Formula 1 2020 - General Discussion Thread (See MOD warning on first post)

vectra

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

True but the myth of Kimi's keen wit is a massive exaggeration. Hamilton talking for 5 mins and saying nothing vs Kimi just saying nothing. No real difference there.

The adage that springs to mind: better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

So Lewis is better to stay silent?
I absolutely agree with you for once :pac::pac:

AMKC

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I understand that alright, but I'm actually comparing the 90's/00's Williams to now, Jesus, what a fall, but ferrari is also shocking, what the hell is going on there! Seb completely disconnected along time ago there, he didn't win those championships like that, he's well capable of better things, his ultimate dream of following his ultimate hero, has been crushed

Yes that is quiet a fall for William's alright.

As for Ferrari well they are just a mess. I would say the moral in that team must be very low and that certainly would not help. I think the team needs bigger changes than just the manager. They should have been on level terms or at least 2and best engine wise by now with the resources they have but instead they have the worst engine it looks like Honda have the 2nd best engine now and the Renault the 3rd best but both are now better than the Ferrari unit.
Maybe 2022 will be better for Ferrari but I don't see them getting anyways better for the next 15 months at least. They need to start making big changes now. I do not envey Carlos Seinz going to Ferrari next year.

El_Duderino 09

User given 24hr ban for ignoring warnings

cadaliac

Parsnips wrote: »

I agree.
I cannot bring myself to watch a live race now. Im recording each 1 so I have the option to FF . unfortunately that is every race. Im watching 30years now and even my wife has has asked me why I keep watching as I am repeating myself every week on how dismal the racing is. I love F1 but it has now become the most boring sport in the world IMO

Unfortunately, I have to add that I am in the same boat. 20 years watching F1 religiously, more on and off.
For the life of me I just can't figure out the non-eventful races these days. It was a slippery slope when they removed re fueling and introduced 1 brand tyres. They removed variables. Thus removing more teams mistakes with strategies.

As a poster correctly pointed out, locking down development only secures the gap to the front. This plays directly into Mercedes hands. How is that going to help.
Anyway, 90% of the drivers are commercial machines that have roles to fulfill and obligations to media etc. It's all part of F1 now, I get it. But wow, is it boring.
Max and Leclerc are the only 2 drivers I am interested in watching. The Hamilton domination is just that, not even his second car can put up much of a fight these days.
I guess the cars are so evenly matched (Weight, power etc) that makes for boring awful racing.

Hijpo

How much of the engines periferals are being supplied by ferrari?

If customers of ferrari like HAAS are seeing power drops (or are they making people look left instead of at them?), does this rule out the reservoir theory?

PukkaStukka

Hijpo wrote: »

How much of the engines periferals are being supplied by ferrari?

If customers of ferrari like HAAS are seeing power drops (or are they making people look left instead of at them?), does this rule out the reservoir theory?

All of the Ferrari powered teams have suffered a power reduction since the "clarification" / settlements of recent times. There are many theories around what was going on with fuel, fuel flow, oil burning, ERS management.

I explored some of theories here

Ferrari's struggles are compounded by a chassis that is equally short of spank. The gap between them and their customer engined teams is non existent when it should be nigh-on two seconds at a track like Spa.

quokula

cadaliac wrote: »

Unfortunately, I have to add that I am in the same boat. 20 years watching F1 religiously, more on and off.
For the life of me I just can't figure out the non-eventful races these days. It was a slippery slope when they removed re fueling and introduced 1 brand tyres. They removed variables. Thus removing more teams mistakes with strategies.

As a poster correctly pointed out, locking down development only secures the gap to the front. This plays directly into Mercedes hands. How is that going to help.
Anyway, 90% of the drivers are commercial machines that have roles to fulfill and obligations to media etc. It's all part of F1 now, I get it. But wow, is it boring.
Max and Leclerc are the only 2 drivers I am interested in watching. The Hamilton domination is just that, not even his second car can put up much of a fight these days.
I guess the cars are so evenly matched (Weight, power etc) that makes for boring awful racing.

I'm another. I can count on 1 finger the number of live races I missed in 20 years from 1994 to the beginning of the hybrid era (it was Silverstone 2003 which turned out to be a classic and I'm still annoyed I couldn't watch it due to work commitments)

But in the last few years I've missed more and more races, and I've finally let my Sky F1 subscription go so didn't watch Spa last week. Doesn't seem like I missed anything. I'll still follow what's happening and watch highlights or whatever I can get access to but it's got to the point that I need to vote with my wallet to let them know this is not acceptable. Hopefully it'll be a bit closer to being a sport again in 2022.

I could write an essay on all the problems with the hybrid era. From the way it was brought in with Mercedes throwing their weight around forcing the sport to adopt an engine model they had a few years head start in developing, alongside a bunch of testing and token restrictions stopping anyone from having the option of catching up. Those new engines were more complex and more expensive, driving costs up and taking the sport from a position where it was trying to get up to 13 teams, to one where it can barely keep 10 running without needing takeovers of even the likes of Williams to keep them on life support.

And of course it's completely stopped any new manufacturer of considering entering the sport, having seen what Honda went through. Cosworth were forced out, and other manufacturers who left the sport because of the 2008 financial crisis and would have considered coming back as the global economy recovered have instead moved to other series as Formula 1 is just a no go zone now.

As well as being more complex and more expensive, the hybrids are significantly heavier than what came before, leading to much slower and less impressive cars, which needed downforce revisions in 2017 to make up for those shortcomings and give the cars less embarrassing laptimes (Mercedes dominated 2014 with a car that was on most tracks slower than a Minardi built on a shoestring a decade earlier)

This has led to the current set of extremely heavy, extremely high downforce cars, that have created huge loads on the tyres and left us with much less strategy variation as it's all about durability, and of course the high downforce has made overtaking harder again too. And, although the headline laptimes for qualifying and fastest lap are no longer embarassing, the vast majority of laps are still run at a crawl in cruise control as they have to manage their tyres and manage their power unit and manage their energy stores - Formula 1 has always had a certain amount of management of course, but not to the extent it currently has. The last time races were as heavily managed was in the 80s, and at least then it was up to the driver to manage things themselves, rather than being told by engineers exactly what laptime the telemetry says they should to.

And then you get onto the competitive state. Mercedes have had a massive baked in advantage from day 1 with the huge head start they were given, and the FIA have continued to enshrine that by limiting development avenues and possible innovation, alongside the various token systems and development freezes that have been in place at different times to completely stop any chance of anyone catching up. We've had the longest period of total dominance by one team in the history of the sport. And the level of dominance is beyond anything seen before either. Any driver on the grid, and indeed any driver on the GP2 grid, would easily have one all of the last 7 championships (and the next one) in that Mercedes. And every year we've already known who would win both championships (at least once Rosberg retired) before the first wheel has been turned at Melbourne.

It's absolutely insane that the FIA seem to have worked so hard to stop any potential shake up of the competitive order, when you see the lengths they've gone to previously when any team gets even a slight advantage, from banning exhaust blown diffusers when Red Bull were consistently winning even though it was by fairly small margins, to throwing all sorts of rule changes to try and stop Schumacher and Ferrari, when they didn't even have a dominant car for more than one year in a row.

It's been a long time since F1 felt like a sport. And the really shameful thing is that the 2009 - 2013 set of regulations had got it so right - there were lots of competitive teams, all fighting for race wins regularly, championships going down to the wire every year. When people say that Red Bull were dominant, you need to go back and watch some races. They were not dominant at all. Only in 2013 did they pull out a bit of a gap and that year itself was a victim of the hybrid regulations as all the teams had moved their resources over to developing the new cars.

If you look at 2012, you had 24 cars on the grid, you had 6 different teams winning races, 7 teams scoring podiums, you had the championship go right to the wire in the final race of the season. And the supposedly dominant Red Bull didn't gain the most pole positions outright, nor was it fast enough to secure second in the WDC, or 3rd, or even 4th or 5th. So there was no real pace advantage there in reality, they won many races through race craft, strategy and actual driving on track, rather than just winning by default and cruising around.

And they've thrown all that away because Mercedes were threatening to quit the sport and leave multiple teams without a supplier if it didn't become more "road relevant" (which in itself is a scam, nothing about the current cars is road relevant, it was all about Mercedes getting to a dominant position for marketing purposes), it's hard to see that much legitimacy in the years that followed.

geotrig

cadaliac wrote: »

Unfortunately, I have to add that I am in the same boat. 20 years watching F1 religiously, more on and off.
For the life of me I just can't figure out the non-eventful races these days. It was a slippery slope when they removed re fueling and introduced 1 brand tyres. They removed variables. Thus removing more teams mistakes with strategies.
.

For me it was when they brought it in (or i just took more notice of it ) ,in or around 94/95ish was the start of the slow demise

afatbollix

Im reading Max Mosleys book at the moment. A couple of big points he wanted to bring in was reduce speeds which he did by using groved tyres as they had a tyre war ongoing and reduce costs.

Due to the News of the world he kind of had to scrap it and retire.

He wanted to set caps in 2009 but was stomped on by the big teams but the manufactures loved it. Unfortunately 3 manufactures left in the next year. At the time the engine manufactures were spending 1.5 billion a year on development for the engines. He did bring in a cost reductions by setting that 8 engines could be used thhrough out the year. I knew they had quali engines but they ran them without cooling, different aero and different brakes! Im glad to see they only have 3 engines to use a year at the moment. But we have to think out of the box now and short term until the 2022 rules come in.

We are now half way through the year, They should give the teams in last place in the championship an extra 15 tokens, 13 for 2nd last and so on and take all of Merc tokens away. That way the lower teams can change more but merc have to stay the same and really focus on what they have. We should have a 2009 all over again with Brawn just keeping ahead of Red Bull chasing them down.

quokula

afatbollix wrote: »

Im reading Max Mosleys book at the moment. A couple of big points he wanted to bring in was reduce speeds which he did by using groved tyres as they had a tyre war ongoing and reduce costs.

Due to the News of the world he kind of had to scrap it and retire.

He wanted to set caps in 2009 but was stomped on by the big teams but the manufactures loved it. Unfortunately 3 manufactures left in the next year. At the time the engine manufactures were spending 1.5 billion a year on development for the engines. He did bring in a cost reductions by setting that 8 engines could be used thhrough out the year. I knew they had quali engines but they ran them without cooling, different aero and different brakes! Im glad to see they only have 3 engines to use a year at the moment. But we have to think out of the box now and short term until the 2022 rules come in.

We are now half way through the year, They should give the teams in last place in the championship an extra 15 tokens, 13 for 2nd last and so on and take all of Merc tokens away. That way the lower teams can change more but merc have to stay the same and really focus on what they have. We should have a 2009 all over again with Brawn just keeping ahead of Red Bull chasing them down.

Quotas on number of parts used have largely been a false economy. 3 really expensive, highly durable engines cost more than 20 cheap engines. I would also assume that when they were using 2 or 3 engines per race weekend, most of the actual components probably went back to the factory and got refurbished and used again.

While the exact prices of different components are not public, many of the team's accounts are. I shared an article a few pages back that showed the likes of McLaren and Williams are spending many times as much now as they were back when they were much more successful.

Introducing limitations has never really brought down costs. When they limited testing, the teams invested a fortune in wind tunnels. When wind tunnel time was regulated, they invested a fortune in simulators. And the ones with the deepest pockets continue to come out on top. And all that budget that used to go into sending the cars around a test track where the public could see them, is now being used behind closed doors with no benefit to fans.

An actual cost cap like Moseley proposed is the only way to fix the spiralling budgets. Hopefully in 2022 we'll start to see that. But I am concerned that they're introducing a cost cap, while keeping the same engines that Mercedes already have a huge advantage with, meaning the status quo just stays as other teams just have less resources to make up that gap and Mercedes don't need a huge budget to just keep their existing design.

There are aero changes of course, but the cost cap should have come with an entirely new formula, sending everyone to the drawing board with the same amount of funds.

afatbollix

One thing that is coming out in that book of Max Mosleys is that the FIA sets the rules and FOM look after the money.

With Brawn the MD of sporting and technical does that mean that FOM are looking after the rules now too?


I personally think Brawn is not getting enough stick from the press and fans for creating this, I know he is aiming for 2022 but still think he could do something.

Hijpo

PukkaStukka wrote: »

All of the Ferrari powered teams have suffered a power reduction since the "clarification" / settlements of recent times. There are many theories around what was going on with fuel, fuel flow, oil burning, ERS management.

I explored some of theories here

Ferrari's struggles are compounded by a chassis that is equally short of spank. The gap between them and their customer engined teams is non existent when it should be nigh-on two seconds at a track like Spa.

Yeah that's where I got the fuel reservoir theory, it was a good post. I'm just wondering what supplier parts are common to all power units. When they say engine supplier do they also include batteries and engine stores etc?
Did all customers see the increase in straight line speed gains that year?

Frank Bullitt

quokula wrote: »

I'm another. I can count on 1 finger the number of live races I missed in 20 years from 1994 to the beginning of the hybrid era (it was Silverstone 2003 which turned out to be a classic and I'm still annoyed I couldn't watch it due to work commitments)

But in the last few years I've missed more and more races, and I've finally let my Sky F1 subscription go so didn't watch Spa last week. Doesn't seem like I missed anything. I'll still follow what's happening and watch highlights or whatever I can get access to but it's got to the point that I need to vote with my wallet to let them know this is not acceptable. Hopefully it'll be a bit closer to being a sport again in 2022.

I could write an essay on all the problems with the hybrid era. From the way it was brought in with Mercedes throwing their weight around forcing the sport to adopt an engine model they had a few years head start in developing, alongside a bunch of testing and token restrictions stopping anyone from having the option of catching up. Those new engines were more complex and more expensive, driving costs up and taking the sport from a position where it was trying to get up to 13 teams, to one where it can barely keep 10 running without needing takeovers of even the likes of Williams to keep them on life support.

And of course it's completely stopped any new manufacturer of considering entering the sport, having seen what Honda went through. Cosworth were forced out, and other manufacturers who left the sport because of the 2008 financial crisis and would have considered coming back as the global economy recovered have instead moved to other series as Formula 1 is just a no go zone now.

As well as being more complex and more expensive, the hybrids are significantly heavier than what came before, leading to much slower and less impressive cars, which needed downforce revisions in 2017 to make up for those shortcomings and give the cars less embarrassing laptimes (Mercedes dominated 2014 with a car that was on most tracks slower than a Minardi built on a shoestring a decade earlier)

This has led to the current set of extremely heavy, extremely high downforce cars, that have created huge loads on the tyres and left us with much less strategy variation as it's all about durability, and of course the high downforce has made overtaking harder again too. And, although the headline laptimes for qualifying and fastest lap are no longer embarassing, the vast majority of laps are still run at a crawl in cruise control as they have to manage their tyres and manage their power unit and manage their energy stores - Formula 1 has always had a certain amount of management of course, but not to the extent it currently has. The last time races were as heavily managed was in the 80s, and at least then it was up to the driver to manage things themselves, rather than being told by engineers exactly what laptime the telemetry says they should to.

And then you get onto the competitive state. Mercedes have had a massive baked in advantage from day 1 with the huge head start they were given, and the FIA have continued to enshrine that by limiting development avenues and possible innovation, alongside the various token systems and development freezes that have been in place at different times to completely stop any chance of anyone catching up. We've had the longest period of total dominance by one team in the history of the sport. And the level of dominance is beyond anything seen before either. Any driver on the grid, and indeed any driver on the GP2 grid, would easily have one all of the last 7 championships (and the next one) in that Mercedes. And every year we've already known who would win both championships (at least once Rosberg retired) before the first wheel has been turned at Melbourne.

It's absolutely insane that the FIA seem to have worked so hard to stop any potential shake up of the competitive order, when you see the lengths they've gone to previously when any team gets even a slight advantage, from banning exhaust blown diffusers when Red Bull were consistently winning even though it was by fairly small margins, to throwing all sorts of rule changes to try and stop Schumacher and Ferrari, when they didn't even have a dominant car for more than one year in a row.

It's been a long time since F1 felt like a sport. And the really shameful thing is that the 2009 - 2013 set of regulations had got it so right - there were lots of competitive teams, all fighting for race wins regularly, championships going down to the wire every year. When people say that Red Bull were dominant, you need to go back and watch some races. They were not dominant at all. Only in 2013 did they pull out a bit of a gap and that year itself was a victim of the hybrid regulations as all the teams had moved their resources over to developing the new cars.

If you look at 2012, you had 24 cars on the grid, you had 6 different teams winning races, 7 teams scoring podiums, you had the championship go right to the wire in the final race of the season. And the supposedly dominant Red Bull didn't gain the most pole positions outright, nor was it fast enough to secure second in the WDC, or 3rd, or even 4th or 5th. So there was no real pace advantage there in reality, they won many races through race craft, strategy and actual driving on track, rather than just winning by default and cruising around.

And they've thrown all that away because Mercedes were threatening to quit the sport and leave multiple teams without a supplier if it didn't become more "road relevant" (which in itself is a scam, nothing about the current cars is road relevant, it was all about Mercedes getting to a dominant position for marketing purposes), it's hard to see that much legitimacy in the years that followed.

Great post.

I posted something similar around how Merc got the rules they wanted back in 2011. I honestly think that gets overlooked a lot but it really informs the situation we have now.

I also can not wait to see the viewing figures this year.

Frank Bullitt

Hijpo wrote: »

Yeah that's where I got the fuel reservoir theory, it was a good post. I'm just wondering what supplier parts are common to all power units. When they say engine supplier do they also include batteries and engine stores etc?
Did all customers see the increase in straight line speed gains that year?

I think for some teams, they can design their own parts for it and use their own suppliers for the electric components, like cables and so on. They also get some of the software for modes and so on, and I do believe they can run their own versions of that outside of the basic settings they get.

Some will build their own gearboxes also, Williams and Haas do that I think? But for the most part, if a manufacturer supplies a PU to a team, they get the ICE, Turbo, MGU-K and MGU-K, they can then make adjustments for packaging etc.

PopePalpatine

I wonder what would've happened if the V8s stayed and Renault & Mercedes left. Maybe, just maybe, Alonso would get a 3rd title.

But also, would anyone step in to fill the void? Would anyone pick up the remnants of Mercedes's and Renault's operations?

Frank Bullitt

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I wonder what would've happened if the V8s stayed and Renault & Mercedes left. Maybe, just maybe, Alonso would get a 3rd title.

But also, would anyone step in to fill the void? Would anyone pick up the remnants of Mercedes's and Renault's operations?

I think the V8s would have maybe made it a bit more applying for some other companies to enter F1. Despite them not being road legal, they were reliable and compared to what we have now very affordable.

The FIA buckled at the threat from Merc to withdraw, Merc put that threat in because they had so much to gain in what is more or less a glorified marketing exercise.

vectra

Gintonious wrote: »

I think the V8s would have maybe made it a bit more applying for some other companies to enter F1. Despite them not being road legal, they were reliable and compared to what we have now very affordable.

The FIA buckled at the threat from Merc to withdraw, Merc put that threat in because they had so much to gain in what is more or less a glorified marketing exercise.

Can someone tell me exactly why the FIA buckled to Merc's demands?
Surely they could have said, "if you don't like what we want, then close the door behind you" ?

Frank Bullitt

vectra wrote: »

Can someone tell me exactly why the FIA buckled to Merc's demands?
Surely they could have said, "if you don't like what we want, then close the door behind you" ?

They more buckled to the threat to quit over anything, which I guess is kinda the same thing.

It was harder for the FIA to say "well then off you go" when they were supplying McLaren, Brawn (now the works team), Force India and now Williams and McLaren next year.

They have HUGE muscle when it comes to things like this. I agree though, it it wrong for the FIA to buckle to that, or even listen to it when they are the rule makers. They could well have told them to get lost, but they wouldn't have had anyone to fill that void in a short time. A large manufacturer walking away from the sport like that would be very bad PR.

The cars are so big and cumbersome now that LMPs can match them around Spa by removing limits on electrical power generation and deployment. Obviously it's outside the rules but those massive bastards shouldn't be anywhere near F1 cars.

Frank Bullitt

Deleted User wrote: »

The cars are so big and cumbersome now that LMPs can match them around Spa by removing limits on electrical power generation and deployment. Obviously it's outside the rules but those massive bastards shouldn't be anywhere near F1 cars.

Parsnips

Scrap qualifying
Every race start is reverse of the prev race results.

GarIT

Parsnips wrote: »

Scrap qualifying
Every race start is reverse of the prev race results.

Issue with that is after 10th everyone will want to finish last.

GarIT

Don't want to quote the image above but I think the floor looks ridiculous. Floors with nothing on them should be banned. If you want a floor build a structure on top of it.


As are the front wings, big pannels for wings to connect to but they only actually have a 1cm overlap. The flap pannels hanging down under the nose here should be fully connected to the wing. https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/racefansdotnet-20190413-143208-1.jpg
The tip of the front wing should be directly under the tip of the nose not way out ahead of it.

vectra

Gintonious wrote: »

They more buckled to the threat to quit over anything, which I guess is kinda the same thing.

It was harder for the FIA to say "well then off you go" when they were supplying McLaren, Brawn (now the works team), Force India and now Williams and McLaren next year.

They have HUGE muscle when it comes to things like this. I agree though, it it wrong for the FIA to buckle to that, or even listen to it when they are the rule makers. They could well have told them to get lost, but they wouldn't have had anyone to fill that void in a short time. A large manufacturer walking away from the sport like that would be very bad PR.

I understand,
But on the other hand, Had they walked away I think it might have been worse PR for themselves if the FIA published the reason.

OSI wrote: »

Both Mercedes and Renault demanded hybrid engines to stay, and Honda wouldn't come back until hybrids were brought in so that's 3 of the 4 current engine suppliers you wouldn't have.

I get the need for hybrid, But surely it need not have been a merc exclusive ?

H3llR4iser

OSI wrote: »

That's a pretty ridiculous comparison to make. First, it wasn't just electric power that had to be changed. The car gained near 300 extra bhp between engine and electric motor. It got another 53% more aero and a purpose built tyre as well as removing pretty much anything legally required to race to reduce weight. Go to the same lengths with an F1 car and the gap would be huge.

Precisely - if the goal is "build a racecar without rules limitation", any good race design and engineering teams can create cars way faster than F1 is; Heck, they'd be entirely capable of designing a car requiring either advanced AI or scripting to be driven, as no human being could bring to the limit due to the response times required to do so. Also, such racecar will probably look a LOT more like a sport prototype (LMP1 in modern parlance) than an F1 car, because open wheels are a MASSIVE performance hit and a "wing body" can generate downforce more effectively and with less drag than wings.

That exercise of "making an LMP1 car faster than F1" is indeed a pointless exercise - under the respective regulations, it's clear F1 is lightyears ahead.

Now, going back to when Group C existed, the story was different - these cars were F1 competitors. In 1992, Philippe Alliot's pole time in Magny Cours was an 1'16"415...that would've been good for 8th on the grid in the F1 French Grand Prix. Also, Alliot himself and Peugeot claim, to this day, that during testing on the same track they had put in a time that would've been good for 3rd on the F1 grid.

That level of performance was, pretty much, the unofficial reason for the FIA putting an end to Group C.

Cookie_Monster

Gintonious wrote: »

I have to ask lads, is anyone else like me when they are properly frustrated/upset with the current state of F1 and how it is being run?

I was but I'm past it now and into acceptance.
F1 is ****e, it will not change and there are far better forms of motorsport out there.

geotrig

Gintonious wrote: »

I hated that for so long now,i prefered the older shorter form factor and wish they could reduce the lengths

AMKC

geotrig wrote: »

I hated that for so long now,i prefered the older shorter form factor and wish they could reduce the lengths

That last Ferrati in the picture before the SF90 is the 2007 one am I right? I am sure before the bigger wheels and cars came in in 2017 that the cars had got a bit bigger in 2009. It was not just a big jump like that with them or maybe it was? I think there should be another ar in between them two that would make more sense and show the gradual growth. It is crazy how big they are now but then has'nt everything else in the world gotten bigger too from the cars you see on the roads today to the houses that people now build and live in to the planes you fly off on to holidays in?

geotrig

I think the sf90 was 2019 dont know if it predated that , they definitely got bigger before sf90, I personally just think they are too big and because of that the racing on certain tracks has changed if you ask me.
I'm surprised the f2004 is so close to the 412 ,I had thought they looked bigger by then also.

AMKC

So if you look up Evolution of the F1 car on Google you will see that they have been gradually growing since 2010. They did not just take one giant leap to that SF90 monster. I am not on computer so can not share it but maybe someone else can.