Debate: Is Formula One Heading in the Right Direction?

[gleidson84]

In my opinion, the problem of F1 today is a set of factors, ranging from FIA teams.

1 - FIA and its rules that will always in hand against the sport, I see everyone say that the biggest problem, since the late 90s, is the damn downforce that hinders a car then the other closely, because whenever change the rules, they insist on putting more downforce on the cars instead of mechanical grip? Pilots say that always, "is difficult to follow the car forward," then in 2017 one Williams engineer talked it will be harder still follow the car forward as they will again increase downforce.

2 - All opining: A category where the big teams opine in the rules, will never work, everyone wants the best for you, and all the great do not care really about the little teams. At this point, I prefer American categories where the category creates the rules and others obey.

3 - Drivers who have no opinion: For me, it is the group that should be heard, who better than the pilots to state the real difficulty and what should be tweaked? Last year some drivers like Alonso, spoke there too button on the steering wheel of an F1, this year in Brazil, Hamilton said that even with better tires, could not follow the Rosberg closely because the GPDA does not make a report and delivery to the FIA strategy group?

4 - artificiality of the rules in the name of a false emotion: What's so funny to see a driver overtaking another by pressing a button on the steering wheel? This DRS was the worst thing invented, it is a slap hole. Today we are witnessing real disputes in the first two rounds, then the car is faster will always overcome the other without any work. It's beautiful to watch a category where a weaker safely drive the car forward on the arm while you can, closing the ideal line when cornering, braking the most in possible, while the other attacks from all sides, today it exists in F1 in some Just moments.

6 - complex Aerodynamics: One thing I agreed with Montezemolo F1 is a competition car or plane? Instead of having a winning car that has a set suspension / engine / better brakes, winner is who has the most efficient wings. The front wings, full of mini-wings that direct the wind for the rest of the car, then breaks a minimum piece, the car ever loses performance, you have other car forward, then ****ing all the same. The car is made to have their 100% performance only in clean air but where is that other than on the rally, a car in a race will always have clean air ahead? Under the car also has a lot of thing that hinders the jockeying for position until the Indy has suffered because of a more complex aerodynamics, for me, the wings of an F1 should be simpler and leaves the mechanical grip is better developed.

 

[Rob]

I think @SK and @jacktorance nailed this. I will, however, point to a few "stats" as much as I detest them. The first one is the constructors championship standings, since that is a clear and plain illustration of the biggest problem. Second will be qualifying and race results.

Take a gander at the top ten. I think we all could have done a preseason "WDC" and probably about 30-50% of us would have gotten it right. That is not good. Perfectly aligned by team? Oh my...that's not funny. What this shows is that F1 has become basically predictable. Fans hate that. Drivers hate that, Track owners hate that. Mercedes loves it. Why? Because no matter what anyone tells you, the FIA is arguing like mad right now and the war is between the "greens" and the "racers" with most fans falling on the side of the racers. The problem with the "F1 is an unlimited money drain and should be expensive" argument is that it cannot take place in a vacuum. The dirty little secret is that, like all huge companies with tons of cash, Mercedes and Ferrari think that regulation is good! All large entities hold hands with the "feds" or the governing body to push for regulation because it suffocates someone like Red Bull coming in and shaking things up. The lag time from development and track performance is absurd. If you think the current testing restrictions do anything to alleviate this, you are sadly mistaken. They actually promote it and help it. The *only* reason Haas is going to be competitive (F1 is very lucky to have Gene Haas but he is simply another rich guy looking to F1 for free marketing) is because he has a giant wind tunnel and can spend millions right away. But when you have the #1 team saying in essence "it's okay" and the FIA still looks to stamp it out, it's terribly sad. Where is the next Colin Chapman? Answer: in another series. Criticize IndyCar all you want, but at least it's not predictable year to year, same as WEC (which the FIA is already starting to ruin). Face it -- Bernie was right.

The key to understanding all of this is that Mercedes is not just dominating, but dominating in epic proportions. They have locked out the front row both in qualifying and races so that both qualifying order and race order resulted in a front row lock out more times that ever in F1 history. That is a stunning statistic when you think about it. When Steve Matchett (who is no critic of domination, having been on the Schumi team) pulls this stat out and laments it, it's time to take notice. I have no problems with domination by a driver, but the two stats above, to me, prove that i) it is the teams that dominate (not a very talented driver); and ii) the domination cannot be overcome by human innovation. Nico Rosberg? C'mon man! This guy has no business leading any pack. I have never ever heard drivers basically "write off" a win over and over. Very rare. It's just not in their DNA, but you heard it countless times this year. Poor souls Alonso, Vettel, Raikkonen, and Button never had a chance. Does anyone really want that? Four World Champions dead before it begins? If so, watch these guys take off to another series. If you don't believe me, then just listen to the drivers and team bosses. that are doing well. All of those drivers have criticized F1 as "boring" this year. Hell, even Mercedes says so. Many F1 drivers have speculated that they would like to try another series and said money or salary is irrelevant (and you can bet Haas will be more than happy to build a bridge for them, which, to me, is the most exciting thing about the future of F1). This is not about domination but about drivers not making a difference. A very good barometer for this is Brazil (record losses) and the U.S., where divers matter. If you again want a expensive and wonky Euro series, have at it. If you don't think IndyCar can pick up the slack, that's lunacy, as the cars are getting closer despite the money gap (with rpm's higher now in IndyCar). Why not right away for IndyCar? Well, that's another lesson -- IndyCar went down the same road as F1 is on now...with disastrous results. F1 needs to look behind the domination of any one team and listen to them when they are dominating. Red Bull, who, looking back, pulled an amazing feat in the middle of the V8's spec dominance, exemplifies the difference between dominance by innovation as opposed to regulation. Hate to say it England, but you will never beat Germany at this game. You will, however, beat them if it comes down to innovation. When the FIA's answer to tires blowing is to dumb down Spa and Monza, it's bad. Real bad. F1 can survive a good tire battle, but it cannot survive the idiotic fuel flow regulations.

And track limits. Seriously? I thought Whiting and the FIA had come to their senses. Racing is not like playing a video game. These guys are pushing to the limit with real bad consequences if they mess up. That automatically will result in exceeding the "track limits" which the current generation of fan only understands from a computer. It's a joke, in my view, that we are even talking about this. Many tracks have "cut through the stupid chicane" areas. This is the least of their worries, and the drivers are gong to do it anyway. I can't wait until they disqualify 2/3rds of the grid. What happened to F1's "pure racing" mentality? As much as I love IndyCar, F1 has it right with their "rare caution" and "no safetycar" attitude. I hope that all this talk is just lip service, because the last nail in the coffin will be over-regulation on track. Just ask NASCAR, who were every bit as rich as F1 at one point.

 

[AnklaX]

- Figure out closed cockpit (ignorance born of romanticism will cost lives in F1's future)
- Following a set rule of safety, give very limited creative obstructions.
If I had anything to do with setting rules, I'd say make a car under 550 kg (Not including driver). No limit on gear ratios, nuse whatever powertrain and induction combo you want as long as there is an ICE. No active aero, artificially generated aero or moving body parts, no fixed fuel tank size, no fixed tire size, etc. Basically, I'd set the wight pretty tight and turn it into the main technical challenge. You could have the money to make a car with a V12, turbos and hybrids all together but you probably won't be able to because of the weight budget. Make weight the budget and make free as many things as possible.
- No driver guidance from team during quali or race. Drivers should be allowed to work on their racecraft during team test days and be left alone in race. Only pit, safety and penalty related info conveyed through radio in raceday.

This way, cars will look and sound different. Some will have small engines and turbos, some will be naturally aspirated. It will be more diverse all round and racing will also benefit from it as the cars will produce different kinds of performance at different parts of a track and also different performance at different tracks. Imagine the power related tech in the Koenigsegg Regera in an F1 car. Such a rule would make it possible.

Now my question is, if I can think of these ideas what the hell are the rule makers doing. They've been with racing for decades. Why don't they understand racing?

 

[AnklaX]

I dont like DRS because i want to see real overtaking.
I dont like the tyres. They should drive as fast as they can and not trying to not ruin the tyres.
I dont like the fuel regulation. They should drive as fast as they can and not trying to save fuel.
I dont like the many regulations. There are punishments for rearwings that are a few millimetres to wide or something (Sauber in Melbourne 2014 or something?). I mean, what the hell?! Why not just give them free space, resulting in many different concepts. The cars are so look-alike these days. Remember the 6-wheeled Tyrrell?
Different engine concepts. We had times were there were V12, V8, Turbos or whatever. They had to be planned, either having a heavier car but a stronger engine or a whole different concept. In these days one could also bring electronic engines into it, let them decide how they use taht technology, mabe they use a strong version of KERS, but their car is heavier. Or they have Hybrid engines, too, or or or.
I dont like the high costs. Limit their budgets per season. Giving it a more free competition and one has to be clever in development. A big plus is that they save costs, too


I am not an expert, but stuff like that is not impossible to do and i think it would change some thigns already to the positive....



Edit: Also remove the complicated steering wheels, give them manual geering, not many buttons and no communication to the box (only when there is danger etc, but nothign else)

Edit 2:


Agree.

Many of these problems can be rectified by limiting radio communication. Team must not be allowed to tell driver when to drive fast, when to drive slow, when to change engine mapping, that sort of thing. If the dirver is abusing his car, the team will only be allowed tell him to come in to change after his tyres are too worn to perform. If a tyre blows, the driver will deal with it and in the next race, try to look after the tyre better by changing driving style. Thats how things used to be and should be again. DRS should not be allowed. Though, it may not be so bad if active aero is used as it is used in road going sportscars/supercars these days through computer algorithm and not driver pressing a button.

 

[fortyfivekev]

Like some of the previous posters I have been an F1 fan for a long time, almost 40 years in my case and I have been to the British GP about 25 times but stopped in 2010 and now go to Le Mans instead.

Fundamentally the cars need to be way harder to drive, so more power and massively less aero. The current engines are okay. If they opened up the fuel flow and energy recovery rules they could easily get 1000bhp which should be plenty! If the racing was good no-one would care about the noise they make. There is no point in having more than one engine manufacturer if the people who are behind cannot catch up. This needs to be freed up.

For whatever reason the Pirelli tyres are rubbish for racing. They should get Michelin to make some decent tyres that can be raced hard for their lifetime as they can do in the WEC.

The F1 stewards attitude to racing is ridiculous. Max Verstappen goes to wheel-to-wheel with Jenson at the weekend and ends up getting his license endorsed. That really doesn't encourage hard racing.

Could go on forever but I don't think anything useful will be done until things get a lot worse and Bernie/Charlie and Co are long gone.

 

[Jonas Bögemann]

There are two major problems with your ideas:
1. Narrow cars? Really few people actually like these thin machines nowadays.
2. Closed cockpits: This will be a never ending discussion...

But the thing is not how the cars are built, but many things that are connected.
There has to be one moment things truely change, maybe a little step back.
Once someone truely compares F1 how it is today and how it was just 20 years ago, one would notice what really changed, beside just the cars.

 

[Rob]

Figure out closed cockpit

no.
Just take the driver out ffs. That will make it really safe! Oh wait, they already did that. Nevermind.

 

[Jonas Bögemann]

I would call the overexaggregated safety need another mismanagment of the FIA. Things like the regulation of line hanges are even reasoned with safety.
Yet they make tyres shitty like that...

Racing is dangerous, death and injury can always come to you, it even says so on the tickets.
Meanwhile comparing it to Rallying...

 

[kedy89]

Hell no. For me F1 is a dying series, and a fresh start is probably the only thing that can fix it. Over-regulated (by the wrong people), too expensive (cheap V6t hybrid, lmao), desperately trying to have a "green" look, too much show, too less actual racing, boring tracks, tickets too expensive (there's barely any race which hasn't lots of empty stands).

Don't even care that they don't race in Germany any more, they've castrated our best track anyway. Latest TV ratings in DE tell the same, the mixed relays in the first round of the Biathlon World Cup last Sunday had more viewers than F1 at AbuDhabi (3.95 to 3.83 Mio). That's less than half what it was during the apparently boring Ferrari domination years (~9 Mio iirc).

 

[Rob]

Hell no. For me F1 is a dying series, and a fresh start is probably the only thing that can fix it. Over-regulated (by the wrong people), too expensive (cheap V6t hybrid, lmao), desperately trying to have a "green" look, too much show, too less actual racing, boring tracks, tickets too expensive (there's barely any race which hasn't lots of empty stands).

Don't even care that they don't race in Germany any more, they've castrated our best track anyway. Latest TV ratings in DE tell the same, the mixed relays in the first round of the Biathlon World Cup last Sunday had more viewers than F1 at AbuDhabi (3.95 to 3.83 Mio). That's less than half what it was during the apparently boring Ferrari domination years (~9 Mio iirc).

Very interesting about the German numbers. Very interesting especially since Mercedes is German (ignore the corporate buyouts for a second). So, even in detail and process happy Germany, they want a driver battle (Schumi) and not a bureaucracy-riddled manufacturers battle (Mercedes). As to the latter, who wants to compete against Germany on that basis? Not me. lol.

 

[El-ahrairah]

To add to Toby's comments...

The fact Germany and France have no race is disgusting in my opinion. French basically invented motor racing... I mean... just look at what every race is called... a Grand Prix.

I'm frankly surprised there hasn't been threats of breakaway series' like there were during the political rows during the 2004-2005 period. Back then fans looked at as just idiotic posturing by other teams. Today fans would probably embrace it with the sports current state.

 

[kedy89]

Very interesting about the German numbers. Very interesting especially since Mercedes is German (ignore the corporate buyouts for a second). So, even in detail and process happy Germany, they want a driver battle (Schumi) and not a bureaucracy-riddled manufacturers battle (Mercedes). As to the latter, who wants to compete against Germany on that basis? Not me. lol.

Can only speak for myself here.

Yes, I want that a driver can make the difference. Well, it's never really been only about the driver, but there were times when it was possible to snatch decent results every now and then. I feel that this is no longer possible today (also due to the insane reliability).

As for the last bit, other German manufacturers. Like the DTM, the most boring "touring car" series out there (on level with WTCC).

 

[Ben Lee]

The bottom line, in terms of the technical regs is they need to sort out the dirty air problem. This issue has only gotten worse over time, its cumulative. As more aero is discovered, the problem gets bigger. The FIA once again didn't think things through with 2009 "revolution" car with the wide front wing and narrow rear wing. It was obvious (to me) what would happen. So they banned all the winglets and flip ups, so I thought, aren't the teams just going to shove them all on the front wings? Hmm guess what happened? They shoved them all on the front wings. Those wide front wings I thought, won't they get easily knocked off in a race? Yup, that happened. Essentially, making the front wing less effective (smaller/fewer elements) and then re-introducing ground FX would help to some degree. Making the cars wider would be good, more drag, more mechanical grip. The same goes for the tyres, more mechanical grip is always good.

Basically the FIA is ran by idiots. They can't actually come up with any technical regs themselves, even that is beyond them, so they rely upon working groups and technical committees to do all that, then the FIA simply just rubber stamp it at the end.

In terms of the rest of the sport, well where do I begin. I could honestly write for hours on the state of F1 and the mess its in. Ugh.

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

Here's why we don't want ground effect back. View attachment 113241

This was a 230 MPH crash in one of the most dangerous races in the world. IndyCar is, in my opinion, one of the most entertaining sports despite the danger.


Ground effect would create the best racing. More aero creates poorer racing. At the rate we are going at, all races would become a parade.

Speed is all good, but I'm sure people would want better racing than a faster car

 

[Trezoitao38]

Here's why we don't want ground effect back. View attachment 113241

Why? The 78-82 cars are very diferent.

 

[Benutzername]

Sad to see that it seems that nearly everybody involved with motorsports seems to have way better ideas than the FIA

 

[Andy 'Mars Bar' Graham]

Let me go in detail of what is wrong with F1 and why it will get worse unless people in power decide that there is an issue

TRACKS

We are going through a bad period of track design. These are poorly designed for F1 (being useful for GP2 only) and are replacing decent circuits. Russia and Mexico are a complete waste of space for example. Why the hell would you design a stadium section. There will be no overtaking through their, creating poor racing. Russia on the other hand is a horrible circuit. I hated the 2014 Russian GP. It was the worst race I ever sat through. I promise Azerbaijan will have the exact same issues.

Then we have historic circuits which produce good racing which are under threat (Good racing when the cars are designed well). Monza has to stay, and it would be a huge mistake getting rid of Silverstone and Germany. Turkey as well was an excellent race which we lost in the financial hell in F1.


CAR DESIGN

As I said above, I would welcome a return to ground effect. Ground effect solves all the issues with racing as it eliminates the issue of dirty air (the number one cause of dirty air). @Enzo Fazzi did highlight one issue which is safety, which isn't a major issue as it was when Ground effect was first introduced. Safety has improved a lot and I doubt the cars will be flying when crashing like they did at Indy, as they won't reach that speeds as the circuits are safer in F1 than high speed ovals like Indianapolis. However, they needn't on reduce aerodynamics on the car. It's spoiling the show and it doesn't work at tracks where overtaking is a rarity anyway

MONEY

This won't ever change but it's the worse way of distributing prize funds. The sport is too expensive as well.

ALSO COST CAP. HELLO. LIKE ITS A GOOD IDEA

 

[Birddogg66]

Innovation with R&D is important but needs to be affordable. When the cost of operation is too much for the likes of a team like Lotus there is a big problem.

 

[vahur]

So more downforce, it means car behind cant follow, that means more boring races. It needs less downforce and focus on mechanical grip and power, which means drivers skills are on table, like it should be! But now like in Austin, Mercedes boy's, oh my! our rear tyres did some spin during a race at one corner omg. We have to check the data what caused this huge and major problem. Result was, wind was blowing from other direction, or so they say. I mean c'mon! Is this racing? Whining after whining, no true racing. Just drive the car on the racing line like a razor blade around and around without any battle what so ever. And i'm paying for watching this s... Feel's actually quite stupid now, hmm... Glad there is GT3. And the track limit's, well... They moved the sandtraps, quite stupid move. Just created an issue, plus take away more show, driver's can just run wide where ever they want without harm. Passing issues during race when some cut's, result is penalty this penalty that, well almoust everything they do creates a penalty... But cutting the track was quite different back in the days when there was sand-TRAPS. Easy to fix the damage's that they created, but they wont do that because the "modern day" bling bling image, just million's counts. This was just quick brief. Sry. Possible bad English. This was just a quick brief. And no hate, my opinion's...

 

[Eugene Abramoff]

Formula 1 are supposed to be the fastest, most technologically advanced Motorsport out there, so the faster they make them the better, I think there are too many rules now a days, but at least they are making cars faster and louder, so that's a start.

I just hope they will cycle engines, the good old v12s and v10s and logically V8s then. I don't want to see I4 F1 cars, because that will be a dark day, look what modern society has done to Pirelli calendar already. All this "fairness", efficiency and environmental concern has drained the fun out of the sport; though I understand a lot of that tech is used to develop more efficient road cars, I mean, come on, how much harm can a dozen races a year do, without restrictions? Besides, Le Mans has already become this niche for developing "clean" engines, why ruin number one sport with it, to do the same thing?