18 laps maximum

[blekenbleu]

I wonder whether safety car laps count towards that limit.
Answer: safety car laps do count against 18 lap limit

This may be the first race in years that drivers will actually be pushing most laps...

 

[trichens]

Is it just me but I thought restricting the tyres to only 18 laps improved the actual racing as everyone could go as hard as possible knowing that they didn't have to make each set last.
It evened up the difference between those cars and drivers that take more out of the tyres and those that can make the tyres last.
Post race every driver seemed to be saying that every lap was driven like a qualifying lap.
Isn't that what we what to see?
OK the heat was a problem but that's a different issue.

 

[Antony Snook]

Yes it was good and there where no pit lane fiascos as i thought this idea would bring. I figured the pit lane would be packed with cars trying to pit on the same lap. But then i did not consider how spread out the cars are by lap 18. Teams like to run low pressure and sometimes it is to low. And the Curbs are rougher than other tracks. The location is in the middle of the desert and sand can blow onto track with cross winds as there are few tall buildings near by. Maybe we should have big billboards with sponsors. They could be like large LED screens that provide animations as well as still images. Most of all they can be wind breaks to prevent crosswinds that hurt car performance when they catch the car at a bad angle.

 

[jgf]

Another case of a sanctioning body artificially manipulating racing. Soon the rules book will be a 24 volume set ....when a brochure is all that's needed.

"The location is in the middle of the desert and sand can blow onto track with cross winds as there are few tall buildings near by."
To paraphrase T'pau, "the track is the track". These are professional drivers, they are supposed to know how to adapt. Much as they would like, F1 cannot have every track built on a pool table.

 

[blekenbleu]

These are professional drivers, they are supposed to know how to adapt.

On the other hand, thanks to seating position and 18-inch tires,
they cannot actually see white lines when near them.
Perhaps curbs should be far enough from white lines
that drivers could have immediate off track feedback if feeling curbs.

Max in interview admitted Red Bull's advantage is much greater
when managing pace to extend stints.
I speculate that Max and Red Bull perfected their pace management
by monitoring Checo's telemetry when he joined the team.

 

[Antony Snook]

18 lap's Maximum makes no scene as you have soft medium and hard compound that will push you shorter or longer. Or you might as well run a single tire the whole race. Just be careful as it will get crazy in the pits if you get to many cars in at once. The whole compound of soft medium and hard should fix this by altering pit windows based on qualifying. Back of the grid like a hard tire for the long game and front likes a soft for a fast short stint to push car ahead with a time advantage to allow an extra stop. ?

 

[Antony Snook]

I wonder whether safety car laps count towards that limit.
Answer: safety car laps do count against 18 lap limit

This may be the first race in years that drivers will actually be pushing most laps...

So what is stooping a driver from having a mild crash in the name of the pace car. To influence there or the tire strategy of others.

 

[jgf]

So what is stooping a driver from having a mild crash in the name of the pace car. To influence there or the tire strategy of others.

Ah, now you're into NASCARE territory.

 

[stigs2cousin]

To paraphrase T'pau, "the track is the track". These are professional drivers, they are supposed to know how to adapt. Much as they would like, F1 cannot have every track built on a pool table.

Of course they are professional athletes with all the human short comings as overarching ambitions and succumbing to outside pressures from teams and sponsors.

I didn´t see any of these drivers lift his head and refuse to start only because the conditions are to dangerous. (insert heros of the past here who forfitted a world championship because they deemed the conditions too dangerous.)

Only one driver ( well out of the points) admitted defeat and parked his car.
Others vomitted into their helmet, passed out for short stretches or had to be lifted out of their cars because heat stroke made the unable to move.
A responsible race director would have had to pull the plug here because the FIA regulations of emergency egress could not be met under those circumstances ( that´s what safed Gasly´s life after his fireball crash)

This is not a sport anymore, this is public torture collosseum style.
And once again the money making machine of F1/Fia shows what´s it all about.

At least in Spa they didn´t start the race to not go under in a crash orgy, but in the aftermath ****ed all visitors out of their money by declaring two safety car laps "a race".

 

[trichens]

An F1 race should be a competition of man, team and machine against each other... not one where last man standing is the winner... otherwise we might as well go for a "Death Race" type event.

 

[jgf]

Yes, racing should be the drivers' decision; not the fans, not the stewards, not the promoters, not even the sanctioning body - none of them are in the cars with their lives on the line. But drivers vary greatly in what they can tolerate.

I recall an F1 race in Japan years ago where rain became so intense that most of the drivers pulled off the track, stating it was to dangerous to continue; but the promoters didn't want to cancel or postpone the race so it continued with the few cars remaining.

At a CART race in Michigan back in the nineties it was estimated to be over 120deg (F) in the cars but no one thought that too extreme. At the end of the race many drivers were literally lifted out of their cars by the pit crews. Yet Mario Andretti climbed out of his car, removed his helmet and gloves, and walked over for an interview, looking no worse than if he'd just been on a Sunday stroll.

Should that F1 race have been postponed til teh rain stopped? I think so. The Michigan race? No drivers were complaining.

 

[stigs2cousin]

With all the money on the line it will always be a difficult decision.

Except when objectively safety rules are broken as in drivers havn´t got the strength left to jump out of a burning car.
But how to determin that? Technically it would not be a problem to monitor the drivers vital signs, where should be the cutoff value?

Also there are validated cooling solutions, but no team will accept the weight penalty when it´s not mandatory....

 

[blekenbleu]

To influence

CrashGate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Formula_One_crash_controversy