Sadly agree completely with checkered:
I know that some members of this forum are very adept with stats - can someone post the percentage of winners over the past few years who started from pole? Yes, I do love the technology (but there seem to be more and more restrictions on that element of the sport) and I do love the visceral elements - the sounds and the spectacle - but *!^#$!# there is just so LITTLE RACING involved in winning an F1 race. Yes, there was some very exciting racing going on mid-field, but ultimately we had ANOTHER race whose winner passed no one on the road."To the degree it wasn't even funny anymore, pole equals win."
Maybe the lack of TC will actually be a positive in this sense: in prior years one could have said that Hamilton won because he 1) started from pole and 2) had the best car. Now, the absence of TC will put a somewhat higher premium on driver skill. But I sense that I'm grasping at straws.
Agree with manchild: one thread per race seems to make sense.
Finally, I'm afraid the ECU issue will become this year's Stepneygate. I spent 21 years in American computer companies from huge (Honeywell, DEC, Compaq, Hewlett Packard) to smallest startups you've never heard of, so gained some knowledge of software. And I know first hand the complexity of "tuning" an ECU. Therefore, I regretfully agree with Ray:
The ECU of the humble Nissan SR20 (2 liter inline 4 without variable valve timing) is beyond nearly every tuner in the USA - and this is one of the most popular engines among US tuners/drifters. Imagine the greater complexity of an F1 ECU! It is technically quite POSSIBLE that McLaren has a sizable advantage thanks to their joint development of the ECU. And last season cast more than a little doubt on McLaren's ethics.And if you think mapping is mapping you obviously haven't dealt with a Ford EMC versus a Chevrolet or Dodge ECM. Just to test your theory I would like you to take a Dodge ECU and a Ford TCM and get them to play nice. Load the Ford engine map into that Dodge ECU, still running the same engine with all the wiring mated correctly, and see how well it works. You won't have a chance in hell and you and anyone who has tried knows it. They had to redo their whole control systems from stem to stern to redo the code for the tranny, the injector drivers, the spark maps, the tranny mode selections on the steering wheels. I highly doubt they are even coded in the same language (computer wise). Who knows how MES structures their ECUs? Then they had to optimize it, and in a car like an F1 car that's going to be a huge undertaking. I would guess it would take every bit of a year to get it to work, function correctly reliably, and then when that is done try an make it competitive. Keep in mind your competition does not have to over come any of these hurdles, and that is a huge part of a race team. You can't won a race if your car won't start.