Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
during practice 2 today there were 2 non-current F1 drivers commenting on radio 5 live, ant davidson and karun chandok
ant davidson was discussing driving styles and commented that in F1 driving today a lot of the skill was in looking after the equipment ...as we have seen this year things like fuel , brakes , temperatures have needed managing , and even the tyres which seem to have been too long lasting this year ...chandok said if you used the tyres hard during the first 2/3 laps you lost out on performance during the rest of their life
frankly I think it always HAS been a lot of the skill
is that what we want to see ?
to the optimist a glass is half full ; to the pessimist a glass is half empty ; to the F1 engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be
Tyre management has definitely been one of the necessary skills ever since radial slicks became mandatory, as reducing the working life of a tyre has made it increasingly more important to ensure that peak performance doesn't come at the detriment of overall performance across the life of the tyre.
There was once a time when a set of tyres would last several races, but this was back in the days of 4 wheel drift and negligible downforce. However, managing the cars back then was less of a concern as it was standard practise for Number Two drivers to give up their whole cars for the benefit of the team leader.
No matter how strong and reliable you make your cars, there will always be a major element of management : the drive for extreme performance will ensure that components are always running at the edge of tolerance for their projected lifespan ... as long as tyres have a peak performance window and engines are built with a life expectancy, the driver will have to manage their car in order to bring it home.
The only difference now is that we have car-pits radio transmissions, 24/7 global media coverage and online forums where armchair pundits can analyze and repeat talking points ad nauseam. We only complain about car management now because we are much more aware of it.
Just because we couldn't hear Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Nikki Lauda and Nelson Piquet talking about managing their cars home, it doesn't mean that it never happened : Alain Prost (aka La Professeur) was acknowledged as a master at it!!!
Last edited by gridwalker on 12 Nov 2010, 17:42, edited 1 time in total.
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."
Well it was always said that the main objective of a race was to win at the slowest speed possible. Alain Prost was the master of that and he didn't just win 4 titles, he was runner up four times as well.
Its not entertaining but results are the priority.
Nope, i don't want to see it because it can't be seen. We would need to be constantly reminded why some drivers are going slow. It's just an excuse to give slower drivers a chance to be competitive.
There was a time when the media could not voice these little faccets, and we the viewers just had to take things as we see it on track.
Taking care of the car is counter intuitive to the concept of speed. I don't think it should be artificially injected into the sport.
Call me impatient, but nursing the car is boring and somewhat too delicate for my tastes. It's not even a skill, it's just controlled under performance.
It takes away from the entertainment. Maybe the older viewers would like to dig down for finer things in life in the race, but it really doesn't contribute much to the competition.
It's like trying to change a rodeo to show jumping, or turn a 100m sprint to 100m lime and spoon race just to stop Usain Bolt from winning every time.
according to someone I knew who was there , fangio was the master of car management and that was the reason for his success ; of course he was in his forties , with vast experience of how to win
what's this guy called of that age ? schu something ? maybe next year ?
to the optimist a glass is half full ; to the pessimist a glass is half empty ; to the F1 engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be
If they made engines and tyres that didn't need to be managed then the cars would be much slower : it is the problem with any piece of high performance kit, as you need to treat the equipment with care in order to maximise its lifespan.
A nice off topic example would be CPU overclocking : you can make it faster, but you need to dramatically increase cooling to ensure that it doesn't burn itself out in a few moments.
Tyres wouldn't need to be managed if they were much harder, but there is a demand for the faster sticky compounds that can deliver greater performance over their lifespan IF you don't thrash them in the first few laps. You might be able thrash harder tyres as much as you like, but they will never be a faster choice if they are hard enough to survive the punishment.
Same with the EBD : It is faster than an unblown diffuser, but it introduces many more reliability issues to the mix, all of which will need to be managed (e.g. damage to the exhaust manifold, heat damage to the diffuser walls, cracked exhausts, etc).
Engines could be made to last a whole season, but they'd be slow and heavy. Making them lighter and faster means that they are more fragile, so need to be treated with care.
The faster a car goes, the more likely it is to need management to maximise performance throughout it's life. Saying that it is just an excuse to equalise things for slower drivers makes it sound as if you expect the cars to be made of cast iron. Can't you remember the mid 90s, which featured spectacular engine detonations at almost every race despite the fact that the engines had to do 1/4 of the mileage that they now have to survive?
What about in the 80s, where drivers had to carefully monitor and manage their turbo boost levels to avoid catastrophic failures? This was a continual process throughout the race, enabling the fastest drivers to maximise their advantage when they needed it. Ayrton Senna was a master of this, but nobody ever dared accuse him of managing his car to compensate for an inherant lack of speed.
Reliability wise, we are light years ahead of where we were 10 years ago, but to make those engines last 3 races will inevitably require the machinery to be treated with care.
Equipment management is a fact of life, which will never go away. Wishing it wasn't so won't change the nature of the beast.
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."
I'm not arguing those point you made. Management is key to make the equipment last of course.
But purposely and unnecessarily disadvantaging the equipment to increase the maintenance factor is what i am against.
An extreme case to illustrate my point is reducing the very same homologated engines next year to 6 units all in the name of increasing the nursing factor.
Nursing engines or nursing fuelloads is not something i would count towards a godd idea for F1 which should be a sprint contest even if it is not the short race we see in alot of other formats.
But the art of tyre management or driving at the limit when it counts not for the hell of it has to be very important and needs to be retained as much as possible .
lebesset wrote:nursing engines / fuel loads is unavoidable
the engine that can be run continually at maximum has yet to me manufactured , neither has the engine that doesn't uses less fuel when nursed
answering politely I differ here.
These engines are made to survive a LOT of their time at full load and full revs.
Nursing ? maybe at some time they turn it down a few hundreds of rpm but that is more for saving fuel as the efficiency game does dictate to do so (starting with less fuel).did you forget we had higher revs already in F1 ? the max load of todays is no more the issue it is just the mileage you accumulate plus the little point that all the internal parts are fixed ...so no development going on internally apart from oil.
lebesset wrote:nursing engines / fuel loads is unavoidable
the engine that can be run continually at maximum has yet to me manufactured , neither has the engine that doesn't uses less fuel when nursed
Gas turbine? lol.. those things can run 24/7.
This nursing thing is not what I watch formula 1 for. The difference in nursing is so minute among the drivers that equipment failures are going to be few and far between. It's just gimmicky and boring. Just leave things as they are. Race race race, and nurse as necessary. I do not think it is the drivers' continual job to stop the engine from blowing up. The engine should not be made to blow up in the first place.
I think speed is king, and that is exactly the reason why Webber lost the championship today. Tell him to nurse his way outa that one!
