nderwater said:Early grand prix cars didn't have to be open wheel:
Am very aware of that, and one should note that those closed wheel cars didn't last long in GP racing. They've been open wheels longer than I've been around.
Again, there's already closed wheel racing out there. Why re-do that?
Covering the wheels once you realize how air works is very much tech. Leaving them uncovered is handicapping the cars - not just in outright speed, but the current problems we have with cars having difficulty running close to each other are definitely partially caused by the open wheels making a royal mess of the slipstream.
Not only that, but the exposed sidewalls are very fragile as are the front wings hanging out in space, so far too often a race is decided by someone (usually named Max) bumping someone else just a little bit. Never mind the potential for a catastrophic accident with overlapped wheels.
F1 fans put way too much emphasis on looks and sound, usually complaining that it's never as good as it was. I don't watch F1 because I can see the wheels. I watch it because it's road racing some of the most advanced cars on earth on a frequent schedule and with a good race length. Very little road racing has the level of tech that F1 does, most of it relies on artificial BOP rules. I prefer LMPs over F1, honestly, but they don't race often enough and it's tough to find the time to watch a 12 hour race. When Le Mans is on, I'll stream it all day and all night but I won't get much done. Give me the LMPs racing for 2 hours every couple of weeks, it would be a great show.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I don't see it that way- that "tech" was known a long, long time ago- its far from original or new.
And it's just repeating another series. What's the point of that?
So why should F1 cars have open wheels? Because it's (almost) always been that way, even though it makes for worse racing, slows the cars down and makes them more dangerous? What's the reason FOR it?
That other series is better racing and has more interesting cars - but with very few races and very long races. "Repeat" that other series with the performance turned up and more frequent, shorter races and it would be a different beast.
Other than the concept of open wheel racing, you have a point. But people do like that.
But I'm not so sure that people would just accept it. I like the extra "danger" not because of the actual danger, but because it makes the bump and run BS virtually impossible. You can't dive bomb someone, knock them sideways, and not have consequences. What makes that is the open wheels. There's a lot less consequence in an LMP1 car hip checking another car.
And you do actually see that kind of driving even in endurance races at the end.
There's no question that the F1 fans wouldn't accept it. Just think about how much fuss there is when the sound of the cars changes 
But I'd love to see it, just like I love the hybrid tech.
You're right about the bump and run moves, although that also allows drivers like Max to exploit the fragility of the cars. If you're driving for a championship and he's only driving for a win today, you'll let him get away with aggressive moves instead of trying to counter them. It's also way too easy to have a race-ending bump in the first lap chaos.
Here's another idea. One of the things that makes endurance racing interesting is the mix of classes. Maybe we should put F3 or someone else out there with the F1 cars. Not just because now ALL the air is dirty due to the number of cars on the track, but because it would showcase just how much faster a proper F1 car is over other, lesser classes. Yes, it's more dangerous - as we've very well seen in WEC. But it sure would amp up the show and mix things up. Dunno where you'd put their pits though.
The race in Spain didn't have any rain. Though that didn't stop Alonso from whining about it.
I liked the race. There were some battles in the field. Kimi is having a tough year so far. Bottas got second but should have secured it earlier. His pitstop was slow but oh well. MB just seemed to get the setup right while Ferrari and RB just didn't find the setup as in races before.
In Sauber, I wonder if Ericsson is happy having this rookie beat him vs Pascal.
Haas seems to be getting value out of Kevin. Grojean needs a certain type of team environment to shine and I think Haas is less and less of that. Unless Renault really want a French driver I think this will be Grojean's last year.
Hey what about Carlos?! Right?! Yup I am not noticing that he is having a good year either.
Also interesting that a driver can cause a collision by running into the back of another car under VSC and not get penalized. Under green flag it wasn't worth looking at, but under VSC?
In reply to Advan046 :
RE- Ericsson- remember that Leclerc is going to be a Ferrari driver- he's coming through that team structure into F1, so there's not really a question of who is team #1 there. I'm sure Marcus is not happy, but it's also very expected.
Hey, if your teammate is consistently better, you have 3 options. Become better, stay complacent, or leave. Which one does Marcus choose? My money is on #2, he's got no shot at a drive anywhere else in F1
Advan046 said:The race in Spain didn't have any rain. Though that didn't stop Alonso from whining about it.
I liked the race. There were some battles in the field. Kimi is having a tough year so far. Bottas got second but should have secured it earlier. His pitstop was slow but oh well. MB just seemed to get the setup right while Ferrari and RB just didn't find the setup as in races before.
In Sauber, I wonder if Ericsson is happy having this rookie beat him vs Pascal.
Haas seems to be getting value out of Kevin. Grojean needs a certain type of team environment to shine and I think Haas is less and less of that. Unless Renault really want a French driver I think this will be Grojean's last year.
Hey what about Carlos?! Right?! Yup I am not noticing that he is having a good year either.
Also interesting that a driver can cause a collision by running into the back of another car under VSC and not get penalized. Under green flag it wasn't worth looking at, but under VSC?
If you believe Vettel and the conspiracy theories, these "special" Spain tires were developed specifically for Mercedes after the pre-season test complaints.
Alonso was far from whining about rain. Praying for it, maybe.
I used to give Alonso a break for his statements because it seemed to me to be more of an english language translation thing. He just seems to say sucky things due to his ESL status.
But since the whole "GP2 GP2 engine" silliness I think he might truly be a whining jerk that is very fast in any car. But everyone has a breaking points and vents so I just give him that.
Monaco GP next. Curious who will be on top. Which rookie besides Max will crash? We will see.
In reply to stylngle2003 : You have to give credit to Ericson, being with the team for 3 years, with all the chaos. He has been beat all 3 years by his teamattes, and working on a 4th with Leclerc.
I still don't have a good handle on the ESPN schedule for the races. It seems like the online schedule doesn't match the AT&T Uverse guide schedule. I have missed q3 a couple of times on my recoding but I usually get the whole race.
Anyhow I think I am ready to record the race this weekend. I might watch it live.
I hope Ricciardo or Hamilton win.
In reply to Advan046 :
Seems like they are starting the race 1:10 later than they used to start them. Not sure why, but it makes Sunday morning a little less stressful.
Williams boss says without budget caps in place the team may leave F1
In reply to 06HHR :
meh. they haven't really been relevant for 20 years, except for the brief flash of hope in 2014. As much as I love the storied history of the team, and the spirit it embodies, they have a slow car and young, inexperienced drivers with no ability to develop a car. They only brought money to the table (which the team would no doubt fail without) but little else. The have Bob Kubica on board as a development driver, but iirc, he only got into the car for the first time in Spain, so his talents have largely been floundered as well.
"Perhaps this is best demonstrated by the fact that Williams' 113th grand prix win came in 2004 and their 114th in 2012. They are still awaiting win number 115."
stylngle2003 said:In reply to 06HHR :
meh. they haven't really been relevant for 20 years, except for the brief flash of hope in 2014. As much as I love the storied history of the team, and the spirit it embodies, they have a slow car and young, inexperienced drivers with no ability to develop a car. They only brought money to the table (which the team would no doubt fail without) but little else. The have Bob Kubica on board as a development driver, but iirc, he only got into the car for the first time in Spain, so his talents have largely been floundered as well.
"Perhaps this is best demonstrated by the fact that Williams' 113th grand prix win came in 2004 and their 114th in 2012. They are still awaiting win number 115."
I think that Williams is destined to fail, or be sold to the next super rich dude or car company that wants to spend a couple of hundred million Euro a week. I am sad, but their time has passed. I'm not entirely sure Maclaren doesn't fit that category as well.
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
I think Maclaren made a big mistake with Honda, which put the whole chassis development and threw it into chaos. I see no reason they can't come back- once they get that familiar with the Renault engine. They've had up and down phases before, just like Ferrari.
At least I hope... 
Williams hasn't been much for a far longer time.
The one hope we all have, Haas' model shows an alternate way to fast on a tight budget.
As long as Frank is alive and has a say so, I think Williams will be around. He is well respected and loved. They will find a way. Now as for winning, who knows They were the best of the rest a few years ago with Massa and Bottas so don't throw them under the bus yet. I'm not a Ron Dennis fan but the move to Brown was a bad one. He is a rich car fan, not a F1 team leader. Very different people. Look at Ferrari, they're still lost in the woods. They need a real head to the team. F1 isn't a business on the track. Off-track sure. Business people have their place but its a lot fewer places than people think.
I've always had a love hate relationship with Williams. The team and the cars have been brilliant over the years. Let's face it they have the third mosts starts and wins behind Ferrari and McLaren, they are 2nd in terms of Constructors championships behind only Ferrari. They have eclipsed even the original Team Lotus in starts, points, wins etc. They've given many great drivers a chance and have delivered. But I've never been a fan of Franks mercenary approach to drivers. Nigel Mansell, Alan Prost and Damon Hill all kicked to the curb at the end of their championship winning years as a shinny new toy comes along. These days they are forced to whore themselves out on the street corner to any driver with a few tens of millions in their pocket to buy a good time.
I find it ironic that they are now calling for a cost cap to be able to stay in the series when they have been one of the most vocal teams against the Haas / Ferrari technical and part sharing agreement that is currently the best way to make F1 more affordable for smaller teams, even claiming they don't want that.
Personally I have nothing against a cost and technology cap. I get the purity of F1 and wanting it to not be spec series, but there needs to be a limit or it will forever price itself out of existence. More so than ever before Motorsport is becoming a niche sport and business. Car, automobiles, human directed transport just isn't seen as desirable, freedom giving, boundary pushing as is once was. Society has moved on and for F1 to survive it has to accept that and re-position itself.
I hope Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren accept this and agree to a massive overhaul that would limit team budgets to a couple of hundred million Euro's and some sensible, if not spec, then more tightly regulated parts. Look at pit stops for a start. In the race to get pit stops down to less than to seconds every team spends at the very least hundreds of thousands on unique wheel nuts and fastening systems. What would it remove from the show for the FIA to say 'this is your wheel nut design and here's the guns'? Nothing to me except fewer cars loosing a wheel on pit out.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson : Is it fair to say that the Energy Drink money is equivalent to cigs and booze sponsorship to back in the day, one of the differences being that very few energy drink companies have capital and there were several cig companies that did. Eliminate Mercedes (Monster Drink), Ferrari, Mclaren (don't they have to find sponsorship soon?) and RedBull/TR. Everybody else on the grid needs drivers that have personal sponsorship. Cost cap seems to be another complicated mess. How would they cost cap the advantage TR and Redbull have? Should it be one budget since TR is doing the Honda engine test for them Or does Red Bull have to much influence to allow that to happen? Other then some of the boring races and teams that complain about money, I think the F1 is overregulated, it is extremely complicated to start a team and the distribution to money to teams is ridiculous, banning the cig and booze companies obviously hurt most of open wheel racing. Not sure if there is a solution for that.
A cost cap of $XXX,XXX,XXX will never work. But the regs could be written such that certain items need less investment. Would the following really make F1 that much technically limited or less intersting to watch?
Spec Wheels and wheel nuts
Maximum of X controlls on the steering wheel
Spec steering wheel
Spec engine attachment points
Massivly tight regulations on end plates
Specified wing mounting points
Massively simplified brake packaging. Have you seen the carbon fibre cake tins around them?
Two (dry) tire compounds for the season. In 2017 Pirelli took an average of 13,000 tires to each weekend. That's nuts, if we don't' have a tire war why do we need seven, yes 7 different dry compounds?
Price cap on engine leases and a requirement that each engine supplier has to supply at minimum two teams and be prepared to supply up too four teams. That way if Renault, Ferrari, Mercedes or Honda want to spend $200,000,000 developing an engine they can, but the teams can still afford to race.
I get it that hybrids are here to stay, but what about an off the shelf hybrid and / or battery pack? They get up too 160 equivalent hp from the motors under full tilt. Make that spec, who cares, they still have the differentiated engines. As an aside this could help stability as Ferrari are currently under investigation for finding ways around peak energy deployment.
Minimum engine and cooling inlet sizes
etc.
The famous 1992 Williams FW14b is still regarded by most in the sport as the most technically advanced car to have raced in terms of on board technology. Back then Williams had one of the largest Budgets at (supposedly) £25. Converted to $'s and adjusted for inflation that's $68M USD in 2018. A lot of money, but chump change in F1. The difference between then and now is that with the last hurrah of tobacco money and a good economy through the 90's budgets were (essentially) unlimited and millions upon millions were spent chasing those last 0.0001 of a second. Give every one a tight rule book and let them have at it, but limit the things that are pointless dead ends so the money can be spent else where and less is needed.
Oh, and don't be scared of Ferrari leaving, if they go fine, but don't cave on cost cutting to keep them. I honestly think Ferrari need F1 more than F1 needs Ferrari. Porsche have built their whole brand around Sports car racing and even they've taken brakes from it. Ferrari essentially walked away from Sports cars circa 1970 and built their whole brand around F1. They might leave, but I'm sure they'll be back.
P.S. While the Energy drink money can be argued to be similar to the tobacco money of the last century it's on a totally different level. The global tobacco market is still worth $760 Billion $$'s, that dwarf the energy drink market that's predicted to grow to $85 Billion in the next few years.
I agree on some of those spec items, but I would leave the hybrid system open. It's integrated in the ICE and one of the places where R&D work has actual real-world applications. That's where the teams should be spending money. Even Formula E is opening up the powerplant.
I definitely agree on the tires. A spec wheel and/or number of buttons just means the drivers will have to start using button combos to get into different modes, which probably isn't going to get us anywhere. The spec engine attachment points brings up some interesting thoughts, although I think we're well past the days when you could just bolt in a different powerplant. Wheels and wheel nuts is a no-brainer.
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