How Many Finishers in Melbourne?

[Lycoming]

The history shows that implementation of bold new technical inventions often proves to be unsafe and people get hurt.

You mean like the carbon fiber Monocoque chassis?

The fuel cell safety took many years if not decades to figure out to make it safe.

In fairness, they weren't trying very hard, if at all for most of those decades.

significant voltage on board is really very new.

The basic system has been around in some form or other since 2009. Tesla and other carmakers has been building cars with much higher quantities of stored energy for years prior to that.

Imagine a crash similar to Kubica in Montreal few years back, with car landing upside down. How can track workers help extricate the driver if ES system is damaged putting the whole car is under electricity? They can't see the indicator LEDs in roll hoop burried in mud.

In Kubica's case, the roll hoop was fully exposed and completely visible.

The cell should be completely isolated from the chassis, and the cell should shut itself off in the event of a crash or if it detects a short. The battery pack catching on fire for no apparent reason is probably a bigger safety risk.

Not to say that there are not safety concerns with such high voltage systems, but the people involved are:

a) not clueless
b) not inexperienced.

At the moment, there isn't much reason to believe the ERS systems make the cars significantly more dangerous. This may change in the future, but for now everything I've seen suggests the safety concerns have been adequately addressed.

[erlik]

Few finishers won't be mockery but lots of safety cars with long periods for recovery and after race disqualifications I don't find particulary interesting... but maybe safety cars will help others to save fuel

[Juzh]

If you think very few cars finishing races makes F1 a mockery, you haven't watched F1 for more than a decade or two. F1 historically is an extremely high attrition sport, I see no issue with going back to that.

I also see no issue with that, as long as development is permitted which currently is not the case. At least not in an old fashioned way. Say renault is simply unable to do a race distance with full power and must poke around 2-4s off the pace and can do nothing about it?

[321apex]

Very few cars may be finishing the first races, potentially turning F1 into a mockery. All these cars are undeveloped prototypes wanting to grind to a halt at moments notice and in worst case catch on fire.

Safety car and FIRE TRUCKS will be busy. Is that what the TV viewer expects to see?

I don't want to sound alarmist, but we will also learn of relative safety of race cars containing 4MJ of energy going thru major crashes and how a driver is going to be rescued when the current conducting carbon fiber tub is perhaps LIVE with power.

If you think very few cars finishing races makes F1 a mockery, you haven't watched F1 for more than a decade or two. F1 historically is an extremely high attrition sport, I see no issue with going back to that.

Let's see. I have personally witnessed Ayrton Senna winning the Detroit GP in 1986 and for the first time attended Canadian GP in 1988 and have been there 5 times since. How many years of following F1 does that make?

You should remember what happened after the Indianapolis race in 2006. By 2007 Indy was no longer a viable business issue stemming from the farcical 2006 event in which only 6 cars practically participated.

Times are long gone when attrition rate was high in F1 and the sponsors were willing to put up with it. Perhaps this year only 60% of the field will make the 107% rule, and out of that 2/3 may not even retire in the pit lane, but rather somewhere on the track.

[iotar__]

Very few cars may be finishing the first races, potentially turning F1 into a mockery. All these cars are undeveloped prototypes wanting to grind to a halt at moments notice and in worst case catch on fire.

Safety car and FIRE TRUCKS will be busy. Is that what the TV viewer expects to see?

I don't want to sound alarmist, but we will also learn of relative safety of race cars containing 4MJ of energy going thru major crashes and how a driver is going to be rescued when the current conducting carbon fiber tub is perhaps LIVE with power.

If you think very few cars finishing races makes F1 a mockery, you haven't watched F1 for more than a decade or two. F1 historically is an extremely high attrition sport, I see no issue with going back to that.

Let's see. I have personally witnessed Ayrton Senna winning the Detroit GP in 1986 and for the first time attended Canadian GP in 1988 and have been there 5 times since. How many years of following F1 does that make?

You should remember what happened after the Indianapolis race in 2006. By 2007 Indy was no longer a viable business issue stemming from the farcical 2006 event in which only 6 cars practically participated.

Times are long gone when attrition rate was high in F1 and the sponsors were willing to put up with it. Perhaps this year only 60% of the field will make the 107% rule, and out of that 2/3 may not even retire in the pit lane, but rather somewhere on the track.

I sense a contradiction which is a common element every time good old times of F1 and evil present are brought into discussion. So what is it, high number of retirements in 2014 is "a mockery" as opposed to 80s/90s where it presumably wasn't, or is it just about marketing and public perception? (or rather means of shaping or vocalizing it called media/internet) Would it be a mockery only for sponsors or for you personally?

For me it wouldn't be - just a normal element of transitional phase of huge technical changes and teams adjusting to it. If it lasts too long they can always adjust the rules.

[Lycoming]

That whole affair at indy with the tires and whatnot is an entirely different matter from high attrition rates.

[321apex]

I sense a contradiction which is a common element every time good old times of F1 and evil present are brought into discussion. So what is it, high number of retirements in 2014 is "a mockery" as opposed to 80s/90s where it presumably wasn't, or is it just about marketing and public perception? (or rather means of shaping or vocalizing it called media/internet) Would it be a mockery only for sponsors or for you personally?

For me it wouldn't be - just a normal element of transitional phase of huge technical changes and teams adjusting to it. If it lasts too long they can always adjust the rules.

If you realize what is the foundation of F1 business then you will understand my point.
You seem to be a tech fan and that is just fine. However, you must understand that sponsors pay for all of this on the condition that people on TV watch it. The time you start having several mockery races in a row, with few finishers, that's when you will have this 1 billion TV viewers start dwindling.

Couple that with the escalating cost of running the new and expensive technology the F1 community must somehow fund (from sponsors) and potentially you get a vicious circle and a recipe for a disaster.

Not everyone out of that 1 billion is technically astute in F1 details and the moment they realize that it is no longer a driver, but a larger than ever before army of engineers "creating driving heroes" then F1 will be done. Taking away the loud noise really did not help at all.

[321apex]

That whole affair at indy with the tires and whatnot is an entirely different matter from high attrition rates.

Look at the forest instead of trees.
The Indy F1 race of 2006 was extremely diminished in excitement value and for many was enough of a reason to not give F1 at Indy another chance. It doesn't matter why the race was a farce or boring.

Tony George withdrew from running F1 races at Indy for financial reasons.

[MOWOG]

I attended that infamous race in Indianapolis and can report that there were a LOT of extremely pissed off fans. Imagine if you had come from another country, paid the airfare and the cost of a decent hotel and got treated to that disgusting charade. How angry would YOU be?

Now imagine that you fly all the way to Melbourne in a few weeks time and watch a similar schlamozzle? 123 makes an excellent point. The world has moved on since the days when having only a few cars finish a race was acceptable.

What we used to call "sport" is now the entertainment business. There are multiple opportunities for everyone on earth with a TV and/or an internet connection to view these entertainment options. Admission fees don't pay a 10th of the cost of putting on "the show". All that money comes from advertisers and those advertisers are 100% dependent on enough people watching the racing to justify the enormous sums they are committed to.

In the digital age, viewers are beyond fickle. It takes only a moment of boredom or aggravation for them to find something else to watch. F1 is playing a very dangerous game and there is every possibility that their gamble will exterminate the goose that laid the golden egg.

In today's world, no one really cares how many fans are in the stands. The only thing that matters is the number of eyeballs watching on their TV's, tablets, phones, computers of Google Glass devices. Advertisers scrutinize those numbers with the diligence of an accountant parsing the tax code. There are no secrets. Everyone knows how many are watching and for how long. If those numbers are trending downwards, the advertisers and then the broadcasters will be stampeding to the exits.

We shall see, of course. In the end, all the sturm und drang that is the subject of this thread may turn out to be much ado about nothing and the people who dreamed up this new technical package may look like geniuses. But personally? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

[Vettel Maggot]

What some of you tech heads are forgetting is that you are in the minority. Casual F1 fans are what make or break the sport. If they hear poxy sounding shitboxes that can't make it around a whole race do you think they will tune in for more next week? There are a huge amount of these people that are not die hards like you and me that will tune in no matter what.

F1 has rolled the dice by trying to shake things up, I hope it works out, although I don't like the current state of affairs I don't want something I love dearly to die.

And this aint the 80s where mechanical failure was commonplace and almost acceptable. Too much at stake now. You can't run a two bob team on a shoestring budget and go racing anymore.

[Stradivarius]

I don't think it makes sense to compare unreliable cars to what happened at Indianapolis in 2005 (not 2006 if it is the withdrawal of Michelin teams which is in question). The problem in that case was not that only 6 cars finished the race, it was that only 6 cars started the race, due to the unfortunate fact that Michelin hadn't brought apporpriate tires for that track. To make it worse, the two championship contenders were among those not starting the race.

I am not aware of any similar anger from the fans at Hungary in 2006, where only 7 cars finished the race (Schumacher was the last one to retire on the final lap, but still took 8th position in the race). The race that I can remember with the fewest number of finishers is or Monaco in 1996, when only 4 cars finished the race. But I am not aware of any reactions back then like those of Indianapolis in 2005.

Of course it makes a difference whether this happens once in a while or if it happens consistently, but I don't think it is a big problem sponsorwise to have more cars retiring. More retirements means more different teams on the podium. In this context Indy 2005 is a good example, as Tiago Monteiro scored a podium for Jordan in that race due to the many "retirements" or non-starters. I think this podium would make up for a lot of retirements with regards to Jordan's sponsors. For the top teams it would go the other way, but they are not the ones typically lacking sponsors anyway.

For the TV-viewers I actually expect that many will find it more interesting with more retirements. The biggest problem for a long time was the impression that the race was decided at the first corner, or even during qualifying the day before. With reliability being a real issue, one would never feel that anything is decided until the race is over.

[erlik]

...The problem in that case was not that only 6 cars finished the race, it was that only 6 cars started the race, due to the unfortunate fact that Michelin hadn't brought apporpriate tires for that track. ..

Exactly! I see it different if Renault cars (for example) decide not to start in Melbourne and if half of the grid finish in flames beside the track. Failures and mistakes during the race should be part of racing... nothing strange there. Though it may be mockery if none of the cars succeed in finishing the race

[turbof1]

Fans aren't stupid - indianapolis was a farce partly because of michelin, but also because the FIA didn't want to give in to turn the banking into a chicane. Bureaucracy withhold that, and fans felt betrayed.

Not seeing renault teams finish the race will not be that big of a deal, as long as they do get on the starting grid.

The biggest issue I see with that is that renault teams may come to the conclusion none can handle a full race distance and just don't turn up at the start, to keep PU's from destroying itself. Remember: they have 5 complete power units over a season. each of those units consist out of -I believe- 5 main parts, and they are allowed to use 5 of the same part over a season. So it's not a part of the PU breaks down, they have to swap in a completely new PU. Say the Energy Store of PU set B gets damaged beyond repair, they can swap in the ES from PU set C. And so on. That being said, it doesn't help if one specific part keeps destroying itself, so again they might skip the race altogether and in the meanwhile hope engine upgrades, asked through exception based on reliability, do the the trick.

If that happens, expect a lot of booing from fans and political fallout.

[erlik]

I don't know what Red Bull will do if they find out in free practice that their updates does not provide enough cooling for race

[Stradivarius]

Fans aren't stupid - indianapolis was a farce partly because of michelin, but also because the FIA didn't want to give in to turn the banking into a chicane. Bureaucracy withhold that, and fans felt betrayed.

Not that it matters much, but I am quite sure there would have been a lot of unhappy Ferrari fans (of which there is a lot) if the FIA had agreed to effectively redesign the track to suit the Michelin tyres. For years they had been fooling around with the rules to take away Ferrari's advantage and they finally succeded when Ferrari were stuck with less competitive tyres in 2005 and then I think it would cause some angry reactions if they had proceeded to redesign the track layout to specifically suit the competitors better.

In other words, I blame Michelin, not the FIA for the farce in 2005.