FORMULA ONE - 2019

In reply to bmw88rider :

This year that isn't a bad thing! 

Killer start from Vettel followed by his usual lack of wheel to wheel ability - outbraked himself and caused Bottas to lose one pace and himself to lose two. Well done Seb. The Mercedes race could have been pretty interesting for a lap or two without him trying to cause an accident. 

Despite DC’s attempt to stir up controversy in the interviews, Hamilton didn’t squeeze Bottas. He was on the inside line, Bottas was well placed on the outside and then Vettel came clowning in and gave the Finn nowhere to go. Well judged by Bottas to get out of it and then get free of the Ferrari. That was a really subdued podium, though.

And good lord, Hamilton’s pace on the restart. 

Who would have thought that the two Torro Rosso drivers would be the ones putting on the show? Grosjean’s special line for turn 1 was pretty effective too.

I'm not sure how much more of this season I can handle, when the most exciting pass was for 14th...

Dieter Zetsche is retiring.  Did you American types see the pre race, where the entire Merc team was in white shirts and fake moustaches for a team photo?  I also liked seeing the president of Mercedes getting a champagne shower on the podium.

The in car from Valteri in turn one was butt puckering.  If Nico would have been in that car, there would have been three cars in a heap, and Max would have won the race.  From there on, a bit boring until the restart after the safety car.

I think after the winter test, Ferrari said, "Ok, good, we have something to work with here."  Mercedes said, "Holy E36 M3, we are in trouble, boys.  Get the computers fired up to crunch the numbers again."

Monaco will be interesting.  Merc has struggled there for the last few years, but they were a lot faster in section three in Spain, which is low speed and twisty.  I think Max has a good shot, though.

Red Bull seems happy with the Honda, Maclaren is happy with the Renault.  Funny old world, isn't it? 

Javelin said:

I'm not sure how much more of this season I can handle, when the most exciting pass was for 14th...

 

Yeah, it sucks having to watch two drivers trade off the lead for the championship. Makes you wish for the good old days when Schumacher won every race :)

Keith Tanner said:

Javelin said:

I'm not sure how much more of this season I can handle, when the most exciting pass was for 14th...

 

Yeah, it sucks having to watch two drivers trade off the lead for the championship. Makes you wish for the good old days when Schumacher won every race :)

And it bears repeating that the fault lies with Ferrari and the other teams that they can't reach Mercedes.

As for the race- it was nice to see Haas figure out it's tire problems, once.  They looked quite strong as a team.  More impressive is McLaren, who seems to have made up the years of problems to get to the lead area of the mid-pack.  One hopes they can continue this trend and eventually reach Red Bull (or Ferrari- depending on who ends up 3rd).

Williams... wow.  You guys may want to check your aero model- it does not seem all that accurate to what's actually going on.  Especially when going around a corner. I'm not sure if they will survive this.

At the front end of the field- is it Ferrari stumbling or Red Bull surging?  For sure, I don't see them really being able to challenge Mercedes, yet.  But they are at least equal, if not better than Ferrari.  And it was amusing, again, to see Ferrari flail over team orders.  They could not have gotten that more late- on both the beginning where Charles was faster, and late, when Seb had new tires...  Both decisions were 3-4 laps later than they should have been, if not much longer.  Pretty darned funny.

Keith Tanner said:

Javelin said:

I'm not sure how much more of this season I can handle, when the most exciting pass was for 14th...

 

Yeah, it sucks having to watch two drivers trade off the lead for the championship. Makes you wish for the good old days when Schumacher won every race :)

Barichello never came second every single race with both of them 10 seconds clear of the rest of the field. There have been many, many instances of a driver or team dominating for a season or four, but this is next level boring bad. If go back to Vettel at Red Bull days than this. 

alfadriver said:

And it bears repeating that the fault lies with Ferrari and the other teams that they can't reach Mercedes.

Disagreed. The fault lies with the FIA and Formula 1 for coming up with these ridiculous rules packages that both essentially make the cars a "spec" car and then leave things alone for years at a time "to control costs". The rulebook needs to go back to being way more open.

Every single spec racing series on the planet is dying. NASCAR, NHRA, Indy, Sprint Cars, etc, etc. They all have smaller crowds, smaller TV presence, smaller merchandise sales, etc and with yearly numbers decreasing. It's not for lack of Motorsports fans either, because series' with open rulebooks and competitive tracing are on the upswing with more attendance and sales than ever (Formula Drift, WEC, IMSA, No-Prep, etc).

The more rules there are "To save money" the more money needs to be spent to stay on top.

This also leads to a scenario where the best cheater is at the top.

Javelin said:

alfadriver said:

And it bears repeating that the fault lies with Ferrari and the other teams that they can't reach Mercedes.

Disagreed. The fault lies with the FIA and Formula 1 for coming up with these ridiculous rules packages that both essentially make the cars a "spec" car and then leave things alone for years at a time "to control costs". The rulebook needs to go back to being way more open.

Every single spec racing series on the planet is dying. NASCAR, NHRA, Indy, Sprint Cars, etc, etc. They all have smaller crowds, smaller TV presence, smaller merchandise sales, etc and with yearly numbers decreasing. It's not for lack of Motorsports fans either, because series' with open rulebooks and competitive tracing are on the upswing with more attendance and sales than ever (Formula Drift, WEC, IMSA, No-Prep, etc).

If Ferrari and Red Bull can't keep up with Mercedes on what's a spec series, how in the world will they keep up with more open rules?  So the fault lies MORE with the teams not capable of working withing the environment that the environment itself.  

Can Am had the most open rules anyone can remember, and the total lack of competitive racing was the result.  Winners tended to win by more than a lap.  That's hardly fun to watch.

And forgive me for pointing out that when you start with very small crowds, it's easy to grow.  Vs. the big leagues.  That, and I'd never call WEC/IMSA all that open- there's plenty of work done to equalize the cars, even though they have different powertrains.  

I've said it before... get rid of the restrictions on testing and all these ridiculous penalties for changing engines and gearboxes (especially when it's due to an accident).  If Honda had been able to test and develop throughout the season they may have been at the front by now.  Also, testing is where you keep your drivers sharp AND get your junior drivers enough seat time to be competent when there is a seat available.

triumph7 said:

I've said it before... get rid of the restrictions on testing and all these ridiculous penalties for changing engines and gearboxes (especially when it's due to an accident).  If Honda had been able to test and develop throughout the season they may have been at the front by now.  Also, testing is where you keep your drivers sharp AND get your junior drivers enough seat time to be competent when there is a seat available.

You do realize that all of those changes help the people at the front of the field exactly the same amount it helps the people at the back.  Honda could have gotten improvements faster, but so would have Ferrari and Mercedes for the rest of the field.  And whatever improvements that Torro Rosso could get, so could Mercedes.  

Just like taking out any other limits- it raises the available bar for the entire field, not just the ones who are struggling.  

In reply to alfadriver :

I don't think it works the way you think it does. Not every team can progress in every area. Mercedes is really good at computer modeling potential performance, which is pretty much the only thing the teams can do right now, ergo they are winning. McLaren is really good at in season practical chassis tweaks, but they are restricted from doing that right now. If it was legal, then they would benefit more than say HAAS, who have never raced with open wind tunnel rules. There's a thousand examples of areas of the rulebook that are closed off that teams would benefit from assymetrically. 

Do not confuse Mercedes' competance at the one major form of development currently allowed to equal competence in all areas.

In reply to Javelin :

I DO think it works that way- you need technical expertise in every part of racing,  The best wins.  Mercedes has the best system as a racing team right now, and really have for this current era.

Sure, Mercedes has the best models, but they are also the best at translating that model to actual performance on the track.  

Still, raising any limits does the same change to all teams, equally.   If wind tunnel rules were opened back up, Mercedes would not be static at all- sure some teams would improve a lot, but to pretend Mercedes would not ignores their possible potential. 

I'm not sure why you think Mercedes is limited in what they do well.  Especially given the last 5 seasons.  That thinking makes no sense to me at all.  Maybe that's why Ferrari is doing so badly, as they think that.

Javelin said:

In reply to alfadriver :

I don't think it works the way you think it does. Not every team can progress in every area. Mercedes is really good at computer modeling potential performance, which is pretty much the only thing the teams can do right now, ergo they are winning. McLaren is really good at in season practical chassis tweaks, but they are restricted from doing that right now. If it was legal, then they would benefit more than say HAAS, who have never raced with open wind tunnel rules. There's a thousand examples of areas of the rulebook that are closed off that teams would benefit from assymetrically. 

Do not confuse Mercedes' competance at the one major form of development currently allowed to equal competence in all areas.

You are falling into the same folly you are accusing him of. 

Whose to say that with more testing Mercedes wouldn't make more gains (% wise) than McLaren? That they wouldn't get their chassis where the PU is? Whose to say HAAS wouldn't find something that gives them a huge leap? More testing could easily give Mercedes an even bigger advantage, or maybe it wouldn't. 

You are both presenting hypotheticals as a sure thing. 

z31maniac said:

Whose to say that with more testing Mercedes wouldn't make more gains (% wise) than McLaren? That they wouldn't get their chassis where the PU is? Whose to say HAAS wouldn't find something that gives them a huge leap? More testing could easily give Mercedes an even bigger advantage, or maybe it wouldn't. 
 

Generally speaking, the longer the rules are stable, the more time competitors have to explore the solution space, and they independently make the same discoveries and eventually converge on roughly the same solution.  The Ferrari, BMW, Honda, and Mercedes 3.0L V10s of the mid 2000s (just before they switched to V8s) were all pretty much equal with each other because they'd all had 10 years of development and figured out what the optimal config was.

The problem with the current engine regs is that the manufacturers had a certain period of time to develop a radically different system, during which they weren't actually being run.  This meant that not only was there a huge, new space of solutions to explore, but they didn't have any idea how well their competitors were doing so they couldn't know when it was time to stop looking for incremental improvements and go back for a rethink.  Then, when they DID start running them, development was significantly restricted.  So Mercedes came up with the best concept early on and then the rules prevented anyone else from catching up to them quickly.

I think those sorts of things have largely sorted themselves out now.  There's been 4 or 5 years of dev and even with the restrictions that's let the other manufacturers make big strides.  Ferrari is suposedly making as much power as Mercedes if not more at this point, people are no longer whining about the Renaults being way down on power, and Hondas are actually finishing races.  Of course, they're changing the engine rules again in 2021...

Stupid stupid stupid.  Changing the rules ALWAYS opens up new areas to explore and presents benefits to the teams who are best able to explore them (ie, the ones with the most money).

Does keeping the rules stable allow more competition or does it allow one team to solidify their dominance? 

Red Bull of the last 4 years of the V8 era?

In reply to z31maniac :

My overall point is that all hypotheticals apply evenly to all teams.  Whatever benefit Haas can get is the same for Mercedes and Ferrari. 

And the rules have been stable for long enough for the teams to really identify where the Mercedes team is doing it the best, and follow that path. It’s up to each team to execute that plan. 

In reply to alfadriver :

Mercedes has a batter car, the best driver, they execute pit stops and strategy better than the boys in Red.  I can only respect their performance even if I don’t root for them. Not sure what rule changes would help the other teams more than the silver arrows short of some sort of BOP adjustments, but I don’t want to see that in F1.

In reply to alfadriver :

Because in the last 5 seasons the rules have not allowed development anywhere else. Mercedes was not very good at other things before this particular rule box started, remember?

And I didn't say that they would'nt improve, I said that all teams would improve assymetrically. By restricting development to basically ONE area, only one team is really going to do well. If you opened up the rules to say, three areas, the then the chances of still only having one dominating team decrease exponentially. 

F1 was really really good not that long ago. 2012 had seven different winners in the first seven races...

alfadriver said:

In reply to z31maniac :

My overall point is that all hypotheticals apply evenly to all teams.  Whatever benefit Haas can get is the same for Mercedes and Ferrari. 

And the rules have been stable for long enough for the teams to really identify where the Mercedes team is doing it the best, and follow that path. It’s up to each team to execute that plan. 

That's the problem though! The development in those areas are restricted! There's next to no in season testing, wind tunnel usage, etc and the engine regs are set in stone and have engineer change penalties on top of it. Teams most certainly have figured out how to catch Mercedes, but they are not allowed to.

Think way back to when the turbo V6 had it's first year. Mercedes was the only manufacturer to run the divorced turbo with the long shaft bisecting the engine. Everybody else saw it and that it made more power, but they were not allowed to change their turbos for 3 years to match!

z31maniac said:

Does keeping the rules stable allow more competition or does it allow one team to solidify their dominance? 

Red Bull of the last 4 years of the V8 era?

Forcing the teams to freeze their current designs locks-in domination.  Keeping the rules stable but allowing for development means that as they explore the possible design variants, all of the teams will figure out the broad strokes of what works best and start focusing on more and more detailed levels.  The teams with the most money will still have the fastest cars, but the differences will be vastly smaller.

Red Bull won 2010 through 2013, although they really only dominated 2 of those years (2010 and 2012 it came down to the last race, and arguably Ferrari/Alonso would have won one of them if they hadn't screwed up the strategy in Abu Dhabi).  Note that while the engine rules had been relatively stable this came after the dramatic shake-up of the aero rules introduced in 2009, and also that 2010 was the first year during which in-season testing was banned.

Personally I think there's a case to be made that much of the recent dominance of both Mercedes & Red Bull comes from the "new rules and limits on other teams' ability to catch up" effect.  The Ferrari era of 99-04 and that of Williams in the early 90s were different.

Mercedes wasn't really around before this particular rule package.  Not for long, anyway.

Engine development being restricted is not really an issue any more, for two reasons-  Honda has finally figured out how to keep the oily bits inside, and Williams uses the same engine as Merc.  Let that sink in a bit. 

The reason Merc has such a dominant car is because they are really good at what they do, and they are German.  Ferrari is Italian.  If you were looking for a bunch of help from a NATO member, where would the Italians fall on your list?  Its a berkeleying miracle they ever finish a race.

Somebody, maybe here, pointed out that Mercedes is an engineering firm that happens to build race cars, Red Bull and all down from there are racing teams that hire engineers, and Ferrari is a race team that builds road cars(Not really true anymore). When it comes down to computer modeling of airflow, which is EVERYTHING in modern F1, wouldn't you imagine an engineering firm would have a leg up?

You guys know that Mercedes finished second in the constructor's championship in 2013 - the year before the hybrid era started, right? They might not have been the best, but they were better than all but one other team. And Brawn won the championship in 2009 before the team was renamed. So they weren't exactly nowhere.

F1 was always better in the past. Pick a season, someone will complain that it was better before that season.

I don't think there's any major difference in talent down in the trenches of the various teams. The differentiator is at the top. The team principals, the designer, the strategists. It would be really interesting to see what would happen if Toto Wolff was in charge of Ferrari for a couple of years.

Javelin said:

alfadriver said:

In reply to z31maniac :

My overall point is that all hypotheticals apply evenly to all teams.  Whatever benefit Haas can get is the same for Mercedes and Ferrari. 

And the rules have been stable for long enough for the teams to really identify where the Mercedes team is doing it the best, and follow that path. It’s up to each team to execute that plan. 

That's the problem though! The development in those areas are restricted! There's next to no in season testing, wind tunnel usage, etc and the engine regs are set in stone and have engineer change penalties on top of it. Teams most certainly have figured out how to catch Mercedes, but they are not allowed to.

Think way back to when the turbo V6 had it's first year. Mercedes was the only manufacturer to run the divorced turbo with the long shaft bisecting the engine. Everybody else saw it and that it made more power, but they were not allowed to change their turbos for 3 years to match!

You claim that Mercedes is the best at "computer modelling of potential performance"- what part of the rules prevents teams from improving that part?

The engine regs- Ferrari is supposedly the best engine now, but that doesn't count?

And I totally disagree about the year to year engine development- all of the engine suppliers have been able to make significant changes year to year- just minor ones during the season.  I agree that it was partially fair that Mercedes won out the first season due to their better engine, but why is it the rules fault that they did a better pre-season job on their engine than anyone else? 

BTW, all of the teams agreed to the rules- they clearly saw that if one team got a major advantage for a season, they would get to keep it.  Yet they all agreed to the rules.  So either they are pretty dumb or they think the rules are not nearly as bad as you think they are.

As for teams "not being allowed to improve"- that's total BS.  Look at all of the in season changes that happen to the cars.  So much so that Ferrari is going backwards.  Which tells me that 1) they can change parts as they see the need and 2) they don't actually know how to catch Mercedes.  

If you don't like it, stop watching.  Nobody is forcing you to wake in the morning just to take a nap.  Liberty notes the changes in audience, and since they are keen for eyeballs, they will try to fix it.  Otherwise, they will lose a lot of money.