Pic to be penalised 20s for red flag infringement

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Charles Pic will get a time service and has to serve a day’s ‘community service’ for the FIA for failing to obey red flags during final practice.

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Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Hamilton will be ‘very cautious’ (BBC)

“There are some interesting characters around me so I’ve got to be very cautious. I don’t want to get in his way; hopefully he doesn’t want to do the same.”

Webber warning for Grosjean on eve of Singapore Grand Prix (Daily Mail)

“Yeah, he’s okay. He knows I’ve a good right hook on me so he will stay away from me. But he better put his sneakers on if he hits me.”

Alonso eyes podium to keep title bid ticking along (Reuters)

“Today, pole position was absolutely out of our grasp: Hamilton was on another planet. We must settle for this fifth place but that doesn’t mean we are not hoping to improve on it tomorrow, our target is the podium.”

Q&A with Red Bull’s Christian Horner (F1)

“Q: It is no secret that Red Bull Racing is struggling with this year’s tyres. Not too long ago you, Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko, Pirelli’s Paul Hembery and Formula One group CEO Bernie Ecclestone put your heads together. What was discussed?
CH: Ha, that had nothing to do with Red Bull Racing. We were talking about another form of motorsport!”

Pirelli eyes Kubica for 2013 test role (Autosport)

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery: “I don’t know if he is able to do it at the moment. But he is that type of person if physically he could get back in, then maybe doing a year with us would put him in a good situation to come back in in 2014. It would be wonderful if we could do that.”

Singapore GP – Conference 3 (FIA)

Sebastian Vettel: “I think we’ve discussed it many times, every year actually, to find a better solution in turn ten which probably requires to take a little bit of land from the cricket club for those couple of days or maybe remove the pavement for three/four days. I don’t know, but if you consider the costs for this whole event, I think taking a pavement away and putting it back on shouldn’t be a big problem, but in terms of safety, yeah, I think that’s one of the worst corners we have on the calendar, because you’ve got these big kerbs, big bumps and it’s a bit tricky to find a better solution right now with the space we have, but I think that’s something we need to work on.”

Ted’s Notebook – Singapore Qualifying (Sky, UK-only)

Webber escapes a penalty for impeding Glock after Marussia failed to present evidence at the stewards’ hearing.

Formula One Betting: Singapore Grand Prix Preview (Unibet)

My look ahead to the Singapore Grand Prix for Unibet.

Comment of the day

The new F1 2012 game has divided opinion. Here’s two contrasting views:

I love this game. I bought it the day it came out, as with the other versions, and it’s fantastic. I can’t understand all the complaining that comes along with it from a few of the users.

The handling is much more refined than in previous versions, and although it can be perceived as quite complex at first (for some people), after a short while, it becomes very easy and you can build up a nice consistent rhythm.

The AI are more difficult as well. On some modes (Such as Season Challenge), the artificial intelligence is far too easy, even on hard, but in career, it’s very good.

Driving the Caterham in Melbourne, I soon found that I was about a second or so faster than my team mate, and the other lower teams, but I was still about a second from the lower reaches of the midfield. This kind of put me in limbo, but I still had fun pushing the car as hard as I was allowed.
@JamieFranklinF1

Been playing this game since yesterday morning & sad to say that I hate the way it feels, or lack thereof.

Playing with a wheel is a dead experience for me, I’m not getting any real driving feel through the wheel like on every other driving/racing game I play. You get some vibration from hitting kerbs/running off track but there is nothing from actually driving.

Unlike on other games/simulations there is no feeling for loss of grip through the steering, You can’t feel the brakes begin to lock and the whole thing reminds me off driving with a pre-force feedback wheel, Vibration but no feedback.

Also there is way too much rear end grip and way too little front-end grip. The cars all understeer horrifically yet its practically impossible to get the back end to slide, You can just slam the throttle down & get no wheel spin at all. And yes I do have all the driver assist/aids turned off!
Pete_GH

From the forum

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to TisoyJrIII and Paul Prinnel!

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

Practice for the Singapore Grand Prix on this day last year was red-flagged after problems with the kerbs. They have been fixed for this year’s race:

Image © Marussia

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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41 comments on “Pic to be penalised 20s for red flag infringement”

  1. Pic’s community service shows that the FIA is serious about clamping down on unsafe driving

  2. that’s absolutely hilarious from webber! but i think it might be a good intimidation technique lol. sadly it cant be applied to maldonado as well, he looks like he could beat up everyone on the grid if he got angry.

    1. I know, I’m not a big Webber fan, but I’ve got to hand it to him, he tells it like it is and has a good sense of humour, which isn’t the case for everyone on the grid!

  3. Fun fact: Michael Schumacher’s friendship with Max Mosley and the FIA began with his “community service” after Jerez 1997. Go ahead Pic, make some friends ;)

    1. If you’re quoting Allen….

  4. I wonder what grosjean would think if he hears what mark said haha

  5. >Pirelli eyes Kubica for 2013 test role

    I like this idea very much.

    1. I’m not so sure of the merits of that. The Pirelli test driver should be focussed on helping Pirelli develop their tyres, Kubica has his own more pressing development issues to focus on and I doubt Pirelli want to spend too much of their development costs on charity.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Kubica back to 100% and in F1, but I think too many people are clutching at straws – but if you read the article even Hembery sounds like he doubts it will happen but doesn’t want to be impolite to Kubica. Another case of the headline not really matching what was actually said.

  6. Sounds as if Webber has got a few mates at Marussia. Glock was pretty convinced that it was a penalty. Surely if Marussia wanted to fight it the stewards would have access to the onboard.

    1. The stewards did have access to the telemetry and found that Glock lost no time while behind Webber –

      http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/102767

      No doubt Marussia didn’t fight it because they came to the same conclusion as the stewards.

  7. Turn 10 chicane (aka air-launch) should just be removed. Let it be a high speed corner, hopefully shaving several seconds off every lap so the race doesn’t push the 2-hour time limit.

    1. @mtlracer – The problem with that is that there is no room for run-off there because there is a building on the outside of the corner. That’s why the Singapore Sling was created in the first place: without it, the cars would be heading down a long, fast straight and then throwing themselves into the corner. There would be a real chance of death or serious injury if a car went head-first into the armco on the outside of the corner. At least with the Sling, the drivers have to brake heavily to navigate it, reducing the chances of a serious accident.

      1. @prisoner-monkeys Not only that, it’s a lot of fun to watch the drivers struggle through it. I love the fact that they hate it so much.

    2. There is a complete lack of run-off however; the FIA would never allow it.

    3. Idea: For Singapore, make turn 10 a corner with a very severe banking and ake it very narrow, with the outside packed with tyres or tech-pro barriers

  8. Well said by Pete_GH regarding the f1 2012 game. I hooked up my wheel and pedals, but two laps of Monza just made me want to stop altogether.

    In Race 07, driving F3000 cars, there is simply no way you can just plant your foot and expect the beast to accelerate smoothly. With F1 2012 this is never an issue. Wheelspin seems to be a completely foreign concept.

    In regards to presentation, graphics, promotion, advertising – the game has no equal. Top marks – everyone in marketing deserves a pay rise.

    Whilst the game might be really fun with a paddle-thing, alongside other racing sims such as, well, anything by SimBin, it’s a complete joke.

    Perhaps one of the reasons why sims such as R-Factor are still considered to be vastly superior is that the same devs actually work on the real F1 simulators as places like Red Bull etc.

    No playtoy 3s for those blokes.

    1. Maybe because F1 isn’t a sim? I think Codemasters are trying to make the game more arcade than sim. Hence the easy handling and AI difficulty so one can enjoy overtaking other cars while getting away with one or two mistakes.

      1. From the way people make it sound though, they’re going too far towards arcade. The TOCA games from several years ago on the PS2 imo, used to do a reasonable job of balancing sim/arcade features and handling.

        1. For some people, even the smallest step towards an arcade racer and away from a dedicated simulator is taking things too far.

      2. Yes, they are making an easy to pick-up game. Nothing wrong with that – but it seems a shame to me that we have to play games with much lower budgets – and no endorsement – to get a game that feels right.

        In fact, let’s be frank: I own F1 2010, played F1 2011 and had the demo of F1 2012. In every respect relating to ‘driving’, these games are **** in comparison to what r-Factor can bring or many Simbin games.

        I think the license has been completely wasted (though they’re clearly making money). And I do not begrudge anyone their fun.

        I love mario-carts. It’s great, and should be out there.

        I spent the best part of a week, several years ago, using Motec software to try and perfect my set-up for Istanbul. Going through traces, trying to figure out how best to set-up my car (r-factor, cdcp 2005) Al the time going head to head with other guys doing the same thing.

        And then I’m expected to buy this **** and believe it’s better.

        It’s not. It’s a pale, pale shadow of what racing can be online.

        It really does not deserve the F1 license at the end of the day.

        1. I agree, leave the arcade stuff to the mario Kart thing. Most people who watch F1 want a game to be as close to the possible thing as possible. If codemasters already have an arcade type thing in the pipelines why go and make the full game the same arcade style thing.

          1. @motor_mad

            Most people who watch F1 want a game to be as close to the possible thing as possible

            I watch Formula 1, and that’s the last thing I want in a game. I want a game I can actually play, because I don’t have days to spend figuring out the optimal set-up just so I can be quick.

            I teach high school, and it can take a lot out of me at times. When I get home after a bad day, I want something that can take my mind off the fact that Year 8 spent an hour actively trying to avoid doing anything in class and generally misbehaved. I want to pick up a controller, and jump straight into a race at Interlagos. I don’t want to sift through pages and pages of telemetry, trying to find the perfect sixth gear ratio. I just want to race.

            So what do you suggest that I do? You’re calling on Codemasters to make a ruthlessly-dedicated, hyper-realistic simulator that will take hours to improve your skills, and a garishly-cotton candy, kid-friendly Mario Kart clone that holds zero appeal to me. So here I am, stuck between worlds. nd I’ll bet you’ll find that 90% of people are in the same boat as me.

        2. @novotny

          And then I’m expected to buy this **** and believe it’s better.

          Question: can you reasonably expect Joe Gamer – who might not know that much about Formula 1, or who might be a Formula 1 fan, but only a casual gamer – to do the following, in order to be competitive and to enjoy the game:

          I spent the best part of a week, several years ago, using Motec software to try and perfect my set-up for Istanbul. Going through traces, trying to figure out how best to set-up my car (r-factor, cdcp 2005) Al the time going head to head with other guys doing the same thing.

          Now, while that holds a lot of appeal for you, it sounds like agony to me. I, for one, don’t have weeks on end to perfect my set-ups for every circuit. In fact, even if I did have that time on my hands, I’m likely to just take the default setup and go racing. I get that you like spending that time working on your setup. I fully respect that you like spending that time working on your setup. But to assume that everyone who plays the game wants this is naive at best.

          It’s a pale, pale shadow of what racing can be online.

          I think you’re failing to appreciate that a lot of people just want to be able to jump online, join a game, and start racing with minimal fuss and maximum fun.

          I don’t get why you and so many other people seem to assume that casual gamers will appreciate a dedicated sim simply because hardcore Formula 1 fans approve of it. Casual gamers like me don’t want a dedicated simulator. We don’t want to spend hours on menu screens tweaking our tyre pressures and gear ratios. We just want to play the game.

          Why can’t people understand that?

          1. There’s no reason why you can’t have an incredibly involved sim, like rfactor, with simplified variations. I’m not suggesting for one moment that anyone who wants to play an F1 game must be agonizing over setups – but the options could and should be there.

            If the underlying mechanics, the physics and the simulation aspects of the title were good, then they could have a top tier of difficulty wherein one can tweak these aspects, and really wrestle with trying to get the best performance of the car.

            And then there could be a ‘normal’ mode, aimed at those who are using joypads and want a more mainstream experience – it would just be a case of dialling back the difficulty, introducing the racing line, preventing wheelspin/brakes locking.

            My point is that you can make a complex game more simple, but it’s clearly not easy to make a simplistic game more realistic.

            Why can’t we have as realistic a car-handling as possible – comparable to existing sims – with the afore-mentioned simpler modes for the mainstream?

            We’re being fobbed off and it’s a crying shame that F1 fans such as myself and many others have to race either other formulas or mods in other sims to get close to our love of playing motor sports games that resemble F1.

    2. The job of F1 2012 is to make money.
      The amount of people who want a fully dedicated simulator is tiny.
      Therefore, they won’t make any money off it.
      Therefore, it has to appeal to a wider audience.
      Therefore, it has to turn slightly away from the simulator pathway, and go a bit more arcade, like F1 2009 for the Wii; that was great fun, and I think it sold in vast numbers.

      1. Your points are fine but you are assuming that someone like Simbin, who make a decent living making fairly realistic racing sims, wouldn’t be able to knock out an F1 game and also let it have simplfied modes for the masses who just want to have a quick blast of fun.

        Of course they could. And that’s what I think we as fans deserve – not something that only we can enjoy, but that everyone can enjoy.

        Just because a game might be very difficult at the highest realism setting does /not/ mean that it can’t be easy to play at the lowest.

        My problem with F1 2012 is that it only varies from incredibly simplified to pretty basic.

      2. @xjr15jaaag @prisoner-monkeys @novotny

        What do you lot make of Gran Turismo 5? That sold extremely well, despite priding itself on being a sim.

        1. I haven’t palyed GT5.

        2. I’ve never played it I’m afraid, always been a pc gamer.

        3. That has some arcade-like features on it, such as:
          Seasonal Events, and Licences.
          And to be honest, the style of play is very much like an arcade game; in the A-Spec races, penalties don’t exist.
          The handling etc of the cars is very realistic, but because they’re actually very easy to drive (unlike F1 cars), they can get away with effectively arcade races.

          1. (I love it by the way)

  9. The Pirelli testing job could be the perfect way to get back into F1 for Kubica. He is beyond GP2 but he might not be able to jump into F1 and race straight away, so a year of constant F1 testing would be perfect.

    1. @duncanmonza It would. I saw the article yesterday and enjoyed reading it. I think rallying might be his priority for the time being though.

  10. Kubica being a Pirelli tester would be great, it’s a win-win. He hasn’t raced on the Pirelli tires yet so it would be the perfect way for him to get a feel for them. With the ban on testing, it would be a great way for him to start turning laps in an F-1 car again. This would also show teams whether or not he has lost any of his speed, so if a team eventually signed him there wouldn’t be that big question mark. Kubica is known to be very good at providing feedback and working very closely with the engineers, so from Pirelli’s stand point he’s a perfect candidate.

    It seems like he’s working extremely hard to get back to F1. I would love to see him be the Pirelli test driver next year and then secure a drive with a good team for 2014.

  11. Webber is a stitch. Hope he retires to the broadcast booth.

  12. Bit harsher than the last penalty I recall for a red flag infringement. Michael Schumacher, Hungary 2006, two seconds added to his qualifying time.

    In terms of appropriateness, Pic’s penalty is nearer the mark. Red flag rules are among the most basic in all motorsport. There could be people or emergency vehicles on the track. Not responding to red flags is extremely stupid and dangerous.

    1. FlyingLobster27
      23rd September 2012, 8:05

      Obviously, in Pic’s case, adding two seconds to his Q1 time won’t make much difference to his starting position… But I’m as baffled by the post-race time penalty issued before the race as I am when a mid-race incident which could easily be decided upon and the penalty taken in the remaining laps is announced as “will be investigated after the race”. Surely a drive-through or stop-and-go penalty to be done in the opening laps would make things clearer for all – clearer for the driver as his penalty will be shown to the world, and clearer for the spectators who might see Pic just beat someone, when in fact he’ll be classified miles behind.

  13. Haha, so the organizers of the Singapore GP thought they were as important as Monaco? If not even Spa, Monza or Silverstone get race fee exemptions, why would Singapore? Can’t believe that was hard to explain.

  14. I like Webber’s right hook warning to Grosjean! I am sure Grosjean would not want to meet that one :-)

  15. “Discussing about another form of motorsport”

    Should it be read as closed cockpit F1 or we don’t want to tell you what we were talking about ? In other case, they would have named the motorsport in question …

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