Coming up today we have the first guest article by regular commenter Ned Flanders – make sure you don’t miss it. Here’s today’s round-up:
Links
Video: BBC F1 ignore Toro Rosso (The Bull Run)
OK, we all know where TommyB’s allegiances lie, but he might just have a point about the BBC overlooking Toro Rosso and some of the other midfield teams. And he’s done a nice job with the video:
Malaysian GP development round up (Racecar Engineering)
“Other teams are announcing their [F-duct] systems will soon be ready, with Sauber already completing Friday tests of their system. Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and Force India have stated theirs will be ready to test in the next few races. Red Bull doing so despite Adrian Newey’s suggestion that the system might pose a safety issue. Telling Gazzeta de la Sport; ‘to force a driver to make a sudden movement to change normal load conditions has to do with safety’. Only Renault has put forward that it will not develop such a system.” So presumably the vent on Kubica’s car in practice at Sepang really was for driver cooling.
Comment of the day
Great to see this comment from K (who I think had another Comment of the Day fairly recently). It touches on a topic I’m going to be writing about in the near future – what the purpose of F1 should be:
I would have two main objectives for the sport.
One: F1 must be the world leader in development of clean and sustainable technology.
Two: F1 must be indisputably the fastest most competitive form of motorsport.
Objective one: With F1’s hyper rate of development it could easily become the world leader of any technology it adopts. This would include 100% recyclable materials, clean production processes, clean emissions, clean infrastructure, clean by-products.
Objective two: The only barrier to this is safety. Safety must be taken to a much more extreme level and would require radical innovation in this area. It would also require the sport to be designed around safety to a greater extent.
K
Happy birthday!
No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.
On this day in F1
Perennial F1 back-markers Minardi started their first race on this day in 1985. A single yellow-and-black car was entered for Pierluigi Martini in the Brazilian Grand Prix 25 years ago.
And if you think HRT are slow today, check this out: Martini qualified last with a lap time of 1’44.046 – 16.2 seconds slower than pole sitter Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari was around the Jacarepagua circuit.
It took until the ninth round of the season for Martini to register the team’s first finish, 11th and five laps down at the Hockenheimring. Interestingly, he started that race from 27th on the grid, in the days before grid sizes were capped at 26.
Of course the seventh of April is usually remembered by F1 fans for being the day Jim Clark was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim in 1968.
Icthyes
7th April 2010, 0:30
Fair point but the video seems to imply that (say) Schumacher’s retirement wasn’t a point of interest. Yes the BBC neglected a lot of other interesting stuff, but all of what they did show was relevant. They have a limited time to show the race highlights, of course they’re going to focus on the sharp end of the field. The forum was heavy on some teams, but then again it was Lotus’ home race.
TommyB
7th April 2010, 9:36
Yeh I didn’t mean to say they weren’t relevant, someone made the point on my site that casual fans that moan about F1’s lack of action would surely wanted to see some passing like that instead of clips of Hamilton exiting the pits and Webber circling the track.
The Forum is my main focus though and I don’t get why they spoke about Mercedes for 30 minutes when there wasn’t a single highlight from them apart from Schumacher retirement.
K
7th April 2010, 0:54
Damn I’m on an roll (preferably an Arctic one!).
William McDonough has profound and inspiring things not only to say about clean and sustainable design but is actually putting his ideals into large scale practice. Might be a point of interest if you haven’t encountered his ideas before:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html
mvi
7th April 2010, 8:53
Thanks so much for the link. Most inspiring!
Mike
7th April 2010, 10:59
Quite interesting that one ^^ cheers
K
7th April 2010, 23:38
This one is also good:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4364780292633368976&ei=wAi9S4a7A5nD-QbizK29Ag&q=Dr.+Albert+A.+Bartlett+Arithmetic+Population+and+Energy&hl=en&dur=3&client=firefox-a#
Mike
8th April 2010, 3:36
As great as it was, That reminded me to much of general mathematics a few years ago….
K
8th April 2010, 8:27
It’s very simple math ;) lol
Scribe
7th April 2010, 14:57
I think I might be able to claim an assist on that one mate, great comment though. People should read that whole convo, pretty good all round debate.
Lengthy posts though :)
Can’t wait till we get the forum back, best F1 discussion on the net.
K
7th April 2010, 22:51
Definitely a big assist on that one ;)
The forums are sorely missed.
sato113
7th April 2010, 0:58
i have to disagree with K on point 1. F1 shouldn’t have to be a greener sport. motorsport contributes hardly anything bad to the atmosphere compared with other pollution. f1 should be about big, mean, powerful engines and super scientific methods of acheiving speed.
and let’s get rid of those stupid ‘make cars green’ stripes on the tyres!
F1 should be about the pinnacle of technology, not green technology!
K
7th April 2010, 1:17
Clean sustainable technology is one of the pinnacles.
Internal combustion engines are outdated and backwards.
I agree the concept behind the green stripes is stupid.
IDR
7th April 2010, 10:17
“Internal combustion engines are outdated and backwards”
And what’s your proposal? Electricity? Hydrogen?
First of all, F1 fuels are based on Bio Ethanol that are near to 23 times less contaminant than fossil fuels in terms of CO2 emissions.
So… let’s be happy, F1 is green!
Well, not quite sure, when looking at how this Bio Ethanol has been produced. You should look at the whole energy chain to measure what is green and what’s not, and certainly this world is not green.
Primary Energy world consumption estimated by the US Energy Information Administration is like follows:
Fossil (Oil, Gas, Coil) 13,6 TW
Nuclear………………. 0,9 TW
Hydroelectric ……… 1,0 TW
Alternative
(Geothermal, Wind,
Solar, Wood) ………. 0,2 TW
More than 92% of the energy we produce, come from contaminant primary energy resources. At the end, Electricity, Bio Fuels, Hydrogen, are produced using those resources.
“Green or Clean engines” sounds to me as one of the most cynical things of developed countries: We are consuming contaminant energy, but we want our air clean”
California is pushing hard 0% emissions policy, but USA is the 2nd country in energy consumption rate per capita (more than double of UK level) and per $ of GDP. Americans are wasting energy without any restriction so they are polluting more than any other developed country.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Energy_consumption_versus_GDP.png
Do you want F1 become clean?
Just focus on consumption, the best way to become green is reduce significantly the energy consumption, and more precisely, to optimize energy consumption per performance unit (speed and acceleration for the case of F1).
Technology is working hard to reduce consumption. We have a good example in portable devices. Now we can watch TommyB video using 1.000 times less energy than 15 years ago.
Do you really want to be green?
Well start by your own. Switch off lights and heat of your house and don’t use a car for buying the newspaper. Reduce the quantity of food (and fat) you eat each day to the level you really need, the world will be grateful and your wife (girlfriend) also! :-)
Icthyes
7th April 2010, 13:35
None of that will be any good.
The sad truth is that there are just too many people on this planet. Even if we all reduced our standards of living to levels of barely surviving, we’d still see pollution increase due to the sheer amount of people consuming resources.
Yes, hydrogen requires electric to be made into fuel, and electricity mostly comes from burning fossil fuels. But why don’t we try and get as much electricity from low-polluting means as possible? Solar, wind, tide, etc. Secondly, even though the stuff comes from fossil fuels, the net amount of pollution is still far less than sticking petrol in your car.
K
7th April 2010, 23:35
Gerbils? I don’t know really, it probably has to be some kind of electric motor I guess, I don’t know enough about fuel cells but that’s where innovative creative designers come in.
I agree but we have to work collectively also.
We know fossil fuels are running out, maybe if you want coal powered F1 cars it’s gonna be good but gas and oil are in decline. It’s less a question of if and more a question of when.
We can’t bring oil consumption down to a sustainable level. We can’t optimize consumption. Bioethanol is not a genuine solution. We are over populating the planet. The question is do we want to try and do something about the problem or are we happy for the problem to do something about us?
Hallard
7th April 2010, 15:14
Quote from K:
“Internal combustion engines are outdated and backwards.”
Are you sure you’re an F1 Fan? ;)
K
7th April 2010, 22:38
Bizarrely yes ;)
Icthyes
7th April 2010, 1:20
Personally, I believe F1 should be at the front of all things green so the technology can be developed for mass use. The hydrogen fuel cell is the prime example of this: an idea that just needs the money up front.
I don’t believe technology can save the planet, but F1 should play a leading role in the attempt. What needs to be done is for F1 to go green without losing quality. Engines that go just as fats on hydrogen as petrol, a KERS that gives out more than it takes away by virtue of it just sitting there. Limiting the amount of fuel available to a car, one of the proposed options for the future, is not the way to go.
K
7th April 2010, 1:20
With it’s almost unparalleled rates of development F1 could be perfect test bed for clean and sustainable technologies and be the perfect catalyst for other greater pollutants to revise their practices.
sato113
7th April 2010, 2:55
i agree that F1 is the perfect test bed as you say, but i just don’t want to lose the pure, unparalleled speed and the roar of the v8 engine… B)
Hor
7th April 2010, 4:38
We have already lost the v12, v10… Why shouldn’t we lose the V8 as well? ;)
Tim
7th April 2010, 9:01
Not to mention turbocharged V6s, supercharged straight 8s, V16s, straight 6s, straight 4s, flat 4s, flat 8s, flat 12s, plus the odd H16 and W12…
Mike
7th April 2010, 11:02
I’d take the W12 from that list, not quite sure f we are sad to lose that one….
Life used that didn’t they? anyone else?
Scribe
7th April 2010, 15:12
Imagine if they used Hyrdrogen Fuel Cell Engines. Especially if manufacutors came back to the sport, although I’m not saying thats a good thing. In the F1 enviroment these engines would be developed at a magnificent rate. Soon they’d be nearing the power gained from petrol engines. The fuel would be lighter an probably not require refueling. But most of all if F1 had these engines the development work would go straight into the manufacturing industry. This would translate into worldwide benefits, an could change the nature of the motorcar. From one of the worst emmiters on the planet to one of the least, save massive amounts of oil for plastics instead of burning it, an translate into hundreds of other technologies again. Something to replace internal combustion, at last.
An yes initially the way we produce Hydrogen isn’t completly carbon nuetral but with current technology you could make it so, easily. So, it isn’t currently green is a rather weak argument.
Also, the sound of screeching v8’s is great but sadly, the planets a little bit more important.
Skett
7th April 2010, 20:34
The problem with using Hydrogen is actually that they would need significantly more to complete a race distance than with the equivalent petrol based fuels. The cars would end up quite a lot bigger
TommyB
7th April 2010, 1:21
Thanks for using my link :)
I didn’t make the video to say “talk about Toro Rosso all the time” mainly because they hardly ever do anything but they both drove a superb race a long with Kubica, Sutil and Hulkenberg.
Despite this they were cut out of the highlights completely, surely casual fans that moan at F1s lack of action would rather see some ontrack battling regardless of who it is, instead of just Buttons pit stop or a Red Bull cricling the track?
Note also how they cut out Petrovs move on Hamilton but show Hamiltons on him, minus the weaving too.
I think even so they could make some time to chat about them all in an hour show, why talk about Mercedes for 30 minutes when they didn’t really do much in that race? Argueably Ferrari, McLaren and Toro Rosso provided us the enertainment in that race, a view shared by Brundle.
Hopefull they’ll take note and maybe allow more time for midfield teams, or maybe give me a job as video editor :P
Williams have a huge UK fan base and they didn’t get a mention either.
K
7th April 2010, 1:26
You’re right, on the one hand the BBC perpetuate the idea that F1 is lacking in action and with the other they ignore some of the best action in the race. Focusing attention on the top teams also hinders viewers enjoyment of the lesser teams by over valuing the top and undervaluing those behind. Lesser teams would stand a better chance of gaining popularity if they received the coverage they deserve.
Joey-Poey
7th April 2010, 3:01
I’ll fight ya for that editor job!
*puts up his dukes* ;P
Hairs
7th April 2010, 8:16
I can understand your point but the BBC have to balance things between what’s racing highlights and what’s genuinely important moments. Schumacher retiring, Button coming in on lap 9, Alonso’s engine going etc aren’t exciting to watch but they’re significant events in terms of how the race unfolds. Equally, while they may have been talking about Mercedes for a long time, they also mentioned Jaime’s keeping Schumacher behind in Aus. I think last week they had intended to do the forum from the Virgin garage, but ended up getting (correctly) caught up in the Button win with McLaren.
If nothing else, I think the BBC’s producers know that they’d get a much bigger slating if they devoted significant time to the ultimately unimportant back of the track battles and dropped something like Schu retiring from the race. Harsh but there it is.
Xanathos
7th April 2010, 9:37
Your video is great, but you should be aware that at least there was some hope that the BBC would talk about Toro Rosso. With other broadcasters there is not even the slightest hope that they would ever talk about a midfield team post-race. In Germany,RTL usually show three or four “highlights” from the race before going to repetitive and useless features on Vettel and Schumacher. The best we can hope for is a short interview compiliation with the other german drivers.
Scribe
7th April 2010, 15:16
Great video TommyB. Bahrain is all I can add. Overtaking rate way above most of last years races an what did we see of that?
Incidentally, I could I ask what the music at the beggining is? It has immediatley got into my head.
TommyB
7th April 2010, 20:11
It’s from the PC game Sims 1 it’s called track 1 in the buying menu.
Scribe
7th April 2010, 22:15
Thought so! Ha, nostalgia’d, makes me feel like buying a silver firge an top of the range cooker.
wasiF1
7th April 2010, 2:06
I agree, F1 needs to be safe.
Anon
7th April 2010, 2:14
Great vid TommyB! You do have a point! :-)
Macca
7th April 2010, 6:05
@TommyB – Were did you get the video of the BBC Red Button Forum. Down in Australia we don’t get to see that and if there is a link to it, it would be great to come home from work and be able to watch it on Monday night or somthing like that.
If you recorded it yourself it would be really appreciated if you did it every race and post it so people like me outside of the UK are able to watch it. I understand that you can find live streams but with my connection they aren’t the best thing to watch and sometimes you can’t find a BBC stream at all (Like last race)
By the way, great video, you make a really good point.
TommyB
7th April 2010, 10:49
I found a torrent of the forum online.
GeeMac
7th April 2010, 8:39
“And if you think HRT are slow today, check this out: Martini qualified last with a lap time of 1′44.046 – 16.2 seconds slower than pole sitter Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari was around the Jacarepagua circuit.”
This is what I have been harping on about for ages. Over the nearly 20 years I have been watching F1 many teams have come and gone. When I first started watching the sport the likes of EuroBrun, Fondmetal and Scuderia Italia where trundling round the track at frighteningly low speeds. No one claimed that this was bad for the sport and no one suggested they posed a safety risk. I see no problem with the likes of HRT plodding round at the back of the modern F1 field 5 seconds a lap off the pace because they aren’t actually all that far off the pace when you compare them to the backmarkers of yesteryear (like of Fondmetal, Forti and Pacific). The phenomenon we saw frequently last year of the whole field being covered by a mere 1.5 seconds in Free Practice is just not normal for F1. It is a joke if you ask me.
There always has been, and there will always have to be, a place for the little guy in F1. The advent of modern, ultra competitive, ultra professional F1 has made it impossible for small teams to exist. Teams who just want the honour of competing at the highest level, teams of racers who don’t have 50 strong PR and Marketing teams and massive motorhomes and a fleet of attractive grid girls. The fact that their aren’t more little teams is incredibly sad and it just isn’t right.
Gilvan
7th April 2010, 8:42
F1 technological development is geared towards performance, so if we want F1 to be ‘green’, it should somehow link the green idea with performance advantage.
Just throwing it out there guys, but one way of doing it would be phasing out internal combustion engines, or ban them. Engine manufacturers would have to look at alternatives. Honda has already developed a very efficient and clean engine that runs on Hydrogen cells. Once manufacturers have found an alternative, the FIA should give them free reign on development in that area.
Imagine the possibilities!
Skett
7th April 2010, 20:40
Part of my issue is that hydrogen is inherently very unstable and no matter how reinforced those fuel tanks are I wouldn’t want to have a crash in something carrying that stuff!
K
7th April 2010, 23:47
Good points from both.
Performance related incentives are probably the best way of encouraging change and development in new areas. I think a big failure of the KERS rules was to limit it so drastically so in the end the was no advantage.
Bleu
7th April 2010, 8:52
I think the basic rule was 26 starters but with Renault bringing extra car at German GP it was probably felt unfair if someone would not have qualified because of that.
Tim
7th April 2010, 9:17
Renault fielded a third car at the German GP in order to test the first ever on board camera. The driver, Francois Hesnault, was ineligible for points and in any case retired after 8 laps.
Chris P
7th April 2010, 8:52
Everyone should send Jake Humphrey a link to that video using twitter. I totally agree that we need to see more of the midfield, that is where the action has been for quite some seasons! We only ever see replays of passes, hardly ever live.
Ponzonha
7th April 2010, 9:13
Tommy B is a more talented video editor than the professionals that I am used to in Spain. He should consider a career in TV.
Congratulations.
TommyB
7th April 2010, 9:31
Thanks very much and actually that is exactly what I’m planning on doing after university :P
slr
7th April 2010, 11:40
Good choice of music there. Especially with “Faint” by Linkin Park.
K
7th April 2010, 23:48
Linkin Park = Epic fail :P
PeterG
7th April 2010, 10:26
It is interesting to make F1 the play ground for new technology. In the past we have seen beautiful thing s of teams using different technology. But nornally we all start complaining as soon as one team found something that realy works and it will be banned immediately after it’s succes or even before that.
We had the superfast ground effect cars of Lotus, the only answer from Brabham to put in the vacuum cleaner beat Lotus and was banned immediately.
But we should limit the amount of fuel. It is still unbelieveable that we use 160kg of fule to drive 300km.
This is unacceptable. So the fuel or powercell should be limited to 100kg. We don’t care if its electrical, diesel, hydrogen, water or hot air.
But we should stop changing the rules all the time.
Make the best inventor win.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
7th April 2010, 10:29
Seeing as we’re marking 25 years since Minardi’s debut here’s an earlier article on their best drivers including Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber:
Ten best… Minardi heroes
carldec
7th April 2010, 10:30
wow… You all dont know how good you’ve got it. I wish we had that kind of post race coverage here in the states. I would love to watch Coltard and Jordan talking about the race for an hour.
On SpeedTV they end the coverage right after the driver interviews. Then F1 might get 5 minutes coverage on “the speed report” while Nascrap gets the lions share. Often times the pick up truck races get more minutes. I used to try to watch Dave Despain’s call in talk show on Sunday nights but he hates F1 and all his callers sound like they are from the movie Deliverance.
SpeedTV has been doing a great show called “F1 Debrief” that gives an hour covering the previous F1 race. The problem is the morons that run that network schedule it at midnight on Saturdays during the next race weekend. Yeah, thats a great way to build a fan base.
Sigh… I wish I could find a place to downloads of the BBC’s post race coverage.
macahan
7th April 2010, 15:15
I agree. It would be nice to have F1 Debrief first at a better show time if not at least 10 or 11 instead of midnight and not wait until next race weekend especially when there is 2-3 weeks between races. Personally I would like to see it on Sunday evening of the race.
They do post some debrief style material on their website after quali and race that is pretty good but unfortunately they sometimes talk about track action but are not allowed to show that track action :(
But I have to say SpeedTV commentators does a pretty good job on being balanced for most part. Just hate their timing on things like F1 Debrief and the stupid summer Fox showing of the races. Would be nice with real live Quali coverage. I don’t mind if they start Quali coverage 5min late but catch up in breaks so Q2 and Q3 are truly live.
Icthyes
7th April 2010, 19:17
In Canada, which actually has a race, everything stops after the podium ceremony. I’ve never managed to catch the 5 minutes before the start of the race, but I doubt they even have a pre-show of some Canadian reporter summing things up. The only thing going for it is that they use BBC commentary and have a split screen for commercials, so you can still see the action.
cacarella
7th April 2010, 20:39
Yes, I remember the good old days when I could watch the race on Speed TV here in Canada and get the extra half hour of peter windsor on the grid talking to drivers and team people. Even the press conference was a bonus at the end. Now we get the BBC fed to us from our Canadian provider and they start just before the formation lap and end it right after the podium celebration.
I can actually record a race at 2am local time, wake up the next morning, watch an hour of sports news without any fear of the results of the race being revealed to me.
There’s no coverage of F1 in North America
K
7th April 2010, 23:53
You guys should look into using a proxy to watch it on the BBC website or something.
ciaran
7th April 2010, 10:40
Keith,The 1985 German Grand Prix was held at the Nurburgring not at Hockenheim.
Praveen Titus
7th April 2010, 11:29
So I guess Star Sports coverage isn’t that bad. At least they’ve got Gary Anderson as co-commentator!
I also agree with K’s point about radical safety measures. In this respect I think open cockpits are no longer safe enough. Some sort of technology needs to thought of where fans can see the driver’s head in action, while simultaneously ensuring protection from flying debris for the driver.
PJA
7th April 2010, 12:29
It would be good if F1 was able to use its rate of development to come up with clean and sustainable technologies, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.
For it to take place you would need to free up the regulations a lot and only have restrictions on areas such as total energy available.
If you force teams down one route of development, say hydrogen fuel cells, then you stop them coming up with other ideas no one has thought of which could turn out to be the best way forward.
It probably wouldn’t be as successful if there were any limits on budget either, which doesn’t fit with the current attitude in F1.
If you really wanted F1 to be at the forefront of road relevant technologies then taking the idea to the extreme would mean F1 cars becoming a lot more like road cars, but for me it wouldn’t really be F1 then and there are plenty of other motorsport series closer to road cars anyway.
Another main problem would be maintaining the quality of racing and competition overall.
One of the reasons KERS was not a success last year were the restrictions put on the system from the start. But without those sort of restrictions in general, there is the strong possibility of one team achieving a significant advantage and so dominating the championship.
We have seen a few cases where the reason for banning something in F1 seemed to have more to do with stopping one team from having a competitive advantage.
Also a new technology may be great for road cars but if it was in F1 it would detract from the racing overall, systems such as anti-lock braking and traction control.
F1silverarrows
7th April 2010, 12:48
When you do really see and think about the coverage BBC give it’s true that the teams of Torro Rosso, Renault, Force India, Williams have all just vanished from their line of sight.
Maybe it’s because the championship has been it’s most competitive since……well ever tbh, but a very good video to show “the BBC crew” need to perform better to include the other teams.
1 hour could give 6 teams 10 minutes of coverage each which is plenty, “the team who won”, “the team who came 2nd”, “2 mid runner teams” and “2 back runner teams” and rotate for next race.
maybe f1 fans should send a few twitter’s to jake and say we want more “overral” coverage then just the top 4 and “Lotus” (if you can really call them that) with Mike Gascoyne.
It’s great that the BBC crew are enjoying themselves but tbh we can laugh at EJ pre-race not after when all the important information is being given out to the viewers.
TommyB
7th April 2010, 14:43
Good idea but in my opinion they can talk about the top 4 teams for a long time as of course they are the most important but still not being able to fit 2 minutes into a 1 hour show to talk about to rising stars scoring first f1 points (Alguersuari and Hulkenberg) is a real shame. I know STR aren’t a UK team so they probably don’t care but Williams are and they get ignored to. It seems to be Lotus are the bigged up UK team this year despite them being Malaysian.
F1silverarrows
7th April 2010, 16:07
Maybe the BBC should try to extend it by another 30 minutes just to talk about the rookies and the newer teams progress in the sport. you can talk about a football match in 1 hour but not a formula 1 race, with so much information to talk about.
Force India have improved over the years and they still get overlooked weirdly because in another 2-3 years they could be the new Red Bull racing team. I used to laugh at Force India and Torro Rosso in the past, now I’m wondering will any 1 team ever “dominate” the sport ever again in the future with developing teams like that around.
With jaime, it’s like he has become a racer overnight, I disliked how poorly he drove in 09 but after the schumacher tussle he seemed to just evolve. If that’s a “1 step forward” for jaime what will he be like next year, and the next year, and then the next year.
We might see another Alonso on the block if he develops that quickly and, he would still be only around 22-23……
BBC need to really look alot more at these future champions in the making, or risk saying to ourselves “where the hell did that come from?”, when they finally storm on center stage.
Skett
7th April 2010, 20:52
The problem is that the tv pictures during the race aren’t actually chosen by the bbc. Its actually an official F1 production and editing company that do the pictures for the races themselves (usually – countries hosting the race are responsible for the tv coverage but apparently using the official f1 thing is much cheaper than doing it themselves. I believe Brazil is the only race that still does their own). Thats why the races no longer just seem to follow the driver or team at their home race
bob
7th April 2010, 13:07
RIP Clarck, who has made all his wins using only one team
JSC
7th April 2010, 13:25
This discussion about teams developing revolutionary technology to make F1 green raises for me an interestion question – namely, to what extent would established car brands like Mercedes and Ferrari and others risk their credibility by testing new, unreliable, unproven and possibly unworkable technology in the glare of the F1 arena? I’m thinking in particular back to the late 1970s when Renault developed the turbo. In the beginning, the engine was hopelessly unreliable and the Renault team became something of a paddock joke, with the car earning the derisiory nickname of The Yellow Teapot for its tendency to billow smoke mid-way through a race as the turbo expired. Yet Renault stuck it out and made the technology work, gained a competitive edge, and forced their rivals to follow suit.
But this make me wonder – would teams nowadays be happy to go through such pain in order to make an innovation work? How long would it be before they worry that their ‘brand’ is being adversely affected, and decide that it’s not worth the hassle of having their cars come smoking to an embarrassing halt yet again on TV before the world’s glare? No doubt at the first sight of any setbacks the reactionaries like Eddie Jordan would be shaking their heads and urging them to revert back to the conventional systems. How much carping from the critics, not to mention the myriad blogs and forums all across the Internet, would a manufacturer be able to take before saying ‘enough’ and canning some idea that might have promise for the future?
And is this another factor discouraging big innovation in F1, as well as the issues of cost and the tightly-regulated rulebook – the fear of sacrificing short-term performance and losing face for the sake of experimentation?
Would the turbo be developed today if teams had to subject themselves in public to all its reliability gripes in order to refine it into a success?
macahan
7th April 2010, 15:23
By allowing the teams additional powers, higer revs and the like I believe even some of the top teams would consider going for it especially if it would be “outside” budget limits. Like KERS it wasn’t a requirement but offered an advantage and top teams embraced it. If they are given any chance for any type of advantage over the other teams they will take the chance/risk. Case in point KERS being the latest and there are many others over the years, ground effect cars, fan cars, 6 wheeled cars, turbos, different v sizes with ingenuity on cylinder angles and other odd things. Unfortunately when they come up with things that haven’t been previously “pre-approved” may of them been banned.
Some of the ideas and concepts F1 developed and used have made it into road cars. Some of the things they where not first but thanks to the team embrassing it and using it and pushing the technology forward serious advancement been done on the technology and utilized in road cars either for efficiency but also on road safety (track control as an example).
Bartholomew
7th April 2010, 18:06
The purpose of F1 should be to entertain the fans with good racing.
For sustainable technology, there are a lot of other places to go.
Above all, lets not introduce K.E.R.S : Krazy Economy Ruining System. Just remember how many people went crazy because of Kers : a whole season ruined.
And making F1 cars the fastest is like introducing a golf ball that can go 400 yards – it makes nearly all golf courses obsolete.
The only tracks that can accept these cars will be Tilkedomes out in the desert, and there will only be three teams with the budget for high-tech green development.
It will be a high tech parade out in the desert, with three teams plus the fill-ins.
PJA
7th April 2010, 19:12
Not really F1 but Daimler, Nissan and Renault have announced a three way global tie-up
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8606593.stm
vettelfan
7th April 2010, 22:52
Superb video by TommyB, I did notice the lack of Toro Rosso talk during the forum as well, and I even watched the highlights just to see the overtakes again – but they weren’t shown. Don’t see how BBC can justify that when they spent sooo long talking about Lotus, even Red Bull weren’t mentioned that much until the end of the Forum (I know their race wasn’t as exciting as McLarens/Ferraris, but they did dominate as it was better than Mercedes!)
Patrickl
8th April 2010, 12:31
Nice work on the video TommyB.
I disagree on those STR overtakes needing to be featured in the highlights though. The overtakes on Petrov was merely because Petrov’s car was breaking down. Buemi overtaking Barrichello for 11th is hardly “highlight worthy” either.
I do agree they should have mentioned Alguersuari’s great drive in the forum though. Not sure how they could forget that. He kept Massa behind him for half a race and he scored points.
John H
8th April 2010, 18:16
Great video TommyB, but let’s just be glad they have a forum at all! And I think the Lotus coverage had something to do with where they were sitting. Let’s hope they are over at Toro Rosso in China $:)
Chaz
12th April 2010, 15:55
Thanks for the humorous video TommyB…