Why F1 is not the Pinnacle

I bet they wouldn't!

*IF* they had huge $, probably active suspension, turbos (?) and all kinds of banned electronic aids, then maybe with a current jockey at the wheel.....

 

It has been tried before - Formula Libre, I believe it was called. IIRC it was something of a joke.

Probably the closest real-world attempt at such an idea was the old Can-Am, at least before Porsche got involved and high-teched it into oblivion.

 

No. Yes, you can drop a V12 with turbos in a chassis that you welded in your garage and it might outperform an F1 car in a straight line if you did a damn good job, but as soon as the first corner comes, you won't even see the backlight of a Toro Rosso anymore. The "few extra wing bits and pieces" is where a good part of the engineering goes to, and there's a reason why.
Of course the F1 cars are designed for artificial rules, but if the track doesn't get too bad or you even go offroad, you will have a hard time building a car that outperforms an F1 car, especially through corners.

 

I agree with the first, everything else comes with it.

 

So your saying that a Monster truck with a 12 litre V8 Engine or something stupid like that, that does 300 yards to the gallon is more advanced than an F1 car? Anyone with enough money can build a car with atomic power and beat an F1 car in a drag race, but it's the bits that join the straights together, where you wouldn't see the F1 car for dust.

 

I would say F1 is the pinnacle given the parameters set out in an attempt to rein in R&D costs. It would be great to see what could be accomplished if money (and safety) were no object. But even with 8 and 9-figure budgets there need to be limits, otherwise the sport will spend itself into oblivion. Relative to other forms of racing, F1 is the pinnacle. But from the standpoint of asking whether every possible angle of engineering is exploited at the cutting edge, well no. No series can do that.

 

There wouldn't be any really huge development leaps. They are often already working at the edge of technology, if money was no object, you'd mostly see incredibly expensive things like those beryllium coated engine parts that don't offer THAT much benefit.

 

I think that part of the brilliance of this sport is the ingenious development within the admittedly stringent boundaries. The ability for F1 engineers to make the 2009 cars faster than the 2008 cars is astounding considering all of the changes to the downforce rules.

I would argue that if you had unfettered chassis/engine/aero development, you would not see the "free-market" system that exists today. All you would see is outrageous spending by very few teams that would lead to status quo engineering; today, the so called dominant teams are always kept on their game by the unique and creative car development from the smaller teams. This year is the perfect example of that.

 

The fact that the speed of the cars remains the same is mostly due to the slicks. The tires are still the parts that have the biggest impact on the performance by a huge margin.

Agree, but 2009 is actually the first year since 1997 that a non-factory car dominates. And it was basically completely developed by a factory, we can doubt that Brawn alone would have had the resources if his "new" team really was new.

 

I've read that without technical regulations that about 20 seconds could be taken off a lap time (I believe they said at Silverstone), however the only boundary from going faster is the human's ability to be able to survive two hours of 7g turns.

 

The pinnacle of motorsports is the racing series that goes around a track (no snow or ice please) in the shortest time.

Show me a car that does it faster than F1 and we'll talk. Until then, Monster Trucks, Le Mans Series, Fuel dragsters, IRL, NASCAR, Can Am etc is all 2nd tier.

Good night.

 

I can't help but imagine Monster Trucks running an F1 race. Just imagine Big Foot going through Eau Rouge, that would be entertaining.

 

I'd like to see Grave Digger doing Monaco. In regular traffic...

 

I believe Can Am was faster than F1 back in it's day ... thus a modern series or Le Mans should be faster than an open wheel car. The ideal body shape hides the wheels and would use ground effects, which is banned in F1.

In the end the rules of F1 ensure that it is faster ... otherwise it wouldn't be. I'd also like to see an F1 car complete a 24 hour race anywhere near as fast as a Le Mans car. Back in the Cosworth days they did run a few cars with the F1 engine, but the revs were restricted to make it last the distance.

It would thus be interesting to take a car from each series (excluding cr@p like Monster Trucks which is really wanking around for a little bit of a show) and compete against each other on each others track, etc. I think possibly the World Rally Cars would come out on top, as both F1 and any track series car would get absolutely slaughtered on gravel (maybe?, some old single seaters have made good hill-climb cars ... with a few modifications) and a WRC car would still be running at the end of 24 hours (I think) and be reasonably fast on a short 70 lap race.
Pete

 

I rest my case.

 

Hence the "Formula" in Formula One.
I'm OK with that.
I'm not OK with the new wave of politics off the track.

 

I think you only need a few rules to have a great series:

1) Minimum and maximum height, width, length and weight.

2) All parts must be available to anyone off-the shelf, with a maximum price set. If I can't get it, you can't use it.

3) Any motor goes, as long as it meets 2)

4) In light of 3), must be able to go 200 miles on X gallons of PUMP gas, meaning 104 octane or less.

5) NO 'exclusive deals' with companies that supply parts, such as tires, shocks, etc. see 2)

 

But today, I think you will find that FEW people care. 95% of the folks in the stands have no clue who held a track record, and it doesn't matter since cars change, tracks change: they get a new surface and get reconfigured. And probably 80% of the people watching on TV don't know the logisitics of running a team or designing a car, and guess what - they don't care.

Only a handful of people care - and I'm not one of them. All I want to see is a decent, 'fast' race, but it makes little difference to me if they dice for the lead at 185mph or 195mph or even 210mph, since most overtaking is on a corner at 80mph.

 

Right, and later you could build a space shuttle in your back yard !!!! (why not, it's easy right ?)

 

I completely agree with you...but that is the beauty of the sport. There is a great deal of minutia which many fans eat up. That being said, one needn't have any of that knowledge to enjoy watching world-class athletes drive amazing feats of engineering on a razor's edge.

It is a sport that can be enjoyed on many levels by a diverse group of people.

 

True but fighter pilots manage fine coping with G of 3 or 4 times that, with special pants that inflate and i don't see any reason why an F1 driver couldn't use the same principle.

 

All this crap about pinnacle this, pinnacle that. Top this, top that. Not to single you out Andy, but I've got a sore spot for this pinnaclistic fetish. F1 hasn't been the pinnacle of anything for a while...what with all the rules changes and dirty minutiae meant to stir up the order, the "Pinnacle" of open wheel racing has become a bad soap opera; nothing more and nothing less. Tire change rules, engine change rules makes for nothing more than a Strategy Based Soap Opera with people looking more at fuel loads than on track racing.

What made F1 the pinnacle of racing no longer exists. There are no super heroes like Senna or Prost or Schumi or Mansell. Sure, we have luminaries like Alonso or Hamilton or Kubica or the Smoothe Button...but by and large the drama of the man has been replaced with the banality of the machine...and no one wants that.

I watch F1 for the drama of the man, not of the machine. How can we forget Kubica of early last season, or the long lost Sato finding his rare inner Clark Kent, or the slagged Alonso proving to all that he is worthy of himself with his performance of the last half of last season?

Or even Massa, unliked by many here, missing the WDC by a soul crushing single point on the last turn of the season's last race? Massa didn't win the WDC last year and neither did he lose it; in the interim he gained a lot of lifetime fans.

I don't know how to return the drama of man versus machine, but we've got a lot of players more than able to wield the booty.

Blah labh. I'm drunk /

 

Nicely said.

 

Trust me, I hear you and understand your point. I also get the argument how F1 could be a lot faster etc. All good.

The pinnacle thing to me is only meaningful in the way that it is the fastest series and nothing is faster. To me that's all that counts and that's why I don't really care for other racing series. But that's me. Somebody else might not like the soap opera aspect or thinks that racing in a spec series is more fair because it is more even etc. For them that series is the best.

For me this definition of pinnacle works fine. Except for one thing: I do have to admit that I get disappointed and somewhat stunned when I see F1 drivers try other stuff and they don't succeed. F1 drivers aren't beating WRC nor DTM nor NASCAR. So the old days of being a F1 driver and winning it all seem somewhat over because the equipment and the sports variations have become so specialized.

Only in Le Mans racing a washed up F1 driver can still be king.