didn't I read somewhere that the restrictor-plate engines only made somewhere in the vicinity of 400 or so hp …? approx. half of what a un-molested engine makes ?
didn't I read somewhere that the restrictor-plate engines only made somewhere in the vicinity of 400 or so hp …? approx. half of what a un-molested engine makes ?
In reply to wbjones:
The only reference I found was Wikipdedia (with a "citation needed" note, no less) noting about 430hp for a restrictor plate engine.
You actually could run some production line engines making that kind of power, no? If I fall back to Wikipedia, the Boss 302/Road Runner Coyote variant ( 
) makes 412hp...
The problem with F1 is aero. At the speeds they travel, it's a critical element to the car's performance. And it's almost impossible to legislate, as there are a lot of very smart people working very hard to make it better.
I do like the idea of limiting the cars to single-element wings front and rear, with a limitation on size. Require one wing design for the entire season. Keeping the undercarriage from developing massive amounts of downforce is a problem for sure, and I don't have any easy answers. That's going to require many, very precise rules.
There are going to have to be some rules about maximum dimensions of the fuselage, otherwise the cars will effectively become closed wheel. But that's easy enough, just say "the maximum width of the vehicle between the wheels can be X mm" or something along those lines.
I'd like to see tire limitations removed other than perhaps maximum width. Let the teams decide how to trade off grip vs lifespan, as well as wheel and tire diameter. And number of wheels as well 
For engines, it's easy. Fuel limitations. Or restrictor plates, which is basically the same thing for air. Allow KERS and other ERS if the teams want to run them, and maybe let it be uncontrolled. That could be quite interesting - the total amount of energy available will still be limited by the fuel/air available.
nosleeves wrote: In reply to wbjones: The only reference I found was Wikipdedia (with a "citation needed" note, no less) noting about 430hp for a restrictor plate engine. You actually could run some production line engines making that kind of power, no? If I fall back to Wikipedia, the Boss 302/Road Runner Coyote variant (
The ASA cars run a crate LS1, IIRC. I have the ASA cam in my Miata I have no problem with "stock cars" running a crate engine that is available to purchase and based on a production block. Doesn't affect the show.
I'm not sure I see the need for Formula 1 to remain openwheel. It's the pinnacle of motorsport, right? So if closed wheel is faster, they should be allowed closed wheel.
I'll go back to my old standard rule set for my dream series -
There. That's my racing series.
As noted earlier, formula cars are typically open wheel. One nice side effect is that it does cut down on the rubbin'.
There are good safety reasons not to allow refueling, and the change in behavior as the cars lighten over the race is fun to see. So I'd simplify 2 to say "no more than 20 gallons fuel capacity, and no refueling". F1 races are 200 miles.
Since you're limiting fuel capacity, why limit engine size?
4 will mean alternate onboard storage of power other than your fuel tank, however.
Fun fact: around the time of the Silver Arrows, there was actually a maximum weight for the cars instead of a minimum.
And that's how they became Silver Arrows - Mercedes were overweight once by a couple of kilograms, so they scraped all the nice white paint off the cars and made them legal, and ran them in bare aluminum thereafter. Really.
Let's just assign a challenging energy allotment, BTUs, Kilowatts, whatever, with no engine size. Then you can run internal combustion, hybrid, electric, external combustion, gasoline, diesel, hydrogen, whatever. Flat bottoms, single-element wings of designated maximum size, as Keith suggests, safety configuration requirements, minimum weight, and race.
Keith Tanner wrote: There are good safety reasons not to allow refueling, and the change in behavior as the cars lighten over the race is fun to see. So I'd simplify 2 to say "no more than 20 gallons fuel capacity, and no refueling". F1 races are 200 miles.
Bah. They refuel safely at Le Mans, they do it safely in NASCAR, hell, they do it safely at the 25 hours of Thunderhill and that's just club racing! F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport, surely they can manage to put fuel in a car without endangering people.
IMHO they should define the rules for safe refueling (max flow rate, no other work on car at the same time, interlocks to prevent car from driving off with fuel hose attached, whatever it takes), and then let the teams decide if it's an effective way to win the race or not.
codrus wrote:Keith Tanner wrote: There are good safety reasons not to allow refueling, and the change in behavior as the cars lighten over the race is fun to see. So I'd simplify 2 to say "no more than 20 gallons fuel capacity, and no refueling". F1 races are 200 miles.Bah. They refuel safely at Le Mans, they do it safely in NASCAR, hell, they do it safely at the 25 hours of Thunderhill and that's just club racing! F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport, surely they can manage to put fuel in a car without endangering people. IMHO they should define the rules for safe refueling (max flow rate, no other work on car at the same time, interlocks to prevent car from driving off with fuel hose attached, whatever it takes), and then let the teams decide if it's an effective way to win the race or not.
they do it safely (at least for the most part) at Chupm/Lemons events .. and those aren't remotely in the realm of even club racing
Don't Chump/LeMons have minimum time requirements for a pit stop?
That's not really a fair comparison, in the slightest.
so do various club racing enduro events …
z31maniac wrote: Don't Chump/LeMons have minimum time requirements for a pit stop? That's not really a fair comparison, in the slightest.
The point is that it's possible to have refueling in a pit stop in a safe fashion. Rather than ban it entirely, IMHO F1 should allow it with whatever rules are felt to be necessary to ensure safety. A minimum time for the stop is one option, but probably not the only one.
The most common problem that was associated with F1 refueling was a car driving away with the fuel hose attached. You could fix that by giving the car an air jack and putting the air hose attachment for it on the same fixture as the refueling hose. Make the air line slightly longer so that it engages before the fuel hose does -- now the car gets lifted into the air before the fuel is connected, and stays that way until after the fuel hose has been removed. With the rear wheels off the ground, the car's not driving away.
Far too many people are complaining about the cost of F1 and the attempt to control expenses. Making pit stops mandatory 30 seconds would save tons of cash. The amount of effort and moolah that goes into the air guns, car jacks, and all the rest of the equipment involved in a 3 second pit stop is astronomical. The technology is there to make it so the refueling coupler could be automatically ejected from the car as soon as the car is put in gear, effectively making it impossible to drive away still attached.
codrus wrote:z31maniac wrote: Don't Chump/LeMons have minimum time requirements for a pit stop? That's not really a fair comparison, in the slightest.The point is that it's possible to have refueling in a pit stop in a safe fashion. Rather than ban it entirely, IMHO F1 should allow it with whatever rules are felt to be necessary to ensure safety. A minimum time for the stop is one option, but probably not the only one. The most common problem that was associated with F1 refueling was a car driving away with the fuel hose attached. You could fix that by giving the car an air jack and putting the air hose attachment for it on the same fixture as the refueling hose. Make the air line slightly longer so that it engages before the fuel hose does -- now the car gets lifted into the air before the fuel is connected, and stays that way until after the fuel hose has been removed. With the rear wheels off the ground, the car's not driving away.
Even the fail safe's fail. Refueling isn't that big a deal to me.
Yeah, it opened up the strategy a bit more, but with so many tracks having super long pitlanes, and the E36 M3 tires, we are never going have to races like Magny Cours back in the day where Schumi ran a race full of quali laps on a 4 stop strategy to win. The pit delta is too high.
I'm much more concerned about controlling costs (yay for introducing a power unit that costs 6x the existing one), and relaxing the tech regs.
I disagree with whomever earlier said they think it would be impossible to enforce a strict budget cap.
nosleeves wrote: In reply to wbjones: The only reference I found was Wikipdedia (with a "citation needed" note, no less) noting about 430hp for a restrictor plate engine. You actually could run some production line engines making that kind of power, no? If I fall back to Wikipedia, the Boss 302/Road Runner Coyote variant (
The regular GTs made 420, the BOSS cars made 444 with a higher redline.
Various points in here since my post so I’ll try and tackle a few.
I think F1 should be open wheel, closed wheel may have lower drag, but this is about looking cool and high tech. There is sports car racing for closed wheel cars.
Legislating open wheel is easy. No movable body work and when looked at in plan or side view with the wheels straight ahead (and) at an angle, nothing except suspension pieces and drive shafts shall be within Xmm in any direction. Limit the size/shape of suspension arms to prevent them becoming movable wings.
Pit stops. I don’t want so crappy 30 second mandated minimum stop, this is about being the best. Not parking and twiddling you thumbs for 10 seconds when you’re done. I do agree that the current 2.9-3.5 second stops are silly and dangerous. I like Indy car stops. No jack men, which is also a safety measure as you can’t get run over if you’re not stood in front of a car as it’s coming in. Air jacks and one person per corner, not three. Slows down the stops but doesn’t stop the competitive element of them.
I don’t see a need for fuel stops. I think it adds to the competitive factor making a car that can work on full, part full and nearly empty tanks. It adds a level of complexity to for the teams and makes it harder. Mercedes arguably had the fastest car at the beginning of the year, but they couldn’t make it work on long runs with full tanks so they lost out, tough on them, they over heated the tires.
I’m fine with mandating a maximum engine capacity with max fuel flow and max fuel. If you want to run diesel, go sports car racing, if you want to run electric (other than KERS) go run formula E. If you want to run gas turbine go petition ACO etc. I like noisy IC engines.
To Javelins point about NASCAR loosing popularity due to moving away from stock cars, or RWD V8 body shapes. I don’t think that’s the case. It was still very popular well into the tube frame generic body that vuagly looks like something you can buy era. I think the real issue is that they over estimated the market and got too gimicky. It was the same as golf. Golf was gettign bigger and bigger in the late 80’s and early 90’s so they built thousands of new golf courts for people to hit balls with their golf bats at. The issue was the maeket was already saturated so the same peak number of palyers wasted time at a larger numer out courts, which was ultimatly self correcting. I think NASCAR reached a natural peak, it has too many events vying for peoples attention and is getting too gimicky with things like the chase. There were 36 NASCAR races this year, 20 years ago in 1993 there were 30. Is 36 too many? The Chase may have worked to start with, but maybe people are smarter than they think and they are getting tired of the gimicks?
I think things like the Chase or double stupid points for the last race in F1 are fundamentily stupid. Peple liken them to the playoffs or post season in the various girly sports. But there is a fundimental difference between racing and traditional team games. In racing you can have all the competirots together at one even. Fitting all NFL teams, or all MLB teams or all basket ball teams on one court, pitch, prison to play at the same time is impossible. So you need some kind of ranking to work out who’s the best. That also works for drag racing as you are only two up at a time. When you are all together, race down to the wire with the same # of people having the same shot each time.
Adrian_Thompson wrote: Pit stops. I don’t want so crappy 30 second mandated minimum stop, this is about being the best. Not parking and twiddling you thumbs for 10 seconds when you’re done. I do agree that the current 2.9-3.5 second stops are silly and dangerous. I like Indy car stops. No jack men, which is also a safety measure as you can’t get run over if you’re not stood in front of a car as it’s coming in. Air jacks and one person per corner, not three. Slows down the stops but doesn’t stop the competitive element of them.
I agree about air jacks. But where does the danger in a 3-sec pit stop come from? Is one guy who's removing the first wheel putting on the second wheel, and operating the air gun going to be just as frantic as the three guys each with one job, and just as likely to make a mistake?
Or is the naturally longer duration of such a stop going to help just by giving everyone a chance to notice things are going wonky and not release the car rather than having the thing over so fast that there's effectively no time to register whether or not all four wheels are actually all the way on?
About the refueling: if we're restricting fuel flow anyhow, we already have a maximum amount of fuel for the race. Banning refueling is an easy way to cut costs, help enforce that max fuel load and improve safety even just a little bit.
I like the 3 second pit stops. It's awesome to watch.
Ransom wrote:Adrian_Thompson wrote: Pit stops. I don’t want so crappy 30 second mandated minimum stop, this is about being the best. Not parking and twiddling you thumbs for 10 seconds when you’re done. I do agree that the current 2.9-3.5 second stops are silly and dangerous. I like Indy car stops. No jack men, which is also a safety measure as you can’t get run over if you’re not stood in front of a car as it’s coming in. Air jacks and one person per corner, not three. Slows down the stops but doesn’t stop the competitive element of them.I agree about air jacks. But where does the danger in a 3-sec pit stop come from? Is one guy who's removing the first wheel putting on the second wheel, and operating the air gun going to be just as frantic as the three guys each with one job, and just as likely to make a mistake? Or is the naturally longer duration of such a stop going to help just by giving everyone a chance to notice things are going wonky and not release the car rather than having the thing over so fast that there's effectively no time to register whether or not all four wheels are actually all the way on?
20 guys per pit, standing next to cars doing 60mph, trying to not be hit by other cars coming and out, etc etc
Blow out in 2014 spec tire test
Nico Rosberg tweeted that he had a tyre blowout at 320km/h during this week's Bahrain tyre test, joking that he then needed to go in search of toilet paper.
The tweet is the only news to come out of the three-day test in Bahrain featuring Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Toro Rosso, but was soon deleted. Pirelli is in Bahrain to test its 2014 tyres ahead of the start of pre-season testing in January.
"Just spun at full speed 320km/h on Bahrain straight [be]cause my tyre blew up without warning," Rosberg tweeted. "Thanks to that need to get some toilet paper now…"
Thursday is the third and final day of the test, which is being conducted with 2013 cars.
Read more at http://en.espnf1.com/mercedes/motorsport/story/139965.html#jWg6TacrAO7JF8GM.99
The FIA has announced details of rule changes for the 2014 F1 season including fixed numbers for drivers throughout their careers, a new five second race penalty and double championship points awarded in the season’s final race. However, whilst these new rules have been accepted by teams and drivers, many proposed changes were rejected. Here are the new rules that will NOT be adopted next season:
Loud music played in heavily branded room to cover stilted conversations amongst top three finishers.
Post-race watches limited to diameter of no more than 60 centimetres.
One championship point deducted every time a driver uses the words ‘for sure’ in a TV interview.
Five championship points for any driver who passes Maldonado without sustaining bodywork damage.
Stefano Domenicali limited to 100 TV appearances per race weekend.
Christian Horner banned from starting the answer to any question by saying ‘Yea no’.
Raikkonen awarded one point for every time he manages to construct and complete a sentence.
Jenson Button to clear his throat.
Drivers permitted to have sponsors’ logos tattooed onto face and tongue.
Racing to take place on interesting tracks that allow overtaking.
http://sniffpetrol.com/2013/12/11/those-rejected-f1-rule-changes-in-full-2/
Looks like the NJ race may never happen.....
TAParker wrote: Looks like the NJ race may never happen.....
I could have told you that four years ago.
Jenson Button's father dies at 70. Big Bummer, he was a popular guy around the paddock. Sorry for Jenson and family. 70 isn't old. http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/25719879?utm_source=DGM&utm_campaign=Affiliate
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