Making F1 Driving more challenging

[Manoah2u]

allright, ERS then......

and really? as if without brake-by-wire there can't be regenerative braking?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake

[Lycoming]

allright, ERS then......

and really? as if without brake-by-wire there can't be regenerative braking?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake

You can do it without brake by wire. It's just that if you harvest only from the rear wheels, as F1 cars do, it makes managing brake balance... complicated. Essentially, the brake balance won't be the same every time you step on the pedal.

Anyway, yeah, there's too much non-mechanical driver aid. Engineers telling the drivers to lift and coast, set to steering wheel to 17,20, whatever is proof of that. Would it be too difficult without the team constanly speaking into the earpiece?

Kind of. If you were to prevent the team from telling the driver that information, you would need to give them more information through the dashboard. The current dashboard doesn't tell them much because it doesn't need to.

Surely not. Fighter jet pilots have way more buttons and switches to their disposal and they don't have a 'daddy hold my hand' engineer constantly telling them when to switch mode or buttons......

No, but they do have a flight computer that manages a bunch of stuff for them, and tells them when something is going wrong or needs attention. If you think the computer doesn't replace an engineer, that's true to an extent, but computers did allow airlines to phase out the flight engineer position. They also train extensively and have checklists, 2 things F1 drivers don't have. Not to mention, they have a lot more information at their disposal; as it is right now, F1 drivers don't know things like engine temperature or oil pressure.

It's a bit ironic to use fighter pilots to illustrate your point here, because modern fighters are equipped with every imaginable computer assistance device the engineers can come up with.

- make front wing much narrower and ditch the 'mandated' centre shape (bold moves are punished because one cannot see the wing and has to gamble instead of do a bold and courage judgement on overtaking)

Ironically, the mandated centre section exists to reduce the aerodynamic detriment of being in another car's wake and improve overtaking.

- mandate front and rear wings, no more then 3 different shapes over a season (reduces development costs and needs drivers to cope with the shapes,)
- unlimited testing throughout the year

... Do you care about cost or not? I don't understand.

- slightly enlarge 'driver protection pod' size so the driver doesn't have to 'lay' in the car but can be 'seated', shorten the distance between driver's head position and front wheels, and additional to enlarging rim size, enlargen actual wheel size (tire wall height), and enlarge rollbar height for driver protection. Result: driver can better see the car dimensions around him, positively afffecting his surroundment judgements, and thus use his skills better (go out flat instead of neuter himself by the anxiety of hitting the car in front of him resulting in damage and penalty).

You're better off specifying minimum eye level height or however they're doing it in LMP1 if you want to improve driver visibility.

and fixing the amount of settings that can be adapted on the steering wheel will do away with a lot of the communication between team and driver. It's like F1 drivers are entering computer settings whilst driving. Make practice sessions dure longer or use unrestrictive all-year testing for drivers to discover how to use settings to better effect their performance.
At race day, they must set-up their car and they'll have to race that setting and that's that.

The point of those settings is to change the car over the duration of the race to cope with how the car changes over a stint and over a race, or to respond to things like safety car periods. You can't just dial them in at the start of the race and go; it defeats much of the purpose. You may as well just not make them adjustable at all.

[thisisatest]

A couple things I'd like to see, not to make it "more challenging", but to make dueling more possible:
I like the eye sight height requirement, could also be a helmet height minimum. With that, mandated mirrors that are twice as wide and twice as tall, overall four times larger. Required line-of-sight, required mount stiffness. Not only would everyone be able to see what's going on (i didn't see him so I ran over the nose of his car), the mirrors would also slow the cars down some.
If the frontvwing doesn't get narrower, then a fence or bumper at its edges, some bump load test would be nice. I don't want outright bumpers surrounding the car, but the twigs hanging at the extremities is annoying. Tassels hanging from the rear wing endplate too...

[SectorOne]

...save fuel, tires, consider ERS changing, brake balance, changing engine maps and make their engine last for 5 races and still have to drive fast enough to finish in a good position...

I think you could double that workload, and it still wouldn't be as challenging as sprinting a proper F1 car throughout an entire grand prix.

Speed is the challenge; everything else is clerical.

Yea it´s quite funny hearing guys like Hamilton, Massa and all those other guys saying they barely break a sweat in the car sometimes. A lot to do on the steering wheel but not even close the tire grip and downforce of the bridgestone era.

And that´s why Verstappen can just hop right in.

[thisisatest]

I don't want it to be as physically demanding as before. I want the person with the best skills to be fastest, not the brawniest meathead. They probably didn't have drinks tubes back in the day, do you want them to ban that? Have drivers' mental capacity limited in the second half, dehydrated? More accidents, some dude passing out... That's the way it was before, and that's great, but onward and upward! 17year old driving next year? Bring it on!

[Cold Fussion]

allright, ERS then......

and really? as if without brake-by-wire there can't be regenerative braking?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake

There is no KERS/MGU-H button, it is all done automatically through the ECU. The lap limits exist partly because it dictates the size of the electrical system employed. If you were to set no limits on deployment through the race, then the most likely run a system only large enough to give the maximum electric effect over the lap, or they would size it such only cater for how much they could harvest over a lap, and as it is, neither of these options are likely to produce a significantly different sized system than that is currently in placed.

[Andres125sx]

A driver has to save fuel, tires, consider ERS changing, brake balance, changing engine maps and make their engine last for 5 races and still have to drive fast enough to finish in a good position, how on earth isn't that challenging??

That´s challenging, but about managing the car, not driving itself. The question is, what do we want inside the cars, best drivers or best managers? I´d prefer best drivers


F1 is becoming too artificial, DRS is a joke, tires too, now you see an overtaking and you don´t think the driver involved is a good driver, you think that´s due to DRS, or different tires, or simply different strategy. Today there are a lot more ovetakings than 8 years ago, but they´re so artificial overtaking is completely devalued, and it used to be the most interesting part. This is the most depresing part of F1 right now IMHO, not even overtaking is exciting

And now FIA want to make F1 cars more challenging.... they always do the same, they create a problem, and when they realice that´s a problem, then think about some artificial way to patch that problem instead of solving the root

IMHO, F1 is condemned until those brilliant heads realice the problem is not how dificult the cars are to drive, but how stupid is the route F1 has taken last years because of their own decisions

If I´d be in charge this is what I´d do:

- DRS should continue, but as active wings, not the artificial overtaking aid it is now. We all can buy a car with active wings, but F1 don´t use them.... That´s the pinnacle of anything?

- Freeze and pinnacle are words that cannot go togheter, remove the freeze or accept you´re just a marketing exercise. Engines must be developed, this is not debatable

- Tires must be best tires they´re able to manufacture, artificial wear is a joke. I´d prefer if they last the whole race so they don´t play a huge role in overtakings, but this should be conditioned to the overtakings that there really are.

- Aerodynamics must be re-thought. Ground effect should be used, technology has evolved enought to make it safe (active suspensions allowed), and that would help for real overtaking. Wings should be more limited obviously or G-forces would go too far, but that´s the point exactly, keep high downforce with smallest posible wings to aid real overtaking

- Car´s settings at the wheel should be more limited, for example there are three differential adjustments in the wheel right now, if you remove some of them that would make cars a lot more difficult to drive

- Carbon brakes banned. They have no point, they can´t be used on productions cars, their cost is too high... They must use ceramic brakes that last a whole seasson, or at least some GPs. That would limit top speed as they´d need to brake some hundred meters before, and also would increase overtaking ratio by a huge margin. Good both for costs and spectacle

- Engines: remove fuel flow limit, and downsize. With active wings and no fuel flow limit this could be insane. Maybe 1.0 engines (not sure about best engine size) with no big restrictions could be enough to beat top speed records. That would be real pinnacle of motorsports, a category that beats those V10 monsters records with a small V6 1.0 engine.... That´s what F1 should be, a technological challenge.

With this you´d have a way way more efficient category that beats top speed records with really small and efficient engines and also is really spectacular to watch because there are a lot of real overtakings with insane cornering speeds. This way F1 would be interesting for engineers, drivers and spectators again. Lap times records wouldn´t be beated because of the brakes, but we´d enjoy tons more overtakings and a real spectacle in exchange

[emaren]

I think that the issue is that in all 'Formula' racing, eventually the engineers will converge towards optimal designs. I also see that the formula needs to change from time to time to re-spark innovation.

Personally, I dislike the lack of testing, I loathe the aero dependence and the artificial additions seem inane to me.
- Run both sets of crappy tyres
- Use less than 100kg of rocket fuel
- DRS zones
- etc.

DRS, if it is to be allowed, should be permitted at all times, yes, even when racing under caution, lets reduce the drag to save a little fuel if the safety car is out. Lets use the DRS down the straights, all of them....

Fuel - either make everyone run the exact same fuel from the same supplier, or remove the restrictions that try to describe 'pump fuel'. If, say, Ferrari want to start with 300kg of Shell blend 1199229a and run a thirsty engine, then fine. Because it is the weight of the car and driver at the end that is measured. Heck, lets bring back refuelling too - then we can wait for the teams to come up with the optimum strategy for their car/engine/fuel type / fuel load / tyre wear rates.

Tyres - I would welcome the tyre wars back with open arms. lets see Pirelli, Goodyear, Bridgestone, Toyo and Nankang et al all battle it out on the track. Sure you might only be able to win at Spa if you have a certain tyre, but so what ?

Lets get rid of budget caps too. The manufacturers are the ones with the bigger budgets (are McLaren a manufacturer ?), so lets have a race within a race, Manufacturers can race themselves, privateers can race for the Jim Clarke or Damon Hill trophy.

Lets award points for fastest lap, fastest pit stop (to change all four), most daring overtake and most outrageous hand gesture too ?

I'm quite a fan of the LMP 'make it fit inside this box' approach. Lets open up F1 to any engine, any fuel, any design, as long as it fits inside certain dimensions.

Want to run a V10 Diesel hybrid with 18" wheels ? No problem as long as it is no wider than 'xxxxmm' and no longer than yyyymm and no taller than zzzzmm. Oh and it must weigh more than ggg kg at the end of the race complete with driver. Obviously the same restrictions will apply if you want to run a 900cc supercharged I3.....

[Richard]

Currently: Brake force = MGU-K + Brake pads.

The contribution from MGU-K can vary from zero to max depending on the capacity of the storage. The brake by wire system allows for the fluctuating MGU-K so when the driver presses the brake pedal 100% they get 100% braking force at wheel, when they call for 50% they get 50%, etc.

Similarly for acceleration. The ECU manages the inputs based on capacity of the combined systems, this includes MGU-H, MGU-K, ICE and turbo.

[FW17]

And that´s why Verstappen can just hop right in.

Verstappen could be very talented and Marko is out to prove that age has nothing to to do with adaptability to difficult situation. Easy or difficult to drive age has nothing to do with it.

This guy was 16 when debuted and had a much more difficult job, by the time he finished he was the Micheal Schumacher of cricket

[DaveKillens]

I don't see the problem as the cars themselves, but the many systems managed by other than the drivers. Before Alfred Neubauer invented the pit board, the driver had to manage everything, including race strategy. Then with telemetry we saw engineers back at the factory tune engines and other components during the race. The ban on pit-to-car telemetry just transferred this function to driver instructions from the pits.

With very young and inexperienced drivers in Formula One, all they have to do is drive, there is someone on the radio to hold their hands and walk them through any problems. They don't even have to think about strategy, there is someone to tell them when to push and when to conserve.

[Manoah2u]

there is someone on the radio to hold their hands and walk them through any problems. They don't even have to think about strategy, there is someone to tell them when to push and when to conserve.

so would that same idea be maintained when mentioning names like Alonso? Would that very same go for a (former) master of adaptability and changing circumstances, Jenson Button (regardless of resulting in a win or not)?
Would that go for a Kimi that constantly heard someone crying in his ears ("leave me alone i know what i'm doing").

Every single piece of 'downplaying' on somebody that is an easy target like a 16-year old Verstappen is a very low thing to do, seriously. Because in the meantime we suddenly forget the rest of the field, including 30+ aged drivers get the very SAME treatment? So why aren't they 'vandalised' or 'assaulted' over their abilities?

Alonso seemingly homes in a dog of a Ferrari and he's big hero for everyone and can't do anything wrong. Meanwhile, he gets the same intel on his earpiece lap after lap, corner after corner, just like EVERY driver on the grid. "Mommy can you check my wing i can't see it but perhaps it's off help me mommy". Oh wait, yes indeed, they CAN't see the wing indeed. So yeah, what a shame they're phoning the people that need to do the job which were given to them in the first place to do so.

The drivers are out for best results so they can please the sponsors and the shareholders. If constantly hanging on the phone might get you to position 10 instead of 11, or 12 even, then that radio chatter is worth it doubletime.

And all of the sudden F1 is for waeklings because a 17 year old is gonna do the same as well-matured f1 'greats' like Alonso?
Gimme a break.

You can ask yourself this; would you think F1 2014 format is childsplay if Verstappen never entered? Do we conveniently forget all the driver worship on driver 1 or driver 2 how about they are the better driver because they can cope with the difficult cars of 2014 with the torque and the rule changes and the bad engine? How sideways the lotuses go through corners? How difficult it is for a 4-time World Champion to adapt from blown floor cars to non-blown floor cars and fall 'back'?? suddenly forget all of that because conveniently leaving that out makes me able to rant for no reason to F1 because a 17 year old achieves something that 'mere mortals' normally only dream about?

Imagine all the inspiration this fella can bring to young people over the world, if he manages to achieve his goals.

It's very unfair to spit on a driver that has not even entered f1 good and well just because he's 17 years old,
especially a 17 year old that has such an incredible list of results for his short 'experience'. Has anybody even
remotely serious given a thought to check upon his 'achievements' ?

If any, the problem for the drivers today is that they are given rediculous rules and artifical race implementations.

[strad]

Manoah2u, What are you on about? You seem overly concerned with the age thing. Nobody said Alonso or anyone older wasn't receiving help? What jerked your chain to get you so defensive of Verstappen?

[bhall II]

I think discussion about any so-called driver aids misses the mark. Complication in the cockpit doesn't necessarily equal challenge. Take the MP4-17A for example. The car had an active suspension, fully automatic rev-matching during gear shifts, and a fly-by-wire throttle that didn't require the driver to lift except to brake. Yet, Ayrton Senna became so exhausted chasing the all-powerful FW14s around Imola in 1992 that he was unable to claim his place on the podium after a distant third-place finish, because he couldn't get out of the car.

Again, if the idea is to test the limit of human endurance and precision, rather than annoyance, speed is the challenge. And for a myriad regulatory reasons, current F1 machinery doesn't provide that challenge.

[Manoah2u]

it 'jerked' my chain because i think it's genuinly unfair to be so extremely judgemental and negative towards somebody just because of his age. Achievements and results are constantly put aside and the label 'age' is constantly overkilled.
I remember the same thing happening to that other Russian bloke, Sergei Sirotkin.

You can't turn a page on F1T or see either fanboyism 'my driver is better than yours' or total 'haterism' why some driver would not deserve a ride. I wonder sometimes how many actual F1 fans are on this board becuase i see more 'hating' towards any aspect of F1, including the drivers instead of being genuinly happy with the exciting season we've had so far and the excitements coming up.