So the deficit between Hami and Max to 3rd place Lando is 30 points, the spring qualifying awards only top 3. I feel like this is going to put Mercedes and RB miles ahead of the other teams. I am excited that they are trying to change things a liven it up.
I know he was always kind of inconsistent, but there was always something that I found likeable about Grosjean so I was happy to hear this news: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/grosjean-mercedes-test-wolff-french-gp/6502747/
Toto is going to let him take some laps in Lewis's 2019 car at Paul Ricard, like he said he would after the crash last year.
Classy move by Mercedes. Shame that Haas didn't step up first.
In reply to Sonic :
He's probably spent enough time in a Hass lol
In reply to Sonic :
The Race just posted a video explaining the test. Haas didn't have resources to put a powertrain into one of their 2019 cars..... (and to be able to run a test day like this, the car has to be 2 years old).
The other team that should have stepped up was Renault- since that's the team he raced with prior to Haas- it was both Renault and Lotus before. Even though they did a lot of testing with a 2019 car, they did not extend an offer...
And Wolfe made the offer pretty quickly after the accident, and while Grojean didn't follow up 100%, Wolfe did, and invited him to a seat fitting recently, and then making the plans to run a demo run before the French Grand Prix followed by a full test day on Monday. Very cool for Toto to do that- but he did mention he has known Romain for a long time.
I think that paddock is a lot smaller and more tightly knit than it looks like from the outside.
Roman is going to have a really good day out. Not just a day in an F1 car, but a champion F1 car and in front of a French crowd. That's a great sendoff.
Barcelona.
Verstappen on pole? No it will be PEREZ!!!!! dun dun DUUUUUUUUUN. Then Hamilton Verstappen Alonso Bottas and Norris. Top three rows.
Hamilton will eventually get into a position to pass Perez and win the race. Alonso will crash out with Bottas. Perez reveals he has team orders to let Max by for second.
Williams will get a point from luck of a virtual safety car timing, but will be Latifi that gets 9th!
Crazy predictions!!!
(reality is Hamilton on pole and laps field up to 4th place........again the greatest F1 driver)
I was just reading about Max and his feelings on track limits. It was a good article and Max is starting to grow on me a bit. Anyway can't someone come up with something that has a major lack of traction to put on the paved sections outside of the track limits? Like some sort of turf that can be removed when they aren't running F1. Like ok you can hit this but your coefficient of friction is going to drop 50% when you do so you have a real loss but not the loss of a car so they can stop policing it so rigorously?
In reply to New York Nick :
Why not spray it with something super sticky like VHT / track bite or use coke syrup (used for indoor flat track on concrete) or other product that would slow the car down.
Vettel used to push track limits quite a bit as well a few years ago. Before he gave up :) It seems like such a goofy thing, but it's a side effect of trying to make the tracks safe given the speed of the cars. I'm not sure there is a good answer other than penalties applied with consistency. The turf trick has been tried, IIRC, and the cars were pulling it up with downforce.
New York Nick said:I was just reading about Max and his feelings on track limits. It was a good article and Max is starting to grow on me a bit. Anyway can't someone come up with something that has a major lack of traction to put on the paved sections outside of the track limits? Like some sort of turf that can be removed when they aren't running F1. Like ok you can hit this but your coefficient of friction is going to drop 50% when you do so you have a real loss but not the loss of a car so they can stop policing it so rigorously?
They want it to have friction, because that's what stops cars from hitting the wall. Paved runoff is there both for safety reasons and to reduce the number of drivers knocked out of the race due to minor mistakes damaging cars (fans don't like it when their favorite driver is knocked out and that hurts TV ratings).
I read that at Le Mans they have automatic sensors to detect when cars go out of bounds, and I don't understand why F1 doesn't. That seems like the obvious answer -- qualifying lap times can be automatically deleted, and during the race the drivers can be penalized by reducing the power down the next straight. No need for the stewards to review everything, the penalty is timely, it can be tuned to match the track, and you don't have any safety implications like you get from adding walls/etc.
Edit: Just wanted to add that this wouldn't replace "leaving the track and gaining an advantage" types of penalties, like you get for passing someone off-track. It would just address the "Hamilton has been going over the white line every lap of the race because they said they aren't enforcing it" kinds of silliness that we're getting this year.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
I like the Le Mans style system if that is possible. I was just thinking remove the traction "out of bounds" If they are going to get loose and have to let out to save it they will stay off it, if they hit it they will have to slow down to save the car.
I'm pretty sure F1 does have sensors for out of bounds, but they get reviewed manually because there's a difference between getting pushed wide when trying to pass and cheating a corner. What's been the problem this year is some inconsistency in one race. The two laps that Max had deleted for track limits in the last race were completely legit and expected. The out of bounds pass was obviously going to get recalled, it wasn't even close. The only thing that should have some controversy is the mid-race change in the first race.
The race organizers do not have the ability to adjust engine output, though. I'm pretty sure pit-to-car communication is restricted to audio. If you really want to prevent someone from abusing track limits, delete the lap time during the race. All of a sudden you're a lap down because you went wide. That would get people's attention.
How about this for exceeding track limits: we equip each car with a pepper spray type cannister but instead pepper spray, have the cannister release year old putrefied fish gut oil................this will separate the men from the boys. I guarantee no one will ever exceed track limits ever again.
Keith Tanner said:The race organizers do not have the ability to adjust engine output, though. I'm pretty sure pit-to-car communication is restricted to audio. If you really want to prevent someone from abusing track limits, delete the lap time during the race. All of a sudden you're a lap down because you went wide. That would get people's attention.
Track-official-to-car digital communication exists, it's used for flag display on the steering wheel if nothing else. Pit-lane-to-car digital commands were allowed up until a decade or so ago and I'm sure the software to do it still exists even if it's not installed/enabled during a race weekend (might well be there for testing, for example).
For that matter you don't even need communication for this. If you put the right sensors in the track then the car itself can detect that it's gone over the limits, and the FIA could mandate that there be a software module that would penalize this via throttle reduction for the next N seconds. Enabling that kind of thing is why they have a spec ECU. There are no technical reasons it can't be done.
I'm not sure why you'd want to put someone a lap down just for going wide, that seems almost as pointlessly harsh as wishing for them to crash into a wall (although obviously with fewer safety questions). Penalty severity should be matched to the severity of the offense, going a few feet too wide on a corner is a lap time improvement of a tenth or two at most, so applying a power penalty that costs something like 3 or 4 tenths down the next straight seems about right.
Good point on the flags.
I figure that deleting lap times during quali is like deleting lap times during a race :) Make the penalty big enough, the problem goes away. It's not disqualification from the race (as a crash would be), it's just a big penalty. I'm sure someone could come up with a way to abuse the temporary loss of power scenario although it does seem more appropriate.
It seems it would be pretty simple to put GPS type RFID chips on the cars that police exceeding track limits. Infrastructure could be added to the track to provide the necessary accuracy of the sensors. Simulations could be ran in near live time based on telemetry to determine the time advantage gained by the transgression. Then a penalty of 2X the timed gained could be assessed. Stewards could review and revoke penalties based only on being pushed wide.
Reduction in power is fine for a series like formula E but could be dangerous in a F1 car. Time penalties already exist and accepted by the fans.
I'm not sure why position based telemetry isn't more common in sports. Things like the NFL should have sensors in the tips of the balls that can determine the exact location of the ball at any time. Down, and goal line could then just be as simple as sinking video frames to the record of the ball location. G Sensors could determine if the ball hit the ground during a catch. .. but that's not F1
How do we know there isn't already position based telemetry? They're obviously tracking the cars extremely closely as they're giving gaps to the millisecond updated frequently. I think they already know when a car is outside track limits. It doesn't take long before there's a notification that a lap might be deleted. I think they're already doing the review, that's the delay.
nocones said:Reduction in power is fine for a series like formula E but could be dangerous in a F1 car. Time penalties already exist and accepted by the fans.
What's the safety concern? If it's about unexpected power cuts while the car is cornering throwing it into oversteer, you just wait until the car is pointed straight (the ECU can tell). If it's about other drivers hitting that penalized driver from behind because they're expecting him to accelerate faster then you can fix that by putting a light on the back of the car (say a blue one, so it's not confused with the "harvesting" light). Car has a pending power penalty you turn the light on, then some number of seconds later the power gets limited. When over the light turns off.
All this enforce track limits with technology talk just reminds me of the umpires phoning New York for five minutes to figure out whether they blew a call or not, which generally makes me like baseball less.
Make it subject to human error. Life is better when you can get away with E36 M3 now and again.
Based on FP1 it looks like sausage curbs are the easy answer for track limits. Push right up to them and you are fine, go a bit too far and risk damaging the car. Maybe you'll get lucky, maybe not.
Having said that you could see if they put these in everywhere to control track limits then the teams would just start building cars to handle them better lol.
adam525i said:Based on FP1 it looks like sausage curbs are the easy answer for track limits. Push right up to them and you are fine, go a bit too far and risk damaging the car. Maybe you'll get lucky, maybe not.
Having said that you could see if they put these in everywhere to control track limits then the teams would just start building cars to handle them better lol.
I'm envisioning a trophy truck / F1 car hybrid thing right now. This is something I would absolutely pay to watch.
100, wow.
Even more wow - that's nearly 50% more than Schumi in second.
Mazepin: 3.6 seconds off pole.
Great quote from Toto Wolff on mid-season driver swaps:
“If you’re not happy with your wife and you start to look for other ones it’s not going to improve the relationship,” he said.
“I try to work on the relationship with my driver and achieve the best result for him before I’m starting to flirt with somebody else.”
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