How it ended today was fine, not ideal as entertainment but for the most part the race was settled and it was by the book. It's a shame Daniel wasn't able to get the car to a better stop where it would've been a VSC but from the time it went dead to stopped he did a good job just to get it offline.
Until the field is behind the safety car there wasn't the gap to get the telehandler over to the car so I don't blame them for taking too much time to clear it. Having the race go on with a local yellow would not be acceptable with how local yellows are treated in F1, if you need to go to the telemetry to show you "lifted" that's not going to be safe.
It is annoying when the only thing preventing them from going back racing is clearing the lapped cars and maybe that is where they could make an adjustment. Maybe within so many laps of the finish (5? Maybe is based on when the track is clear rather than when the SC starts?) they do not clear the lapped cars and the race may get going again before the checker. Today that would have given us one lap, not enough to change anything at the top of the podium but it would have been interesting further back with drivers that stopped for softs and those that didn't.
Tom1200
UberDork
9/12/22 12:30 p.m.
Purely my opinion but I see no reason to clear lapped cars other than for show.
Deal with lapped cars; racers have had to do this for years. If you're being lapped it's your obligation to funnel the leaders past. The only place it makes sense for oval track / short tracks.
While being a Ferrari F1 fan since 1976 I wanted to see them win; I'm also happy the race director did what they did.
To save a lap or two of SC time why can't they just let the lead lap cars drive past the lapped cars while following the SC? This would get all the lead lap cars nose to tail and save a lap or two of waiting for the lapped cars to unlap themselves.
So I have a theory why the Red Bull is so fast.
It's the rake.
With the rake, they are giving up some ground effects downforce, but that is made up from the rake created downforce.
And by giving up some ground effects, they don't 1) run as low (less instability) and more important 2) run softer. Remember last season when MB used softer springs to get the car to squat at high speed for better top end? Yea. Add that to the less skittish nature of the car in corners means even if they had less downforce, they would be more stable and faster.
Given the nature of the cars, it *seems* that the MB has a lot of potential rake downforce- since they have a lot of exposed floor due to the lack of side pods. But that also means a chassis rethink for geometry.
Well, that's my idea. Pretty clever trade off.
Region_Rat said:
To save a lap or two of SC time why can't they just let the lead lap cars drive past the lapped cars while following the SC? This would get all the lead lap cars nose to tail and save a lap or two of waiting for the lapped cars to unlap themselves.
The reason for using a full safety car rather than a virtual one is to create long-ish periods of time where workers can go out onto the track surface and know that there are no cars coming. Letting cars past the SC before the incident is cleared up defeats this purpose.
One interesting suggestion that I've seen to potentially speed things up is to have all of the drivers on the lead lap enter the pits and wait at the end for a lap. The safety car takes the lapped cars around, then the lead lap cars come out and rejoin at the front. There are some details that would need to be worked out (perhaps you use two safety cars, one for the lead lap, one for the rest), and it doesn't work if the pit lane is blocked, but I think it would provide a mechanism to do the unlapping and track clearing at the same time without compromising safety.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
The current crop of f1 cars can not stay stationary for anywhere near that amount of time.
It also doesn't help that the safety car picked up the wrong car for whatever reason.
wvumtnbkr said:
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
The current crop of f1 cars can not stay stationary for anywhere near that amount of time.
Sure they can, just shut the motor off. The hybrid electric motor works as an onboard starter so they can actually do that now.
jmabarone said:
You can't do it today, no. Change the safety car rules to require that the car be able to restart after being shut down for 2 minutes and that will change in a hurry, trust me. :) Le Mans cars do it every time they make a pit stop and those engines are no less advanced.
And they are already doing the onboard starter thing, BTW. 10 years ago you used to see cars DNFing because they stalled after a spin all the time, that doesn't happen any more. Some of that is better anti-stall software that automatically pulls the clutch in, but the onboard starter functionality got the rest of it.
Absolutely agree with you on that. I thought there was some caveat in the rules about restarting engines that had carried over from the days of external starters. I.e. your engine stalls, womp womp, you're out. Doesn't matter that you have a fancy onboard starter with your ERS system.
What I have heard about red flags and how if they go to that vs. staying yellow with a potential restart is that it puts those opportunist pit stoppers at a disadvantage. Easy solution, close the pits. But, do you do that for every VSC/SC? Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a great solution that doesn't have a massive effect in other circumstances. Maybe pits close under SC/VSC (except for emergency service) in the last 10% of the race?
The other solution I have heard is the Nascar style 2 lap shootout, which I doubt they would do because 1) it could create a fuel level issue and 2) F1 CANNOT take something from Nascar and use it.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
Region_Rat said:
To save a lap or two of SC time why can't they just let the lead lap cars drive past the lapped cars while following the SC? This would get all the lead lap cars nose to tail and save a lap or two of waiting for the lapped cars to unlap themselves.
The reason for using a full safety car rather than a virtual one is to create long-ish periods of time where workers can go out onto the track surface and know that there are no cars coming. Letting cars past the SC before the incident is cleared up defeats this purpose.
One interesting suggestion that I've seen to potentially speed things up is to have all of the drivers on the lead lap enter the pits and wait at the end for a lap. The safety car takes the lapped cars around, then the lead lap cars come out and rejoin at the front. There are some details that would need to be worked out (perhaps you use two safety cars, one for the lead lap, one for the rest), and it doesn't work if the pit lane is blocked, but I think it would provide a mechanism to do the unlapping and track clearing at the same time without compromising safety.
I think we are getting to the same place. My suggestion was to let the lead lap cars get to the front so it would still be a train of cars, still allowing for time for the crews to do their work and not having to wait the extra 1-2 laps for lapped cars to unlap themselves. They stay "lapped" as they should based on their performance but start behind the last lead lap car. I think we are accomplishing the same thing but mine doesn't unlap the slower cars.
Allowing the lead cars to pass the lapped cars behind the safety car would avoid the problem of random cars going at faster than SC speeds - but it would also put those lapped cars down by another lap.
Keith Tanner said:
Allowing the lead cars to pass the lapped cars behind the safety car would avoid the problem of random cars going at faster than SC speeds - but it would also put those lapped cars down by another lap.
Not if the safety car picks up the leader. SC gets leader and then all lead lap cars advance ahead of lapped down cars in the line. No laps changed.
On the topic of the cars starting themselves, some of the current engines can do that. Yuki shut his car off when he was first told to pull over at the Dutch GP and then restarted it when they asked him to come back to the pits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvaq7VXmekA
Why don't they just have the lapped cars pull to the right and slow down and fall to the back, change their lap electronically and save all the shenanigans. They should be able to shuffle 20 cars in a straight away.
NY Nick said:
Why don't they just have the lapped cars pull to the right and slow down and fall to the back, change their lap electronically and save all the shenanigans. They should be able to shuffle 20 cars in a straight away.
Better question to me (as pointed out by Kyle Petty) is why give them the lap back at all? The leader has rightfully pulled a lap on that person. That person gets a free lap because we have to get the "out of position" cars back in position. Not fair to the leader/lead lap cars that have driven faster over the given distance.
In reply to jmabarone :
I also agree with that. I agreed with that in Abu Duabi too.
adam525i said:
On the topic of the cars starting themselves, some of the current engines can do that. Yuki shut his car off when he was first told to pull over at the Dutch GP and then restarted it when they asked him to come back to the pits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvaq7VXmekA
Yes. In theory they've had the hardware to do this ever since they introduced KERS in 2009, but they haven't used it until the last few years. I don't know why, but if it was a holdover rule from the days of external starters then that would make sense.
As for the various other proposals, I think there are some abstract principles that you don't mark down laps as completed unless they've actually been completed (there are marginal effects on tire wear, fuel consumption, engine wear, etc). I also get the impression that it's considered less fair to push lapped cars backwards than it is to allow them to come forwards. Rubbing salt in the wounds, as it were.
Edit: One other reason for letting the lapped cars come forwards is that otherwise it can totally screw people who were involved in battles somewhere near the end of the lead lap. Imagine 10th and 11th are battling for that last point with the leader ~15 seconds from lapping them. The guy in 10th pits, when he comes out he's now a lap down. Safety car comes out before the other car pits, so not only does he get ahead of the former 10th place car with a cheap stop, but he's almost an entire lap ahead of him!
Why not just leave the lapped cars exactly where they are? Wouldn't that be the most fair to literally everybody?
wvumtnbkr said:
Why not just leave the lapped cars exactly where they are? Wouldn't that be the most fair to literally everybody?
It still has the effect of screwing with the race between two people who are only a second or two apart other than having the leader between them.
There's also an argument that it's less safe to have slower, lapped cars caught in between the leaders at the restart. I dunno how real that effect is though.
Tom1200
UberDork
9/14/22 10:33 p.m.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
wvumtnbkr said:
Why not just leave the lapped cars exactly where they are? Wouldn't that be the most fair to literally everybody?
It still has the effect of screwing with the race between two people who are only a second or two apart other than having the leader between them.
There's also an argument that it's less safe to have slower, lapped cars caught in between the leaders at the restart. I dunno how real that effect is though.
Drivers dealt with lapped cars for decades until someone decided it was better for the show.
Amateur drivers at the RunOffs have to deal with lapped cars on restarts and they mange it. If they can do that surely F1 drivers can.
L5wolvesf said:
Daniels at McLaren
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/jack-daniel-sponsor-mclaren-formula-190000695.html
I missed the "Jack" as I scanned that headline, and was confused, because Daniel is already at McLaren...
