Formula 1 Discussion - And favourite driver?

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I'd like if they brought back refueling given it would have another element of strategy as could lead to drivers with a soft and low fuel set up gambling to have no weight and set out a blazer of laps before going to refuel and hope they put up massive time advantages
As if the safety-obsessed F1 of today would ever allow it.
 
I'd like to see them have tires that actually can be driven hard on.
Wet tires, but also yes. Part of the problem seems to be that the tires are too good. I think it was last race where they were getting 40+ laps on mediums? That's crazy. One of the soft compounds is deliberately nerfed so that it literally starts falling apart. I don't get it personally, I'd prefer to make the tires as good as they can be and if that means 80 laps on mediums then so be it. It'll push the teams harder in other areas knowing that they can afford to go harder on the tires.

Also yes, smaller cars, remove monaco or make drastic changes to the track. Bring back refuelling. Bring back 60 minute qualifying. Stop fining drivers for swearing. There needs to be some kind of restraints on aero & flooring too because watching anyone who qualified pole and gets through the first 4 corners breeze to p1 is boring. Dirty air, or more importantly clean air at the front doesn't make for good racing. Lastly, stop paying ferrari every year just because they're ferrari, it's free money for nothing. Every team should get the same allowances. Get rid of hybrids, bring back v10s or whatever is the equivalent.

I'm undecided on sprints because they sort of work. When i look back on it, the best change of the last 10 years that i can think of is actually the halo.
 
make the tyre selection actually mean something, red should last i dont know 10 laps tops. and hard should be 4 seconds slower
Back in the 90's they actually had those tyres. They had A (ultra hard), B,(Hard), C (Medium) and D (Soft) tyres. Pitstops weren't mandatory and sometimes you would have drivers just taking the "wood tyre" (A or B) and waltz along to get track position. Like for example in Belgium 1991 Alesi put on B tyres and he took the lead after everyone in front pitted and he might have won or at least finished on the podium if his Ferrari had not decided to blow up. But that was mostly Goodyear because Pirelli wasn't able to make good tyres back then too (except their qualifiers they were better then those from Goodyear)
 
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Wet tires, but also yes. Part of the problem seems to be that the tires are too good. I think it was last race where they were getting 40+ laps on mediums? That's crazy. One of the soft compounds is deliberately nerfed so that it literally starts falling apart. I don't get it personally, I'd prefer to make the tires as good as they can be and if that means 80 laps on mediums then so be it. It'll push the teams harder in other areas knowing that they can afford to go harder on the tires.

Also yes, smaller cars, remove monaco or make drastic changes to the track. Bring back refuelling. Bring back 60 minute qualifying. Stop fining drivers for swearing. There needs to be some kind of restraints on aero & flooring too because watching anyone who qualified pole and gets through the first 4 corners breeze to p1 is boring. Dirty air, or more importantly clean air at the front doesn't make for good racing. Lastly, stop paying ferrari every year just because they're ferrari, it's free money for nothing. Every team should get the same allowances. Get rid of hybrids, bring back v10s or whatever is the equivalent.

I'm undecided on sprints because they sort of work. When i look back on it, the best change of the last 10 years that i can think of is actually the halo.
The way I'd approach overtaking as an issue would be that the front wing has to be narrower than the space between the front wheels but in return, teams get more room to iterate on what can be done within that area. Also, I'd allow some things that got banned like blown diffusors, mass dampers and FRIC as extra tools that teams can use to compensate for the smaller wings and such. Maybe allow teams to also have movable aero within the boxes that contain the radiators as a measure to counter over-heating when cars inevitably do have to follow each other. I'd also limit the maximum length of an F1 car to around 4.5 meters with the width going to around 1.9 meters.

Engine should ideally be a 3 liter open spec, with any configuration allowed. Fuel would be standardized into something like 95 pump gas. Biofuels of course would also be allowed because that is an area where companies should have the best possible space to explore whatever weird concepts and grey areas are involved. I'd also allow privateer entries to enter, with a previous year's car from any manufacturer willing to sell them one.

Monaco is something that should stay in the calendar because IT IS F1. Removing it is a bad sign for the sport and while I do agree the track should be tweaked, it should still follow the classic layout. Also, I think sprints are silly because ultimately, they are about trying to fit more F1 into a weekend when what they should do is more support events from local series. The weekend of every F1 race should be Friday having two 3 hour free practice sessions, 2 hours of free practice on saturday, 1 hour of quali but with the clock pausing if yellows or reds come up. Race day would of course have no practice as all cars go to parc ferme over night, with teams only getting access back to the cars two hours before formation lap. I'd also expand the 3 hour window where the race has to be held back to 6 hours as it used to be.
 
Just wait until someone has the bright idea to look back at the early 90's. They had a practice session followed by a qualy session on Friday. Then they did the same on Saturday and your best time would count. Which sometimes lead to funny rersults when Friday was in sunny conditions while Saturday was wet as fuck. Oh and on Thursdays was the Prequalifying because they had over 40 cars competing for grid slots and they needed to weed out "the slowest". Maybe also bring back the Warm-Up on Sundays so that drivers can clean the track a bit for the race. But then come "But it costs too much" discussions (just think about it, tyres weren't limited back then but now they are). Heck, I have begun to look deeper inbto the roots of F1 and early F1 had basically no restrictions save for the engine (4.5 litres for natural aspirated, 2.5 litres for compressor (turbo) charged engines) and the fact that nthe car had to be powered over the back wheels so no rocket or propeller on your car. Heck back in the early 50's they actually used alcohol-methanol fuel instead of normal fuel (probably because most early engines were based on aeroplane engines instead of specially developed race engines)
 
I'd like to see them have tires that actually can be driven hard on.
The consensus on reddit is we need to go back to tyres that can barely do a lap, as if that was so interesting.

"Hey kids want to watch drivers driving round 20 seconds off the pace to preserver their tyres, well here you go."

Mentioning refueling gets you jumped on by a bunch of kids who probably never watched a race with it with those stats showing less "overtakes" when we had refuelling. Well, one we had more strategy interest so overtaking was done in the pits, two driving round someone using drs is not an exciting overtake, and three number of overtakes isn't a direct metric for quality of the racing.

Both of these are important to know because the higher ups in FOM have admitted used reddit to gauges what the fans want before and no reason to assume they've stopped.

I stand by my suggestion teams should be able to select which 3 of the tyre options from the full range they take to a GP. Means some might take the absolute softest for qualifying but then those are useless in the race, or teams might take something harder and try to make a long stint 1 stop work. Also woild mean designing your car to work with certain tyres would be an option. Though I would expect after a few races they'd have the computer models dialed in and all select the same options.

The stepped tyre selection they pushed recently has obviously been an utter failure. Who could have guessed (you know besides anyone with a working knowledge of the sport) that teams would avoid the hard and just go super tyre preservation on the soft and medium?
 
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As if the safety-obsessed F1 of today would ever allow it.
Which I never got btw, the drivers used to accept the risk of dying like Lauda had said, and we watch a lot of violent sports as spectators. Boxing MMA all that is way more dangerous for a person than simply the possibility of an accident. We do the best we can and mitigate the rest, no need to obsess over the risk. Again clown world.
 
the drivers used to accept the risk of dying like Lauda had said
I'm sure on some level they still do.

Safety isn't really for the drivers. It's for the people watching.

When you have elite drivers, professional danger-seekers, what have you, you know as well as they do there is something so fundamentally wrong with them that they're willing to do something that's inherently dangerous. They all got misty over Grosjean five years ago, because they're all mortal, but you didn't see a lineup of 19 guys deciding to quit the sport, and that was a freak accident based on a configuration of both the cars and the bump that sent Grosjean off track that could happen at any race.

BUT, the thing I find fascinating about Formula 1 as a new watcher is just how much the F1 organization is dedicated to making the drivers look cute, cuddly and relatable. That sort of thing comes across as making me painfully aware that I'm watching what is likely a bunch of otherwise insufferable assholes, charismatic though they might be. (Seriously, the amount of "F1 human interest/look at how dorky and playful these guys are" content I've been getting on YT over the past few weeks has been something to behold.)

SO, if you have an organization that wants you to fall in love with its stars, enough to make them bankable to the tune of billions, you want to not only protect that investment, you want to protect your investment in the fans' love for the personalities. Thus, the organization needs to devote some of its energy to safety.
 
I'm sure on some level they still do.

Safety isn't really for the drivers. It's for the people watching.

When you have elite drivers, professional danger-seekers, what have you, you know as well as they do there is something so fundamentally wrong with them that they're willing to do something that's inherently dangerous. They all got misty over Grosjean five years ago, because they're all mortal, but you didn't see a lineup of 19 guys deciding to quit the sport, and that was a freak accident based on a configuration of both the cars and the bump that sent Grosjean off track that could happen at any race.

BUT, the thing I find fascinating about Formula 1 as a new watcher is just how much the F1 organization is dedicated to making the drivers look cute, cuddly and relatable. That sort of thing comes across as making me painfully aware that I'm watching what is likely a bunch of otherwise insufferable assholes, charismatic though they might be. (Seriously, the amount of "F1 human interest/look at how dorky and playful these guys are" content I've been getting on YT over the past few weeks has been something to behold.)

SO, if you have an organization that wants you to fall in love with its stars, enough to make them bankable to the tune of billions, you want to not only protect that investment, you want to protect your investment in the fans' love for the personalities. Thus, the organization needs to devote some of its energy to safety.
So we need to bring the masculinity of the sport back. Honestly it should have been done ages ago, F1 is getting kinda gay a n that's bad news cause it will reduce its following among the core group. If you look at what Mercedes (the model team that FOM would like to attract) it's gonna be fags like Antonelli, Russell and Norris filling the grid. It's a process that started with Hamilton, whose personality got molded into a faggot for the cash but the higher ups would like to continue.
Old drivers like Alonso may be assholes but they still have some soul left in them. Look at drivers like Verstappen and (thankfully for all of us) Piastri, they still have that raw energy like Schumi did. Liberty media is trying to mute what made F1 the pinnacle of masculinity. I remember being a boy growing up after Schumacher had dominated and having him as a hero. None of these faggots should be anyone's hero, and at the end of the day it means that young boys aren't gonna bother with F1 anymore.
 
So we need to bring the masculinity of the sport back.
Fuckin' A, man. I think a lot of professional sports these days are just as much about the personalities as much as they are about the sport itself, and for me, that really sucks (and yes, that's feminization, and a lot of it is probably because when women spend money, businesses want female spending; this is what drives entertainment to lean into things like human interest and player relationships).

I found myself drawn to F1 because it's a fairly concentrated set of parameters with all players on the field at a time (meaning, I don't have to follow multiple, separate events to start to get the bigger picture). So, relatively easy to follow.

But I suppose F1 is like everything: there will always be the core group of people that care about the real sport, not the outward faggotry. Times will change, the trend-chasers will find other things to do, but there will always be purists. What can I say, sometimes I'm an optimist.

at the end of the day it means that young boys aren't gonna bother with F1 anymore
We can observe elsewhere that the world is healing from modern sensibilities and boys will get to be boys again. I'm not convinced that young boys won't bother. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the culture that raised a lot of the current set of grid drivers is just as masculine as it's always been. I doubt that the pipeline that created the stars isn't somehow aspirational to the kids who are karting now.

It's no secret that, daddy issues aside, Max is where he is through a combination of aggression and devotion to the sport. As long as there's a success story to be found in that kind of masculine drive, there will continue to be boys that emulate.
 
Fuckin' A, man. I think a lot of professional sports these days are just as much about the personalities as much as they are about the sport itself, and for me, that really sucks (and yes, that's feminization, and a lot of it is probably because when women spend money, businesses want female spending; this is what drives entertainment to lean into things like human interest and player relationships).

I found myself drawn to F1 because it's a fairly concentrated set of parameters with all players on the field at a time (meaning, I don't have to follow multiple, separate events to start to get the bigger picture). So, relatively easy to follow.

But I suppose F1 is like everything: there will always be the core group of people that care about the real sport, not the outward faggotry. Times will change, the trend-chasers will find other things to do, but there will always be purists. What can I say, sometimes I'm an optimist.


We can observe elsewhere that the world is healing from modern sensibilities and boys will get to be boys again. I'm not convinced that young boys won't bother. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the culture that raised a lot of the current set of grid drivers is just as masculine as it's always been. I doubt that the pipeline that created the stars isn't somehow aspirational to the kids who are karting now.

It's no secret that, daddy issues aside, Max is where he is through a combination of aggression and devotion to the sport. As long as there's a success story to be found in that kind of masculine drive, there will continue to be boys that emulate.
My issue is that Max is the only one bucking the trend. Before him there was Alonso and before Schumacher, but it's trending downwards to be sure. A young lad will look up to Max for the most part, but without him people like Norris and Antonelli would fill the grid. Piastri is also ok, but he's got very big shoes to fill.

Go to watch an older race and look at the opening graphics. It's filled with women waving the white and black flag. A schoolboy's dream; adrenaline and women, what's not to love? Now it's banana suits and bouncy balls, and just rules to constrain what should be the freest expression of mankind's soul, our inginuity and our bravery, being broadcast all over the world. A sport that truly united, where it was an undisputed WORLD champion. Now?
 
Everyone ready for watching the red flag fly?

Screenshot_20251102_112920_Brave.jpg

Hopefully they don't puss out and we get another classic Brazil like 2002, 2012, or 2024.
 
Maybe Max is doing some sick drifting pirouettes again.
Shame though, it's such a good track.
Guess we have to make due with formation lap crashes.
 
Everyone ready for watching the red flag fly?

View attachment 8112633

Hopefully they don't puss out and we get another classic Brazil like 2002, 2012, or 2024.
Looks like the WDC is back on the menu boys! Rain means that the boat Verstappen is driving is gonna be faster than normal, plus the midfielders can actually compete with the frontrunners. Norris is gonna fill his bottle and Piastri may actually have a good race
 
Guess we have to make due with formation lap crashes.
I still don't know how Norris only got a €5k fine for the illegal formation lap last year. Like it was a fully abandoned start, the green lights never came on, and there were marshals at the side of the track recovering Stroll's car so it was a safety issue to have them go round again.

Yet even though most of the filed stayed put until explicitly told to go around again by the race director because Norris had already gone, he apparently couldn't be expected to know the rules.

Should have been a full disqualified like if you go through the red light at the end of the pit lane.

Though the FIA removing Herbert as a steward due to a "conflict of interests" is a tacit admission as to why a lot of Norris decisions were odd last season.
 
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