. Now Alonso does not have any chance to develop the McLaren as he only has 8 testing days (he even has to share with his team mate) and if the car does not run (just like the McLaren does at the first tests) there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. He will basically sit in Melbourne in a car he did not influence at all.
Second: take away the sensors on the car. Let the drivers decide by themselves when they think a tyre has to be changed and not an engineer at a laptop back in the factory knowing exactly how many tenths a new tyre is faster and where the driver is coming out in the field after the stop.

Let the driver influence more in the tactic and development of the car and his input is much higher than at the moment where he "only" has to drive the fastest qualifying possible with the cars potential, do not screw the start and after that do what the pits tell you (safe fuel, engine mode, pit stop...).

 

Motor racing cannot be different from other sports.

You cannot punish the BEST for winning, and change the rules to give a chance to those that can't catch up!!

Could you imagine that in any other sport that is dominated by one individual or a team for a period?

Should we handicap Ussain Bolt for winning too much?

Should we punish Pheps because he gets too many gold medals in swimming?

Honestly ... "Variables" ? really ?

I know that it can be irritating for some to see the same winning all the time, but that's what competition is about: the best gets to the top.

 

GPs are maximum 190 miles long (160 for Monaco), but cannot go over 2 hours anyway.

Look at last year results, most GPs were covered in just over 80 minutes, with the longest one going to 90 minutes.

GPs are short, because that's what the broadcasting dictates: the tele-viewers just don't have the attention span going over that period.
With cars going faster, the races will even become shorter.

So, in essence, they are sprints.

Long gone are the days of the 500kms GPs lasting 3 hours+.

In a sprint race, you don't need, IMO, to introduce artificial gimmicks to reshuffle the pack.

That may be current practice in NASCAR, but hopefully will never be part of F1, I hope.

I don't mind watching a procession with the best combination car/driver at the front: that's how it's supposed to be.

You don't suddenly slow down the athlete who is leading a 5000m track race because he is the best and has led from the start! You don't suddenly handicap the leading football team by 10 points because their opponents cannot score! That's heresy ...

People who are bored by procession in F1 are watching the wrong sport !! Watching the best at the lead of a race is rewarding in itself; there is nothing more "interesting".

 

Uhh...

How much fun is it to watch Hamilton far out in the lead cruising around because his car is incredible?

Not very.

 

The issue of testing has been decided years ago.

Bernie offered the teams 5 more GPs on the calendar each year against a stop in unlimited testing.

Guess what they preferred... It was a no brainer.

5 extra GPs gave them extra income, where days and days of testing did cost them a fortune.

You cannot sell testing to the media, have the public at the gate, etc...

I don't think unlimited testing like in Schumacher days will ever come back again.

McLaren issues are mechanical and electronics, IMO, and these could have been ironed out without testing the car on track. The power unit needs bench time, not track time. Again, it's only my opinion. I despair seeing McLaren ever winning a GP again ... Really sad ...

 

It may not be everyone's cup of team, but then if he is the "best" driver in the best car, what can you do about it?

I remember how some GPs where won by huge margins years ago, and nobody complained then.

I missed watching the German GP at the Nurburgring the year it was won by Jackie Stewart, but he finished 5 (five) minutes before the next driver, having completely dominated the race, the field and the weather conditions!

On the Nurburg, a lap was more than 7 minutes then, so imagine that the public saw nothing of the race for most of the time, and then a gaggle of cars passing by, less than 10 times in 1 hour!

Stewart won by almost a lap of the 22km circuit, 5 minutes in front! And people applauded the performance then.

I don't recall anyone at the time asking for pit stops and tyre changes because they didn't like the best driver to win by a comfortable margin.

Listening to some comments about racing on this forum, I am wondering if I am not living in the wrong century sometimes!!

 

Big difference between 1 driver outclassing the field by a huge margin occasionally than 1 doing the same thing for 3 years straight, all because of superior equipment.

 

But then you can not talk about a deserved drivers WDC as his input into the outcome of the season is very much reduced to whether he beats his team mate or not and whether he sits in the right car and he has no chance to change that no matter what.

So? But Alonso has no chance to do anything to improve the car at all if there is no testing and on the rare occasions there is he is not able to drive. So despite being one of the best drivers he has absolutely no chance in getting the WDC, no matter how good he is or how willing to improve he is. So your argument about refueling/tyres/strategy is wrong as it will not make the WDC dependant on the strategists because the WDC allready IS dependant on the team/pits/mechanics/engineers.
The best example are the last WDC of Vettel and Hamilton: all they had to do is beating their team mate so the WDC was actually a duel rather a championship.
I don´t say that it was much different in the past but we are going in the wrong direction at the moment as it gets even worse.

 

Allowing testing and varying strategy can allow better drivers and teams to overcome powerful ones with either lesser drivers or fewer ideas, that makes the race far more interesting. I used to, sadly, sit and watch GPs logging the laptimes and comparing them so I could predict qualifying pace, pit stops etc, now I do the ironing and my filing during the race, looking up on occasion to hopefully watch some red flashing through the picture, unfortunately usually in sixth o seventh place!

 

Alonso made the wrong career decision, and no amount of testing would change that!!

That McLaren chassis is probably not bad, but the Honda engine is a dead duck.

No amount of track testing could improve the engine; it needs dyno time.

No point of blaming the testing ban to explain Alonso's lack of performance.

Honda is just useless this time, so don't blame the lack of testing for Alonso's misfortune.

Regarding Alonso, I am sick and tired of hearing "he is one of the best drivers" around.

On present form he isn't, and in this game, you are only as good as your last race or your last season.

 

So, you blame a team for doing a better job than the opposition?

I thought that was the idea of sport?

Otherwise, it's just choreography dictated by the organisers.