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

g1983d

geotrig wrote: »

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.

Wasn't there a period when some had short wheel base and others had long, different length cars had different strengths and weakness mixing it up a bit

duploelabs

GarIT wrote: »

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

Especially in Monaco or Barcelona

Jordan 199

I read Sebastian Vettel has bought the Williams FW14B that Nigel Mansell won the 1992 championship in.

duploelabs

Jordan 199 wrote: »

I read Sebastian Vettel has bought the Williams FW14B that Nigel Mansell won the 1992 championship in.

Such a groundbreaking car with its active suspension

AMKC

g1983d wrote: »

Wasn't there a period when some had short wheel base and others had long, different length cars had different strengths and weakness mixing it up a bit

Yes there was not so long ago. Mercedes had a long wheel base and Ferreti a short wheel base but they changed to a long wheel base then like Mercedes too. It was 2017 or 18 so not so long ago

pjohnson

Jordan 199 wrote: »

I read Sebastian Vettel has bought the Williams FW14B that Nigel Mansell won the 1992 championship in.

Probably an improvement on the SF1000

mickdw

Jordan 199 wrote: »

I read Sebastian Vettel has bought the Williams FW14B that Nigel Mansell won the 1992 championship in.

Dont tell me williams are now selling off stuff from their past? Or was it in other ownership already?

AMKC

Jordan 199 wrote: »

I read Sebastian Vettel has bought the Williams FW14B that Nigel Mansell won the 1992 championship in.

duploelabs wrote: »

Such a groundbreaking car with its active suspension

He will need all the computers and software from that time too so it is s beautiful car with a great livery do. I wonder where he will keep it and drive it?

duploelabs

AMKC wrote: »

He will need all the computers and software from that time too so it is s beautiful car with a great livery do. I wonder where he will keep it and drive it?

Like america's nuclear arsenal, it probably only runs off 5" floppy discs

Jordan 199

mickdw wrote: »

Dont tell me williams are now selling off stuff from their past? Or was it in other ownership already?

I'm not exactly sure, but it was bought for an undisclosed sum. One sold last year for three million euros.

mickdw

Jordan 199 wrote: »

I'm not exactly sure, but it was bought for an undisclosed sum. One sold last year for three million euros.

I wonder is it a case of buying the car but leaving it with williams who would run it etc for him if he wanted to take it to goodwood or something like that.

tipp_tipp_tipp

So a number of people have been weighing in on the current state of affairs so thought I'd share my thoughts.

In general I'm not as negative as others. Sure I'm finding this season boring like everyone else, but I have enjoyed the last 3 seasons a lot. There have been plenty of great races. Sure there are plenty of boring ones but that is nothing new. The tracks that produce boring races are largely predictable and can be avoided (I don't think I'll ever sit through another Singapore Grand Prix again for example). As someone who watched through the 2000s, I remember the truly bad days when the only action happened in the pit lane. I find the races these days a lot more engaging than then. Hopefully the FIA will find something to peg Mercedes back next year, if not the 2022 regs seems to be a step in the right direction. So I feel confident it will come again.

I do kind of feel that the notion of designing and building a car to go racing is kind of dead. Looking at other series, they largely seem to be going the BOP route, or simply the spec route. I came across an old preview of the 2008 LM 24 hours recently. Something that struck me looking through it was the large number of chassis and engines in the P1 category with lots of privateers taking part. Fast forward 12 years and P1 is dead and the privateers are competing in the mostly spec P2s. It just feels like no-one wants to spend lots of money to finish nowhere near the front.

In relation to the above, someone made a great point recently in this thread about technology largely having outgrown the sport. Something that's really struck me in the last few years is how static the pecking order has been. Take Renault for example, they seems completely stuck in the midfield, unable to make that big step forward. When they won their championships in 2005/2006, they had made steady progress year on year (having been nowhere in 2001) till they reached the front. While a lot of focus has been on the engines in recent years, I feel it is important to look at how the chassis and specifically the aerodynamics compares between teams. It just seems to me that year on year all the teams run the analysis, get roughly the same downforce gains, and rock up at Melbourne in roughly the same order they finished the last season. Based on my own experience of FE analysis (structural equivalent of CFD) cloud computing is really having a profound effect on engineering analysis, with the ability to spool up (near) infinite numbers of powerful servers to run you analysis. Along the required automation of the collation/visualization of results, you can do an awful lot of things in a timeframe that has not been possible until now. Given the nature of the beast, I'm sure there has been heavy investment by F1 teams into these kind of processes. And I feel we are seeing the results of this on track.

Not sure what the future direction should be. I would be interested to hear others thought on the 2022 regs. My understanding is they do limit the avenues for development. Formula E puts on a good show for a fraction of the F1 cost. Should F1 go down the route of spec chassis or even just spec parts (spec front wing for example??). I now others are of the opinion the opposite should be done and more freedom allow in the technical regs. I struggle to see how that will not end in anything but an arms race that no-one can afford, but would love to hear other thoughts on how this might be done feasibly. Can a cost cap truly be implemented perhaps to make this possible?

AMKC

https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/d3x0dx/the_evolution_of_ferrari_19862019/

SMC92Ian

Didn't McLaren also sell off all it's cars?

g1983d

SMC92Ian wrote: »

Didn't McLaren also sell off all it's cars?

I think they have just used them as collateral against loans

quokula

tipp_tipp_tipp wrote: »

In general I'm not as negative as others. Sure I'm finding this season boring like everyone else, but I have enjoyed the last 3 seasons a lot. There have been plenty of great races. Sure there are plenty of boring ones but that is nothing new. The tracks that produce boring races are largely predictable and can be avoided (I don't think I'll ever sit through another Singapore Grand Prix again for example). As someone who watched through the 2000s, I remember the truly bad days when the only action happened in the pit lane. I find the races these days a lot more engaging than then.

I remember the 2000s well. The title went to the last race or second last race between multiple different teams in 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Multiple years leading up to that decade, and coming out the other side of it, went to the wire too. In contrast, for the entire hybrid era no non-Mercedes driver has had a mathematical chance of the title by the second last race of any season. In reality, no non-Mercedes driver has had a chance by the time the teams have turned up for the first test session of any given year. We already know now that no non-Mercedes driver has a chance in 2021.

Going back to the 2000s, in 2001 Schumacher won fairly comfortably but Ferrari barely won half the races or half the pole positions as McLaren and Williams were very competitive and it was really the driver making the difference that year after Hakkinen lost his edge. 2002 and 2004 were the only years that have come close to the kind of dominance Mercedes have enjoyed throughout the entire hybrid era, and on both occasions the FIA tore up the rule book to try and make it competitive again the following year (which they succeeded in doing both times)

Aside from the field being far more competitive, I'd also take drivers actually being able to push hard and engage in different strategies and make a difference on track any day over the running to slow engineer defined laptimes and artificial DRS overtakes of the current era. There were other differences too like the FIA generally allowing them to race or qualify in heavy rain instead of sticking a red flag or safety car out whenever it looked like it might get tricky, which gave every race weekend more potential for unpredictability.

And it's not just rose tinted glasses, at no point in my wildest dreams at that time did I countenance missing a race, in the way that I often skip them now and just catch "highlights", much like many other posters in this thread have also indicated.

Harika

Whole Williams family stepping away from Williams. https://www.williamsf1.com/news/2020/09/williams-racing-opens-new-chapter-as-family-step-aside

Too bad to see a former great team and after Ferrari and McLaren the third longest team on the grid dissolved. Will go the way of Jordan Spyker Sahara not force India, quote me on that.

Cool_CM

Reports that the Williams family will no longer be involved in the Williams setup after Monza - if true, that didn't take long!

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/williams-family-steps-down-from-f1-team/4867525/

muckwarrior

quokula wrote: »

I remember the 2000s well. The title went to the last race or second last race between multiple different teams in 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Multiple years leading up to that decade, and coming out the other side of it, went to the wire too. In contrast, for the entire hybrid era no non-Mercedes driver has had a mathematical chance of the title by the second last race of any season. In reality, no non-Mercedes driver has had a chance by the time the teams have turned up for the first test session of any given year. We already know now that no non-Mercedes driver has a chance in 2021.

Going back to the 2000s, in 2001 Schumacher won fairly comfortably but Ferrari barely won half the races or half the pole positions as McLaren and Williams were very competitive and it was really the driver making the difference that year after Hakkinen lost his edge. 2002 and 2004 were the only years that have come close to the kind of dominance Mercedes have enjoyed throughout the entire hybrid era, and on both occasions the FIA tore up the rule book to try and make it competitive again the following year (which they succeeded in doing both times)

Aside from the field being far more competitive, I'd also take drivers actually being able to push hard and engage in different strategies and make a difference on track any day over the running to slow engineer defined laptimes and artificial DRS overtakes of the current era. There were other differences too like the FIA generally allowing them to race or qualify in heavy rain instead of sticking a red flag or safety car out whenever it looked like it might get tricky, which gave every race weekend more potential for unpredictability.

And it's not just rose tinted glasses, at no point in my wildest dreams at that time did I countenance missing a race, in the way that I often skip them now and just catch "highlights", much like many other posters in this thread have also indicated.

I kinda agree with both of you. I think what it comes down to is that the on-track racing in the 2000s was pretty bad, but at least the championship was usually competitive.

PukkaStukka

AMKC wrote: »

He will need all the computers and software from that time too so it is s beautiful car with a great livery do. I wonder where he will keep it and drive it?

Apparently Williams only had one legacy laptop with the requisite software to boot the car up. Nobody in the team today understands how the car works because original knowledge is long gone as are some of the toolings to produce specific parts. I don't know if Renault left their engines in the cars either. I believe BMW took their engines back when their contract with Williams finished in the noughties.

Infoanon

Sad days to see the Williams family step away - no word yet on who will be the new team principal - we might get an insight into who BCE Ltd are .nothing to do with Bernie despite the rumours apparently

billybonkers

Infoanon wrote: »

Sad days to see the Williams family step away - no word yet on who will be the new team principal - we might get an insight into who BCE Ltd are .nothing to do with Bernie despite the rumours apparently

BCE (a fund managed by Dorilton) seems to be headed by a hedge fund manager James Matthews, ex driver and employed by Horner's cousin. Rumoured to take over..

The name that I find interesting is former racing driver James Matthews who my sources say is the person who I should be looking at. Matthews is best known for being married to Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William’s wife. So he’s British and part of The Establishment. He owns his own asset management and investment company called Eden Rock Capital, which is run by managing-director Edward Horner. If the name sounds familiar that is because it is Christian’s cousin.



Matthews has been around racing all his life and, to some extent, motorsport – and F1 - is unfinished business for him.



James is the son of David Matthews, a successful car dealer who raced Fords in the British Saloon Car Championships in the early 1970s, until he had a very hefty accident which meant he returned to business. He set up the original Eden Rock business, which is a very flashy resort on the island of Saint Barths in the West Indies, where the rich and famous go on their holidays. They pay a lot for the privilege. David is now sufficiently wealthy to also own a 10,000-acre estate in Scotland and when James set up his hedge fund he decdied to use the Eden Rock name. Before that James was a racing driver, and a rather good one. He was so good in fact that he dominated the British and European Formula Renault championships in 1994 before moving to Formula 3, where he failed to shine and finally decided that a career in finance was a better idea. He walked away from the sport and never really knew what he might have achieved if he had kept going.

There is another link with the F1 world that is also worth considering. James raced for John Booth’s Manor Motorsport in Formula Renault with David investing in the team and being a director from 1993 to 1995. He is also believed to have helped fund the team’s move to British Formula 3 a few years later that led to titles in 1999 for Marc Hynes (now Lewis Hamilton’s right hand man) and Antonio Pizzonia in 2000. The team also won the British Formula Renault title with Hamilton in 2003 and ran him on the Formula 3 Euroseries as well.

The historic link with Manor is interesting but there is nothing as yet to suggest that there is a link between Matthews and Manor. John Booth is now 65 and may not be that interested in further F1 adventures, but his business partner Graeme Lowdon has been working quietly in recent years to get a new F1 venture up and running.

Article here https://www.racefans.net/2020/08/30/who-are-the-mystery-buyers-now-in-charge-at-williams/

flazio

The biggest disappointment in all this is that Claire and Frank aren't being allowed to see out the season they started.

BikeRacer

billybonkers wrote: »

BCE (a fund managed by Dorilton) seems to be headed by a hedge fund manager James Matthews, ex driver and employed by Horner's cousin. Rumoured to take over..

The name that I find interesting is former racing driver James Matthews who my sources say is the person who I should be looking at. Matthews is best known for being married to Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William’s wife. So he’s British and part of The Establishment. He owns his own asset management and investment company called Eden Rock Capital, which is run by managing-director Edward Horner. If the name sounds familiar that is because it is Christian’s cousin.



Matthews has been around racing all his life and, to some extent, motorsport – and F1 - is unfinished business for him.



James is the son of David Matthews, a successful car dealer who raced Fords in the British Saloon Car Championships in the early 1970s, until he had a very hefty accident which meant he returned to business. He set up the original Eden Rock business, which is a very flashy resort on the island of Saint Barths in the West Indies, where the rich and famous go on their holidays. They pay a lot for the privilege. David is now sufficiently wealthy to also own a 10,000-acre estate in Scotland and when James set up his hedge fund he decdied to use the Eden Rock name. Before that James was a racing driver, and a rather good one. He was so good in fact that he dominated the British and European Formula Renault championships in 1994 before moving to Formula 3, where he failed to shine and finally decided that a career in finance was a better idea. He walked away from the sport and never really knew what he might have achieved if he had kept going.

There is another link with the F1 world that is also worth considering. James raced for John Booth’s Manor Motorsport in Formula Renault with David investing in the team and being a director from 1993 to 1995. He is also believed to have helped fund the team’s move to British Formula 3 a few years later that led to titles in 1999 for Marc Hynes (now Lewis Hamilton’s right hand man) and Antonio Pizzonia in 2000. The team also won the British Formula Renault title with Hamilton in 2003 and ran him on the Formula 3 Euroseries as well.

The historic link with Manor is interesting but there is nothing as yet to suggest that there is a link between Matthews and Manor. John Booth is now 65 and may not be that interested in further F1 adventures, but his business partner Graeme Lowdon has been working quietly in recent years to get a new F1 venture up and running.

Article here https://www.racefans.net/2020/08/30/who-are-the-mystery-buyers-now-in-charge-at-williams/

Why have you copy and pasted a large section from this article from Joebloggsf1 word for word and tried to pass it off as your own info?
https://www.joeblogsf1.com/joesaward/id/00800

billybonkers

BikeRacer wrote: »

Why have you copy and pasted a large section from this article from Joebloggsf1 word for word and tried to pass it off as your own info?
https://www.joeblogsf1.com/joesaward/id/00800

I copied it from Reddit and posted the other Racefans article which goes into a lot more detail on the subject... Sorry officer :rolleyes:

Thought it may be interesting to people who aren't on the subreddit that's all

Frank Bullitt

A shame to see the Williams family step away. They are one of the more remarkable stories in F1 over its history.

having said that, I think the good news is that the team stay functional and people keep their jobs, so there is a silver lining to this.

GarIT

flazio wrote: »

The biggest disappointment in all this is that Claire and Frank aren't being allowed to see out the season they started.

There's no real allowed about it, they decided to leave apparently.

Infoanon

GarIT wrote: »

There's no real allowed about it, they decided to leave apparently.

A new brush sweeps clean comes to mind - team principal still to be announced.

Interesting article on Autosport with Vettel saying F1 needs to change to survive or it will be irrelevant in ten years time.

recyclebin

So the only Williams we will now see at grand prix is James Matthews sister in law, Vogue Williams, aka Vogue from Fade Street, no relation to Frank and Claire!

Top Dog

billybonkers wrote: »

BCE (a fund managed by Dorilton) seems to be headed by a hedge fund manager James Matthews, ex driver and employed by Horner's cousin. Rumoured to take over..

The name that I find interesting is former racing driver James Matthews who my sources say is the person who I should be looking at. Matthews is best known for being married to Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William’s wife. So he’s British and part of The Establishment. He owns his own asset management and investment company called Eden Rock Capital, which is run by managing-director Edward Horner. If the name sounds familiar that is because it is Christian’s cousin.

Sorry to be pedantic, but if he owns the company he's hardly employed by Horners cousin, and the opposite is actually true - Horners cousin is employed by him?