Formula 1 Discussion - And favourite driver?

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The reason attack mode is off-line in that way is specifically because of how much power output it enables the driver to have for the following two minutes - it means drivers can't overtake by activating it and then ride off into the sunset, it seems daft (and is daft) but it's to ensure there's some amount of fight on track.
It's an absurdly shitty mechanic, that forces a driver into a bad position and be overtaken to get a boost that he will then use to pass by some of the cars that passed him by. At best, he'll come out even, if there's a safetycar phase, his boost will just run out and it will be a huge net loss.

It leads to some overtakes, but it's artificial as fuck, since it at best gives you back the position you had before you popped off your second horsepower.

They could lower the duration and percentage of boost and set it off to the side on a long straight, so drivers can conveniently use it and get a smaller boost... it would essentially turn into FEs version of DRS that way. Still not ideal and somewhat artificial, but not as blatantly ridiculous as what they have now. I understand the logic behind it all, but it's asinine, stupid and not the least bit interesting. It's a terrible mechanic through and through, especially when you consider there's a fan-boost.

FFS, fan-boost, I'll never get over that. Some desperate manner to crank up viewer-interaction/investment, but it's the single most idiotic thing in motorsports I have ever seen. Might as well decide the starting grid by forum polls jfc.

The penalty for it is similar to race series where you have mandatory pit-stops and you don't take it at the allocated time or (as in this case) a red flag comes out.
A pit-stop at least is a disadvantage to the driver, since he'll lose a lot of time going slow through the pitlane, standing still while doing the mandatory thing and then continue. In F1, that comes out to roughly 22-25 seconds per pitstop on your laptime, depending on the track.
FE's shitty mechanic is presented as a boost, ie. and advantage, when it is in fact hindrance to get a few meaningless overtakes (first the car gets overtaken when going for the boost, then retaking some ranks with the boost).

The fact that you get penalised for taking this supposed advantage speaks volumes about how shitty and countereffective the mechanic truly is.
I genuinely wonder if it wasn't worth it to ignore that stupid boost zone entirely and just eat the penalty tbh. It is that fucking terrible.

Every powertrain in FE does genuinely have a different sound, it's odd to make sense of but there is a difference in what little noise they make - but the issue we are all taking here is the little noise.
Frankly, I would not be surprised the smallest bit if it turns out that the "engine sounds" in FE are actually created using speakers like some e-cars do on the street.
There is only little noise and what noise we get is pathetic as fuck.

The reason for FE using that configuration of Monaco is a matter of costs. For Monaco as a full circuit to be used, it'll have to be done to the standards expected of FIA Grade 1 for the F1 to go there - otherwise it fails its safety inspections and potentially loses its Grade 1 license, daft I know but I think fair.
If they share the costs with F1, they could very easily race the weekend before F1 goes there. If they really wanted to, they'd be able to race on other F1 tracks like the aforementioned Spa, Monza or what have you.

The reason why they don't isn't just a matter of costs I think, it's also that they know they can't measure up to F1 and thus avoid the comparison wherever they can. They are almost 33% slower than F1 in Monaco, despite having a significantly faster layout. They can only drive for a very short stint and their laptimes are atrocious. And that is assuming these cars are even capable of using tracks that aren't tailor-made for their sport...

Imagine you're sitting in Spa and every 4 minutes, one of these leafblowers wobbles past, that happens a dozen times and that's the race. Meanwhile, F1 is 44 laps with any given car making a pass in less than 2 minutes, engines screaming and creating gusts of wind as they push past.

FE uses their shoebox circuits cause their cars can't handle a real racetrack and even if they could, it would be insanely boring to watch for the audience in the stands.
 
FFS, fan-boost, I'll never get over that. Some desperate manner to crank up viewer-interaction/investment, but it's the single most idiotic thing in motorsports I have ever seen. Might as well decide the starting grid by forum polls jfc.
That was the decisive factor when I was on the fence about bothering with FE when car 2.0 came out. I decided to watch a YouTube introduction to the series and as soon as they described how that would work I closed the video and knew my answer. We don't need shitty "got talen" type twitter polls in sport, whoever came up with that desperate "please interract with our sport" move should be fired and the nonsense dropped.
 
That was the decisive factor when I was on the fence about bothering with FE when car 2.0 came out. I decided to watch a YouTube introduction to the series and as soon as they described how that would work I closed the video and knew my answer. We don't need shitty "got talen" type twitter polls in sport, whoever came up with that desperate "please interract with our sport" move should be fired and the nonsense dropped.
The big irony of it all:
Formula E cars are absolutely fascinating when it comes to the engineering and design department. They are truly marvelous works of machinery, that manage to run on a pretty high performance level for a rather significant amount of time and they manage to reach the finishing line within a few percent of their battery's capabilities... but there are so many misguided ideas within the sport, it just falls flat entirely. Doesn't help that it's become the dumping ground of lackluster drivers or retirees from other sports...

And something that came to my mind just now... how many times do they reuse the same battery? If they regularly swap them out due to the strain and demands of partaking in a race, chances are that Formula 1 is significantly more environment friendly than FE. With normal e-cars, they need to run up to like 100k miles before they become more clean than a regular car (depending on the source of electricity), so an FE car might have to use the same battery for a long time, maybe even more than a season, to make up for the pollution generated by processing rare earths to make the battery.
 
And something that came to my mind just now... how many times do they reuse the same battery? If they regularly swap them out due to the strain and demands of partaking in a race, chances are that Formula 1 is significantly more environment friendly than FE. With normal e-cars, they need to run up to like 100k miles before they become more clean than a regular car (depending on the source of electricity), so an FE car might have to use the same battery for a long time, maybe even more than a season, to make up for the pollution generated by processing rare earths to make the battery.
The entire environmental friendly "industry" has nothing to do with actually being environmentally friendly and everything to do with appearing to be. The current F1 IC unit is ridiculously efficient but that never gets talked up because its mean old fossil fuels. For example the Mercades engine is pushing (just) past the 50% thermodynamic efficiency mark, meanwhile the most thermodynamically efficient production road car engine is 40% with the usual range being 20-30%.

Sorry for double post but totally different topic.

Couple of new cars released.

Alpine
I don't know what to make of this one. on the one hand it's colourful, on the other it looks a bit odd. I'm sure it'll grow on me and the grid definitely needs colour

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Mercades

Look a hell of a lot better than any other Merc of the modern era, pity its still the instrument of the death of the sport and the tool by which some prick inflates his abilities.

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Aston Martin is out. It's a nice colour but I'm disappointed they didn't do more of a design. They could have done some really cool designs with the Aston Martin wings emblem like many online attempts.

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The green color doesn't sit right with me, it must just be the lighting. Also lol that people like me who were worried about the pink branding, it's less prominent than the petronas stripe on mercedes cars.
 
I'm interested what this design element is for.

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Is it for air flow, to allow tighter packaging of the engine or something totally different?
 
Aston Martin is out. It's a nice colour but I'm disappointed they didn't do more of a design. They could have done some really cool designs with the Aston Martin wings emblem like many online attempts.

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I had hoped for a stronger darker green, this is a bit too light, I think.

They should have gone for a nice dark green with a huge white circle for the car's number, something that alludes back to the old days of racing. Aston Martin has this atmosphere of classic oldtimey luxurious cars, so they should go for a classic, oldschool look imho.

But maybe the paintjob will look better irl. It's an absolutely idiotic idea to put that color in the background, it's visually confusing, for all I know, the car could be polished black and all the green is just reflecting on the surface. Why not use a soft off-white in the background? Would help with seeing the silhouette of the car, too. Many teams do this colored background this way and it's stupid every time.
 
I'm interested what this design element is for.

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Is it for air flow, to allow tighter packaging of the engine or something totally different?
I read a blurb about that when Merc launched, something about some new engine component or something, It should be on all the Merc powered cars. Its referenced in this article:

MERCEDES HAS F1 ENGINE INNOVATIONS IT WILL RACE FOR FIRST TIME
Mar 2 2021
By Scott Mitchell

Mercedes has “completely new innovations” on its 2021 Formula 1 power unit that it will be racing for the first time this season.

The championship-winning team reasserted itself as the leading engine-maker in F1 last season after being controversially deposed by Ferrari in 2019, when the Maranello team was suspected of manipulating rules governing fuel-flow limits and burning oil for performance gains.

Speaking at Mercedes’ virtual launch event, technical director James Allison drew attention to the revised sidepod of the W12, explaining that “you’ll see a rather sexy looking bulge in the engine cover which is hiding some of the work which our friends at HPP have done to squeeze more horses into that power unit for us for the year.”

Mercedes threw significant resources into its 2020 engine, surprising chief rival Red Bull and its engine partner Honda with the results, and has sought another development step for 2021.

Mercedes High Performance Powertrains boss Hywel Thomas outlined “three main areas” the company had identified to work on for the 2021 engine, having recently revealed that the design had encountered some issues on the dyno that would be fixed for the start of the season.

“We’ve continued the development of the technology in the power unit,” he said.

“That’s a continuous process, and we feel like we’ve been able to take a step forward on that front again this year.”

“The second area is reliability. We discovered some design issues last year, so we’ve been looking at those and introduced some changes to address them.

“And we’ve also got some completely new innovations that will be in the racing PU for the first time.

“That was particularly challenging because last season finished late, so the winter period has been shorter than normal and has given us less time to prepare, which put extra strain on the business.
Thomas explained that Mercedes has sought even better thermal efficiency in the internal combustion engine, and introduced “changes to the turbocharger to minimise the impact on the heat rejection”.

“Those are probably the most striking when it comes to crank power and the performance of the power unit,” he said.

“We’ve also completed some work on improving the reliability of the PU. In 2020, we used an aluminium structure which wasn’t as reliable as intended, so we’ve introduced a new alloy for the engine block.

“We’ve also made some adjustments to the energy recovery system, to make it more resilient.

“We’ve got a big challenge in 2021 with 23 races on the calendar, we will need to ensure that the reliability of the power unit is spot on.

“We’ve worked hard on that area and hopefully it’s paid off.”

One of the specific reliability gains that Mercedes has outlined has been revising its new-for-2020 MGU-K design.

Thomas described last year’s MGU-K as a “complete redesign”, which made a “solid step forwards in performance” but was also “difficult to manufacture and assemble consistently”.

That led to some cases of mid-life failures, which HPP has sought to understand and address.

“We have changed it for this year, to allow for a more consistent manufacturing route which should help to improve the reliability of the MGU-K,” he said.

Manufacturers may only upgrade their 2020 engine specification once between the end of last season and the end of 2021, unless it is for reliability reasons.

That means once the engine is introduced, which is likely to be the season opener for all four manufacturers, its performance level will be frozen for the season.

However, preparation has been restricted compared to previous years as engine dyno time was cut back during 2020 and for 2021 as well.

“It’s similar to how wind tunnel usage has seen restrictions for a number of years, but we had to implement the restrictions with immediate effect for the dyno,” said Thomas.

“Now, we need to decide earlier what projects to focus on, because we can’t afford to use precious dyno hours on ideas that end up not making it to the car.”

Mercedes has added McLaren to its list of customers in 2021, joining the renamed Aston Martin team and Williams.

Thomas admitted that had and would continue to “put more pressure” on HPP.

“We need to take more engines to winter testing, we need to take more engines to the first race, but we don’t want to freeze our designs any earlier because of that,” he said.

“So that puts some additional strain on the internal and external supply chains and the build and test team, to be able to develop the design for as long as possible.

“What we gain is another group of chassis designers looking at the PU, looking at how it works, how it’s integrated into the car, how it’s working with the rest of the package.

“We can add all those comments and ideas into the melting pot of this season and all the subsequent seasons.”
 
I didn't initially see it on the merc because the colour scheme and angles make it difficult. Will certainly be interesting. I wonder how much of a headache it gave the aerodynamacists, you would want that area as smooth as possible to give the smoothest airflow for the rear wing.
 
I didn't initially see it on the merc because the colour scheme and angles make it difficult. Will certainly be interesting. I wonder how much of a headache it gave the aerodynamacists, you would want that area as smooth as possible to give the smoothest airflow for the rear wing.
It actually might help with directing airflow in a positive manner. After the race in Portimao, you could see trails of dirt and grit on the cars showing where the aerodynamics lead the air on the car and even the tiniest features helped directing airflow towards different parts of the car for different effects. That bump might actually be beneficial to the car compared to a shape that doesn't have that bump.

With Mercedes, one thing is for sure though, whatever impact this has, it has been optimized to either be as insignificant as possible if it's bad or it's as beneficial as possible if it's good.
You can say a lot of things about Mercedes, but their engineers are meticulous and leave nothing to chance.
 
The red blue and white colors of America are always very eye-catching and nice contrast.
They're far more likely to be the red, white and blue of Russia given the title sponsor is practically the state chemicals company at this point and how much money they're throwing at Hass.

Yup, that's a lot of seeth on Reddit. "But the Russian flag is banned, why are they allowed to do this", I hate to break it to you but the Russian ban thing is pure virtue signalling. They will still have a Russian GP and they're fine with a de facto state company being the title sponsor of a team. That's before we go picking at the support to loads of dodgy regimes around the world. If you're first impulse at seeing this or Mazepin is to screech into the void then you're less a fan of F1 and more a fan of being performativly offended.

I can't wait for the social media reeing if Mazepin tangles with Hamilton and shoved him off at some point. It will be a glorious shower of hot takes that are entirely destroyed by the facts.
 
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They're far more likely to be the red, white and blue of Russia given the title sponsor is practically the state chemicals company at this point and how much money they're throwing at Hass.

Yup, that's a lot of seeth on Reddit. "But the Russian flag is banned, why are they allowed to do this", I hate to break it to you but the Russian ban thing is pure virtue signalling. They will still have a Russian GP and they're fine with a de facto state company being the title sponsor of a team. That's before we go picking at the support to loads of dodgy regimes around the world. If you're first impulse at seeing this or Mazepin is to screech into the void then you're less a fan of F1 and more a fan of being performativly offended.

I can't wait for the social media reeing if Mazepin tangles with Hamilton and shoved him off at some point. It will be a glorious shower of hot takes that are entirely destroyed by the facts.
What was funny was the thought process of Redditors and those perpetually outraged (but I repeat myself) when Mazepin was first announced.
"Haas, an American enterprise, has to get a Russian sponsor due to financial troubles. I know what I, a Redditor, will do! I'll write angry emails to Haas and their other sponsors complaining and claiming that I'll never use their products and services again! Surely those other sponsors leaving will cause Haas to not get sponsorships from morally dubious (according to me!) sources!"
 
you are probably right about the russian sponsorship. Alas I don't read into the politics of the sponsorships much, I think the red and blue are very nice aesthetically.
 
The thing that instantly made me think Russian flag was that front wing. When viewed from above it is the Russian flag, correct colour order and everything.
The red and blue stripes on the side of the body and cockpit as well as on the tip of the nose are russian flags, too.
That is to say, everywhere you see red and white stripes, it conveniently forms a russian flag.
 
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