Even Formula 1 Drivers think F1 is boring

Happy Turkey Day Kelly.

No I hate those stupid areo dependent, hybrid things that the rest of the guys seem to like to drive. It's cold enough outsie now that it's time to sit back down in the rig for the winter.

 

Sorry, thats just a pipe dream. The aero portion will never go away. F1 cars need downforce to go ridiculously fast and pretty much everyone wants the cars to go ridiculously fast. A real solution is finding a way to keep the downforce while also making the cars less aero-sensitive. The new rules claim to do this by increasing the downforce contribution of the floor & diffuser and reducing it for the wings.

IMO, they effectively copied Indycar and the Dallara IR-18 spec which seems to have much better racing. But those cars are spec, are shorter, and have narrower tires IIRC. So it cant be a direct comparison for the aero concepts.

 

It's not going to work and it will still be a snoozefest.

 

there's most certainly a difference between aerodynamic grip and mechanical grip. i agree with the car size (and all the carbon) being the culprit. the cars are ridiculously long, and wide, and the widest parts are all made out of carbon. and the suspension is made out of carbon. you can't breathe on them from another car. that is all totally stupid for the sake of good racing, engineering masturbation aside. going back to the 70's/80's (not for safety) as far as design and size would go a long way. smaller aero that's inside of the wheelbase, shorter fronts, shorter cars in general... they should go back to being gokarts on steroids and not land barges. we've been saying that amongst my friends for at least 15 years now. they won't, but they should.

 

I miss the days of the screaming v-10 engines and such.

That said the fuel mapping and the trolling around it has created bordom. I get that they don't want to refuel for safety, but come on, every other auto series have pit stops with fueling. The "select map a, select map d" racing kinda sucks..

Give them fuel stops, aero and let them race!

 

Just slap a big, butt-ugly pair of fans on the ass end of a wedge and call it a day. (And NA engines with big thumpin' cubic inches!)
Ugly cars, beautiful racing.

 

I really dont understand why the cars are so large. I cant believe that someone couldn't make an F1 car that was amazingly safe but was only 1.6m wide instead of 2m wide. And I dont understand why they kept them this wide for the new regs. The width is the problematic part. Not only does it create the larger disturbance in the air - it also makes the tracks effectively narrower. So now theres less room for other drivers to pass. Ugh.

It might be that I'm underestimating how much slower a 1.6m wide car would be compared to a 2m one. And it really does seem like F1 has no intention of slowing down the cars any time soon.

Most people blame the putting around on trying to save tires to do a 1-stop strategy. Adding pitstops may or may not help. Chain Bear on YT has a good vid about why mandating 2-stops (or potentially why extra stops) wouldn't help. Its called "What if two pit stops were mandatory"

 

Wouldn't a 2m wide car vs 1.6m wide car have a LOT more mechanical grip, simply due to the width?

 

I dont know.

Even if mechanical grip changed a lot, who knows how the lap time would change. Narrower cars have a less drag. If they keep all their downforce, they'd be just as fast in fast corners and faster on all the straights. But they could be slower in slow corners because of less mechanical grip. All that could reduce the laptime or increase it. Or they could add more downforce, sacrifice the straights, and make up time in the mid-speed corners. Its all a tough comparison.

 

shit is dumb. if you think length doesn't matter, consider the effective radius of an 18-wheeler turning into a shopping center from the street and how it occupies the road within a turn and the inability to have a passing line, compared to a normal car. look how far out and how wide that dumb fucking nose airplane is. make suspension arms all metal and hubs and heim joints and mount points beefy. make front aero small and close in. make the car shorter. make it narrower.

 

Holy moley! I haven't watched F1 in years and had no idea they had grown so much.

 

The longer cars probably increased the occurrences of people losing their nose because of an incomplete pass. It doesnt create a huge aero problem like the extra width seem to have.

I do think the 09-13 cars were near dimensions - 1.6m width, ~3.4m wheelbase IIRC. The 13' cars with wider tires and a stronger floor would be fast!

 

I just finished listening to the latest podcast of beyond the grid. Lord Hesketh was being interviewed,what a treat it was to hear of the stories of how F1 was back in the day.

 

The LeMans GTE class cars are 2m wide and have no problem passing each other.

F1 cars became longer to allow for more leg room clearance incase of a frontal impact accident, plus having to store a full race distance of fuel plus the hybrid system.

 

I’ve been an F1 fan since I was a little kid in the 50’s. The current generation of cars results in the least interesting and watchable races of all the years I’ve watched. Like they say, the race is pretty much over after qualifying, more or less leaving a procession they call the race. In a way, it’s made every race like Monaco. In contrast, I think probably the most competitive and fun-to-watch F1 racing generation was in the DFV Cosworth era before technology and aero took over.

It’s true, the 10th place qualifier can win in MotoGP, but doesn’t have a prayer in F1. It’s simply because F1 concentrates the show on its display of technology and not on wheel to wheel racing.

 

Like others have said, the aero isn't much of an issue with the exception of that dumbass push to pass button. Aero technology has increased significantly since the big HP v10's and they need to bring those engines back. High HP with high aero will degrade tires quickly and thus create performing attrition instead of no passing. This style of racing significantly downgrades Hamilton's accomplishments IMO compared to Schumacher & Co. and he knows it.

 

Yeah, that’s what I was doing.

 

Did Hamilton's teammate ever pull over on the front straight on the last lap?

 

Pirelli already purposefully introduced tires that degrade quickly and it has produced the racing that we see now. Every driver can already destroy a set of tires in 2-3 laps. That's why they put around on their warm-up lap before getting on it during QP. That's why the teams have put a ton of effort into wheel design to cool the tires as much as possible. That's why their race laps are so much slower than QP laps, even at the end of races with little fuel left and fresh tires. They are trying to extend the stint because high degradation doesnt make up for the pit stop time loss. Degrading tires faster still isn't going to help anything with the racing.

I wouldn't be surprised if the current engines plus the electric motors produce more torque and can destroy tires faster than the V10s ever did.

Pirelli was set to switch to tires that don't degrade quickly in 2021. But that was before the pandemic. I dont know what they are doing now. Liberty Media is hoping that racing will get more exciting if everyone can push as much as possible. Maybe theyll degrade the fronts less when following closely, which will help them pass. Maybe not. Theyll have to find a sweet spot where pitting for faster tires is actually worth it over a full stint.

 

I thought watching F1 was boring but discussing F1 has that beat.