Idea: ban carbon fiber brake discs?

[ChrisM40]

Fine, even 20 years ago! or 30! Most over taking then was just because of the massive gap in performance between teams, it didnt look any harder or more real.

Surely though keeping the speed down is whats making the cars more controlled. Yes they keep removing downforce, but that simply isnt working at making the cars less controlled because the cars are just too slow and too heavy and they wont drive at 100% for fear of killing the tyres.

Steel brakes seems like another idea to fake excitement and its another nail in the coffin of F1s cutting edge image. What next? Wooden wheels and cart springs?

Maybe im in a minority, but I found the fast cars of the early 2000s way more exciting to watch than the current ones, even with less over taking. Now at best when they are sliding around it looks like slo-mo.

[Just_a_fan]

When talking about overtakings it´s the excitement of on track battles what matters. Today there are more overtakings, ok, but most of them are so artificial due to DRS or different tire strategy there´s no battle at all. DRS has ruined the most exciting part of racing, now drivers don´t need to risk fighting with a rival through the lap, just wait to the straight to use DRS and you´ll get a free risk overtake. It would be absurd otherwise. If you see any overtake at any other point of the track you know driver doing that has fresh tires and he´s passing a car with old tires so he´s so much faster he can pass him at the outside, so no real battle either

Yes more overtakings, but artificial, no battles, no excitement

If you want to force drivers to overtake then you'd need to ban pit stops. Before DRS, drivers would just wait for the pit stops and "pass in the pits" by trying to do a better in and out lap than the guys around him. We'd get 20-30 laps of "excitement" as drivers followed each other hoping that the guy in front would make a mistake. The "Trulli train" was a common sight. A guy in clear air would try to string together 5 decent laps and hope to jump the opposition in the pits. Little, if any, on track overtaking occurred and there was little "racing" except in the form of lap time trading. It wasn't that interesting, to be honest.

So no pit stops. Of course, that would mean no refuelling (that's ok because that's as we have today and refuelling was an attempt to add "spice" to the show anyway) and it would mean tyres able to last the full race. That's going to be trickier but it can be done if required. Whether the "racing" would be any good is debatable.

[tuj]

active aero. Would solve a lot of the dirty air problems. But driver controlled only!

[xxChrisxx]

Has anyone actually considered that the cars aren't the problem. It's the whole attitude of everyone, even the fans.

With points and bans, and us lot moaning about people being dangerous when a half chance goes pear shaped, it's no wonder that people aren't willing to be cavalier. Alesi's propensity to just stick it up the inside would have had his license stripped within the first 5 minutes in a modern race. But he was great to watch.


People also moan about a car/team being dominant. The thing I hated about Red Bulls dominance is that you know they were sandbagging. Each race was carefully managed to win by 0.001s. Excellent race management, but really --- annoying and dull. I'd take a car storming off to lap the field any day. You can at least marvel in absolute superiority.

[wesley123]

Has anyone actually considered that the cars aren't the problem. It's the whole attitude of everyone, even the fans.

With points and bans, and us lot moaning about people being dangerous when a half chance goes pear shaped, it's no wonder that people aren't willing to be cavalier. Alesi's propensity to just stick it up the inside would have had his license stripped within the first 5 minutes in a modern race. But he was great to watch.

This. This. This. This.

THIS

THIS

No offense to the TS, but this is what, "how to fix F1" topic 5 billion?

[J.A.W.]

Yeah, & if you compare the 'slicing & dicing' that went on over positions in last weekend's French Moto GP.

A bunch of those riders would've been on the bloody carpet - for doing it in F1 - quick smart..

If Moto GP can tax their C/C brake set-ups, no way can porky F1 cars do without..

[Tim.Wright]

If Moto GP can tax their C/C brake set-ups, no way can porky F1 cars do without..

Oh goodie, another JAW sponsored bikes are better than cars rant. There really aren't enough of these on F1T...

As it has been pointed out - the difference between carbon and steel brake systems is nothing to do with stopping power or even thermal management - its due to weight.

Both solutions can be designed to give the same braking performance which in the end is actually limited by the FIA imposed master cylinder and piston sizes and the tyres NOT the brakes themselves.

[ChrisM40]

Has anyone actually considered that the cars aren't the problem. It's the whole attitude of everyone, even the fans.

With points and bans, and us lot moaning about people being dangerous when a half chance goes pear shaped, it's no wonder that people aren't willing to be cavalier. Alesi's propensity to just stick it up the inside would have had his license stripped within the first 5 minutes in a modern race. But he was great to watch.


People also moan about a car/team being dominant. The thing I hated about Red Bulls dominance is that you know they were sandbagging. Each race was carefully managed to win by 0.001s. Excellent race management, but really --- annoying and dull. I'd take a car storming off to lap the field any day. You can at least marvel in absolute superiority.

I agree that the rules and therefore attitude of the drivers and teams are a big problem as well, but the cars are still too slow. F1 has become sanitised and in itself that can be dangerous because people get complacent.

[Andres125sx]

Fine, even 20 years ago! or 30! Most over taking then was just because of the massive gap in performance between teams, it didnt look any harder or more real.

Have to disagree with this

Surely though keeping the speed down is whats making the cars more controlled. Yes they keep removing downforce, but that simply isnt working at making the cars less controlled because the cars are just too slow and too heavy and they wont drive at 100% for fear of killing the tyres.

I didn´t say removing downforce. Problem is not downforce, but turbulence generated by current aero regs. Instead of banning all sort of aero technologies they could try enforcing aero rules that do not create so much turbulence. That´s the way to go IMO

[Andres125sx]

When talking about overtakings it´s the excitement of on track battles what matters. Today there are more overtakings, ok, but most of them are so artificial due to DRS or different tire strategy there´s no battle at all. DRS has ruined the most exciting part of racing, now drivers don´t need to risk fighting with a rival through the lap, just wait to the straight to use DRS and you´ll get a free risk overtake. It would be absurd otherwise. If you see any overtake at any other point of the track you know driver doing that has fresh tires and he´s passing a car with old tires so he´s so much faster he can pass him at the outside, so no real battle either

Yes more overtakings, but artificial, no battles, no excitement

If you want to force drivers to overtake then you'd need to ban pit stops. Before DRS, drivers would just wait for the pit stops and "pass in the pits" by trying to do a better in and out lap than the guys around him. We'd get 20-30 laps of "excitement" as drivers followed each other hoping that the guy in front would make a mistake. The "Trulli train" was a common sight. A guy in clear air would try to string together 5 decent laps and hope to jump the opposition in the pits. Little, if any, on track overtaking occurred and there was little "racing" except in the form of lap time trading. It wasn't that interesting, to be honest.

So no pit stops. Of course, that would mean no refuelling (that's ok because that's as we have today and refuelling was an attempt to add "spice" to the show anyway) and it would mean tyres able to last the full race. That's going to be trickier but it can be done if required. Whether the "racing" would be any good is debatable.

Agree, that´s another artificial rule to cover up aero problem, but to ban pitstops you firstly need to do something to improve overtaking

[ChrisM40]

Fine, even 20 years ago! or 30! Most over taking then was just because of the massive gap in performance between teams, it didnt look any harder or more real.

Have to disagree with this

Surely though keeping the speed down is whats making the cars more controlled. Yes they keep removing downforce, but that simply isnt working at making the cars less controlled because the cars are just too slow and too heavy and they wont drive at 100% for fear of killing the tyres.

I didn´t say removing downforce. Problem is not downforce, but turbulence generated by current aero regs. Instead of banning all sort of aero technologies they could try enforcing aero rules that do not create so much turbulence. That´s the way to go IMO

On the first point i disagree, having seen plenty of older GPs on Sky F1 recently there was no more over taking than now and much of that was because the pit stops were 20+ seconds pre-mid 80s and it put them back into the pack where cars were 5 or more seconds a lap slower. Qualifying engines also seemed to encourage overtaking, meaning that slower race cars were higher up the grid because they had a good qualifying engine, come race day, they fell back.

On the downforce issue I agree completely. My question is whether reducing downforce is whats caused it, forcing an aero design thats more sensitive. If so, give the downforce back and improve safety at the track level.

[Just_a_fan]

Instead of banning all sort of aero technologies they could try enforcing aero rules that do not create so much turbulence. That´s the way to go IMO

If the teams knew how to create turbulence free down force they'd do it! Turbulence means drag and drag is bad.

[CBeck113]

The idea of returning to steel brakes has an additional point which I have made previously: you can push steel brakes for a single attack to outbrake an opponent, and they will recover after a few corners of normal braking, but the driver is "endangered" in this period for a counterattack. I think this should have been the goal for the Pirellis, but rubber doesn't tolerate excessive heat very nicely, and steel does.

Safe? Sorry, if it was a question of minimizing braking distances then the tires would be designed to support this goal, so no - this would not influence the safety of the cars worse than the crap Pirelli is voluntarily forced to supply now. Sticky tires and steel brakes, then they wouldn't have to decelerate as much in the corners.

The problem with this proposal is simple: we know, because of the carbon brakes from the past years, that this system would be tampered into playing a role, since it could obviously be designed to be better - but then again, steel brakes would be much more road car relevant.

[Just_a_fan]

- but then again, steel brakes would be much more road car relevant.

1. "Road relevant" is irrelevant.
2. Performance road cars use non-steel brakes these days anyway.

[Andres125sx]

a couple of years ago people downtalked and laughed upon HRT/Hispania out in shame and hate for their 'unprofessionalism' running steel brakes instead of carbon brakes

HRT run steel brakes?