How to fix Formula one

The last thing the world needs is another spec series that slows the fast guys down for the sake of the show. That would be the death of F1

 

I know a thing or two about race car aerodynamics. None of the forms or data in the book "Race Car Aerodynamics: designing for speed" J. Katz is applicable if you implement the convex hull rule. you cannot build a wing more modern than a Boeing Constelation wing with a convex hull rule. No multi-element wings, no wing end plates, no barge boards, no spoilers, no diplanes, no venturies, no diffusers, no splitters, ... all of these violate the convex hull rule.

This is not to say aerodynamic gimmics won't be found, I'm pretty sure they will be, but they will not be of the same scale that is found today. So, one could expect the aerodynamicists to find 10%-30% whereas today the are already exploiting 300% gains in tire traction <with versus without aero>.

 

We're getting a bit off track. My point was simply that if a car is traveling through air there will be aerodynamic effects and the simple statement "ban aero" was a non sequitur.
Beyond that I think the nature of F1 is technical sophistication and anything that adds limitations had better have good cause and be as limited as possible.

 

I think I'm starting to understand....

So, it's not that you guys want the races to be closer, you just want the faster car to be able to pass the slower car. Once he's past, you want him to run away and finish a minute ahead if he can?

So, for instance, in the last race, Alonso could have passed Massa with actual driving, then he'd have just run away from him? OK, I get it now. I'm really not trying to be sarcastic, I guess I had misinterpreted things to be that people wanted the races to be closer, but that's not really the case. You just don't want slower cars to have the ability to hold fast cars back? In that case I suppose movable rear wings are perfect.

 

I know you have only just started watching F1.

The racing is only half of the show in F1.

In most racing a team buys a car from a factory and does very minor tuning to it over the year.

In F1 everyone makes their own cars and everything is in constant flux and the technology is pushing everything ahead.

F1 has more in common with NASA than NASCAR and that is why I love it and have been watching for over 25 years. My wife grew up in Woking and my kids were born at the hospital down the road from McLaren.

 

Well put but I'm getting the feeling that someone is being intentionally obtuse

 

I took him at face value because it is not a bad question no matter his motivation.

 

Sorry if you didn't get it, I WAS being facetious......

F1 should be a technical tour de force, but allowing huge amounts of downforce ruins the racing, as we have all seen. There has to be a balance between downforce and power. If you allow huge downforce you need to allow huge power so that the driver re-enters the equation (also assuming you don't allow traction control). Big downforce on low powered cars means the driver just plants the pedal most of the time, and where is the skill in that? Sorry, but I just don't see it.

Big downforce also makes for dangerous racing in that if downforce is lost (think wing breakage) then the car really can go into orbit.

Look at motorcycle racing (where there is no downforce) and there is plenty of passing (yes the road is wider relative to the vehicle so that helps too) but the braking distances are longer and that gives the people opportunity to pass.

I want to know what is the best car and driver on that day, and if you can't pass, you never know..

 

About three months before the first Detroit GP they freshly paved the entire circuit. The street course went through a number of intersections and they had to fill and smooth it so that the cars wouldn't become airborne as they went over the cross streets. They did it early enough that it would season and wouldn't come apart when raced on. At the time of the first race it was pristine blacktop and it was so smooth that kids were out skateboarding on it. While the surrounding roads in Detroit were and still are a mess, the racing surface for the downtown course was like glass. I worked the race and walked the entire course, so unless you were there too (which I highly doubt from your comments), you don't know what your'e talking about.

 

Ian's right. I've always wondered about limiting/removing wings from an aesthetic point of view--stemming from a race a while back when the rear wing was knocked off and the car looked pretty cool! BUT, back to the point. F1 has never been a series that featured lots of overtaking, unless you include seasons where there was a big disparity in the quality of teams (early 90's), which is actually called "lapping". However, the difference with F1 today and the years to which we all seem to harken is, in the "good old days", F1 rules were about development, growth, experimentation and innovation. Today, the rules seem to be implemented more for limiting, restricting and undoing the developments. The sport was more interesting to look at from afar, with unique designs that screamed cutting edge. We don't get that feeling any more, even though as fans we know that there's a tremendous amount of high-tech R&D going on, it doesn't always reveal itself to the common fan. The rules need to stop coming from the approach of taking away and return to opening up the drawing board. Financially, the sport will regulate itself. If 2nd or 3rd tier teams can't survive, so be it.

So, regarding aero, I mentioned before that I'd like to see either no wings, or the wings limited to between the rear axle and roll hoop (I know, I know, that's a restriction!). As for tracks, yes many tracks no longer mesh with the current cars. But that's not a viable option for change. But the series needs to somehow continue to look interesting to fans other than aerospace engineers. A friend of mine watched one of the races on FOX, his first since the 80's. He texted me and asked "Dude, when did F1 cars get so f'ing ugly?"

 

F1 is a race that take place continuously at the factory, and then every couple of weeks the guys get together at a race track to compare notes on who is making forward progress.

 

You are correct, I was not there and never suggested I was. I was at 2 of the Pheonix Street races and have been to more Long Beach GPs than I can count as I live 10 miles from the circuit. What I did say is and i will expand on it now is that I have raced on all kinds of tracks on 3 continents and in all kinds of conditions and I can't believe that a temporary street circuit could be compared to a billiard table. I know that no matter how great a job the crews do the roads in Detroit are not great and with so many transitions to patch and fill it is impossible to get perfectly smooth transitions that would be indistinguishable from driving on a permanent circuit.

That was and still is my point.

 

I will add to my last comment one more thing.

I think the guys driving the F1 cars in Detroit that weekend were also there and might have had a bit more experience with actually driving a F1 car on your billiard table and on a permanent circuit and from your comments I know which one they preferred.

 

I am sure they would prefer a permanent circuit, but the Detroit course was plenty smooth. The cars of that era had huge downforce since it was almost unregulated and they were using skirts at the time. In order to support that downforce they had very stiff springs and even on what appeared to be a smooth surface the cars were so stiff that the drivers were being bounced around since the only real suspension was the tires.

Allowing big downforce results in cars that cannot be driven on anything but the smoothest surfaces. To me that's artificial. If a car can't be driven on a real road, what's it good for? This same observation applies to endurance cars too, and perhaps even more so. Very low ground clearance and huge downforce results in vehicles that have no other use than to go around a smooth track. Endurance racing (and F1 too) would benefit if the surfaces that they raced on were more like real roads. Suspension technology and ride improvements would transfer over to road cars. Ride height would have to increase and that would decrease downforce caused by the interaction of the body with the ground. When they stopped running endurance races on real roads, the cars became much more single purpose and ceased to be useful for anything else but racing.

 

You're assuming facts not in evidence. If Alonso were able to pass competitively they wouldn't have had to wrangle Massa.

 

No EtOH, it's a kludge on par with turbocharging.

 

I think that was the point he was trying to make, but in the hypothetical. That if F1 were somehow "fixed", Alonso could have done just that. Only that there's a flipside, which is Alonso would make quick work of getting by his slower teammate.

This brings up an interesting point. With the current difficulties in overtaking, there is the potential for drama when one car approaches another for position. Because it's so hard to get by, we end up with a nose-to-tail situation where we get to see the trailing driver trying to set up the lead car to pass. If it becomes too easy to overtake, we'll get a different version of a parade, where there will be very little drama at all to overtaking. Approach, pass, good bye. I think this is why some sort of aero reduction is always suggested by fans.

 

I could have been more clear: There is no empirical evidence suggesting Massa was holding Alonso up, plaintive whines of "ridiculous" notwithstanding.

 

Passing in F1 is great because it is not easy, it is like soccer, goals are not easy.

Do we really want NASCAR 30 passes per lap?

Be very careful what you wish for...

 

We'll never friggin' know! *That's* the primary reason the fans were outraged! I recall Rob telling Phil to "get a move on"..... Fred closed the gap anyway and should have put himself in a position to pass - They're both experienced jockeys, so if he was indeed faster he should have been able to get by [Phil is often criticised here for rolling over too easily of course.]

Then again, who knows what may have happened? Maybe Phil could hang on and pressure a mistake, maybe Freds tires go off and they swap again.... etc etc - We'll never know!

Conversely, if you come past me and take off into the distance to the tune of a minute, my hat is off to you - That (by todays standards) is a serious ass whooping! I'd be both impressed and depressed at the same time. "We've got work to do!".....

Cheers,
Ian

 

I beg to differ. I don't think F1 racing is "ruined" at all. Downforce or not, the racing is at least "OK" and sometimes downright "great" right now (IMO).

You're not suggesting that's the case in F1 right now are you? [If so, you better get your flamesuit out ]

+1 Even worse was a stuck skirt.

Cheers,
Ian

 

For all the palaver over aerodynamics, thanks to electronic engine controls and particularly the sequential semi-auto transmission.

God no. I can stay awake on the LIE if I want to watch that.

 

Nuance is never an easy sell.

 

What sucks is when somebody slow holds up a pack of faster cars and the lead car(s) just run off and hide. You get five cars that are all faster than one joker who holds up the show. Somebody gets impatient, makes a mistake and you get a crash. Not much to watch. I don't want to NASCAR passing, but a better driver in a notably faster car should be able to get around an obviously slower car. I'm just saying that the racing would be better if passing wasn't almost impossilbe.

When they had traction control and more downforce it was a joke. It didn't show up on TV but at the track you could hear the traction control bleating 2/3's of the way around the corners. Outlawing TC was the right thing to do, and It's a lot better this year with the lower downforce pacakge, but at higher speed the cars are totally stuck down such that the driver is pretty much planted. Ask yourself if you ever see the car squiggle or get loose coming off of fast corners? Doesn't happen. The're hooked up. If there was less downforce you'd see more driving in fast corners and more opportunity to pass in the subsequent straights. If somebody had to lift a bit to catch it in a fast corner he would be passed in nanosecond. Doesn't happen does it?

The other thing big downforce does is rob the downforce of the following car. He can't get close without losing his downforce so he has to stay back from the car ahead and unless the guy ahead of him does a huge mistake he can't get by.

Limit body width and put flat bottoms and no wings and the racing would be awsome.

 

Again, we beg to differ. It's *always* been that way, and the best find ways to overcome. I accept it doesn't happen often, partly because they're so evenly matched - How did the slow car get ahead of the fast car in the first place? I personally enjoy a nice train of cars being held up trying to figure out a way thru'.....

You're entitled to your opinion.

+1 I remember those days well and concur they shouldn't have TC. I remember hearing it on TV as well, but it was particularly annoying live. However, we have TC in our road cars and F1 is meant to "push the envelope" etc etc - Why shouldn't they have it? [I can argue both sides, and it's an endless debate.]

Are you watching the same thing as me?... Yeah, I see it "often" (and they replay it as well) - Some good tank slappers every weekend (Phil had a big one today! ) These things really are on a knife-edge - How often do we see the ol' "up and under" fail at the next corner because he overcooked it? - The *tiniest* screw up and you're in the gravel, race over..... [And you don't last long in F1 with a reputation as a crasher.]

My 02c, cheers,
Ian