Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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krisfx
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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Why not just start to reduce power to a car when it's over 2m off the track?
RE: People being pushed off, it's simple. If a driver doesn't want a penalty for being pushed off, they need to back out of it, which is what they would have to do with a wall.

TwanV
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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bill shoe wrote:
Stradivarius wrote:The disadvantage with having a wall, even a safe wall, is that it eliminates the possibility of letting an innocent driver go clear, for example if he is forced off the track.
I think the current culture where pushing other cars off the track as a normal & accepted racing move is actually enabled by the ease of leaving and rejoining the track. If a driver was pushed into a wall every time a following driver dived across the apex with brakes locked, then F1 would no longer be able to tolerate those moves. The acceptance of it would have to change or F1 would become a silly farce.

Someone earlier in the thread posted a picture of Canada's wall of champions. Have you ever seen an F1 car crudely push another car into that wall? No! The push-off culture seems to be purely an artifact of Tilke-drome runoff areas.
Interesting discussion this thread, but who said anything about push-off culture? This is about taking short-cuts and gaining an advantage. Let's keep the "I don't like what that other driver did to my favourite so the culture is wrong"-thoughts out of the equation here, more or less all the drivers use all their means at their disposal to gain an advantage, whether you are HAM, ALO, VET or VES. It's not that drivers deliberately push others off track for the sake of it.

My personal 2-cents: VSC style slowdown similar to e.g. iRacing** for cutting corners. The basic system is already in place. Of course, designated slow-down areas should be provided for to allow for safe implementation.
Edit #2: We're looking at situations where a stop/go penalty is too much, while a post-race 5 sec penalty leaves room for manipulation of the result and I think a more direct intervention would improve the situation)

I think that turning back the clock towards gravel-traps and grass (and even worse, walls, let's not even go there) is a very bad idea safety-wise and from a spectator PoV. The good thing at the moment is that all cars more or less finish a race which adds to the excitement, and nobody gets hurt like Schumacher at Silverstone in 1999. (edit: sorry for the previous reference, bit harsh. Gravel traps are very dangerous when all you can do is brake, since you can't)

** for those non-simracers: iRacing forces you to lose a certain amount of time by coasting within a certain amount of track when you cut a corner. The "certain amount of time" is quite harsh to such an extent that you never can gain an advantage by taking a curve too wide or too narrow.
Last edited by TwanV on 02 Nov 2016, 16:55, edited 4 times in total.

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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SectorOne wrote:
PlatinumZealot wrote:Hamilton slowed and allowed the pack to catch up with like three corners.
Well it´s quite interesting when we think about this.
Right now the question is "did he gain an advantage" rather then "did he just erase a disadvantage"

Sure he arguably did not gain an advantage but he sure as hell secured first place by strolling over the grass rather then having a DNF from a wall or in some crazy way managed to stop the car before the obstacle and subsequently lost out to Rosberg and even one or two Red Bulls who managed to take the corner properly.
Kimi did it at Spa 2009 and secured his win against a charging Fisichella.
Rosberg did it in Canada 2014, when directly under attack.
No one batted an eyelid.
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Just_a_fan
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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The way to "punish the naughty" but protect the unfortunate, is to have the punishment at the point of rejoining the track.

To take Mexico as an example, have a band of gravel (for example) along the side of the track where Hamilton rejoined. A driver doing the same move would then be forced to drive through gravel. This would slow them and dirty their tyres. The big run off is still there for safety at T1 so the unfortunate are ok.

Of course, one problem with gravel is that it gets dragged on to the track which affects everyone until it clears.
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hollus
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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Change that gravel at the point of rejoining for colored paint. If your tires collect color, 5 second penalty, no matter why you got there.
I like it!
You get your scape road, but you do not get your mega-fast route back to the track, you have to go around the paint.
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bhall II
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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You don't even need paint. The cars are accurately tracked with GPS all the time. I see no reason why that can't be used by race officials to enforce track limits.

Again, the key factor is consistency. While it would be foolish and unfair to disallow exceptions for force majeure, the scope for such consideration should be so limited that everyone who triggers the system is effectively considered guilty until proven innocent. The system should be fail-deadly, so to speak.

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henry
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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An issue with physical deterrents like walls or gravel is that there is a lot of potential for collateral damage.

In qualifying somebody else's mistake might cost another competitor's chance of a high starting position.

In the race a well earned lead can be erased because somebody else overshot the hairpin and got beached.

This is excacerbated by the current, fully warranted, attitude to safety that requires VSC or Safety Car whenever a air needs to be retrieved.

In the last 2 races jenson button has lost 10-15 seconds because he pitted just before a VSC. With more gravel and walls this would be a frequent occurrence and would turn people's results into a lottery potentially out of their control.
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nevill3
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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bhall II wrote:You don't even need paint. The cars are accurately tracked with GPS all the time. I see no reason why that can't be used by race officials to enforce track limits.

Again, the key factor is consistency. While it would be foolish and unfair to disallow exceptions for force majeure, the scope for such consideration should be so limited that everyone who triggers the system is effectively considered guilty until proven innocent. The system should be fail-deadly, so to speak.
They have that system now, when a driver leaves the track the stewards will have a look at it every time. Repeat offenses incur a warning and then a penalty.

Several tracks have a bollard placed at the edge of the run off area and a directive is issued prior to the race weekend instructing the drivers that a penalty will be applied for anyone not rejoining the track without going around it. This could be tweaked to include rejoin the track before a bollard if you go off at certain points. This could be applied to turn one at Mexico, the driver would have to stop and Spin the car around to re-enter the track just like they do in Monaco and Baku when they overshoot into one of the cul-de-sacs .
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bhall II
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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In that case, I guess I'm just looking for a more rigorous application of the system that's already in place. Something needs to happen to make cutting corners a conscious decision instead of the unconscious reflex it's become.

On a more outlandish note, I wonder if it would be possible to devise a system that adds 1-2psi to the tires for a given duration every time a driver goes off. The subsequent reduction of cornering ability would seem to have the potential to quickly nullify any previous advantage.

Edax
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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krisfx wrote:Why not just start to reduce power to a car when it's over 2m off the track?
RE: People being pushed off, it's simple. If a driver doesn't want a penalty for being pushed off, they need to back out of it, which is what they would have to do with a wall.
Just realised that should be pretty easy to do. With the current hybrid systems it should be easy to link a track excursion detection with a temporary disabling or reduction of the ERS system.

Cut the corner and lose 50 or 100hp for the next half lap. That should lead to a pretty natural way of correcting an excursion. In case of max there would be no way that he would prevent Vettel from launching an attack on the next straight, still Vettel would have had to make a real pass in order to get the position.

Could lead to exciting racing, one guy sitting in front hanging on waiting for the power to come back on, the other behind presented with a now or never kind of opportunity.

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hollus
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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So now we have McNish saying that as an experienced Steward, the events of lap 1 make perfect sense and deserve no penalty. He confesses that, yes, they are told to judge lap 1 almost as a free for all, and then he then manages to say that Hamilton "won no advantage" while Verstappen "would have lost two places" by trying to make the corner.
Yes, we need some sort of wall (but not a wall!) that makes using too much track a binary event. Either you did it or you did not. It must punish drivers that do it every time they do it, no matter the circumstances, yet be safe.

And then Just a Fan nailed it:
Just_a_fan wrote:The way to "punish the naughty" but protect the unfortunate, is to have the punishment at the point of rejoining the track.
So developing that idea a bit further, in that corner it could look like this (imagine tarmac or grass everywhere):
Image
The pink area would simply be a layer of very coarse sand, 1mm thick or less, about 20cm wide, with a shiny color applied. It could be contained by a minimal structure, about 2mm tall or so, made of collapsable rubber, just to keep it in place in case of wind or rain.
If a car runs over it, it sticks to the tires in a narrow band, very easy to see but otherwise harmless. Also, the car would leave a mark in the sand.
Essentially I am proposing detecting the infraction with this spirit:
Image
by using this technology:
Image

If you touch the pink sand for whatever reason, your fault or not, you get a 5 second penalty. Corner exit is clean and full of tarmac, so it is safe to take evasive action and it provides space to brake down. Then, if you want to rejoin the track, you are expected to go left or right of the sand trap. There is really no reason a car should be there, ever. If you go around it, you only lose 1-2-3 seconds, it is safe and life and the race continue, but you cannot possibly have gained an advantage.
If you do run over the sand, there might be two reasons: the most likely, you are trying to rejoin as fast as possible. But no, sorry, you did leave the track limits and by doing that you forfeited your right to take a sensible line. Slow down and go around instead (or have your 5 seconds).
In the rare cases where the car really cannot avoid running over the sand, well, your tires turned pink (easy to see!), here is your 5 second penalty.
The main thing its that it is perfectly safe to do so. You carry a bit of sand to the track, it will largely disappear under the texture of the asphalt and it will be removed slowly by passing cars. It will reduce your grip a little bit for a very short period of time. Plus it happens all the time already. It poses no obstacle for the car and it only hinders braking/turning for 20 cm, that after you had a lot of tarmac to do most of it beforehand.
The sand will withstand wind, it will stick even in the rain, it is easy to apply, easy to remove, easy to modify, cheap and can be used at any racing level.
And, from the point of view of gaining an advantage, it is binary, it is obvious and it is non negotiable, just as the walls. Just put it at the track re-entry points instead of at corner exit, where grip = safety.

In this case, it would look like this: Both Hamilton and Rosberg would have picked up a 5 second penalty (and otherwise kept position!):
Image
And both had obvious alternatives that involved losing a bit of time.

Also, note the extra "virtual chicane" before turn 3, very similar to the bollards used for example at Monza, but even safer.

Edit: The term sand trap is perhaps not very fortunate. F1 cars can drive over those things without even blinking. The purpose is not to slow the cars or to trap the cars, just to mark the cars. Sand tags?
Last edited by hollus on 08 Nov 2016, 09:34, edited 1 time in total.
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mrluke
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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I still think that ROS is the more serious offence because he was perfectly able to rejoin the track before T2 but instead decided to miss out T2 purely to maintain his position in front of VES. He corrected his car and was parralel to the track and only just over the white line, but would have lost position to rejoin so instead he decided to cut the corner.

Ham on the other hand just over cooked it and was sliding across the grass, by the time he had collected it there was no other sensible way for him to rejoin the track without turning around and driving towards the chasing pack.

Looking at the above sand trap proposal, if the decision on whether a driver is penalised or not is down to whether they have sand on their tyres then whats to stop a driver making the whole thing into 1 big corner with the entry at T1 and the exit onto t3, just use all the tarmac run off and go flat out. No sand no penalty right?

With all that said we are making this horrendously over complicated.

If you really want to enforce track limits put a wall there.

However this is once again a knee jerk reaction to treat the symptom rather than the underlying condition.

The reason the incidents have been so controversial at Mexico is because of how much the cars struggled to overtake one another, therefore to have any chance of getting past you had to do a crazy lunge. IF the cars could actually overtake one another we wouldn't see so much whinging about gaining a couple of car lengths here and there and we would eliminate the crazy dive bombing. Win win.

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hollus
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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That virtual t1-t3 corner would not work because there was grass there. To turn in the grass you need to slow down. If there was tarmac there, you'd just extend the sand trap a bit further until slowing down becomes necessary again.
The idea is to use the sand traps as walls, only that they impose a sporting penalty instead of a material and health penalty.
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strad
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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y'all make it way too complex. imo
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hollus
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Re: Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

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I think most people in this thread agree to the conceptual elegance of a wall, me included. But let's admit it, we are not getting any new walls where currently there is none. Not in the 21st century. 20th century racing was great... but it won't happen in the 21st, and I, personally, intend to live in the 21st century from now on. So, other than real walls, what's the next best?
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