Formula 1 Discussion - And favourite driver?

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The difference between red bull dominance days and mercades dominance days is when Vettel was winning every week Webber wasn't walking to 2nd place unlike the last few seasons where not getting a merc 1-2 was an upset.

Edit: found the chart.
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DRS is a system for the reddit smooth brains who look at the number of overtakes in a race and go "wow much overtake, good race" or "boo that no one overtook". All while ignoring some amazing tactics or defensive driving. Some of the best GPs of all time were a display of amazing defensive driving that would be utterly impossible these days as the car behind just hurtles past. I saw a thread on reddit discussing DRS and saying it was a great systems because "a car like a Renault shouldn't be able to hold up a mercades and ruin their race", why the fuck not? If an on paper slower car can hold off a much faster car then they deserve the place and arguably that's one of the signs of a star of the future. Take today for instance, if Hamilton couldn't just DRS past Perez then there was a chance perez could have held him up (albeit on a major tyre disadvantage) and brought Vestappen back into it, with DRS though no chance.

That plus I bet many drivers don't take a risky overtake they could make when there is a DRS sure thing coming up so it's costing us good moves. I wonder how many cars are being set up so they're even worse at following to overtake in a corner but set up to maximise DRS to see them through.

DRS is a product of a badly designed track (Abu Dhabi) and the fact that in 2010 the wrong driver (in the opinion of the FIA) won the championship because of being unable to overtake a slower car.
 
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It would be interesting to update that chart for 2020, also what does it summarize? Victories, iirc, right?

In terms of DRS, I assume that overtaking without it would be a lot harder, cause the aero causes pursuers to lose a lot of downforce, which forces them to stay away and makes it very hard to really get past another car. In a certain way DRS allows cars to pursue another car more closely, which in turn allows overtakes even outside the DRS zones, but I agree: I bet cars are tailor made to drive in DRS zones, so any other part of the racetrack becomes a bitch to deal with for overtakes.
Most likely, it's a bit of both: Cars are currently hard to overtake and then that gets made even worse with DRS-optimized cars, that can't handle anything else for overtaking.

DRS is nothing but a workaround to allow cars to close a gap that they can't easily close otherwise, due to turbulences and the cars being incredibly dependent on their aero-stuff.
I wonder if we could go back to 90s aero-setups with modern engines and everything. Those modern cheesegrater-bargeboards might be super optimized like crazy, but they look awful and the cars are so picky when it comes to turbulences and air, they simply can't overtake with some artificial bs like DRS. It somehow worked in the 90s, so why don't we go back to something more like that design?

I have shat long and hard on Formula E for having the Fan Boost, but DRS is equally as silly, it's like training wheels on a MotoGP motorcycle.

I wish the new rules had been active this year, you can't even fathom how much I hope the new ground effect cars will allow more genuine overtaking and wheel-to-wheel racing.
 
I just go with the ever unpopular opinion of bring back refueling, it made for much more strategic battles over the current bs of everyone stopping within 3 laps of eachother for identical tyres. It let people do totally different strategies and made a big impact on performance (long stop and heavy car vs two short stops with lighter car). But then that's never coming back because, again, the fan base either don’t or are incapable of finding tactical battles exciting. Almost every refueling thread on reddit comes with "but muh more overtakes" and this graph while totally ignoring that the overtakes now are dull fly bys.

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Bare in mind these stats are ontrack overtakes so totally ignore strategy related overtakes such as over/under cuts. I would appreciate a race with 0 on track overtakes and an intricate chess game being played more than one with a million DRS "I'm within a second so I automatically go infront" overtakes and everyone using the same strategy.

Plus as I said above I enjoy a good defensive battle, a slower car or one on really old rubber keeping track position and trying to keep a car coming at them behind, uts a million times more thrilling than what we have now.
 
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I went to bed early last night, so I didn't watch the Portugal race. Seems like I didn't miss out on much.

As for Bottas, I concur with the last page or so. He's Toto and Hambone's useful idiot. In pretty much any other car he'd be about on-par with the likes of Ricciardo; a solid midfielder that can rack up a few podiums in a season but not much more.

GigaKike said:
Wow what is with this race, this is absolutely miserable. You know it's sad when the only reason I watch F1 is to take a good look at the cars, because the racing and the Mercedes dick sucking is just sad.
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It's times like this I wish I spoke a language other than English. I'd be curious to hear whether say French, German or Spanish F1 commentators ride Hambone's dick as enthusiastically as Sky's commentary team does.
 
GigaKike said:
Same. Then again it's not hard to think that since Kimi, you know... Actually has a personality.
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Kimi is as based as he is because he’s just Kimi. Other drivers falsify their personality in pursuit of political goals or a wider appeal with the fans, but not Kimi.

Kimi is Kimi. Kimi doesn’t want to talk to the media. Kimi just wants to race. Kimi just wants the drink.
 
Coccxys said:
I just go with the ever unpopular opinion of bring back refueling, it made for much more strategic battles over the current bs of everyone stopping within 3 laps of eachother for identical tyres. It let people do totally different strategies and made a big impact on performance (long stop and heavy car vs two short stops with lighter car). But then that's never coming back because, again, the fan base either don’t or are incapable of finding tactical battles exciting. Almost every refueling thread on reddit comes with "but muh more overtakes" and this graph while totally ignoring that the overtakes now are dull fly bys.
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refueling is one of the things about old f1 that I look back at with nostalgia, but I agree with you that increasing the strategic battles would be an interesting idea because the commentators talk about tyre strategies all day. However, I heard something interesting, that the new engines use so little fuel, both due to their efficiency compared to old v10s and the ERS, that the different weight would not make that much difference, so if you imagine doing things like Schumacher's miraculous 3-stop strategy to win the race, it wouldn't have that much effect. So I think it would have to be some kind of rules to remove the turbo and hybrid aspects and simplify the engines by making them naturally aspirated, and either v8 or v10 (which I think would make f1 more approachable for new engine manufacturers) but you and i both know the reasons liberty media would never allow that.
 
Full Race Replay said:
However, I heard something interesting, that the new engines use so little fuel, both due to their efficiency compared to old v10s and the ERS, that the different weight would not make that much difference
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The weight impacts on so much: acceleration, breaking, tyre wear, cornering speed.

They start with a max 100 kg on board cars that have a min weight of 740 kg (including driver), no way 13.5% of the weight doesn't impact performance.

Looking it up (as you would imagine it's car and track dependant), a rule of thumb is that average 1 kg of fuel will increase lap time by 0.03 s. So a car with half a tank (50 kg) would be 1.5 seconds per lap faster than one with a full tank (100 kg). Plus would wear its tyres slower giving more and more advantage as the stint goes on.

I've seen that 1.5 seconds per lap dismissed as "imperceptible" to fans so it wouldn't matter, to which I can only think those people don't watch or understand F1 since 1.5 seconds is huge.

It would mean in today's pit loss (plus 10 seconds for the refuling) of 35 s then you'd be a stop ahead by lap 23. That is a huge advantage.

That said a car with less weight would burn fuel slower so the heavier car would burn its fuel quicker to close the weight difference, reducing the per lap advantage.

Still I'm not buying that in a sport where every single thing anywhere near the car is controlled so tightly for weight but 100 kg of fuel isn't relevant.

As far as possible rule changes to increase the tactical battles that're actually likely they should give the teams free choice of tyres from the full range from c1 to c5. They only get so many to select and still have to use at least 2 in the race (hell they could stipulate that they must be of consecutive compounds if they like).

It would let teams develop towards being super light on tyre wear so they can use super softs and be quicker or let teams develop a car that's hard on tyres and use the hardest compounds. It would also stop these everyone pit within the same 3-4 laps for the exact same tyres strategies.

That or, and as against it as I am, there is always the balast based on total points option. Make it like 100 g per point and that would mean a win gets you about 0.08 s a lap worth of balast, a second would get you about 0.05 s etc. I'm not particularly for punishing success but it's another way to keep the field somewhat bunched. Though I doubt it could work in F1 where the weight of every single nut is precisely designed and balanced.
 
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Full Race Replay said:
but you and i both know the reasons liberty media would never allow that.
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Call me blind, but I don't, unless it's 'environmentalism'. What's the reason?
Full Race Replay said:
I couldn’t help but notice the guys producing the world feed didn’t put the top 3 driver of the day poll results on the screen, the same week that autists on the internet were banding together to vote for mazepin...
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Last time they did that, people were voting for a DNS'd Hulkenberg. Also had no percentages on the website.
 
Coccxys said:
I've seen that 1.5 seconds per lap dismissed as "imperceptible" to fans so it wouldn't matter, to which I can only think those people don't watch or understand F1 since 1.5 seconds is huge.
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For comparison, Bottas' lap in Portimao this qualifying was 1:18:722, while Mazepin's lap was 1:20.912. The difference is less than 2.3 seconds in total between the very first and very last car on the grid. 1.5s per lap is a complete gamechanger in F1.

FIA should allow refueling, it should allow free choice of tyres and it should ban DRS as soon as possible.
 
I'm just preying 2022 will be good enough rules wise that they can get rid of the gimmicks. You would think Ross Brawn would be the man to come up with some amazing rule set but we shall see.

The only major doubts I have is another engine freeze, if that cements mercades dominance with no way anyone else being able to catch up due to the rules then I think I'm done with the sport until some revolutionary change. The beginning of the turbo hybrid era was a joke with the mercades advantage and rules stopping others from developing.
 
Coccxys said:
I'm just preying 2022 will be good enough rules wise that they can get rid of the gimmicks. You would think Ross Brawn would be the man to come up with some amazing rule set but we shall see.

The only major doubts I have is another engine freeze, if that cements mercades dominance with no way anyone else being able to catch up due to the rules then I think I'm done with the sport until some revolutionary change. The beginning of the turbo hybrid era was a joke with the mercades advantage and rules stopping others from developing.
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Agree wholeheartedly. I can't bring myself to really enjoy the sport when I can pretty much guarantee the outcome of a race before it even starts. Doesn't get better when pundits suck off Hamilton and it's just Fremdscham of the highest degree to listen to them pretending anyone in current F1 is even remotely capable of challenging him his car, the moment he doesn't effortlessly grab a hattrick every fucking weekend like clockwork.

Pure and simple: If the 2022 ruleset sees this same degree of Mercedes dominance, the sport will be dead. Absolutely no one will look back on the past 7 years and go "Man, wasn't that an amazing time full of iconic rivalries and suspenseful overtakes in every corner?" and for good reason. There were none. Vettel of all people came close to put up a fight, but even with Ferrari cheating with their engine, they were incapable of defeating Mercedes. If this shit continues for more than a year after next season, the sport is essentially worthless.
 
RomanesEuntDomus said:
Agree wholeheartedly. I can't bring myself to really enjoy the sport when I can pretty much guarantee the outcome of a race before it even starts. Doesn't get better when pundits suck off Hamilton and it's just Fremdscham of the highest degree to listen to them pretending anyone in current F1 is even remotely capable of challenging him his car, the moment he doesn't effortlessly grab a hattrick every fucking weekend like clockwork.

Pure and simple: If the 2022 ruleset sees this same degree of Mercedes dominance, the sport will be dead. Absolutely no one will look back on the past 7 years and go "Man, wasn't that an amazing time full of iconic rivalries and suspenseful overtakes in every corner?" and for good reason. There were none. Vettel of all people came close to put up a fight, but even with Ferrari cheating with their engine, they were incapable of defeating Mercedes. If this shit continues for more than a year after next season, the sport is essentially worthless.
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I wholeheartedly believe mercs will dominate in 2022, so the question is not if but when will the sport die and what will take over as the premier open wheeled racing series
 
I've just taken to replacing "Hamilton" with "Mercedes engineers" in my head while they're busy sucking him off. Every single piece of fawning praise for Hamilton should be going to those engineers who designed and built that car, that is the real achievement here.

I have high hopes for the next generation of drivers, given decently close cars the likes of Russell, Norris, Leclerc and Schumacher will give us some great rivalries. The 2010s never really had those real future talents coming in, you just got a load of formula E tier drivers like Van Dorn, Di Resta, JEV and Chilton who were winning in F3 and F2 because there was similarly mediocre "tallent" there challenging them.
 
any of you have tips for watching WEC/IMSA endurance races? Surely most if not all times you don't sit in front of your computer for the whole 6+ hours. Do you just set aside an hour or two during the race to watch it, and watch highlights to fill in the gaps, or play it in the background and do other things, or something else? I think i might try to watch some of the upcoming races, especially because my favorite motorsports babe Sophiea Floersch is racing there, and the multi-class racing seems intriguing.
 
Full Race Replay said:
any of you have tips for watching WEC/IMSA endurance races? Surely most if not all times you don't sit in front of your computer for the whole 6+ hours. Do you just set aside an hour or two during the race to watch it, and watch highlights to fill in the gaps, or play it in the background and do other things, or something else? I think i might try to watch some of the upcoming races, especially because my favorite motorsports babe Sophiea Floersch is racing there, and the multi-class racing seems intriguing.
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You can listen to all of WEC, IMSA, ELMS, Le Mans Cup, NLS, and a fair few other endurance series through Radio Le Mans, there's a schedule at the bottom of the homepage for you to plan out especially busy weekends - which channel and when.

What I tend to do with watching the stuff is same as Snooker, stick it to one side and work through it - only turning my head when John Hindhaugh starts getting excited by something, really.

For watching, IMSA can be watched on IMSA TV although it is region locked due to broadcast rights for NBC in the US (And maybe Canada), the commentary on IMSA TV is RLM's voices. ELMS streams all their stuff on YouTube again with the RLM commentary fixed into the video feed, same for NLS.
With WEC it is different, if you want to watch the races you got to pay either for a TV channel which has broadcast rights (I think Eurosport has it in UK/Europe) - which will have their own commentary - or you can pay directly through WEC which carries WEC's own commentary, from Allan McNish, Graham Goodwin, and Martin Haven for most of the races (Le Mans being exception due to race length, they have more people cycling through). However RLM is always free to listen to, but you won't get video there.

As for following the racing, the easiest way to do it genuinely is to try and pay attention to one particular class each hour or so (SRO events, and NLS not withstanding for different reasons) and enjoy the racing there since what you essentially have in WEC is four distinct races happening which just happen to be on the same bit of road - so spending an hour watching the race between the GTE Pro cars and ignoring what is happening overall unless there's something major makes it a lot more enjoyable in my experience as a viewing experience if you wanted to watch the whole duration 'properly'.
The other thing with following the races, is almost all broadcasters will do hourly updates - either on the clock hour or race hour - going through every classes positions, which in turn keeps you informed of the broader picture if the broadcast itself is focussing more on the top class fight.

One very good thing with endurance racing is that, thanks to multi-class, there's always some racing happening - in the NLS and Creventic's series the TCR class is almost always a source of entertainment whilst the GT3s leading the way might have ended up strung out due to issues or some other reason.

Plus if you watch it and start posting about it more I have an excuse to derail this thread from F1 to endurance racing which is nicer, in my view
 
Sums it up perfectly.

I said that the race was miserable to watch, but I now think this wasn't due to a lack of cool shit going down - it was due to completely incompetent directors not cutting to the cool shit going down or commentators not talking about it while it happened.
Like, Mick had a genuinely good battle with Latifi and it didn't get the spotlight it deserves - not cause it's a guy called Schumacher, but rather cause it was a total rookie in a lackluster car creeping up and overtaking a seasoned driver (in an admittedly similarly anemic car).

And as much as I don't understand RB's strategy of Checo on mediums for almost the entire race, I must say: keeping those tyres alive for such a long time is absolute masterclass.
Someone already mentioned how lackluster F1 drivers overall were many years ago. Now we have such a plethora of absolutely amazing drivers old and new... and Mercs ruin the sport with their stupidly powerful car. Damn.
 
I already had the 6 hrs of spa taped so I watched it. In America we get WEC on the fuckin MotorTrend channel of all things, and only the first and the last hour were broadcast with ads. So, pretty shit compared to the luxury of watching f1 on espn with no breaks during the race, but was quite interesting. Apparently the performance gap from the hypercars to lmp2 is smaller than it was from lmp1 to lmp2 last year. And seeing the GTE cars which are a combination of pro and amateur drivers was quite interesting. Will try to keep in touch with this league, there are only 7 rounds this year so not even that much of a commitment. (I'm also taping Indycar and IMSA on youtube tv so will consider watching some of that when i get some free time)
 
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