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So, the last Abu Dhabi race triggered this thought.
It was the last race of the season. All engines were in their last race, by definition. All chassis never had to run again, so cost caps for a crash or a breakdown in the race was covered. Some drivers could not lose championship position but could only win it.
And yet... all 20 cars finished. There were exactly zero banzai moves like realy long divebombs. There were zero brishing the wall in an attempt to catch a tow... zero. No one pushed anything to the breakdown point.
Is this normal? I got the feeling that after a very long 24 race season, other than in the title battle, everyone just wanted to finish and go home.
And now to the main point that followed from the first though above:
Should teams be way more aggressive with engine settings, cooling closures, low setups? Should then "buy in" 2 engines failures per season plus one brake failure per season plus 1 LiCo nightmare per season plus 1 plank DSQ per season?
The compromise is clear: your engine might blow up, or it might need to be set lower due to lack of coolling, or you might need to LiCo to cool the brakes, or DNF due to a brake failure. And yes, you could be DSQ'd due to plank wear.
Can we agree that all of those instances, at least to the point of failure, have been extremeyl rare? Did we have 20 of all of those combined in the whole season? I think not, and thus they are less than 1 per driver per season and less than 5% per driver per race.
I say that this is too little, like 5 times too little risk!
Say that you are likely to be 5th in any typical race (Charles?). Finishing 5th 24 times is 10x24 = 240 points.
Is running less louvres, or pushing the engine harder, likely to get you 1 tenth per lap? Likely. Is that tenth per lap worth one position in average? Lets say it is, feel free to change threshold otherwise. And say that that means a DNF in every 5th race. Now we have 19 4th positions and 5 DNFs, or 12*19 + 5*0 = 228. So the break even point is somewhere there. Gain more than 1 tenth per lap, or break down lestt than 21% of the time and you'll come ahead. Some of those "5 DNFs" could esily be "extreme LiCos" instead, still finishing 7th (is this what we have seen Ferrari doing???!!!), so the picture is a tiny bit better than this cold math suggests.
Now let's revisit that for mister finish 8th. Say an early season Albon or a late season Sainz. I would argue that 1 tenth of a second a lap is now worth more than 1 position in average. It might mean passing to another round in Q, or avoiding being trapped in that DRS train, or free air after your pit stop. And we still pay 5 DNF for the tradeoff. Now we are going from 24*4 = 96 points to 19*6 + 5*0 = 114 points. Clearly ahead.
Let's look at an "often 13th" driver. Is that Bortoletto or Gasly? In your normal season, you might catch 1 point a couple or times and 2 or 4 points another couple of times. Say 8 points in average, in total. That 1 tenth might now mean 5 DNFs, 4 times 1 point, 2 times 2 points, 1 time 4 points, 1 time 6 points?. That´s 8 point scoring races versus 3, about 16 points, double as much. (Numbers pulled out of derriere). From the 5 DNFs, 4 were going to be 0 points anyways!
At the very top... yeah, if you are likely to finish 1-2 or 1-3, it doesn't work, mostly because your team-mate / rival inherits your points when you DNF, plus there are no points for being one tenth faster than 1st place.
But at least for the bottom 2/3 of the field, are we OK with 5% of performance related mechanical DNFs? (Engine or brake or floor failures). I say that 20% or enen 30% should pay up in points, at the end of the day, I mean, year.
With that logic - it might well be that a team might design adn build a car that can only perform at a certain kind of track and so guarantee some strong results there.
It wasn't so long ago (in my head) that a team would have a B chassis, or a lwb/swb variant of a car and use it to great effect when the season turned to tracks that might suit it.
If Cadillac were to design a car that was mechanically focussed for Monaco and was able to win (or place) highly and take twenty odd points...would that be a risk worth taking to beat the Apline like performances this year?
I think I agree with you...it's all very vanilla and "same same" these current days.
Maybe new regs will be exciting for a few weeks til we all converge, in Spain, on the most "vanilla" designs.
So, the last Abu Dhabi race triggered this thought.
It was the last race of the season. All engines were in their last race, by definition. All chassis never had to run again, so cost caps for a crash or a breakdown in the race was covered. Some drivers could not lose championship position but could only win it.
And yet... all 20 cars finished. There were exactly zero banzai moves like realy long divebombs. There were zero brishing the wall in an attempt to catch a tow... zero. No one pushed anything to the breakdown point.
Is this normal? I got the feeling that after a very long 24 race season, other than in the title battle, everyone just wanted to finish and go home.
This formula it is little reward to do that. Push on engine, then you run out of fuel and your rear tyres. Push on tyres, then you hit the plank or risk a puncture, push on strategy and then the track evolves against you...
The problem is still dirty air, short braking zones and the high penalty for pitstops.
We will refueling back to negate the pit stop penalty.
I think they should exclude a fixed amount per employee (100,000 euros) instead of excluding the top 3 salaries and implement a cap on headcount. This way the budget cap doesn't encourage uncompetitive wages in the industry and the rich teams can't abuse the loophole of having massive headcounts under 100k salary.
I think they should exclude a fixed amount per employee (100,000 euros) instead of excluding the top 3 salaries and implement a cap on headcount. This way the budget cap doesn't encourage uncompetitive wages in the industry and the rich teams can't abuse the loophole of having massive headcounts under 100k salary.
F1 is not a lucrative job if you are not a senior engineer indeed.
There aren’t many engineering jobs in Motorsport that pay 120k us dolllars. In automotive you should hit that by 35-40 although after that you get COL unless you change jobs.
So, the last Abu Dhabi race triggered this thought.
It was the last race of the season. All engines were in their last race, by definition. All chassis never had to run again, so cost caps for a crash or a breakdown in the race was covered. Some drivers could not lose championship position but could only win it.
And yet... all 20 cars finished. There were exactly zero banzai moves like realy long divebombs. There were zero brishing the wall in an attempt to catch a tow... zero. No one pushed anything to the breakdown point.
Is this normal? I got the feeling that after a very long 24 race season, other than in the title battle, everyone just wanted to finish and go home.
One thing is for sure that the amount of social media involvement and subsequent scrutiny, drivers want to actively avoid being seen as crash prone or dangerous. I suspect the Kyvat and Maldonado type drivers will be less and less common. The whole motiff around current F1 is buttoned up and corporate approved.
A little surprised Max did not try to bunch the field up because he had the most to gain from chaos and relatively not much to lose. It always unlikely for Piastri and he couldnt dictate terms either. For everybody else, there isnt much incentive to be indulging in high risk behaviors.
The TV coverage also influences the perception as there were some tasty scraps going on in the midfield for the last few points but generally ignored on the main broadcast. Stroll, Sainz, Bearman, Hulk, Ocon all had some nice battles.
- The hybrid engines have become so refined and understood by the teams, we've seen less and less engine failures over the years. They presumably know the limits of the engine more than ever, therefore no reason to take risks and push it.
- The standard of driver in F1 now is better than ever, as teams generally don't need pay drivers, so less 'stupid' driving
- As already mentioned, the cost cap stops teams/drivers taking as big risks as they could previously
Ideally next year, with new engines and a high cost cap threshold, I'm hoping that we'll see more unpredictably again.
The problem is still dirty air, short braking zones and the high penalty for pitstops.
So: Hard to follow closely, hart to pass if you do, and hard to extreme undercut...
... precisely why qualifying ahead and risk limping in the race should be a more viable strategy!
The more I think about it, the more I think this is what happened to Ferrari in 2025.
It made for endless comedy shows, angry fans, and loud and depressive drivers. Maybe not worth the extra points after all?
