Separating car speed from driver speed

[raymondu999]

I don't think we can call reliability as hindering them in the WCC points. Reliability is due to the team. If whether by bad design or by bad manufacturing the car is unreliable; then they deserve their failures. Teammate crashes is another point.

[beelsebob]

I don't think we can call reliability as hindering them in the WCC points. Reliability is due to the team. If whether by bad design or by bad manufacturing the car is unreliable; then they deserve their failures. Teammate crashes is another point.

What he's getting at is that the constructors standings involve more than simply car speed. They also involve car reliability. As this thread is meant to be about separating car speed from driver speed, we can't rely solely on WCC positions to give a measure of car speed.

[raymondu999]

If you're talking about WCC "speed" standings then yes. But in terms of the actual WCC standings no. I agree with you Beelsebob

[Mandrake]

If you look at last year's result, the gap between McLaren and RedBull was kind of small. Although the RB6 was a lot quicker than the McLaren, especially in the beginning of the season. What made them suffer was reliability.

This year the RedBull has not been the quickest car on all tracks, but due to strategic and reliability problems at the competition, they could benefit everywhere.

So what is car speed then? Outright pace or consistent pace on a variety of tracks with perfect reliability?

Earlier here someone mentioned the quote: "Wow, you must have 30points more downforce than us" - I'd like to bring up an example from SimRacing. Same car, same setup, same track conditions, but a friend of mine can take the corner with 5kph more than me. I can't even see how he does it. So I say to him, you must have 1 degree more wing than me, but he didn't, he just drove right at the edge.

I'm sure something like the above is possible in F1 too, as we currently with the Webber / Vettel comparison. One can just not use the full potential, or one is performing above the car's natural pace.

[raymondu999]

Thank you Mandrake; that is the point I'm trying to illustrate with this thread. Was it just basically the other driver being faster/having more confidence than you, in that particular example? With same setup?

I used to play F1 challenge with a friend. I would always can him; being faster in qualifying, and also the race. My setup was visibly easier to drive too; more drivable. Then I'd share my setup, and he'd absolutely can me back. He was just plain faster whenever on the same setup.

[Gerhard Berger]

If you look at last year's result, the gap between McLaren and RedBull was kind of small. Although the RB6 was a lot quicker than the McLaren, especially in the beginning of the season. What made them suffer was reliability.

Not only reliablity - driver mistakes and stategy errors.

This year the RedBull has not been the quickest car on all tracks, but due to strategic and reliability problems at the competition, they could benefit everywhere.

Well Red Bull has been on pole at every race this season - some might say this is the ultimate indicator of speed of the speed of the car. In my opinion, Red Bull were fastest at the vast majority of races - the only possible exception is Hungary, and perhaps the Nurburgring.

So what is car speed then? Outright pace or consistent pace on a variety of tracks with perfect reliability?

Speed and reliablity are different things.

Earlier here someone mentioned the quote: "Wow, you must have 30points more downforce than us" - I'd like to bring up an example from SimRacing. Same car, same setup, same track conditions, but a friend of mine can take the corner with 5kph more than me. I can't even see how he does it. So I say to him, you must have 1 degree more wing than me, but he didn't, he just drove right at the edge.

I'm sure something like the above is possible in F1 too, as we currently with the Webber / Vettel comparison. One can just not use the full potential, or one is performing above the car's natural pace.

I'd say it's more a case of Vettel is getting close to the maximum out of the car, whilst Webber is not.

[Richard]

Are we talking about raw speed (ie fastest lap) or the ability to win races?

[raymondu999]

I basically should rename the thread really. How do we know how far off the absolute 100% limit of the car; is the driver?

Say Car A can go through Turn X at 100 kph. But it's also possible for the car to go through the turn at 50kph. If he goes and does it at 50kph; and thinks it's on the limit, how do we know that it actually could have done 50?

For examples; take Mandrake up there being 5kph slower in a corner than his friend; and beelsebob's comment on the first page. Hypothetically speaking, for instance, how do we know that it's actually the RB7 that's faster than an MP4-26? How do we know that Hamilton/Button aren't just superslow drivers driving a car that's faster than the RB7? All hypothetically speaking in the light of this question of course.

[intelligentF1]

Interesting question. If you asked the teams I reckon that they'd say their simulator would give them a pretty good idea. They know where they are 'driver limited' rather than downforce/traction/power/balance limited. They play with increasing the grip until it makes no difference, so they know when not to bother as the driver can't handle it anyway - which tells them how good the driver is.

Also, for a 90 second lap, 1% is 0.9s. So I guess we're all really talking about a few tenths here. Then the really good drivers are within at most 0.5% - and the question becomes is this band from 99.5%-100% or somewhere lower. My guess would be that it's not too much lower, but you can never know for sure...

[raymondu999]

yes exactly. Most likely would be that they're very close; but we don't really know that

[ahmedvortex]

i have a solution , but teams must collaborate with Fia and Fom ,all the teams ( real ones) will use a benchmark (virtual) driver on their simulator , and it will provide us the real pace of their cars , and fom will show the simulated lap time during quali.

[beelsebob]

i have a solution , but teams must collaborate with Fia and Fom ,all the teams ( real ones) will use a benchmark (virtual) driver on their simulator , and it will provide us the real pace of their cars , and fom will show the simulated lap time during quali.

That tells us more about their simulator than any driver.

[raymondu999]

That's an interesting idea actually. Or I think so, anyways. I think the problem there is that not all simulators are of equal accuracy

[BigT]

Even if they did have some test driver to try all the cars to see if its the car or the drivers then it could still be wrong if by the end of it he starts to get more confident and pushes the last few cars a little further than the first few cars. Even if it was done in real life, not a sim.

It depends how accurate it would have to be too because replicating the conditions in exactly the same way for each car can only be done by a computer.
I think the only way would be to use one sim with all the cars, have someone drive round once in each car, record all the data for tyre grip, down force etc and make some huge complicated program which would determine how a car would perform if you changed say how late the driver brakes and the computer can then figure out how this would effect the car. Like for example if going that bit faster it increases the down force and how it would effect the handling etc so really, it would be much too complex and time consuming for there to be a point in doing such a test.

If any of that makes sense to you.

But obviously that would be for 100% accuracy, the much simpler option would be to have someone drive each car for the first time around a track and get timings and leave the cars set up how each driver would so you can see the set up affects the drivers speed too.

[beelsebob]

Even if they did have some test driver to try all the cars to see if its the car or the drivers then it could still be wrong if by the end of it he starts to get more confident and pushes the last few cars a little further than the first few cars. Even if it was done in real life, not a sim.

It depends how accurate it would have to be too because replicating the conditions in exactly the same way for each car can only be done by a computer.
I think the only way would be to use one sim with all the cars, have someone drive round once in each car, record all the data for tyre grip, down force etc and make some huge complicated program which would determine how a car would perform if you changed say how late the driver brakes and the computer can then figure out how this would effect the car. Like for example if going that bit faster it increases the down force and how it would effect the handling etc so really, it would be much too complex and time consuming for there to be a point in doing such a test.

If any of that makes sense to you.

But obviously that would be for 100% accuracy, the much simpler option would be to have someone drive each car for the first time around a track and get timings and leave the cars set up how each driver would so you can see the set up affects the drivers speed too.

It would also be somewhat biased based on the control and comparison drivers styles'. While Schumacher, Hamilton, and Kobayashi might be able to wring everything out of a twitchy car, Button and Vettel might be able to make the tyres work on a car that's planted on rails.