Formula 1 2023 Season

kevlarcorolla said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Agree 100% that changing the finishing order post race is not acceptable.

 

 Sucks for Lewis and Charles but their teams got it wrong,and I suspect they weren't the only 2 to do so,which is the real problem with the DQ.

Yeah that's my issue. If it's enough to disqualify drivers then they need to check every car at the end of every race. 
 

Carlos moved up to P3 and he may have been lower than Charles for all we know because his car wasn't checked. No logic in their random spot check system. The excuse of "it's rare so we don't have to check every car every race" doesn't fly.

Advan046 said:

Just like racing in the rain. Do you drive the car on the limit or stay around 7/10s?

 

MB and Ferrari have a few million dollars invested into figuring out a car setup from before arriving at the track. They screwed up plain and simple. They could have spent a few more laps in FP1 to figure out their ride height. They are many paid employees per team to figure it out. And RBR and McLaren did just fine.

 

A couple comments about post race scrutineering not changing the results. Not sure how that would work in any racing series? How do you scrutinize plank wear before the end of the race? They check for minimum car weight, so if an intact car is 15 Kg under. Just let them have the win? Nah.

Or maybe RBR and McLaren just got lucky?  F1 is not about being conservative, it is about pushing right to the edge.  You cannot do that without occasionally pushing slightly beyond that edge and needing to pull back.  Drivers do it all the time (track limits), engineers do it all the time (occasional engine failures), etc.  It doesn't matter how many millions of dollars you spend on simulations, at some point you need to actually test the car on track, and 1 hour is empirically not enough time to get it done properly.

Regarding not changing the results, I'm not saying the results should have been left intact.  The car was out of spec and it doesn't matter how much, therefore it should be disqualified. (*)  What I'm saying is that the rules need to be defined in such a way that a team that is attempting to comply with the rules in good faith should not be caught out like this.  Nobody is alleging that Mercedes and Ferrari were intentionally cheating (well, OK, I'm sure some rabid RBR fans are on a forum somewhere, but let's ignore them), this was a mistake and one that is attributable to the FIA giving the teams inadequate preparation time.  You cannot measure race-length plank wear at an unknown track without data, and you cannot get enough data to know the answer when the total length of the practice session is less than the length of the race itself!  All the teams took a guess at the minimum ride height to meet the regs (an educated guess, yes, but still a guess).  RBR and McLaren guessed right, Ferrari and Mercedes guessed wrong.

(*) It is, in fact, exactly this principle as to why I think RBR should have been tossed out of the 2021 championship when they went $15M over budget.  The car cost too much, therefore it was out of spec, therefore should have been disqualified.

I have watched every sprint they have run so far and only one was interesting (the previous one at Qatar).  That was basically only because they had lots of crashes and safety cars with restarts mixing things up.  IMHO the sprint format sucks and needs to be tossed out.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:(*) It is, in fact, exactly this principle as to why I think RBR should have been tossed out of the 2021 championship when they went $15M over budget.  The car cost too much, therefore it was out of spec, therefore should have been disqualified.

 

 

It wasn't the cost of the car, it was the cost of lunches........ 

A friend of mine had a great idea about the overspend - RBR should've paid the amount of the overspend to each of the other 9 teams. This sum would be deducted from the 2022 budget of RBR and the other teams would have their budget increased by the RBR contirbution. 

I think the sprint races do exactly what they were supposed to do; shake things up and make it more exciting. That said I hate them, they shake things up and make it more exciting for the casual fan. If I wanted to see what happens when people lack budget and test time and have to fly by the seat of their pants I would go watch a late model race, which I do regularly. I think the hard core fans, which most of us fall into, are interested and excited by the massive data analysis, the ability to run a car at 99.9% over and over, the manufacturing prowess required to be at the ultimate pointy end of the sword and the advanced technology. The casual fan wants to see a pass and a crash, regardless of whether it was at 99.9% or 95%. I went through this pandering to the masses in NASCAR 20 years ago and it is now irrelevant to me, but this is me, I can't say if the sport is better for it or not.

TLDR: Sprint races suck, they contribute to the dumbing down of the masses.

In reply to NY Nick :

I don't qualify as a "casual" f1 fan as I haven't missed a race in yrs and yrs but I do qualify as a fan of real racing.

And I love the F1 tech and watch nearly every practice session just so I can see what each team is up too.

 That said we allready get to see what happens when each team has loads of practice to prepare,the same teams generally finish in the same position and many races its simply teammates racing each other to see which beats the other.

So does each team maximizing its potential make the best race action....not so much most weekends.

Also tired of watching them all cruise around to save tires just to hit the pit stop strategy somebody potencially sitting 1000's of miles away says will be the fastest.

The max laps on a tire made it pretty interesting as they couldn't cruise but actually had to use them.

 I don't think the driver exhaustion was all due to the heat,they didn't get to cruise around controlling the pace.

 I want more of that,if you're making 30 mil a yr to drive a car to its maximum I want to see them crawl out looking like they earned it.

In reply to kevlarcorolla :

I hear you, no disrespect on the casual fan thing, obviously it was a generalization.

I understand that they are restrained, just like playoff hockey or basketball tends to be at another level, mere mortals also can't seem to play like that all the time. 

Only a couple of them are in the $30M range too. Don't get me wrong I would be happy making any of these salaries (https://racingnews365.com/f1-driver-salaries-2023)

No worries Nick,yeah I thru out a big $ salary for the headline :).

 Even still the average salary across the grid is approx 9.5 mil a yr,like you say we'd all be pretty thrilled to make less then that to race cars. ;)

Albon...I'm only halfway through FP2, but golly gee whiz.

Just a quick note.  I just got back from Vegas.  The track is already mostly blocked off except for the strip portion (front straight?).  Very new asphalt on one half of the strip there.  The track goes right around The Sphere, so that should be interesting to watch during the race.

They built grandstands IN the Bellagio fountain!  The closed streets are playing hell with the traffic.  It should be an interesting auditory spectacle if nothing else.  Lots of stuff for sound to bounce off of.

OK, well, that got a bit more normal, but still... Bottas and Danny top 6.

Good old weird air tracks.

In reply to aircooled :

We're going to Vegas for the race. First to walk around and see the mayhem that has been wrought on the city and get a feel for the atmosphere, then back to the timeshare to watch it on the big screen since we are not millionaires with five digits to blow on seats with a view of one corner.

I don't think I have any contacts in the F1 circus anymore, alas.

My wife and I will be in Vegas for the F1 race but so far haven't found cheap enough tickets to watch it. 

loosecannon said:

My wife and I will be in Vegas for the F1 race but so far haven't found cheap enough tickets to watch it. 

I am not sure that will be that big of a downside.  It's RIGHT in the middle of the town and surrounded by casinos.  I am sure the Casinos will not shut down.  They of course are not known for lots of outward visibility, I suspect you will get a lot of the sound from just walking around.  And of course, even if you have seats, you will see very little.  Hearing it and watching it on TV would likely be a very good option (outside sports bar?)

I don't know how much they will block off, but I can't imagine they would restrict access to the Casinos?!

One thing we did do was visit the bar at the top of Resort World (yes a silly name for a casino) down the strip a bit.  It's Alle Lounge on 66 (66th floor), which gives a great view of Vegas.  Its only open at night, so no race viewing, and a bit upper crusty, but if you can get in (there were no restrictions when we went), definitely worth a look (might see some teams their?)

aircooled said:

loosecannon said:

My wife and I will be in Vegas for the F1 race but so far haven't found cheap enough tickets to watch it. 

It's Alle Lounge on 66 (66th floor), which gives a great view of Vegas.  Its only open at night, so no race viewing, and a bit upper crusty, but if you can get in (there were no restrictions when we went), definitely worth a look (might see some teams their?)

Oh, you didn't know? The Vegas race is at Midnight, Saturday night

They need to stop that BS pit lane blocking. Can't impede cars on track, why is it allowed to block pit lane?

Everybody happy??? I'm digging Danny R

In reply to 759NRNG :

Good looking grid for tomorrow,  would have liked to see Albon keep his lap. 

Any word on penalties for impeding yet?  If they start that, Danny could be on the front row.

hey what was the deal with Albon .....had the sound turned down?

het

johndej said:

They need to stop that BS pit lane blocking. Can't impede cars on track, why is it allowed to block pit lane?

Because the drivers need a gap to the car in front if they're going to set a qual lap, and the cars leave the pits at non-synchronized times.  They have to slow down somewhere to create that gap, the minimum lap time rule means you can't do it out on the track itself, and that leaves the pit lane.  That at least has the advantage that the cars are going slowly so it's not dangerous.

https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/38767503/max-verstappen-lewis-hamilton-escape-grid-penalties-mexico

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

It may not be dangerous, but it screws over all the teams that are getting backed up when they schedule the lap to start at a pretty specific time.  Which makes it similar to blocking, and should be dealt accordingly.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Traffic? It's group qualifying, deal with it. They can go back to single lap shoot outs, weather changes you're lap, deal with it. They make it now so if one team wanted, they could just sit at the end of pit lane and keep the other teams backed up far enough they don't get around for a final flying lap. They put the minimum time in place to stop this from happening on the track and just created a new problem. As Alfa mentioned, you can optimize yourself all you want but if it is being used to intentionally negatively impact other teams by blocking, that should be punished. 

johndej said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Traffic? It's group qualifying, deal with it. They can go back to single lap shoot outs, weather changes you're lap, deal with it. They make it now so if one team wanted, they could just sit at the end of pit lane and keep the other teams backed up far enough they don't get around for a final flying lap. They put the minimum time in place to stop this from happening on the track and just created a new problem. As Alfa mentioned, you can optimize yourself all you want but if it is being used to intentionally negatively impact other teams by blocking, that should be punished. 

They're not intentionally screwing other teams, that's just what happens when 15 cars try to leave the garage at the same time and each of them wants a 3-5 second gap to the car in front.  It's not one car waiting 20 seconds, it's 4 or 5 waiting a few seconds each.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

It may not be "intentional" but most blocking isn't, either.  It does screw with the other teams.  It's not fair to do that to the field.

So you can lose the race going into the first corner.  The traffic jam going home is going to start early.

Also, seems that since the part came off, Ferrari *should* have gotten a flag for that.  And because they didn't take it off live, we now have a VSC.  

edit- and LeClerc is being investigated for driving a dangerous car.