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.
the abandonment of the tyre warmer ban for 2009 seems to me to have been sensible
but what about 2010 ? is there a firm decision ?
for me it is a no brainer .....on safety grounds they should be retained
and how about on board microwave heaters ...certainly looks the way to go , and long term would be cheaper as I see it
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
Comparing American open-wheeled racing to F1, no matter how you slice it, is like comparing apples to hand grenades; there's simply no point. Just as there was no point in attempting to ban these simple devices as they're cheap and every team already has and uses them.
It would be a different story, maybe, if teams were rushing to develop better and better tire blankets, but they're not.
Zanardi and all the other drivers had made several pit stops in that race(which I still have on tape) and had no problems, HE hit a bump off line and that threw him onto the track.
Tire warmers are an unnecessary waste of money and energy and they do not allow us to see which drivers are the fastest on cold tires and full tanks.
If you cant compare F1 to AOW, what can you compare it to? It is the second highest level of open wheel racing in the world... and were only about 3 to 5 seconds apart at Circuit G.V.
4 ovens for each set of tires baking for hours on end. Wets, Inters and several sets of dries baking for no reason, and for each car. Plus, All that heat makes them have to turn up the A/C in the garage... it is ridiculously unnecessary.
Plus it takes away from getting to see the drivers struggle with cold tires, it was always amazing to see Montoya & Zanardi and several others better the field on out laps with cold tires.
Coffee is a waste of energy, I dont drink 1 drop and I am much more productive than my staff who drink it all day. Maybe because I am not sitting around the coffee pot, or running to the bathroom to piss, plus my breath doesnt smell like ass like there's does. hmmm... I think I'll ban coffee from the shop today
Waste of money and energy. I wouldn't mind seeing them go. It just adds an extra factor into the race which means hopefully more interesting and entertaining races.
The real cost cutting needs to come from all the unnecessary extravagance displayed in F1. All the stupid motorhomes. Flashy parties. All the typical rich continental European nonsense. Fashion models etc.. they need to cut down on that crap.
would a driver emerging from the pits be massively slower than the rest of the field? I'm not sure how much of a change it would be but i guess it would make the penalty for making a pit stop higher
The biggest saving from eliminating tyre warmers is not having to drag all the extra equipment to and from the race tracks. The power consumption is negligable.
Same for refueling rigs. Eliminating the two refueling rigs that each team needs to drag around the world will save Million$$$. Not to mention a staff reduction of two or three as well.
It will be difficult to get in-race refueling back into the show once it is out.
Personal motto... "Were it not for the bad.... I would have no luck at all."
the power consumption is not negligable, think about having 16 ovens on in each pit for each car, for hours on end... it is absurd.
Assume each tire/wheel warmer is 1Kw, 4 per set, 1 set of wets, 1 of Inters, and 1 of each type of slicks, 16 tires= 16 Kw for at least 4 hours(very conservative) every day so that is 64Kw-hours per car per day and 192Kw-hours for the weekend, multiplied by an estimated 24 cars on the grid next year, so a low estimate of 4600 Kw-hours over 1 race weekend or about half the yearly usage of the average US household.(which we know is extremely wasteful to begin with)
Yes it is probably much less than the energy of just shipping it worldwide but still a good bit of energy wasted to get the tires up to temp when the tires would reach the same temps in a couple of laps or so.
point is , existing tyre warmers are very old technology as currently used ; the point about energy consumption is well made ..although it is insignificant in the total energy used by F1 [ or even compared to ONE fly away race for example ] modern microwave technology would be vastly more efficient , so let's move on
but basically the energy consumption argument is just specious , a bit like saying we should we should all watch television by one minute less each day , statistically insignificant
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
