Formula 1 2023 Season

The results were mostly as expected (except for the penalty) but I'm curious about one thing.....Max seemed to be able to easily pass thru the field on his way to Checo's back end, but then Sergio seemed to be able to keep him 5 sec back at will. How could he gain so much thruout the race then not be able to close the gap, then set fastest lap when he wanted to?

Are there shenanigans going on here?

Disappointed in the Ferraris, I don;t know if it was just down to the tires or what......Charles was able to make the softs last longer than some were able to get the mediums to go....then same thing as Max, all of a sudden he can't pass his teammate?

Kudos to George for not letting the Hamster pass him.

So, a little like the Ark at the end....

2 Red Bulls

Alonso

2 Mercs

2 Ferraris

2 Alpines

Kmag

At least till the penalty.....

In reply to MiniDave :

Red Bull have so much in hand that they can get to the front and just maintain the gap. That's why I think RB are going to win every race (barring disaster)

....and Alonso has been reinstated as the third place finisher. The rule is vague about working on the car and doesn't explicitly say the mechanics can't touch it.

Alonso gets Saudi F1 podium back after penalty ruling overturned (autosport.com)

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Good.  He deserved it back just for the time management of it.

Statute of limitations.

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

Which also says there will be a clarification by the next race.

I don't have a strong opinion on wether he should be penalized or not. Well I kind of think he should be after last weekend and if you can touch it with the Jack why can't you place all the lug guns on too?

The bigger issue, and the reason the FIA look like dipE36 M3s, is they didn't call it during the race, then they called it and then they changed it. For berkeleys sake, make the call in real time so the teams can race around it. 

I'm super happy that Alonso got that back! That was such a mismanaged and incorrect move from the stewards to begin with.

Well done to Ferrari for a double points finish and to the HAAS!

NY Nick said:

I don't have a strong opinion on wether he should be penalized or not. Well I kind of think he should be after last weekend and if you can touch it with the Jack why can't you place all the lug guns on too?

 

The bigger issue, and the reason the FIA look like dipE36 M3s, is they didn't call it during the race, then they called it and then they changed it. For berkeleys sake, make the call in real time so the teams can race around it. 

For the former, that will certainly be clarified by the next race.

As for the latter- that's a HUGE problem.  They look so stupid for taking that long, and then reversing even though Ocon got penalized for a similar kind of infraction.  Who is running this clownshow?

In reply to alfadriver :

I'm a big Toto fan so I shouldn't post this but...

I thought the original penalty was dumb. I get you have to basically be in the box and behind the line, but how far outside the box was he? Half a tire width? He was still behind the line. Also, F1 can fix these penalty issues real easy, make them drive through penalties not time penalties. Will it be more severe, sure. Will there be any question about whether it's served or not? And served correctly? Absolutely.

Max did seem to have great pace til he got to P2. I wonder if he didn't try for P1 because of the vibration he reported. He kind of said that after the race, didn't he? 

What is up with McClaren? Did they really miss that bad? 
 

alfadriver said:

triumph7 said:

OK, that is bullE36 M3!  The initial infringement was stupid anyway but they served the penalty from what I could see.  Then to give them a 10 second penalty is total BS.

While it seems stupid, a 5 second penalty means nobody can touch the car.  Not even a jack.  So IF (and I've not seen it clearly) the rear jack man has his jack against the car, he wasn't serving the penalty.  As for the original penalty- he wasn't in the box, and Fernando seemed to know he did that.  Very much a rookie mistake, not something he would do.

I haven't read the rule myself but I've seen it stated that the crew *can* touch the car but they cannot *work* on the car.  So if the jack man touched the jack to the car but did not lift the car, no penalty.  Also, there is/was a 25 minute time limit to hand out penalties, the 10 second penalty was handed out 34 minutes later.

As far as the original start box infraction, can the driver see the front tires?  On my Fmod the cockpit sides are cut down so I can see the front tires and cones.

Not to mention the jack guy basically just accidentally whacked the back of the car getting in position. 

And yeah, that initial penalty was pretty ticky tack too. I've seen the in-helmet shots they post now and there's probably no real good way of seeing where you are on those start grid boxes. 

triumph7 said:

 

As far as the original start box infraction, can the driver see the front tires?  On my Fmod the cockpit sides are cut down so I can see the front tires and cones.

That's what the yellow lines on the track are for.  

triumph7 said:

alfadriver said:

triumph7 said:

OK, that is bullE36 M3!  The initial infringement was stupid anyway but they served the penalty from what I could see.  Then to give them a 10 second penalty is total BS.

While it seems stupid, a 5 second penalty means nobody can touch the car.  Not even a jack.  So IF (and I've not seen it clearly) the rear jack man has his jack against the car, he wasn't serving the penalty.  As for the original penalty- he wasn't in the box, and Fernando seemed to know he did that.  Very much a rookie mistake, not something he would do.

I haven't read the rule myself but I've seen it stated that the crew *can* touch the car but they cannot *work* on the car.  So if the jack man touched the jack to the car but did not lift the car, no penalty.  Also, there is/was a 25 minute time limit to hand out penalties, the 10 second penalty was handed out 34 minutes later.

As far as the original start box infraction, can the driver see the front tires?  On my Fmod the cockpit sides are cut down so I can see the front tires and cones.

The lack of clarification is why they are certainly going to update the wording before the next race.  

In reply to triumph7 :

The rule is quoted in the link in my previous post. The wording doesn't mention touching the car.

MiniDave said:

The results were mostly as expected (except for the penalty) but I'm curious about one thing.....Max seemed to be able to easily pass thru the field on his way to Checo's back end, but then Sergio seemed to be able to keep him 5 sec back at will. How could he gain so much thruout the race then not be able to close the gap, then set fastest lap when he wanted to?

 

My WAG is the team told Max to hold position and not press Perez unless another car caught up to him.  Could Max have caught Perez and passed him? Possibly. Would it have looked like team orders to hand Max the win? Almost certainly. They let Perez have his day. Max will have plenty of opportunities.

So the Race is explaining why the rule was overturned.  Since cars use the front jack to guide the car into the slot, the rule allows the front jack to touch the car.  But the rule apparently isn't clear enough to distinguish between the two- so Aston said that if the front is ok to touch, so is the rear.

Very much I think there will be a clarification.

In reply to triumph7 :

My F500 has the full sides and the sports car nose; you can still see.

I've actually sat in an F1 car and while the visibility is not great one could simply line up to the box 20ft before you got there. Someone of Alonso's caliber could easily do this.  I'm sure he probably didn't think it was that big of a deal.

I'm also not sure why they gave a penalty in the first place; what sort of advantage to he get? (yes, I get rules are rules)

Regardless I'm glad he kept his 3rd place.

I'm glad Aston was able to get the penalty overturned after showing prior offenses that had been allowed. If only the FIA had had the nerve to do the same after the on-the-fly change of safety car regulations in 2020.

From Checo's comments, I think RB was very much managing the pace. They didn't want their drivers pushing too hard on a track with very little runoff, it's why they didn't tell Max what the fastest lap time was. Although I would like to see some tightening of the rules that allow the drivers to shortcut turn 23 (?) four or five times without penalty. Give them one, sure. But the RB boys were simply using it as a bypass on a few laps.

To fix the problem with "when can we touch the car", move the penalty to after the pit stop. Car comes in, everyone works on it, the penalty starts when it hits the ground. Or have a penalty box at the end of pit lane - drive in and wait until the light turns green. The tracks were mostly built when we had more teams, so there should be a couple of empty garage spaces available for the FIA.

The comments about the DRS being stronger on the RB than other cars was really interesting. That's a heck of a useful thing to optimize, and having it on the fastest car is bad news for the rest of the field. Although since they're allowed to use DRS in quali, maybe that's part of the RB being so fast.

Keith Tanner said:

To fix the problem with "when can we touch the car", move the penalty to after the pit stop. Car comes in, everyone works on it, the penalty starts when it hits the ground. Or have a penalty box at the end of pit lane - drive in and wait until the light turns green. The tracks were mostly built when we had more teams, so there should be a couple of empty garage spaces available for the FIA.

I think I like that one better.  Makes a 5 second penalty even longer.  The issue is how to manage the release from the penalty box.  Or make a minimum pit stop time (when serving a penalty) as 8-9 seconds or something.  Everyone is doing 2.5-3.5 second stops, so the car just gets held over its normal stop time.  

Go to soccer type penalties,yellow card for an infraction....get 2 and the 3rd is red and park the car.

 Won't take long before they magically stay on the track etc etc.

 This guys are supposed to be the best,and they can be when they HAVE to be ;)

They pretty much always know exactly what they're doing, and they're shaving every bit of time they can everywhere.

The penalty box thing is used at the Thunderhill 25, IIRC. It just needs to be a light, that's how the cars are released now. Car comes into the box and when it comes to a full stop, the timer starts. At 5s, the light turns green and the car goes. They can tell if the driver jumps the light. All you'd need would be a human override to avoid an unsafe release - or even a set of sensors that wouldn't turn the light green if there was a car less than x meters away and moving down pit lane. They've got these things instrumented out the wazoo already, this is just using existing data.

Keith Tanner said:

The comments about the DRS being stronger on the RB than other cars was really interesting. That's a heck of a useful thing to optimize, and having it on the fastest car is bad news for the rest of the field. Although since they're allowed to use DRS in quali, maybe that's part of the RB being so fast.

It is- one thing that you can see is that when the RB is open, there's not some odd flaps sticking out at the ends like most other cars do.  Seems kind of an obvious source of drag there.

But I'm betting that they also figured out how to stall out some of the downforce, too- like Mercedes did.