Whinging about tech regs

[Murph7355]

I rarely bother even reading articles about F1 any more, my love of the sport starting in the early 80s and waning rapidly 15yrs or so ago.

And whinging like this -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/68491352

is a good part of the reason.

The reg's don't need changing on this. The designers just need to design something "sustainable". What MV and GR are saying is, they don't want to give up an advantage so therefore everyone must be forced to by yet another pointless regulation that boxes the designers in.

It reminds me of when cars being too quick for circuits is whinged about. Flex your right foot FFS.

Less regs not more. Maybe then things would get interesting again.

(Off to read Caravanners' Weekly again now).

[Zarco]

With all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

[Dingu]

The designers job is to design something fast. If there is a health risk long term then regs is the right way to go about it. You chose a really crap example to use as regs being a bad idea.

[Murph7355]

Dingu said:

The designers job is to design something fast. If there is a health risk long term then regs is the right way to go about it. You chose a really crap example to use as regs being a bad idea.

Agreed on the first point - to a degree. To be fast the car must also be driveable. If a team design a car that isn't, surely that's then a back to the drawing board job to design one that is. Even if it means it's ultimately slower round the tracks on which they have to drive?

Where does it end on the latter?

Regs aren't generically a "bad idea". But if they restrict things too heavily, slow things down too much, doesn't what makes the sport the alleged pinnacle of motorsports erode?

Zarco said:

With all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Quite possibly. You've done a lot to convince me you do...

[GlobalRacer]

Extrapolate what would happen if regs were relaxed to the point of just being boxes in a formula where spending is restricted.

[budgie smuggler]

Dingu said:

The designers job is to design something fast. If there is a health risk long term then regs is the right way to go about it. You chose a really crap example to use as regs being a bad idea.

Exactly, I see raising the car as being no different to mandating SIPS, the halo etc. The car would be lighter and faster without it, so the designers would leave it out if they could. It's the job of the regs to ensure the cars are safe for the drivers.

[kambites]

I hope we're past the point where a driver has to seriously damage his back before they do anything about it.

The formula has always been a tradeoff between speed and safety as engineers find new and interesting ways to make cars go faster within ever tighter technical rules and that's not going to change any time soon.

[Sandpit Steve]

There were already changes in 2022 and 2023 regarding ride height, intended to stop cars porpoising, as it became seen as a safety issue.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.from-cu...

The current cars make extensive use of ground effect, so the closer they are to the deck the more downforce they’ll produce, even if that means it’s an uncomfortable ride for the man with his arse an inch off the floor.

Sometimes it’s just drivers moaning, but do we really want to get to the point where someone ends up seriously injured? I suggest not. You can bet that the drivers will put up with discomfort over speed though, because no team or driver is going to raise their ride height unilaterally.

[520TORQUES]

What James Allison is saying is more interesting and relevant than what the drivers say.

He is basically saying the new car regs introduced by Ross Brawn are a pile of st and chased the wrong problem, which was and is tyres.

The evidence backs him up.

[richhead]

this is the big problem with ground effect cars, they need to be run as close to the ground as poss, some of the older cars used skirts to avoid this, but moving areo parts arent legal now.
The effect of running so low means that they are in effect touching the floor at speed seen by the sparks, and you can hear it on the onboard footage. And to avoid plank wear the teams use super hard skid blocks in the planks.
Maybe the answer would be to get rid of the skid blocks, as plank wear can only be so much.

[kambites]

520TORQUES said:

What James Allison is saying is more interesting and relevant than what the drivers say.

He is basically saying the new car regs introduced by Ross Brawn are a pile of st and chased the wrong problem, which was and is tyres.

The evidence backs him up.

I think they are related problems. The fact that no-one could overtake because of the sensitivity of cars to turbulence was a large part of the reason that the FIA pushed Pirelli to produce fragile tyres in order to produce a bigger performance offset between cars throughout the race. Of course the fragile tyres simply ended up making it even harder to follow the car in front unless you had a huge tyre delta, which is arguably why the cars still can't follow closely now even with the turbulence greatly reduced.

I think they now need to simultaneously further reduce the wake turbulence AND introduce tougher tyres; specifically tyres which are less sensitive to the surface overheating when they slide over the track. I think they'd need to give Pirelli a fair bit of time and testing to prepare such a dramatic change in approach to the tyres though.

Edited by kambites on Thursday 7th March 11:31

[kambites]

richhead said:

Maybe the answer would be to get rid of the skid blocks, as plank wear can only be so much.

Whether the titanium skid blocks are necessary or not (I think they're mostly there to make pretty sparks), they could certainly tweak the plank wear rules to allow less grounding.

[budgie smuggler]

520TORQUES said:

What James Allison is saying is more interesting and relevant than what the drivers say.

He is basically saying the new car regs introduced by Ross Brawn are a pile of st and chased the wrong problem, which was and is tyres.

The evidence backs him up.

You haven't linked to James' comments, so I can't say anything about that.

But your point that "the evidence backs him up"... what evidence?

I watched pretty solidly since the late 80s and I can't remember any time when cars could follow closer than now.

eta: i'm not opposed to changing the tyres

Edited by budgie smuggler on Thursday 7th March 11:44

[richhead]

kambites said:

richhead said:

Maybe the answer would be to get rid of the skid blocks, as plank wear can only be so much.

Whether the titanium skid blocks are necessary or not (I think they're mostly there to make pretty sparks), they could certainly tweak the plank wear rules to allow less grounding.

they are definatly not just there for the sparks, but to prevent plank wear, in hypercar we have skid blocks but they have to be steel, so they do wear, so if we run to low for to long it will wear the plank beyond the legal limit.
Therefore we run the cars higher than we would maybe like. Many instance of cars beeing excludid post race for plank wear.

[kambites]

richhead said:

Therefore we run the cars higher than we would maybe like. Many instance of cars beeing excludid post race for plank wear.

This occasionally happens in F1 as well though. If they wanted to I'm sure they could ditch the skid blocks (or make them out of a softer material, or make them smaller, or whatever) and tweak the plank wear rules to produce roughly the same ride heights as now; or keep the skid blocks and tweak the wear rules to force the teams to run higher.

Edited by kambites on Thursday 7th March 11:47

[richhead]

kambites said:

richhead said:

Therefore we run the cars higher than we would maybe like. Many instance of cars beeing excludid post race for plank wear.

This occasionally happens in F1 as well though. If they wanted to I'm sure they could ditch the skid blocks (or make them out of a softer material, or make them smaller, or whatever) and tweak the plank wear rules to produce roughly the same ride heights as now; or keep the skid blocks and tweak the wear rules to force the teams to run higher.

Edited by kambites on Thursday 7th March 11:47

thats kind of the point i was making, problem is that the regs have gone abit too far towards ground effect, so rising the cars makes a huge differance, as they have alot less upper body downforce than before, In sports cars its less of a problem as whe have a bigger surface area of bodywork to use.

[520TORQUES]

budgie smuggler said:

You haven't linked to James' comments, so I can't say anything about that.

But your point that "the evidence backs him up"... what evidence?

I watched pretty solidly since the late 80s and I can't remember any time when cars could follow closer than now.

eta: i'm not opposed to changing the tyres

Edited by budgie smuggler on Thursday 7th March 11:44

His comments are in the first post of this thread link posted.

They may be closer on average but they are not racing or making overtakes except with DRS. We have the same DRS trains we have seen for years.

It's all about tyre delta and which car has less tyre deg. It's certainly far less racing than towards the end of the last formula, and I'm not referring just to the Red Bull dominance, they can't even race in the rain now.

[budgie smuggler]

520TORQUES said:

His comments are in the first post of this thread link posted.

520TORQUES said:

They may be closer on average but they are not racing or making overtakes except with DRS. We have the same DRS trains we have seen for years.

It's all about tyre delta and which car has less tyre deg. It's certainly far less racing than towards the end of the last formula, and I'm not referring just to the Red Bull dominance, they can't even race in the rain now.

So is your suggestion to change the tyres to have less thermal deg when following?



It would be interesting to see what would happen if you had cars with higher power engines, but (say) 50% reduction in downforce such that the overall lap time was similar.

Less downforce = longer braking zones and more overtaking opportunities, maybe?

[T_16]

F1 is GROSSLY over regulated.

Its now to the point where any real innovation is just stifled to the point of non existence.
There is so little to choose now between any of the cars, they just look like different coloured clones.

[520TORQUES]

budgie smuggler said:

So is your suggestion to change the tyres to have less thermal deg when following?



It would be interesting to see what would happen if you had cars with higher power engines, but (say) 50% reduction in downforce such that the overall lap time was similar.

Less downforce = longer braking zones and more overtaking opportunities, maybe?

Tyre issues wont be fixed until Pirelli leave and we have Michelin or Bridgestone back, ideally both of them in a tyre war.