Why are there no topics or sections about the drivers?

[johnny comelately]

Yup, we have caption competion threads and all other funny threads which I'm 100% in agreement, yet driver thread are too much for this site. I understand that they would be very very toxic and uncontrollable but I also think this site takes itself WAAAAAY too seriously. Just look at how the mods generally love to overpolice stuff. While saying this I understand that it is a very hard job to do and keep balance between censorship and utter chaos.

Well, we don't "like" to overpolice, it's extra work. In fact, the dream of each moderator is to have nothing to do, and instead have time to post along in the thread. If you have specific examples of overly strict moderation, I'd be happy to discuss that, and encourage you to bring that to the moderators' or my attention.

Also, amidst facebook's poking and liking, twitter idiots and snapchat, it can't hurt to try to keep it somewhat sane around here. I might be getting old, but I keep being amazed what people continue to put online these days. I'm happy it's better around here.

Finally, as mentioned before, driver threads are not banned. It's allowed, and when one is started with reasonable intentions (not including "lewis hamilton is a boss", or "rosberg is a crybaby", because we've been through that before), it is usually left open, but more often that not, people cannot avoid feeling personally touched when their favourite driver is involved, and that's when things get messy. If everybody would be reasonable enough, there would be no problem, with any topic at all.

For those who want driver threads... tell me, what would be a useful topic in your opinion?

And this about Danny Riccy and fast twitch muscles - https://www.redbull.com/sg-en/daniel-ri ... t-training

[3jawchuck]

And I would like the phone number of the lady who makes the McLaren bloke's shirts just that little bit too small

Ahh, you like a man with semi-pecs?

[johnny comelately]

Or This:
to quote "There are numerous research papers to verify the effectiveness of psychological interventions in sports.1 Goal setting, visualisation and imagery, anxiety control, effective communication and team building are some of the areas that can assist performance in motor sports"
which may be of interest to the dark tetrads

Just on the physical training, I can remember when Randy Mamola took up a certain type of training and went slower... the reason was the increased muscle bulk reduced the ability to react, so he changed to lighter weights and more repetition.

Then there was the time when Nige Mansell couldnt hold the head from laterals and had to do big neck muscle training.

OR Contract talk, here from Kimi a few years ago:
""I wasn't happy being second, I wanted to win and that's as simple as that. I don't know how many times I've been second, maybe 30-odd times and if I'd won those 30-odd races I would have been happier. Our main goal is to win, I was very happy the team got a one-two. The contract has not changed."

When asked about whether he had a clear idea on his future later in the media session, Raikkonen replied: "I have, but it's nothing I need to share with any of you. It's none of your business and you keep writing anyhow, it doesn't change."

OR guess who
""That hunger that I had when I was eight years old; when the teachers said that I was never going to amount to nothing; when the other racing drivers' dads said I was never going to amount to nothing; when the kids shouted abuse at the race track to me and my family. That still powers me on through the races."

AND, the effect on different drivers by high income on motivation (grammar check)

OR this small insight into contract terms:
https://www.theversed.com/16972/red-bul ... 917x0747B8

[johnny comelately]

Yup, we have caption competion threads and all other funny threads which I'm 100% in agreement, yet driver thread are too much for this site. I understand that they would be very very toxic and uncontrollable but I also think this site takes itself WAAAAAY too seriously. Just look at how the mods generally love to overpolice stuff. While saying this I understand that it is a very hard job to do and keep balance between censorship and utter chaos.

Well, we don't "like" to overpolice, it's extra work. In fact, the dream of each moderator is to have nothing to do, and instead have time to post along in the thread. If you have specific examples of overly strict moderation, I'd be happy to discuss that, and encourage you to bring that to the moderators' or my attention.

Also, amidst facebook's poking and liking, twitter idiots and snapchat, it can't hurt to try to keep it somewhat sane around here. I might be getting old, but I keep being amazed what people continue to put online these days. I'm happy it's better around here.

Finally, as mentioned before, driver threads are not banned. It's allowed, and when one is started with reasonable intentions (not including "lewis hamilton is a boss", or "rosberg is a crybaby", because we've been through that before), it is usually left open, but more often that not, people cannot avoid feeling personally touched when their favourite driver is involved, and that's when things get messy. If everybody would be reasonable enough, there would be no problem, with any topic at all.

For those who want driver threads... tell me, what would be a useful topic in your opinion?

OR who of the "modern" drivers could design and race their own car like Black Jack or Mr Surtees?

[johnny comelately]

Yup, we have caption competion threads and all other funny threads which I'm 100% in agreement, yet driver thread are too much for this site. I understand that they would be very very toxic and uncontrollable but I also think this site takes itself WAAAAAY too seriously. Just look at how the mods generally love to overpolice stuff. While saying this I understand that it is a very hard job to do and keep balance between censorship and utter chaos.

Well, we don't "like" to overpolice, it's extra work. In fact, the dream of each moderator is to have nothing to do, and instead have time to post along in the thread. If you have specific examples of overly strict moderation, I'd be happy to discuss that, and encourage you to bring that to the moderators' or my attention.

Also, amidst facebook's poking and liking, twitter idiots and snapchat, it can't hurt to try to keep it somewhat sane around here. I might be getting old, but I keep being amazed what people continue to put online these days. I'm happy it's better around here.

Finally, as mentioned before, driver threads are not banned. It's allowed, and when one is started with reasonable intentions (not including "lewis hamilton is a boss", or "rosberg is a crybaby", because we've been through that before), it is usually left open, but more often that not, people cannot avoid feeling personally touched when their favourite driver is involved, and that's when things get messy. If everybody would be reasonable enough, there would be no problem, with any topic at all.

For those who want driver threads... tell me, what would be a useful topic in your opinion?

OR this drivers input to development:
Ever since Fernando Alonso famously claimed to bring 7/10ths of a second to a car in the development stage, there has been a desire to understand what the driver actually does to improve the car in its early days of testing.

[johnny comelately]

Yup, we have caption competion threads and all other funny threads which I'm 100% in agreement, yet driver thread are too much for this site. I understand that they would be very very toxic and uncontrollable but I also think this site takes itself WAAAAAY too seriously. Just look at how the mods generally love to overpolice stuff. While saying this I understand that it is a very hard job to do and keep balance between censorship and utter chaos.

Well, we don't "like" to overpolice, it's extra work. In fact, the dream of each moderator is to have nothing to do, and instead have time to post along in the thread. If you have specific examples of overly strict moderation, I'd be happy to discuss that, and encourage you to bring that to the moderators' or my attention.

Also, amidst facebook's poking and liking, twitter idiots and snapchat, it can't hurt to try to keep it somewhat sane around here. I might be getting old, but I keep being amazed what people continue to put online these days. I'm happy it's better around here.

Finally, as mentioned before, driver threads are not banned. It's allowed, and when one is started with reasonable intentions (not including "lewis hamilton is a boss", or "rosberg is a crybaby", because we've been through that before), it is usually left open, but more often that not, people cannot avoid feeling personally touched when their favourite driver is involved, and that's when things get messy. If everybody would be reasonable enough, there would be no problem, with any topic at all.

For those who want driver threads... tell me, what would be a useful topic in your opinion?

OR drivers styles excerpt:
You can win with a variety of styles. There is an ultimate way around a lap and what one tries to do is minimise the disadvantages of someone's style and maximise the advantages. Pastor Maldonado is a very high energy driver - or aggressive - but if that is slightly overdone it can lead to small errors or energy spikes in a lap that can cost time.

He is a very fast driver so you'll want to say, 'Very good, but if you reduce the energy level a fraction would we have a slightly more harmonious relationship with the surface? Would the car accelerate a little bit better onto the following straight as it has slightly less wheelspin?'

Someone who places an emphasis on high-speed corners may pick up some time in the wet. But when people say, 'I'm really good at fast corners' there is an awful lot less to do. You don't have to downshift, brake on a threshold or decrease the brake pressure as you transfer a little bit of weight, you're not wanting the best direction change to get traction out of the corner. When the car's balanced it's not that difficult to do.

Jim Clark was probably the most stylish of all in terms of going for an earlier rotation in what he used to call a false apex. If you drew the line it wouldn't look quite right. Jackie Stewart would say he would move the wheel once, but you could manipulate a direction change with the throttle in those cars.

These days you can't use the throttle for a subtle rotation as much because the car has too much grip, so it requires a bit more steering, a subtle release of the brakes, a bit more rotation than in Stewart's era.

[johnny comelately]

"Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen have slightly different styles. Sainz is right on the edge and corners go on a fraction longer for him. He relies a more on on-the-edge car control that occasionally catches him out.

Verstappen creates little flatspots on the car; you can see he really concentrates on the rates of decrease of brake pressure, and angling into the corner he's very, very clever. If Sainz was just a little squarer in his approach he wouldn't rely on car control as much and would probably go slightly quicker.

Verstappen seems able to rotate his car sooner, whereas Sainz's rotation is a little later in the corner and requires more control towards the exit. You can achieve pretty much the same laptime, except Sainz is probably having to correct things a little bit more.

Jenson Button has what is termed a classical style and concentrates very hard on the geometry of the corner. He has really nice rates of input but probably needs a well balanced car for that.
On nice geometric lines you have corners that go on a little bit longer, and if you have an issue with the car that problem will be apparent for a greater percentage of the lap, whereas if someone is manipulating a shorter corner it will be smaller. If you have a sore left foot and walk around an oblong, you wouldn't make it a circle you'd go to the end, a short right, a short right, a short right. It might not be geometrically as nice but it would protect your sore foot!

Button is locked into his pattern and has great success with it - he's proved to be very competitive with Fernando Alonso. We know ultimately people will kill to have Lewis Hamilton in the seat, and in the past Alonso, whereas Jenson's not quite as in demand because people know he may not deliver over a decade what the other two might. But he's comfortable in his skin and has found a way of being successful most of the time.

Nico Rosberg is more calculating, whereas Lewis's main gift is his relationship with the surface. When he's settled he's got a little more adhesion and he'll introduce the car to every dynamic in a slightly more natural way. He'll always do that, whereas Nico will remind himself to do it.

Kimi Raikkonen has a great feel between the throttle and the surface in that he can just find the right amount of throttle as the weight comes down on the driving wheels. It's magical, but camouflaged a bit in F1 now by turbo variations - he got caught out a little when the turbo came up a few times in the last couple of years. His style's also very good for making very short corners, and he's very good in terms of weight transfer. When he maximises all that he goes very well.

Sebastian Vettel has a slightly later turn - it's all about the exit now. You need very good grip for that rotation not to turn into oversteer, which is why he's sensitive to the rear stability of the car.

Hamilton or Raikkonen will introduce the car for longer going into the corner, but on that long right-hander near the end of Barcelona Vettel will always hang out a little bit and rotate later. Lewis or Kimi will roll it in on the inside and gradually build up a feel for the car in doing that.

[johnny comelately]

"One of the great questions in motorsport is 'what would happen if we swap all the drivers and teams around?'

People often used to ask what would result if we put Fernando Alonso back in his Minardi, and strangely we've seen something resembling that over the past year or two by giving him an underpowered Honda engine.

Had he been a newcomer and the only driver in that McLaren team, there would have always been a question mark over how good he was. It goes without saying that the car has a huge effect on a driver.

Stirling Moss once said that while Jack Brabham wouldn't have been as quick as him in Moss's Lotus 18 around Monaco, Moss probably wouldn't have been as quick as Brabham at his peak in the Cooper, because you could personalise your cars. The driver could make a bigger difference then - nowadays some people put it at as much as 85% car, 15% driver.

It takes a certain type of driver to be capable of personalising their car and the team around them.
Ronnie Peterson was, for a season or two, probably the fastest driver in the world, but as soon as Lotus lost the development brain of Emerson Fittipaldi, the team's fortunes began to slide. When it was Peterson's job to lead the team, he couldn't. And despite Felipe Massa's many years in racing, I wouldn't be certain he pointed Williams in the right direction either.

It's actually very difficult for an individual to make a difference, whether that be a driver, engineer or designer. After Alonso moved to Ferrari, he was joined by Pat Fry, who he'd won with at McLaren, and that didn't lead to success. You can be a driver with a great track record of winning races, or an engine builder that is renowned for having the unit that everybody wants, and still not win anything. There are many moving parts that decide why someone is going to succeed.

So, how easy is it for a driver to move into a team that's been dominated by one particular driver for a reasonable period of time, to the extent that it's viewed as 'their' team? There are many examples of drivers who have stepped into teams dominated by other drivers and still succeeded.

John Surtees moved into Jochen Rindt's Cooper team in 1966, outqualified him all year and went on to be runner-up in the world championship. Graham Hill had three pole positions in '67, even with Jim Clark in the other Lotus. More recently, Lewis Hamilton came in cold to Mercedes and immediately matched Nico Rosberg. He didn't need time to understand, he just drove the car fast.

[johnny comelately]

From: this PDF file - https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct= ... Q_kvpd1Oee
Therefore, we can see that both IRL and NASCAR turn their focus
onto the driver by standardizing all their cars, limiting technological
development and testing, and providing strict regulations that stifle most
novel technological development for the cars in their series. Although
NASCAR has had much more success than the declining IRL series, how
can they both compare to Formula One?
These differences are reflected in the viewership for each series.
IndyCar has an average global television audience of 10.37 million
viewers over the course of a season, while NASCAR pulls an average of
148.17 million viewers ("IndyCar Price," 2009). Compare this to Formula
One, which generates an average global television audience of 527 million
people over the course of a season ("Formula One,” 2011). Viewership for
Formula One is over three times that of IRL and NASCAR combined.
When interviewing viewers about their choice in watching Formula One,
many people referenced the thrill of technological competition. Formula
One seems to attract not only speed-enthusiasts and car-lovers, but
“gadget-junkies” as well. Dave Banks (2011) of Wired magazine wrote a
column highlighting the ten reasons why people should be watching
Formula One. Some of the items on his list were: “1. The engineers are as
important as the drivers, 2. Science! 3. Teams know the importance of a
good computer, 4. They create some really cool technology, 5. It captures
the best of science fiction & fantasy, 6. The athletes are superhuman, 7. It
filters technology, like NASA, 8. Beam me up: the alien beauty of the
cars”.

[johnny comelately]

From: https://newatlas.com/computer-modelled- ... ime/43147/
"In regard to this specific question, Dr. Andrew Bell who headed the team, says that on average over the period 1979 to 2014, 86 percent of the performance of a driver/car combination stems from the car/team and 14 percent from the driver."

[johnny comelately]

??
McLaren's hard-headed team principal of the 1970s was American lawyer Teddy Mayer, who famously said at that time: "Drivers are just interchangeable light bulbs – you plug them in and they do the job."

[3jawchuck]

Jesus christ Johnny.

Couldn't you have posted just 1 reply, rather than quoting the same comment over and over, without making a page worth of posts? Think about it, it makes sense. You think about your comment, write it, check it over then post. You just seem to blurt out whatever comes to your mind without regard to the poor sods who have to read it.

[PlatinumZealot]

"Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen have slightly different styles. Sainz is right on the edge and corners go on a fraction longer for him. He relies a more on on-the-edge car control that occasionally catches him out.

Verstappen creates little flatspots on the car; you can see he really concentrates on the rates of decrease of brake pressure, and angling into the corner he's very, very clever. If Sainz was just a little squarer in his approach he wouldn't rely on car control as much and would probably go slightly quicker.

Verstappen seems able to rotate his car sooner, whereas Sainz's rotation is a little later in the corner and requires more control towards the exit. You can achieve pretty much the same laptime, except Sainz is probably having to correct things a little bit more.

Jenson Button has what is termed a classical style and concentrates very hard on the geometry of the corner. He has really nice rates of input but probably needs a well balanced car for that.
On nice geometric lines you have corners that go on a little bit longer, and if you have an issue with the car that problem will be apparent for a greater percentage of the lap, whereas if someone is manipulating a shorter corner it will be smaller. If you have a sore left foot and walk around an oblong, you wouldn't make it a circle you'd go to the end, a short right, a short right, a short right. It might not be geometrically as nice but it would protect your sore foot!

Button is locked into his pattern and has great success with it - he's proved to be very competitive with Fernando Alonso. We know ultimately people will kill to have Lewis Hamilton in the seat, and in the past Alonso, whereas Jenson's not quite as in demand because people know he may not deliver over a decade what the other two might. But he's comfortable in his skin and has found a way of being successful most of the time.

Nico Rosberg is more calculating, whereas Lewis's main gift is his relationship with the surface. When he's settled he's got a little more adhesion and he'll introduce the car to every dynamic in a slightly more natural way. He'll always do that, whereas Nico will remind himself to do it.

Kimi Raikkonen has a great feel between the throttle and the surface in that he can just find the right amount of throttle as the weight comes down on the driving wheels. It's magical, but camouflaged a bit in F1 now by turbo variations - he got caught out a little when the turbo came up a few times in the last couple of years. His style's also very good for making very short corners, and he's very good in terms of weight transfer. When he maximises all that he goes very well.

Sebastian Vettel has a slightly later turn - it's all about the exit now. You need very good grip for that rotation not to turn into oversteer, which is why he's sensitive to the rear stability of the car.

Hamilton or Raikkonen will introduce the car for longer going into the corner, but on that long right-hander near the end of Barcelona Vettel will always hang out a little bit and rotate later. Lewis or Kimi will roll it in on the inside and gradually build up a feel for the car in doing that.

There is a driver style and preferences thread. It is still open. We have a crop of new drivers so you should have new content (though these regulations hide the drivers styles).

[PlatinumZealot]

Johny boy, a drivers thread with you in it would be hard work man!

What do you think of Lewis breaking ferrari's back last year? Most insiders thought the Ferrari was the faster car too.
And since you like the past... Let's talk about 2007.....

[johnny comelately]

There is a driver style and preferences thread. It is still open. We have a crop of new drivers so you should have new content (though these regulations hide the drivers styles).
[/quote]
Goodo, could you just post the link please.
I did a search, must have been a bloke look
and then all the flak about 'we dont want driver' talk, i assumed there wasnt any