2024 Season Bickering and Moaning

[f1jcw]

And just to remind you during 2014-2021 we had 6 championships going down to at least the last 3 races of the season! 3 of them (2014, 2016, 2021) all went down to the last race of the year!

The 2022 and 2023 championships ended by the end of September…

These "close championships" of 2014-2016 were Mercedes drivers infighting - it was pure Mercedes dominance.
During 2017-2018 Ferrari picked up a fight for a bit, but 2018 ended in September and only in 2017 there was a real title fight (if not for some bad luck at the end, VET had a real shot at WDC, although I'm pretty sure HAM would have won that even without VET's Singapore crash and Japan retirement).
During 2019-2020 there was no real contest whatsoever.
So I'd say that during Mercedes era only 2017 and 2021 were really interesting.

And as for current regulations, it's Ferrari's own fault that they were out of contest in 2022 even before TD039. LEC's bad luck, Binotto's bad team management and mid season rule changes are what sealed a deal.
You can't blame regulations or a budget cap, that RB doesn't have 2 strong drivers at the moment.

But we still had fighting, which we don’t with Redbull which you are clearly ignoring as it clearly defuncts your argument.

[dialtone]

Yes Newey did wonders and I’m applauding him but after a certain point it just gets boring!

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

[Cs98]

erm, Budget cap, AD21, 2 teams, valkyrie..

I guess AD was just so traumatising they forgot how to build a car Enjoy the season!

You statement was "it’s all above board and fair" when clearly it is not.

During the Merc years FIA was modifying the rules to reign in Merc, for some reason they are not doing this with Redbull, they even go out the way to look the otherway on track transactions.

It's all above board and fair, we've come from the era of oil burning, illegal tyre testing, running an F1 engine program for "road cars", and pink copies of Merc cars

As far as rule changes, you must've forgotten about Toto applying political pressure to change the floor regulations for last season. Your recollection is rather selective I think.

[Cs98]

Yes Newey did wonders and I’m applauding him but after a certain point it just gets boring!

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

We've come from an era of unlimited spending where two teams (first RB and then Merc) leveraged an initial advantage into 4 and 8 straight WCCs respectively. Uninterrupted dominance was the norm for a decade pre-cap. If you won it meant your revenue increased and you could spend more to retain that advantage. Besides, I'm seeing huge gains year over year from a team like Ferrari in this cap era. Saw much the same last season from McL and AMR.

[mendis]

Yes Newey did wonders and I’m applauding him but after a certain point it just gets boring!

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

It never went down in the last decade or so. Motorsports is not like football, basketball etc., that doesn't require any technical understanding. It's not for an average entertainment seeking couch potato. It's difficult to start into motorsports and like it, but once someone gets into motorsports and starts developing a liking for how it works, there is no going back, despite when one's favorite driver/team not winning.

These set of rules were created by Ross Brawn, who was one of those intelligent people in motorsports who was considered a good warden for rule breach crimes, as he himself was notorious for it. These rules are probably the most prescriptive than any other sets so far. Yet, one team got a march and others fell behind. Unless you make this sport a circus ring of dictator, where he can randomly choose a rule of play and create perfect entertainment, you can't have the ideal scenario of 2 or 3 teams being competitive at exact level of building new cars and developing at the exact same competitive rate that will keep season after season interesting.

Mercedes are paying because of repeated mistakes, not because cost cap or anything. Red Bull got hit with penalties and they were already getting less development time, yet the others failed to capitalize on it. Ferrari is Ferrari. The less we say, the better it is. They are mastering the art of being competitive out of the box for a new rule set, only to screw themselves over as they develop it. Rinse and repeat.

[SharkY]

But we still had fighting, which we don’t with Redbull which you are clearly ignoring as it clearly defuncts your argument.

Well, by that logic, we still had fighting in 2022, so there was only 1 truly dominant season so far (with 2024 being just as likely).

We don't have the fighting between Red Bulls, because they know better, just like Mercedes learnt from 2014-2016 and we had no fighting in 2019 or 2020.

My point is that having a dominant team is a tale as old as F1. Apart from 2016, 2017, 2021, the Mercedes era was as boring as RB's is now. The only way in which 2023 was outstanding, was the combination of 3 factors: Max seems to be a robot, the reliability is the highest ever and Sergio has sunk really low.
And Red Bulls dominance will end eventually, just like Mercedes', Red Bulls', Ferrari's, McLaren's, etc. before. Who knows, maybe even in 2026.
IMO going the way of BoP is too artificial, but reducing cost cap and regulations won't change much.

[DChemTech]

And just to remind you during 2014-2021 we had 6 championships going down to at least the last 3 races of the season! 3 of them (2014, 2016, 2021) all went down to the last race of the year!

The 2022 and 2023 championships ended by the end of September…

These "close championships" of 2014-2016 were Mercedes drivers infighting - it was pure Mercedes dominance.
During 2017-2018 Ferrari picked up a fight for a bit, but 2018 ended in September and only in 2017 there was a real title fight (if not for some bad luck at the end, VET had a real shot at WDC, although I'm pretty sure HAM would have won that even without VET's Singapore crash and Japan retirement).
During 2019-2020 there was no real contest whatsoever.
So I'd say that during Mercedes era only 2017 and 2021 were really interesting.

And as for current regulations, it's Ferrari's own fault that they were out of contest in 2022 even before TD039. LEC's bad luck, Binotto's bad team management and mid season rule changes are what sealed a deal.
You can't blame regulations or a budget cap, that RB doesn't have 2 strong drivers at the moment.

But we still had fighting, which we don’t with Redbull which you are clearly ignoring as it clearly defuncts your argument.

How is that an argument when it comes to whether the rules incite excitement? The rules have 0 to say over which drivers a team recruits (as long as they have their superlicense). MB at some point chose to have drivers that had mutual competition, but they could just as well have chosen otherwise.

As for FIA trying to reduce MB dominance by adapting the rules and not doing the same for RB, there was indeed Toto's campaign for changing the floor regulations (which, as was noted before, eventually ended up giving RB more advantage), but also during 2021 there were TDs specifically aimed at RB (the 'flexiwing' saga), so by no means are these efforts confined to MB.

In any case, let's also not jump to conclusions as 2024 hasn't even begun yet. Yes, there are some smiles on faces at RB, but also Ferrari seems to be rather well equipped. Perhaps we should give it a few races to see whether the interesting RB gamble with a concept change as leading party (showing that innovation is by no means limited by budget cap by the way - if so, they would be locked in to their initial design) pays off.

[AMG.Tzan]

erm, Budget cap, AD21, 2 teams, valkyrie..

I guess AD was just so traumatising they forgot how to build a car Enjoy the season!

You statement was "it’s all above board and fair" when clearly it is not.

During the Merc years FIA was modifying the rules to reign in Merc, for some reason they are not doing this with Redbull, they even go out the way to look the otherway on track transactions.

Not to mention that Red Bull’s penalty for cheating the budget cap wasn’t even a penalty! 7% cut

[f1jcw]

My point is that having a dominant team is a tale as old as F1. Apart from 2016, 2017, 2021, the Mercedes era was as

We had Rosberg and Lewis were fighting in 2014 and 2015, and yet you only mention 2016 when Lewis lost.
Thats a bit strange.

[f1jcw]

I guess AD was just so traumatising they forgot how to build a car Enjoy the season!

You statement was "it’s all above board and fair" when clearly it is not.

During the Merc years FIA was modifying the rules to reign in Merc, for some reason they are not doing this with Redbull, they even go out the way to look the otherway on track transactions.

Not to mention that Red Bull’s penalty for cheating the budget cap wasn’t even a penalty! 7% cut

A penalty that they bypassed by using aero work for cooling.

[RonMexico]

Yes Newey did wonders and I’m applauding him but after a certain point it just gets boring!

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

I would love to have seen what the response from Mercedes and Ferrari was if there was unlimited spending. 3 teams spending well over half a billion dollars on car development with only 6 cars capable of finishing on the lead lap again. It would probably have destroyed the sport

[DChemTech]

My point is that having a dominant team is a tale as old as F1. Apart from 2016, 2017, 2021, the Mercedes era was as

We had Rosberg and Lewis were fighting in 2014 and 2015, and yet you only mention 2016 when Lewis lost.
Thats a bit strange.

Which still has exactly 0% to do with the technical rules, and 100% with the driver selection of Mercedes.

[DChemTech]

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

I would love to have seen what the response from Mercedes and Ferrari was if there was unlimited spending. 3 teams spending well over half a billion dollars on car development with only 6 cars capable of finishing on the lead lap again. It would probably have destroyed the sport

Yes, I honestly don't get all the complaints about the budget cap. Even if the cap leads to slower convergence or lock-in (which I don't think it does), it's still a better situation than one where the peking order is decided by the depth of ones pockets, with an actively increasing gap between the big spenders and the rest of the teams (which are currently also not, or hardly, limited by the budget cap).

[dialtone]

Ferrari is Ferrari.

Ridiculous argument invalidates everything you wrote.

[dialtone]

Ferrari and Mercedes GP did particularly bad with their 2023 cars!!!

If they had improved at the normal rate, like Red Bull or better still Aston Martin and Mclaren, they would have regularly been winning races without issue and potentially the championships.

To blame the rules for Mercedes and Ferrari not making the normal improvement with their 2023 car designs is totally absurd.

Meh.

Rules and cap as they are punish mistakes massively and reward success with uninterrupted dominance.

Even if we want to say that Ferrari and Mercedes were a bunch of idiots for not making their ‘normal improvement’, they now are behind development and can’t catch up unless RBR makes a mistake of their own.

This is not good design of the rules. Even if you stomp your feet yelling injustice and impurity, viewership will go down.

We've come from an era of unlimited spending where two teams (first RB and then Merc) leveraged an initial advantage into 4 and 8 straight WCCs respectively. Uninterrupted dominance was the norm for a decade pre-cap. If you won it meant your revenue increased and you could spend more to retain that advantage. Besides, I'm seeing huge gains year over year from a team like Ferrari in this cap era. Saw much the same last season from McL and AMR.

Yeah, I'm not saying the previous ruleset was the better one, I'm simply saying the current one still isn't it.