Formula One - 2017

steronz said:

Keith Tanner said:

Make a real penalty for going outside track limits and it will no longer be a problem. For example, Laguna Seca has really rough kerbing with "wheel breaker" chunks of concrete inside. Outside, you're into the dirt if you go past the kerbs. So going off track isn't really an option other than potential shenanigans with the pit exit, and that would be a relatively easy thing to solve if it was desired.

The problem for the tracks is that any sort of penalty is going to reduce grip and potentially lead to an incident.  We've seen accidents where they've added strips of artificial turf to prevent running wide on corner exit.

How is that a problem?  Drivers know that they can't risk an accident.  If Max knew the grip was non existant, no way would have he tried that.

In reply to alfadriver :

Well, aside from the fact that adding anything to the track that might intentionally make it less safe would open the track up to a lawsuit, I think we forget that not every case of exceeding track limits can be marked down to a driver taking risks.  Drivers get pushed off the track by other drivers, they have mechanical issues, gusts of wind or unexpected bumps can reduce the aero load... we've seen this in places where tracks have added hard curbing on chicanes, it's all well and good until your favorite driver gets pushed onto the curbing by some jackhole and loses control and hits a wall and gets injured.   This applies to foam bullards and rubber hoses as well, anything that can take off a front wing is going to unsettle the car and potentially cause an accident.  

In reply to steronz :

Again, there are plenty of tracks througout the world where the inside of all of the axex's are grass.  

I honestly don't see how that can possibly increase liability.  At all.  And one never gets pushed to the inside of an apex- 99% of pushing is from someone taking the inside line and pushing the other driver out.  

And I'm tired of watching cars go all 4 off, because they can, on the outside of the track- that, for sure, should slow a driver down to have all 4 off.

Again, the particular corner we are talking about- Max cut the corner.  Replace the concrete inside the curbing with grass, which makes the corner just like most other inside of a corner in the world, and that would have not happened.  This isn't about the rumble strips on a chicane- we are talking inside of that, even.  

If my driver does that and gets hurt, they did it by their choice.  That's the only way you go that much inside of a corner.  Max wasn't forced there, he drove there.

Grass or sand. Again with Laguna Seca - if you track out too far in T6, you end up in a gravel trap. It won't cause you to ricochet across the track, it just keeps you. Same with T9. So people don't go there. I was about to use T10 as an example, then I remembered what happened at the MX-5 race there last weekend Those guys were a little too happy to go beyond track limits, and it cost one driver second place but luckily didn't collect anyone else.

Got a chance to watch the first half of the race last night. So far, it's been a riot.

Clearly they made the right call, I don't think his aggressive style would stop him from running on grass. I think the end result would be him crashing into Kimi and ruining both their races. I think that is the one edge that Ric has over Max, he is still young, he might benefit from running a endurance race or two.

In reply to alfadriver :

I read something during the halo discussion that said, essentially, once the FIA had internal documentation that said the halo would prevent certain injuries (which it did) and had no drawbacks (other than aesthetics), the die was cast -- they couldn't not implement the halo at that point, because if anything happened and this documentation surfaced they'd have no defense against a lawsuit.

Likewise, taking a perfectly safe corner and adding a traction reducer is different from taking an unsafe corner and doing nothing. 

Let's look at the problem we're trying to solve here -- bad calls from the stewards.  The proposed fix is to implement an indiscriminant deterrent, one that doesn't care why the driver exceeded track limits, yet will punish the driver, possibly with injury, regardless.  Why?  Why not just implore the stewards to make better, more transparent, more consistent calls?

In reply to steronz :

Because it's also easy to discourage drivers from going *that* far off the track.  That wasn't a bad call- there were others that were not made that were the bad ones.  But there should not be a way to pass that inside of a corner.   There's nothing unsafe about taking out grip that far from the defined track.

Because relying on the stewards doesn't fix the underlying problem - it's treating the symptoms, not the disease.  Any time you rely on stewards to make the "right" call, you will have the problem we had this weekend where not everyone agrees what the "right" call is.

There are tracks on the calendar that don't need to rely on stewards to deal with track limits. I'll let the F1 otaku tell me exactly what corner on each track they are, but Canada is one that comes to mind.

Some guy named "Horner" has the same opinion I do, apparently. "...if you don't want the cars to go there, put in a gravel trap, or bigger kerbs or a deterrent for the drivers not to go there."

Max is currently acting like a teenager who isn't getting his way, but the press is loving it.

As for starting from the back - there are really only six top-level cars in the race. Starting from the back isn't that much of a penalty, as those six cars can carve through the field. It's happened several times this year - Max in Austin, Vettel in Malaysia, Bottas in Bakku. Once you're into the top six, things get a lot more difficult. With Ricciardo out, Max was basically guaranteed at least fifth.

In reply to alfadriver :

I agree, grass in that part of the track wouldn't represent the sort of safety concern that grass on the exit of the final corner would, but... again, we have a perfectly good method for deterring the move that Max made, and it was employed effectively in this case.  I think people are complaining that, for instance, lots of cars were putting 4 off on the exit of the last corner, and the (unofficial) word of the stewards is that was perfectly fine because it's not "gaining an advantage" by their confusing definition.  I don't think the fix has to be putting grass or gravel on the exit of the last corner, I think the stewards should just either clarify their decisions, corner by corner if they need to, or, ideally, change their internal criteria to make sense.  If drivers start getting slapped with 5s penalties for exceeding track limits everywhere they actually do, unless it was a mechanical issue or they got pushed wide, then they'd also stop taking the risks.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Relying on the stewards to make the right call is a flaw in the plan, no doubt -- there will always be controversy.  And in the absense of any safety concerns I would agree with the grass/gravel solution.  But I don't think we can go back now, we've seen how safe paved runoff is, especially for bikes, and it's not going away.

"We're stuck with it" seems like a bad solution for a track that's only a few years old.

Maybe do what they do at Goodwood, build walls out of styrofoam. No question when you've exceeded those limits!

You also don't want to mess with a track that runs MotoGP and other major races and club events just because Max cant keep it between the lines. 

Gravel sucks when you are sliding next to a motorcycle at 100 mph. 

Again, there's gravel at Laguna Seca - and that's a track that got a big safety upgrade specifically for MotoGP.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I don't follow MotoGP, but google suggests that the last time MotoGP race there was 2013 (maybe 2014?), and they took it off the calendar partly because of FIM standards.  The big safety upgrade was back in 2005.

There's talk of a repave, and I'd bet that the gravel is gone if/when it happens.

Hitting gravel is better then hitting walls. Laguna Seca and lots of other tracks need gravel because they don't have the runoff that COTA has. 

alfadriver said:

codrus said:

As for making serious consequences for going out of bounds, they certainly used to have those kinds of things on many tracks.  The problem is that it results in driver errors taking cars out of the race (in some cases into walls), which is both unnecessarily dangerous and unfair to the fans who came there to see that driver.  

On the part of the track that he executed the pass- all they really need to do is have some nice soft grass inside the ruble strips.   No way anyone would try passing with all 4 in the grass like that.  Or like other track, higher rumble strips inside what would be a nominal car width.

Certainly don't need a wall to prevent someone cutting the corner that much.  

The hard part for Verstappen- other cars gained advantage on him after driving 4 wheels off during the race.  Botas did it a few times.  So those should be enforced, too.  I really don't see a difference between running wide or short cutting a corner- if you gain advantage, you gain.

Tell that to Alex Zanardi...

Were there other incidents that should have been penalized?  I don't remember any specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised to see evidence that there were.  Of course, "but he did it too!" isn't a valid defense against receiving a penalty for one's actions, not for a 6-year-old and definitely not for a holder of an F1 superlicense.

The current system of stewards handing out penalties is somewhat cumbersome.  It's really only useful for small numbers of isolated events, and so those tend to be the most egregious ones.  We have the tech to do electronic enforcement as I mentioned above, IMHO that would be a much better solution.

In reply to codrus :

Botas went all 4 off, and used that to battle off some pretty clear passes.  He did that a couple of times.  While that happens a lot during the start, he was doing it at other times.  IMHO, that's what Max's beef with the consistency is.  He was clearly in the wrong, but others should have been penalized, too.

Gravel has "gone out of style" in F1.  At one point it was preferred, because of the thought that it would tend to stop cars in a shorter distance than the other options.  Unfortunately that has turned out not to be the case, there are lots of examples of F1 cars bouncing across the gravel and hitting walls in places where they would have stopped if it had been paved.  These days gravel is considered to be inferior to paved runoff from a safety perspective, and also has the added benefit of keeping cars running on track rather than causing a 3-4 lap safety car period while they roll a truck to pull someone out of the gravel.  Grass is significantly worse, especially in the rain.

From a legal liability perspective, there's a difference between an existing corner that simply is what it is, vs making a change that reduces the safety margins on a track.

Laguna Seca doesn't meet F1 safety standards, and probably never will.

In regards to “all 4 off”. Remember, they can’t advance a position that way, but apperently have no problem with “closing the gap” that way. For instance, magnusson was dead last, and every single lap, at T12 (where I was sitting), he went all four off. Every lap. Now granted, he was WAY in the back, and it’s not like it made a difference. He still finished last. But there were no penalties. His cart was easily 10 ft from the curbing. With My vantage point on T17, I couldn’t see the inside edge. Thus the reason I thought Max bent physics. 

Paint a double yellow line that you can't advance if you have wheels over it.

This is F1, install sensors in the pavement.  Hell we get in pavement cameras that they use for TV in a few places.  Whats a few light sensing cameras that tell a location and trigger a review with data?

Bet they can make good ones that are removable with battery and Wifi.

In reply to Apexcarver :

F1 fans everywhere would call conspiracy the first time a “sensor” triggered wrong. Or even if it triggered correctly, but the fans perceived it wrong. 

Or they'd bitch that the sensors neutered aggressive driving and moan that F1 is boring. 

We're such a fickle bunch.

Rumble strips like they use on center lines on highways.   Not enough to upset the car.  Just gives you a buzz to let you know you are where you are not supposed to be.

Oh, they know. That's not the problem.