What About Ditching Pit To Car Radio????

[alc59]

All-out ban, bring back pit-boards like in MotoGP etc.

Agree - radio only for emergency & race control messages that can't wait. Simple pit boards. Keeping the drivers guessing about their rivals' strategy and other issues means more uncertainty, more surprises for them and hence more tension and more fun for us the spectators.

[Cold Fussion]

Why is it that people who watch F1 are so anti technology?

[Nickel]

Why is it that people who watch F1 are so anti technology?

This may be semantics, but I'm not anti technology. I'm very much pro technology. I just want the driver to be the only one using it.

If the driver is cognisant of all engine maps at his disposal, is aware of fuel consumption, or even has a display to tell him tire temps, great.

I am vehemently against a large group of people watching computers, dictating the driver's every move. I want to see drivers make mistakes, make bold calls, use their brains and use their hearts.

I want radio, but only so the driver can notify the team of his tire of choice, and the lap he wishes to fit it. Only a pit board can be used to communicate the other way, from pit to driver.

Let the driver learn the tools at his disposal. If one driver can better know how best to adjust his diff, his engine maps, his energy recovery and deployment, so be it. The cream shall rise to the top.

[Cold Fussion]

Why is it that people who watch F1 are so anti technology?

This may be semantics, but I'm not anti technology. I'm very much pro technology. I just want the driver to be the only one using it.

If the driver is cognisant of all engine maps at his disposal, is aware of fuel consumption, or even has a display to tell him tire temps, great.

I am vehemently against a large group of people watching computers, dictating the driver's every move. I want to see drivers make mistakes, make bold calls, use their brains and use their hearts.

I want radio, but only so the driver can notify the team of his tire of choice, and the lap he wishes to fit it. Only a pit board can be used to communicate the other way, from pit to driver.

Let the driver learn the tools at his disposal. If one driver can better know how best to adjust his diff, his engine maps, his energy recovery and deployment, so be it. The cream shall rise to the top.

But why is this ridiculous notion that the driver must be the centre piece of everything only present in Formula 1? Every other motorsport has an array of people monitoring the car and calling strategy and everyone accepts that this is the way it has to be, and then we get to Formula 1 and drivers are suddenly mythologised? Last year we had Jamie Wincup ignoring team calls to save fuel in the final laps at Bathurst because the team knew he was going to run out fuel and low and behold on the final lap he ran out of fuel and lost many positions needlessly, and he was panned for being a complete numpty. If this had happened in Formula 1, the public would be kissing his feat for defying all logic and willing more petrol into the tank, even though it failed.

[Just_a_fan]

F1 is a team undertaking. It is not just 20 blokes in cars, it is 10 teams and their drivers. The drivers drive for the team, the team does not exist for the driver.

The cars are so complicated these days that expecting the driver to monitor everything and drive and call strategy is plain stupid. How can the driver know where everyone is on track and whether his stop will put him in traffic?

[Cold Fussion]

The irony of all this nonsense that the driver must do everything is that if they were to be doing everything, they would be spending far less mental capacity to drive the car and thus the best drivers under this meta would be a test driver that could also manage strategy; just being the fastest driver would not be enough and if all you had was raw speed then you wouldn't even be considered.

[Roman]

I think the way to do it is not necessarily ditching all pit to car radio, it is eliminating data gathering during the weekend by the teams. If on Saturday the teams know exactly how long each tire is going to last, which strategy is the fastest, when to stop etc the races become predictable. And the more predictable they get the more boring they become. Look at Austin this year, noone knew how long the dry tires would last, so everyone was on different tactics. Which lead to a bunch of overtaking and lots of excitement.

This would be best achieved if you just ditch FP1 and FP 2 on Friday and start your race weekend on Saturday only. 30 - 45 min practice and then it goes into Q. But of course I know that is not realistic, especially the tracks would loose even more money.

So I would propose: No more telemetry for the team during the race any more, except telemetry concerning security warnings (e.g. enginge temperature too high, gearbox about to fail, damaged wings etc) so the team can tell the driver to retire the car in those circumstances. The rest (brake temperaturs, tire temperature, fuel consumption etc) should be left to the driver. The team can call him in to pit of course and can (and should) tell him what the other drivers do but that is it more or less. Also if the team looses its telemetry during the race we do not have to argue all the time if some radio was driver coaching or not.

All data can of course still be gathered, but it can only be taken by the team after the race, not during.

[pob]

You could ditch Friday but have an extra test day on Monday instead, then the tracks won't lose out as much, you'd get less predictable races and more testing opportunities for young drivers.

[hollus]

Don't bring common sense to the table, please!