The FIA is stupid

[racer10]

THe FIA are stupid. They have no idea how to improve racing, overtaking or controling costs. Traction control and more driving aids are not the answer. Giving traction control and yet taking downforce is defeating the purpose. They are working against each other. THey have managed to take away overall grip. Drivers will not attempt a pass if they cant confidently control their cars. I quote Panis and De La Rosa. Panis: There is less overall grip than last year. The car is sliding in all corners." De La Rosa: "YOu can not follow in someones slip stream with the new aero rules. IT will be harder to pass than last year." The FIA have all the WRONG answers. How many more driving aids could we possibly have? The drivers dont even have to suck the water through the straw. THey have a button they push to do it for them. THe FIA have managed to take away any and all possibilty of an entertaining season next year. Remember this now. These changes will mark the demise of F1. In 5 years F1 will be in danger of extinction. Remember this prediction. The downfall starts in 2001.

[ozywoodwards]

It always shocks me that every time the FIA introduce a rule which is meant to encourage overtaking they manage to make t more difficult.

When grooved tyres and narrow cars where introduced in 1999 it made it harder. Therefore lets put more grooves in shall we is there response.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH.

[jimclark]

...number of tire failures since grooves have been introduced. Why can the drivers not control the cars confidently? Your Panis quote, "There is less overall grip than last year. The car is sliding in all corners" suggests success....it sure as heck is what I want to see as I did in the past. Mayhaps you're too young to remember four wheel drifts, squirrelly braking zones, passing, etc. THAT was the epitome of car control. i disagree with the traction control, of course, but I think FIAs trying it's darndest to counter the high tech era we're in (Heck, colossal advances in "stiction" of tires in all forms of racing) Viva la F1 !!!

[Liz]

The downfall of Formula One started in 1991. Where have you been?

[Minardi fan]

It amazes me how F1 slumps every so often - 1996, 97, excellent seasons, 1998 was a rubbish season, 1999 was a fantastic season, 2000 was another rubbish season.

[Peter Mallett]

It's really easy. Get rid of Traction Control, put them back on slicks, take away automatic changes and give them 2.0 liter turbos.

Then see how scared Mickey-the-Shoe is.

(Forgive me if some people don't understand the "scared" reference).

[Splatz]

F1 will never die, havent you noticed it is spreading across the world, it's(he) is richer now than ever before.

I thought 2000 was great, more passes, DC back from the edge of death victory, and love them or loath them, a well deserved TGF and Ferrari championship.

Peter M: Perhaps you could fill me in on the "scared" bit, I dont know what you mean.

IMO, no matter what the changes, the brilliant drivers come to the for, and the bad ones still struggle, Taki Inoue, would crash a McLaren, Ferrari or whatever.

I do agree with y'all that F1 is heading the wrong way down the one-way-street called "technological development".

I think electrical control of steering and braking and scratching the driver's nose, is going to make it less safe and less exciting. Important it will make development costs more expensive.

The Splatz solution:

no TYRE WARMERS
no ABS
no TRACTION CONTROL
no STABILITY CONTROL
no GROOVED DRY TYRES

This would not fix everything, but I think having cold tires would mean that the drivers with the better car control would do better at starts and after pitting.
The other points mentioned would mean the same drivers would do better through corners, accelerating, and when braking.

I reckon the drivers that would excell in these cars are, (in no particular order):

TGF
JPM
Zanardi - sadly for him its too late
JV
MikaH

and maybe Alesi

[Peter Mallett]

HEHE,

Mickey drove a 1986 Turbo Ferrari and proclaimed it dangerous and frightening.

Never heard that fom Mansell, Tambay, Prost, Senna, Wawrick, Cheever or any of the others who raced in F1's last golden age.

Merry Christmas.

[GURRYP]

Well here goes, the Gurryp 5 point plan for better racing & the return of overtaking. In no particular order :-

Larger slick tyres (more mechanical grip)
Steel brake discs (longer braking distances)
Smaller wings (less aerodynamic grip)
No refuelling (unecessarry in 200 mile racing)
Air restrictor limit for engines (let people bulid & run what they want)

The chances of any this happening, zilch I'm affraid.


Gurryp

[jimclark]

...but I still await the reply to my standard question: What is the rationale for the "slicks" (let alone larger ones)obsession? Grooved or not, the amount of "stiction" will be what it will be. The answer is in different compounds (hey, they might even have to last a race distance) or else reduce contact patch. Again, I believe a majority of the increase in non-passing is in the tire tech increases over the past few decades...

[GURRYP]

The reasoning behind larger slicks is two fold. Firstly it makes the cars less aerodynamically efficient, and secondly it will make them more controllable on the limit, rather than the knife edge handling characteristics of the narrow grooved tyres as reported by many drivers.

Gurryp

[Liz]

Bring back cars that had to be raced by men, and perhaps the maelstrom will throw up men to race them. Perhaps one day the modern group of RC Racers will be able to look out of their bank vaults to see real men four-wheel-drifting through corners, hear cars that sound like cars again and not like chain saws gone mad, and watch men drive instead of merely programming and pushing buttons when little red lights come on to say "press button now!" with big arrows to point at the button...and when hollow little PR machines like Jensen Button won't be considered "star drivers" because they got out an autobiography and a line of merchandise before they had ever signed a contract, far less before they proved that they could drive a real car.

Bring back the 1980s - cars and men both - and take away the robot PR machines that need to be surrounded by syncophants and handlers to remind them what their job is supposed to be.

Bring back the men who raced because they loved racing, and not because they loved money.

And do that by bringing back the cars they drove, so their heirs will find it worthwhile to return.

[TimD]

And circuits too.

Guess who just got a video for Christmas. Watching Vic Elford's on-board camera during practice for the 1972 Targa Florio gave me the heebie-geebies...

I doubt if there's a current F1 driver who would tackle the Targa circuit in a hire-car, let alone a 12 cylinder 190mph Alfa Romeo sports prototype!

[Liz]

Amen! I'd pay real money to see TGF do three laps of the old Nurembergring in Patrick Tambay's old Ferrari, as is, and have a camera on his face when he was winched out and carried away to be revived.

Technology is a fine thing in its place. But its place is not in Formula One. Safety is a fine thing in its place too, and it'd be hard to go back to the old circuits with the present World View that everyone should be wrapped in cotton wool all his life ... but I'd bet if you built those old cars and opened up the Nuremburgring and said "Who wants to run a real car on a real course?" you would find takers enough to fill a grid. And once the modern generation had seen it, it'd be hard to put them back in the playpen again.

[jimclark]

...That's where the grooves came in, in the first place. To lessen the contact patch while maintaining the same frontal area. What makes you think there isn't "a knife edge" with slicks? There is; and if you ain't on it, you ain't racing. Still no scientific rationale for the infamous "slicks"...

[Tris]

What bothers me is that in the early 80s, when I first really got in to F1 every one was complaining that the racing was rubbish in comparison to the 60’s. If the trend continues what will F1 be like in 2010?!?! I hope I never look back to 1998-200 and say well compared to now the racing was good! These days Formula 1 is a dull as ditchwater. It’s too commercial and the drivers are put under so much pressure they dare not “try” in case they make a hash of things.

Failure has been taken out of the sport. It did not matter that Gilles took the car past the limit so often and wrecked Ferrari after Ferrari. It was part of the sport and was accepted. No driver could “get away” with such driving now, no team boss would tolerate it.

[kev]

Stirling Moss on todays F1 compettition;
'That's no job for a man'.

I say bring back turbos and the rest will take care of itself.

More Power!
Woof! Woof!

[Gt_R]

Now that the teams got traction control, the teams are going to start wincing that someone is using ABS, and i wouldnt be surprised if FIA legalise ABS to so as to "help development in the auto world and make braking safeR!"

DArn...whats all this about..

If the FIA is so obsessed with slowing the cars down, perhaps they would set a 300km/h speed limit!!!

LEAVE THOSE DRIVERS AIDS OUT.......please?!

[Liz]

What Sir Stirling Moss said. Present day F1 ain't no job for a man!

While I won't go so far as the former pilot who observed with disgust that "Formula One drivers no longer know how to die", I would observe that the majority of them seem to have forgotten how to live.

[enzo]

For jimclark:

Tire grip is a function of download, sideload,contact patch area, and compound.

Changes in grip are linear to contact area, non linear to download, linear to changes in sideload, and non-linear to changes of download vs. sideload.

When grooved tires were introduced, track widths were also reduced. This has the effect of greater weight transfer off of the inside tires for any given g-load of cornering, which has a dramatic effect on the available grip (non-linear grip change for a given download change).

Grooved tires have a reduced contact patch, and must use harder, more durable compound, to be able to live for any reasonable timespan. They are VERY sensetive to any changes in download.

To counteract the massive loss in available mechanical grip, the engineers have had to spend a ton of time & money researching ways to increase aerodynamic downforce, in which they have obviously been very successful.

The problem lies in the fact that these aero aids decrease their effectiveness rather dramatically when slowing into a corner, and/or when smooth airflow is disturbed, like when following another car closely. The effect to the driver is that he has a phenominal amount of grip at high speed, and very little at low speed, with those levels changing a LOT, and unpredictably, whenever he gets close to another car.

With current cars, a driver cannot fllow another closely under braking into a corner, because he stands a great chance of losing too much areo load suddenly, with disasterous results.

All this has the result of putting the car on an extreme knife edge, and edge that is forever changing, and is extremely non-forgiving. Step over the edge even slightly, and you are GONE.

Slicks, on the other hand, have a much larger contact patch, and can live nicely with softer, more grippy, and less durable compounds, resulting in higher "mechanical" grip levels at all speeds.

Did you know that a Formula Ford corners faster (pulls more g's) than an F1 car in really tight corners? It's because of the slicks and wide track widths.

As slicks tend to be wide, they create a lot of drag. Add that to a wider car width, and you have more frontal area and lower straighaway speeds.

If the areo rules are tightened up so that the engineers cannot pile on 5 tons of downforce, they will find that what they have is much less sensetive to disturbances - ie - if the areo is disturbed, the areo download won't change as much pound-force wise.

For a quick illustration:

Lets say that Car A developes 10000 pounds of downforce at a given speed, and Car B developes 5000 lbs. Both cars then lose 50% of their downforce in a given disturbance situation. Car A then loses 5000 lbs downforce, while Car B loses only 2500 lbs.

Guess which car changes the most dramatically ? Car A.

Guess which one will be less forgiving ? Car A.

If Car B has a higher mechanical grip level, it will mean that it is easier to control if something reduces the downforce to zero, like getting sideways. The car will be more "forgiving" and a lot less likely to fly off of the track at the slightless provocation.

It DOES NOT mean that the car is any easier to extract the maximum performance. Superior car control will still shine, as well as superior tactics.

Which is why CART is so much more fun to watch !

[TimD]

Thanks Enzo - that's the clearest, most succinct summary of the problem I ever saw.

In 20 years of active study of Formula cars, I have come to be very familiar with the effects of the different grip generators, but little of the dynamics of why and how those effects come about.

Thank you.

[Splatz]

Yeh. I second that, top-job Enzo.

You're probably a good person to ask then Enzo, about some of the tech aspects of having cold tyres, (like in CART,) introduced to F1.

Whats your response to this and how do you see it would affect the larger picture of car control, that you referred to previously?

Also, how many laps of 1, Hockenheim, and 2, Suzuka, do you think it would take for cold tyres to come up to racing temperature on an F1 car, if these tyres were introduced (on slicks)?

[enzo]

Sorry, I can't give a definitive answer as I don't know squat about those tracks, nor the characteristics of current F1 tires. I actually doubt that the teams do either as they would have no need to test from dead cold. They would, however, test for starting scenarios, and for pace car restarts.

I can give this, however:

Temperature-relative grip will vary greatly according to the compounds characteristics. Hard compounds like those currently used usually don't vary as much as much as sticky compounds, but sticky tires will have a higher cold starting point.

How fast the heat builds up will also vary according to the compound, as well as the track surface texture, and the types of corners. Tracks such as Road America, with its long straights, will usually take longer to build heat, compared to tracks like Monaco.

The length of the braking zone also affects the time it takes - tires build heat under braking also. Short, quick stabs of the brakes aren't as effective as long, hard ones.

Back in the mid '80's, I helped develop a brake system for Nascar that was much larger than what they were using at the time - it was basically a GTP car caliper & rotor for the front, and an Indy car caliper for the rear. It worked extremely well, almost too well. The next year, the Goodyear tires started over heating - both blistering and sometimes blowing up. Goodyear was at a loss as to the problem, since the tires were the same as the year before, and were getting embarrased because of it. After some conversations with Bill Elliot and Darryl Waltrip, I suspected that the problem was due to the fact that they were using the brakes hard the full race distance, whereas before, they hardly ever touched the pedal if they didn't absolutely have to. Ford & Elliot set up some infared sensors to take active tire temps, and sure enough, the tires were actually reaching maximum safe temps at the end of the braking zones, even before the heat of cornering was added ! For some reason, I've gotten along very well with Goodyear engineers since then !

An extremely grippy surface can also sometimes cause soft, grippy tires to never come to temp, whereas a hard tire may slide enough to build up enough heat to get it into an operating temp range where they will actually develop more grip than the softer tires !

Shock valving also makes a big difference. I recently did some tests of two different brands of shocks, eack with a different valving philosophy. Runs were done, and the shocks rebuilt with the valving philosophy that previously was in the other set. In all cases, there was no real difference in ultimate grip & lap times, but one valving type was noticably faster to build max grip - so fast in fact, that lap times taken starting from a dead stop in the pits on cold tires ( a so-called "out" lap) was only 2 seconds slower than a flying lap, and the driver was getting full hot grip levels within 3 corners. The other valving style was 5 seconds slower on an "out" lap, and took 2 more laps to get up to full grip ! The shock manufacturer that was responsible for that particular valving philosphy has gotten an earfull from me since then ! I've been trying to get them to develop their shocks along the other valving line for 2 years now - they are finally starting to listen !

That example is probably the one of the major causes of the cry from teams from time to time that they can't get enough heat into their tires to get good grip. Shocks can make you or break you in that regard.

Anyway - is there a good answer to your question ? NO !!!! There are too many variables, and they are going to be different for every team at every track.

As to the question about cold tires affect on car control:

While it can be maddening to the driver to leave from a pit stop and have to take it easy for a few corners, it also points out dramatically the differences of car setup from team to team, and the differences in driver skill, both physical and mental, when they have to push the car to the edge of grip, when that edge is changing constantly during the course of the first lap out. The truely brilliant drivers are magical to watch in that situation.

To me, tire warmers are only an advantage if you are the only ones that have them ! Otherwise, they are just one more expensive piece of equipment that you have to have just to maintain your competitiveness during those out laps.

Not worth the aggravation.

[Gt_R]

WoW! That's impressive...learnt quite abit frm there...10x!

[KC]

A very large portion of the problem comes from the egos involved in the leadership of F1. Most everyone here, the TV commentators, chassis designers, and other fans agree that mechanical downforce would achieve desirable racing results, but in order for this to happen, the powers that be must admit they were wrong. They would have to emulate CART or the IRL and they won't swallow that bitter pill without choking. Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley would rather destroy F1 than admit that someone else knows more than they do about motor racing.