F1 risks turning into ‘GP1’, warns Newey

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In the round-up: Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey says the rules on F1 car design have become too restrictive.

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Adrian Newey: Why he’s quitting Formula 1 (MotorSport)

“I do think the regs have become too restrictive. We’re in danger, chassis-wise, of becoming GP1.”

Why the aerodynamic failures of the F14 T have led to a power vacuum at Ferrari (Sky)

“Although this would indicate that the power unit was more of a problem than the car’s aero performance, the feeling is that the performance of the power unit was knowingly compromised to achieve maximum aero performance with quite a radical design.”

Lauda: F1 doesn’t need Briatore (Autosport)

“Why do we need Flavio? Bernie [Ecclestone] is the man in charge, and he should stay in charge.”

Vijay Mallya Q&A: Force India can catch Williams (F1)

“Customer cars would be disastrous. Not just for the paddock but also for the sport. The DNA of Formula One has always been about passionate teams. When you look at the history of how these teams started – be it Ferrari, Williams, Brabham or McLaren – they have all been entrepreneurs and racing enthusiasts passionately going racing in what evolved to become this big thing called Formula One. That’s part of our DNA.”

Red Bull will struggle at Spa and Monza, says Horner (Adam Cooper’s F1 Blog)

“You never know, it might be wet at Spa, and Monza might put a load more corners in! Singapore has to be the next golden opportunity for us, in reality.”

UK Court Ruling Holds The Keys To Ecclestone’s Future (Forbes)

“Ms Noetzel said on Tuesday that it is not clear how long the settlement talks will last but Mr Ecclestone’s latest offer expires on 8 August.”

Driven to Race With Simon (Red Bull)

Daniel Ricciardo’s race engineer Simon Rennie: “I really enjoy qualifying because absolutely everything is down to the second and it has to be perfect. That’s the bit I enjoy the most I think. In the race you might have a bit more time to react to things.”

‘My ambition is to be the first team to have all trackside systems in the cloud,’ says Caterham F1 IT head (Computing)

Caterham Group head of IT Bill Peters: “Typically lots of teams still carry four or five racks full of IT equipment to every event. We’ve managed to condense that down to a half-size rack with a completely virtualised environment.”

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Comment of the day

Parallels between the championship of 25 years ago and this season:

The 1989 F1 season was dominated by two team mates at the top of their respective games.

One had armfuls of natural talent but took more risks and suffered from greater unreliability. The other wasn’t quite as fast but his calm, calculated approach and better reliability saw him build a points lead in the drivers’ championship by mid-season.

Their team had produced a chassis/engine package that dominated the constructors’ championship and was clearly superior to the opposition, but struggled to maintain a positive relationship between their two drivers after a row about team orders. I also seem to remember allegations about favouritism being thrown around at one point.
@Timg

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On this day in F1

Gerhard Berger won an eventful German Grand Prix 20 years ago today. Check back on F1 Fanatic later today for an article on this race as part of our retrospective on the 1994 season.

Also on this day 60 years ago Argentinian Onofre Marimon was killed during practice for the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Image © Red Bull/Getty

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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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94 comments on “F1 risks turning into ‘GP1’, warns Newey”

  1. Don’t worry. Bernie already owns the rights to the ‘GP1’ trademark…

  2. “Double the points, double the disappointment” has a better ring to it…

    1. Chris Cartile (@)
      31st July 2014, 14:24

      Agreed- that track is probably my least favorite. My perspective for what tracks are good vs bad changed significantly with the F1 video games- Valencia was probably the worst- but Abu Dhabi just doesn’t deserve a place on the caledar when tracks like Istanbul lie dormant. Double points is just a second kick in the groin…

      1. @jleigh @cartwheel A lot of people hate on Abu Dhabi but it usually produces good races. Sure it isn’t that exciting, but the time the race is run adds some spectacle, and the racing isn’t half bad. Apart from the double points, I see no reason to insult the event

        1. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
          31st July 2014, 20:40

          You say it has good races, but the only race i remember being good is the 2012 edition. I can’t even remember anything from last years, it took me far too long to remember who won the race. The only other thing that happened is 2010 where Petrov defended brilliantly from Alonso, terrible race and terrible circuit.

          1. and then came DRS as a result of Petrov defended brilliantly from Alonso,

          2. @come-on-kubica I remember a lot more than that from 2012.. Vettel from pitlane to 3rd was great to watch.. Hamilton retiring from the lead spiced things up.. there was also a massive crash between Karthikeyan and Rosberg (had to look this up for driver names). Sorry, but it was a great race , buddy.

            As for the other years.. 2013 was boring I’ll give you that but I blame Vettel and RBR (Abu Dhabi 2013 was his 7th consecutive win last year..)

            2011.. I remember nout of this race haha

            2010.. Not much here apart from Vettel claiming his first WDC which was great to witness.

            2009.. First race there – again I remember nothing.

          3. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
            2nd August 2014, 22:29

            @timi I meant 2012 race was brilliant. I agree with you there buddy. TBF the whole of that season was great probably the best and most open season in years.

    2. Mark McDonald
      1st August 2014, 1:38

      Well said, sir.

  3. Canal+ onboard is up, and as ever its excellent. Highlights include comedy Marshall moving Ericsson’s car, and Hamilton overtaking K-mag out of the pit lane and promptly binning it next corner.

    1. Yeah, love seeing only on boards, you get so much more information about the cars’ characteristics, I think the Kimi on board with the data overlaid is great, you can see how little time they spend on 100% throttle, and when it is at 100% you can visibly see how difficult it is to handle in those wet conditions. Scarbs made a point before the season that these cars would be able to light up the rears in fifth gear (presumably he was assuming dry conditions), but it’s only really in the wet you see how difficult these machines are to drive. Also I love watching Lewis carve through the field, I kind of assumed he just got lucky with the sc’s, but he was definitely working for that podium. It’s very telling at around 11:40 when Rosberg gets out broken by the Toro Rosso of JEV, you just can’t see Lewis letting that happen.

  4. I am wondering if Ricciardo has any chance to win the drivers’ championship this year. It might sound crazy but he is only 71 points behind Rosberg, there are 50 points on offer at Abu Dhabi and Red Bull have always been stronger at Tilkedromes and in the second half of the season, while Mercedes drivers are taking points off each other and suffering from reliability issues. Given Mercedes superiority, it is very unlikely but if the stars align…

    1. I put a fiver on him when they banned FRIC :)

    2. @girts Was thinking of the same thing these days. I wouldn’t completely rule him out.

    3. It’s a very long shot, if you ask me. Even if he does well at Abu Dhabi, how many points will he gather at Spa, Monza or COTA? Those three are very well suited to the Merc and quite badly for the Red Bull. But, then again, he already won at Canada so I guess anything is possible. Just not probable.

    4. It would need Red Bull making a big step forward during summer break, which they have done before but not in that magnitude, perhaps weather helping in the right moments. The Mercs have already begun to help, but would need to continue this every now and then.

      I loved the outcome of the 2007-season, not only as a Kimi-fan, but also because a teammate-war growing ridiculus, with both drivers emotions totally out of control, was punished by a third, who just calmly grabbed the title away. I still have a grin on my face when thinking about it. “When two people quarrel, a third rejoices.” is the proverb, I believe, and yes, Ricciardo doing it would be so much fun

      1. me too :))

    5. petebaldwin (@)
      31st July 2014, 10:15

      I can’t see it. There are only 8 races left and Red Bull aren’t going to win at Spa or Monza which will extend the gap between him and Rosberg.

      Red Bull can improve the car all they like but their biggest problem is the Renault engine and thats not getting any faster!

    6. He’s a similar number of points away as Raikkonen was when he came back from the worst ever deficit. But before Hungary he was further back than Raikkonen ever was, and how likely does it seem that after the following 2 races he will be less than 70 points behind the leader? If just 1 of the Mercedes has 2 trouble free races, then I expect that gap to increase, possibly significantly. And although the Red Bull is stronger at the tighter tracks, it still isn’t really close to the Mercs, so even there they will mostly be relying on more Mercedes misfortune or very topsy turvy races like Hungary. I don’t see him taking it unless the reliability probably at Mercedes become far more severe.

      Ricciardo has finished above Hamilton only twice so far including retirements (although would have been 3 times had he not been disqualified in Australia), versus 8 times Hamilton has been ahead. With Rosberg it’s also 3 vs 8. In 2007 Raikkonen wasn’t doing much better, but during that time his team mate was also showing the car the be a winner.

    7. I don’t see how the Mercedes drivers are taking points from each other anymore than all drivers are taking points from each other. There’s no amount of points allocated for Mercedes that they have to divide between them.

    8. jsw11984 (@jarred-walmsley)
      31st July 2014, 11:04

      I can see the possibilities, it would take some very strong finishes by Ricciardo and some DNF’s by both Merc’s. But its certainly not implausible.

    9. Heads would roll at Mercedes, big time. Again.
      That would be an even sneakier championship against faster cars than Raikkonen’s or Prost in 1986.

      On GP1, what F1 needs is a breakaway series, or to collapse and start again like the WEC.
      They need to start a new set of regulations from scratch, instead of piling more rules on top of existing ones.

      1. They need to start a new set of regulations from scratch, instead of piling more rules on top of existing ones.

        Can’t agree more

        Everybody’s converging on cars that look more and more similar. We’re back to ‘paint the cars white and it’s difficult to spot the difference’ – especially next year when we even lose the different noses.”

        Why change the nose rules? It would be nice to see if teams like Lotus or Ferrari would change their nose designs if the rules stay the same.

        1. The main driver for that is the accident that Kobayashi had when his brakes failed and he crashed into the back of Massa in the Australian GP, indicating that certain types of nose have the potential to “submarine” if one car hits another.
          That raises a major risk of severe head injuries – in the Kobayashi-Massa crash, I think that Kobayashi received a glancing blow to his helmet – that the FIA wants to eliminate for 2015.

          Interestingly, it should be noted that Adrian Newey had been reportedly aggressively lobbying the FIA for several months for them to change the regulations for 2015 to get rid of the current nose designs on safety grounds. I find it astoundingly hypocritical for him to complain about a change that he was probably one of the key architects behind.

          @bullfrog, you do realise that there are many more caveats in the regulations for the WEC than most people seem to think? The ACO’s regulations explicitly state that “What is not expressly permitted by the present regulations is
          prohibited”, and in fact a number of developments have been struck down by the ACO in the past on those grounds (for example, Audi had spent 18 months developing a system that could maintain the boost pressure of their turbocharger system at a constant pressure which the ACO banned whilst it was still in testing).

          Furthermore, there are complaints that the ACO has too much influence over the teams through its right to adjust the balance of performance regulations midway during a season.
          Imagine, for example, that the FIA announced that all Mercedes powered teams were to have their fuel allowance cut and their rivals were to be allowed to use slightly more fuel. There would be an uproar that the FIA was artificially closing the field back up – yet that is exactly what the ACO did last least when it announced that Audi would have its fuel allowance reduced slightly and Toyota would have its fuel allowance increased.

          To a certain extent, the regulations in sportscar racing are actually fairly strict – it’s just that the ACO tends not to enforce them if it means hurting a manufacturer. After all, the scruitineering report for Le Mans found that all of the LMP1 cars were illegal – over at the mulsanne corner, the owner pointed out that Toyota have been running for at least half the season in a blatantly illegal configuration – and yet despite declaring the cars to be illegal, deliberately ignored its own decision.

    10. @girts

      It’s not completely out of the question, and I thought that when I saw the championship table after the last GP. But basically it’ll mean both of the Mercedes consistently messing up or tripping over each other for the rest of the season, or Red Bull suddenly coming good and being able to consistently fight for wins. It’s not impossible and if anyone can do it, it’s RBR. But the Renault factor is out of their hands so they aren’t the masters of their own destiny in that respect.

      Also, it would mean probably getting some support from Vettel, especially if the car suddenly becomes a genuine challenger. They’ll be needing Vettel to finish ahead of the Mercs but to not beat Ricciardo and take points off of him. It’s a big ask but he’s shown willing to help his teammate so far so I would think he’d be happy to support him if he felt he was out of the frame himself.

    11. No. Remember his only wins have come from races in which both Mercedes cars have suffered serious obstacles and this is not something to reliably expect.

      People are always talking about this sort of thing after the Hungaroring – remember this time last year when everyone was wondering whether Hamilton was about to mount a serious championship challenge?

    12. well, besides the double point, the developement of the cars and so on, let’s not forget about PU penalties… ok, if you’re in a Mercedes, starting from the back of the grid won’t be that bad.. but it may shuffle things a little bit. I don’t think it’s going to be smooth sailing for Mercedes (at least at WDC, the WCC i think they already have it in their pocket…)

  5. Engine wise, F1 has been GP1 for some years prior to this year, Adrian is an aerodynamicist so that probably suited him, I would prefer the opposite if it came that.

    1. Well said @hohum, for me this year means the cars are more internally different, not just in the aero package.

    2. Indy have some spec aerodynamics, but i think they can develop a lot more in other car areas, so i don’t see it as a bad thing. The races are always quite tight, so if they let engine developement and cut the aero influence, it’s fine with me

      1. Indycar have ONLY spec aerodynamics @matiascasali. They never got round to having teams do their own bodykits, as the powers in place fear for their position (and argue it will drive up costs)

        1. in that case, i wouldn’t go as far as a totally spec series with only one body kit. But the point is: they’ve kept the aero relatively simple, and the racing itself tends to be more exciting. Maybe that way is the way to go (less aero – no spec series)

  6. Newey does have a point, but there must be some sort of compromise, because designing a chassis, modeling it and then having some wind tunnel action isn’t exactly on the cheap as chips side.

    1. Newey does have a point, but I find it funny that he still doesn’t realise that the rules and limitations have been imposed on F1 as a direct result of him and his aerodynamicist friends turning F1 cars into road going aeroplanes and that if we did away with (or severely restricted) his beloved wings and aerodynamic devices that we’d be able to de-restrict the engines, chasis, suspension etc.
      I’ve always considered Newey to be a genius, it’s just a shame he’s used his genius to (unintentionally) ruin F1 by making cars with so much downforce that the FIA have had to bring in restrictions for other aspects of the car’s design for safety reasons. As we’ve seen this season, the more downforce you take away, the better the racing gets.

      1. As we’ve seen this season, the more downforce you take away, the better the racing gets.

        That’s a false cause. The last big reg change was in 2009 and that was one of the most boring seasons ever. Also, throughout the last five years FIA have banned a number of aerodynamic elements, and the racing never improved in the last season of that era (2013).

        1. It’s not that false. It is a fact that cars can not follow each other closely because of aerodynamics. The less dependent on aerodynamics, the closer the race would get. Increase the mechanical grip and reduce the aerodynamic one, and you will see better racing with drivers choosing different racing lines, or following each other closely.

        2. Don’t forget that in 2009 there was the double-diffuser, a loophole that some teams had exploited from the beginning of the season. This effectively erased much of what the aerodynamic restrictions had achieved, and by the end of the season the cars were just as aerodynamically dependent as they were in 2008.

        3. The start of 2009 was actually a big improvement over 2008 as the downforce reductions & other aero changes were working as they were meant to.
          If you go back & watch some races from early 2009 you can actually see cars able to follow much closer than they had in previous years & there was a lot more overtaking.

          The problem however came when most of the teams got there double diffusers fitted & when they started bringing more complex double diffusers as that seemed to negate what the 2009 rule changes were all about & seemed to make it more difficult to follow/overtake again.

          An example I always point to is turn 8 at Istanbul. If you watch an in-car shot from 2008 & compare it to 2009, In 2009 they seemed able to follow a Non-Double diffuser car in 2009 seemed much closer than they could when compared in previous years.

        4. @austus, Hah! double diffusers, exhaust blown diffusers, and on top of all that marshmallow tyres meant drivers were constantly unable to stay close to the car in front, add to that “equalised” engines and we needed DRS to get 1 car past another.

      2. If you want exceptional racing, watch KZ kart racing.
        No gimmicks, just the best kart racers in the World racing flat-out for the whole race in different chassis and with different engines. They are SO close in terms of lap times; 0.1 seconds can be worth 5 or 6 positions.
        http://www.karting1.co.uk/why-f1s-decline-should-be-kz-kartings-gain/
        http://www.karting1.co.uk/the-quiet-golden-age-of-top-flight-kart-racing/

  7. Newey just wants to be able to developed the car more to suit Vettal, who cant stand the car sliding around,
    if anything we need to get rid of half that stuff off the steering wheel and make it even harder for the drivers,
    the cars sliding around is great to watch and the mistakes are more often,
    we don’t need/want to have cars that look/drive like they are on rails, makes for boring racing plus takes the skill away from the driver.

    1. I don’t think Vettel’s problem is sliding car. He was always very good in wet conditions. The problem might be that the car was built around Vettel and this season is a whole new chapter, so they couldn’t easily build car around Vettel, because they just started exploring uncharted waters. I believe that next year RBR will build car more around Vettel, so he should be good next year.

      1. why would you design a car around a driver who’s wanting some bigger paychecks an looking for other teams (VET), when you can design a fast car around a cheap and really quick driver (RIC) who can drive anything with four wheels you can throw at him?

    2. Those are different issues. But I agree with Newey, F1 is becoming more and more a spec series. Decades ago, you could see engines with different number of cylinders, in different configurations, naturally aspirated or turbocharged, racing together. Now eveything is regulated, down to the exact angle of the V.

    3. Yes, lets artificially create a world of 1970s while the whole world moves forward!

      1. If someone could artificially create a 1980s world, not in terms of how the cars behave, but in terms of no neccessity for cost-cuts at all, that would actually be a good thing, not only for F1. And then make the classic PU even smaller but completely open up ERS and every other way to contribute power, see what the engineers can get out of that.
        And yes, opening up a bit about aero could have it´s good sides as well. We have seen several attempts to force the cars into an aesthetic form through regulations, while at the same time none of these ugly steps and quite unnatural shapes of noses would have ever appeared without those regulations. Crash-tests and an overall limit of downforce (to control corner-speeds), and then let them develop something that has the least drag with it and has that maximum of downforce as stable as possible in every situation including being in dirty air.

        Ok, I´m being unrealistic…

      2. Yes, lets not go back to the past, when instead of instructing the driver to change a setting the engineers could do it from the pit-wall, lets head to the future and let the cars drive themselves.

        1. thats where it’s going, brake by wire and throttle by wire, almost make it possible to have the cars drive themselves already. Just need a few cameras and a servo on the steering wheel.

    4. If you look at the Rate the Race so far this season, most races are a big improvement. We dont want F1 to go artificially back to the 70s technology, it should be the pinnacle of motorsport.

      And if skill is being taken away (your words, not mine), explain to me the one sided Alonso vs Raikkonen (11-0), how Hamilton can usually be a few tenths faster than Rosberg in qualifying, how can Sauber be behind Marussia.

    5. I think that fans want to see drivers, not engineers. At some point the engineering takes over from the drivers. In the days of traction control, active suspension, ABS brakes, it was getting to the point where the driver did very little in terms of controlling the car. Aero is a big factor that is about the mechanics and not about the driver. Taking out aero helps bring it back to being a driver’s sport, but it is only part of the equation. One of the key elements would be getting rid of the carbon fiber brakes. They mean there is almost no way to out brake a competitor. Bring back metal brakes, which road cars use, and limit the aero, and suddenly there would be a lot more driver input into who won each race.

      1. Newey has a problem,
        the Fans really dont have a problem,
        the proof is in the ratings on this site,
        we are enjoying F1 more than ever,
        the racing has been outstanding,
        forget all the other stuff noise/DRS/tires, and look at the quality of the driving some real fantastic on the edge of your seat, even my wife is watching it, heaven for bid, races start here “NZ” at midnight Sunday so you have to be keen…

        1. F1 has been progressively gotten worse since 2011. I am only watching for one reason, and it has nothing to do with the technology. The tech is lame. If I wanted to watch an interesting technical series I would watch WEC, where there is real diversity and tires that last.

          1. *progressively getting worse

            * the textbox I am typing this in is about 8 characters wide. This site is nice, but it could use some work.

          2. john in shanghai
            1st August 2014, 14:06

            Have we been watching the same races? F1 this year is great, and much better than 2000-2004. Sure there are still problems, but I think a lot has gone right this season as well.

            Agree about the website though ;-)

  8. The double points thing is getting ridiculous. I live in Abu Dhabi and the ads are on the radio all the time. Most people here go to the race as a social event, and don’t really care about F1 as a sport, or the championship, or fairness of the competition. They also have no idea what “double points” means, as they don’t know what points drivers usually get for a race in any case.

    I suspect the local race promoter has paid a *huge* amount of money to get this double points thing and to have Abu Dhabi back as the last race of the season, and for what? Noone here even knows what it means, never mind cares. And it’s a laughing stock throughout the rest of the sport.

    1. If there’s any business sense in double points, it’s in the TV audiences. It doesn’t really matter who does or doesn’t “get it”. If the most likely race outcomes in Abu Dhabi have a more diverse range of resultant champion (realistically, this being the second placed Mercedes driver needing to beat his teammate by fewer places) then a certain number more people will wonder what will happen and tune in to find out.

      Is that worth the ridicule, loss of respect, fans etc? Probably not, but the intended effect won’t be felt until the headlines after Brazil (and again after quali) when the trailing driver comments on how confident he is he can do what’s needed to take the title.

  9. Caterham – “Everything in the cloud”. When I read the summary I thought he was talking Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, particularly when the interwebs link is down. Bad enough when the weather radar is off-line (right, Jenson?), just wait till all of the car telemetry is unavailable. Then I read the article which just turned out to be an ad for Dell cloud services. Maybe you’ve got to say that sort of thing for the sponsor.

    1. Being in the IT industry myself, cloud services are hot topic, and while you think this is an advert for Dell, it is a bold statement to suggest that Caterham are gunning for 100% cloud based solutions for their IT infrastructure. Not everything can work seamlessly in the cloud and it puts a huge amount of faith into having not only reliable internet connection, but a fast one, and given that F1 travels to some developing countries, that may not necessarily be a given.

      1. I think that is where TATA communications is key @dragoll, as they promised to make sure there would be top rate connections at all events

        1. @bascb you can’t provide top notch services in cities/towns/tracks where no decent infrastructure for it exists in the first place ;)

          1. I understood that deal to be for Tata to put in place exactly such infrastructure to be able to offer connectivity, in effect giving Tata a good reason to greatly enhance their presence in all those markets that are underdeveloped @dragoll, making it possible.
            But it sure is going to take a lot of effort!

  10. So even more news about Ferrari tearing itself apart from the inside out. Great. If that Mark Hughes article is to be believed, the blame culture is so bad inside Ferrari, the culture there so toxic, that people are turning down chances to work for them.

    Maybe this was inevitable, ever since Schumacher’s last world title. When your team puts that much internal pressure on winning, on being champions year in, year out, and when you have a guy like Luca beating the war drum and pointing fingers constantly, maybe this kind of dismantling is to be expected. When you start expecting to constantly win and you don’t, things will get ugly.

    I’m a Ferrari fan. Love the team its passion and its history. Seeing Ferrari be constantly incapable of giving a supreme talent like Alonso a front running car, and not really ever having built a great car since 2008, has been painful to watch. I hope that Mattiacci can be the man to cleanse the team of whatever rot it currently has, to get it back to being the well oiled machine it was in the glory days of Brawn and Todt. That, according to Mattiacci, may take years. Under Domenicali we constantly read news of how Ferrari was changing its internal structure, its processes, philosophies, and its personnel. Yet hear we are, five years on from the disasterous 2009 season having an even worse one. I can wait years and years. A liftime. It’s the team I love and always will. But Alonso can’t wait that long. And if Alonso, their talisman goes, what then?

    1. One very senior engineer with a rival team who recently spurned an offer to join Ferrari said one of the reasons he did so was that the team’s blame culture, with a series of high profile sackings – including Chris Dyer, Aldo Costa and Marmorini – had made the team an unattractive place to join.

      That was quite shocking to read indeed …

      1. Just goes to show how tense a working environment it must be in Maranello. Not what you want to hear if you’re a Ferrari fan!

    2. @colossal-squid Interestingly, Edd Straw also recently wrote that “F1 teams cannot operate with a blame culture” and pointed the finger at Ferrari. He rightly points out that Aldo Costa is now one of the key figures at Mercedes but Ferrari threw him out in 2011.

      I think it is clear that Ferrari have been doing something wrong for several years. Every great team gets beaten now and then but there are no excuses for being permanently behind if you have Ferrari’s resources.

      As for Alonso, his heroics are obviously fun to watch. It is always fascinating to see what a great driver can do with a mediocre car. But that is little consolation to Alonso himself and I would not be surprised to see him jump ship as soon as a good opportunity comes around.

    3. But hang on a minute. In the corporate world, if you’re a high ranking executive, and your team or division perenially under perform, you get the boot. So why should F1 teams operate any differently? F1’s management culture mirrors that corporate worlds more than it does with any other sport. In Football, at times, the manager gets the sack because the players didnt like the colour of his jumper, F1 isnt like that.

      Even CEOs of big corporation get removed when the board feels he/she it is in the best interest of the company. I feel the same applies here. Who knows what’s gone on in the background, we dont know what drives these decisions. Ferrari is more ruthless than the next team when it comes to pointing the finger, however, its worth mentioning that Nikos Tombasziz’s tenure there is looking pretty ripe, considering he hasnt really produced a winning chassis for years now, so there must be another element at play.

      1. In the corporate world, if you’re a high ranking executive, and your team or division perenially under perform, you get the boot.

        And indeed this is one of the reasons great corporations often also fail to deliver @jaymenon10.

        The long term best organizations work when there IS room for taking a risk, making a mistake but also making a gamble that pays off.

  11. I absolutely agree with the COTD – me myself likened this season to 1989 a couple of times as well during the F1F Live sessions.

    1. Yeah I can’t recall if there were ever any actual orders such as we had when they put NR on an extra stop, but I do know that rivalry was enthralling, is talked about to ths day, and is what the paying audience deserves, especially on a dominant team. This is the opposite of what we got with MS/Ferrari, and I’ll take the close rivalries any day over that, in what is supposed to be the pinnacle of racing.

  12. Great to see Abu Dhabi advertisers are using the new HRT livery in their advertisement.

  13. “Customer cars would be disastrous. Not just for the paddock but also for the sport. The DNA of Formula One has always been about passionate teams. When you look at the history of how these teams started – be it Ferrari, Williams, Brabham or McLaren – they have all been entrepreneurs and racing enthusiasts passionately going racing in what evolved to become this big thing called Formula One. That’s part of our DNA.”

    If we’re honest, the DNA in F1 had customer cars or engines in mind. After all, wasn’t that the purpose of the Cosworth DFV? to have a top engine ready for everyone? privateers racing in Alfas or Ferraris…

    But, yeah, it’s against what F1 is now. I agree with that, but it’s not in its DNA :P it’s DNA was so different that calling what we have now DNA (with DRS, double points, safety restars and the lot) seems a little bit far fetched…

    1. What is your point – we still have customer engines..?

    2. The Cosworth DFV was actually initially designed/developed solely for Lotus as the engine was built around what Colin Champman had in mind for the Lotus 49.

      It only became available to other teams because Ford believed that it was giving Lotus such a big advantage that winning easily against much lesser opposition could tarnish Ford’s reputation.

      And it only ended up been so widely used because they made so many of them that it was an extremely cheap engine to buy & even cheaper to lease which allowed even the most budget strapped privateer’s the chance to get there hands on one.

      1. and that’s the kickstart for some memorable teams, like Williams, right?

  14. That Abu Dhabi ad has got that nose as part of it? Oh dear.

    Double the points, DOUBT the action.

  15. Double the points, double the meh…

    1. “Spa Francorchamps…. Half the points…. Half the action”

  16. It will disappoint some, however, that Abed confirmed to Grupo Formula radio that the exhilarating Peraltada corner will be axed from the new F1 layout.

    “Firstly, the old banked curve is too dangerous, and the second reason is that we need to accommodate another 40,000 spectators,” Abed said.

    But the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix could be spectacular for another reason, Abed revealed.

    “Perhaps we will see the season finale in Mexico — with double points,” he said.

    And why do teams honestly think that there will be 22 races in 2016 when there will be only 21? But the Concorde Agreement states a max of 22 races and Auto Motor und Sport says that 21 is actually the financial limit

  17. Races has been very good lately, but I still haven’t got used to the chainsaw engine sounds and the ridiculous gonzo noses. Well, if Newey has his points of view so do I as a fan. Democracy.

    1. look, if the car are hideous to look, and the engine isn’t eardrum piercing anymore, but the racing is as fun as it’s been up to now, so be it, i don’t really care about those things if the races are so thrilling to watch!

  18. Newey may well want a more open formula in terms of aerodynamics but would that really be good for Formula 1?

    While aero does give the cars a huge performance gain as we know aero is also detrimental to the racing with cars unable to follow each other closely, Aero also helps produce shorter braking zones which is also hurts overtaking possibilities among other things.

    There is also the aspect of how far is too far?
    If the rules were opened up too much the cars could literally become too fast for many circuits with G-levels too much for the drivers.

    If you look at the extreme example of those Adrian Newey designed X cars in Gran Turismo 5/6, You could not really race those on most of the current circuits let alone find a driver able to cope with the G-loads.

    When aero development was less restrictive & we had flaps, winglets & god knows what else sprouting off the cars etc… the racing for the most part was a bit dull. Too restrictive or not the racing this year has been great so if I had to choose what sort of formula I’d prefer to watch…. It would be the current one.

    1. Quote of the day material here. Well said.

      I like Vettel and Newey, and while I wish the cars were faster this year than they are, the racing is better than Vettel and Newey’s dominance (with the exception of 2010, which was more to do with better tyres).

      Heres to more powerful and faster cars next year! The LMP1 monsters with their 1000 horsepower hybrids fascinate me. I hope for that kind of power in F1~

    2. that would actually make the racing more legitimate, being that the driver would make more of the difference. The cars make too much of the difference now, the balance is sliding towards the engine manufacturers and away from the individual teams and then making even less the difference of the driver themselves. Better tires, more G-Forces, puts the onus on the driver to make the difference, worse tires, fuel economy, whose engine and it’s all about the manufacturers.

    3. PeterG, totally agree, however the answer is really simple, drastic reduction in the size of down force producing wings, ban multi elements so as to make the downforce more about balance than being able to produce a downforce so great the cars theoretically could run upside down, then confine the “floor” to the bodywork profile to reduce ground effect . The cars would probably look similar to 1970s cars, would that be bad?

    4. also is the safety issue should be a concern. If the aero is that efficient, the cornering speeds will rise, and that would be a great risk, and that’s why the ground effect was banned, and the possibilty of cars flipping over, like Webber in LeMans is also a big risk too! the aero is detrimental on the show. Did you ever see a touring car unable to follow the car in front? those racing are thrilling, and it must be because they relly more on mechanical grip than aero grip…

  19. Happy birthday @Osvaldas31! Greetings from the Latvian brothers! ;)

    1. @girts Thank you, braliukas! :)))

  20. Looking what have happened here in Argentina with the death of Julio Grondona (82 years old) of the AFA (it’s like the FIA in football from here) there’s a couple of things F1 should look up: When this man died, he leave behind him a lot of unanswered questions, and a style of management who only could be carried by himself, not unlike Mr Ecclestone with the F1. He’s a 83 years old man, with a lot of legal problems who runs a business by himself and ONLY by himself. What will happen if Bernie ends up in jail or even worst, death? Now, the Football here is in crysis, let’s not wait until this happen to the F1 to look for a Plan B…

  21. I think they want to change F1 to electrical series slowly.

    1. F1 is dying.

  22. Why do we need Flavio?

    Well said Nik-

    Bernie [Ecclestone] is the man in charge, and he should stay in charge.

    Ooh, so close.

  23. Newey is right. I know that some people say that aerodynamics make it more difficult for cars to follow closely, but if F1 still cared about innovation, then there is probably a mechanical or aerodynamic solution to that as well. If your engine can’t quite cut it, then you should be allowed to use aerodynamics to counter it.
    Adjustable wings, winglets, gizmos, and gadgets. I am in favor of a team coming up with a device to help them, and even if they only use it for one race before it is banned, then it will force them to find a new one for the next race. I am in favor of anything that requires imagination and ingenuity to help catch the team ahead.
    As long as it doesn’t pose a danger to the health of the drivers, then go for it.
    I don’t want to see gimmicks, I just want to see some creative thinking to cut the gaps.

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