Villeneuve and Berger say modern F1 is too forgiving

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In the round-up: Jacques Villeneuve says Formula E offers less margin for error than F1 does while Gerhard Berger claims huge run-off areas let drivers off the hook.

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I can only put it down to the fact that it has churned out more than its fair share of great races (after 2006 ayway). It never ceases to amaze me just how much people’s opinions of the circuit have changed.
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74 comments on “Villeneuve and Berger say modern F1 is too forgiving”

  1. And Formula E again…

  2. People who no longer drive in F1 think driving in F1 is easy now.

    I’ve never rated Villeneuve. His current failures in Formula E aren’t helping his cause.

    1. Well, I’ve read Villeneuve’s article, and maybe I’m going crazy, but he doesn’t actually say that it’s easy. He does imply that there’s a bigger margin of error than before, which is objectively true.

      Tarmac runoffs, while arguably increasing safety, also give a bigger margin of error. If you go wide, you’ll only lose a couple of tenths (or even a couple of seconds depending on how dirty the runoff is). With gravel or grass, your race was probably over.

      While it’s a bit hypocritical that he complains about F1’s DRS while saying that Formula E doesn’t have anything like that (does Fanboost ring a bell?), he’s at least right in that point.

    2. You’re right on the money there. Of all the World Champions in the last 25 years, I believe he possessed the least talent.

      Crikey, I think I could have won in ’97 driving that Williams!! LOL

      1. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
        22nd January 2016, 4:08

        Try and with 2014 and 2015 Mercedes cars and you would be 2WDC ;)

        1. Bet neither of you would beat a Manor even given the Merc as for 97 I bet you could not run more than 2 laps without either getting tired or crashing and even then many seconds off the pace of Jacques. Of course you are both making a light hearted comment but some couch potatoes might actually think they could just jump into a dominant F1 car and win because they believe they are quick in their 70 hp Saxo at McDonalds car park on a Tuesday night.

          1. hahah I love how markp gets so p!!sed off for my innocent joke. Are you sure you ‘re not the couch potato? Cause I’m quite fit.

          2. Omarr I was not calling you a couch potato and acknowledged your original comment was light hearted. I was moaning as I have come across people that really think they can jump in an F1 car and be good having never driven a race car or even decent road car and they tend to be fat so hence the couch potato comment.

            P.S I am a very good runner so no couch potato.

      2. I’ve never understood why attacking someone’s character/skill has anything to do with a universal statement that they make, besides just being catty. If Hitler said that the Eiffel Tower was quite pretty, do you turn around and say it can’t be true because of who he is? (No… before people go all kneejerk, I’m not calling Villeneuve ‘Hitler’, it’s just for illustration) The city circuits of Formula E ARE less forgiving than in F1, and F1 circuits ARE (in many peoples’ opinions) becoming much more boring. Oh, and while we’re at it, if everyone’s always harping on about how F1 has to be relevant to the car market, then Formula E is the way of the future, not F1. And we should start a formula with driverless cars. It’s the way it’s going if F1 continues to be a ‘business’ instead of a sport.

        1. The Beeb is bringing back robot wars, so halfway there!

    3. If him and Berger are referring to the oceans of tarmac runoff on so many of the permanent racetracks, they have a point.

      1. Yes, @david-a, Berger primarily mentions the tarmac runoffs meaning that a mistake just doesn’t goe punished anymore. As for Villeneuve, he more or less states that the cornering speeds were higher “in his time” and he mentions how the walls being close in Formula E make it exciting to drive.

        JV also mentions how F1 “doesn’t know what it wants” and feeling a bit like a mess because of it (mixing endurance aspects, high tech hybrid, wanting to be the fastest, the “show” with things like DRS). I know that JV has often said things that sounded like just being upset about not being in it, this time its pretty much spot on.

        1. As usually JV is spot on with his comments. Born to race, this purebred Champion, with achievements on his resume that only 2 other drivers in history have attained, has fascinating and valuable knowledge and experience to back up his opinions. It is so thrilling that he has yet to retire and still carries on racing. I hope one of his sons ends up in F1 one day, but only if by then it has gotten back to it’s roots, as JV thinks it needs to, and I and the majority of posters on this site agree with.

          1. @robbie you do realise they’re talking about Villeneuve junior right?

          2. @robbie, I do hope that you are joking about Jacques being a “pure-bred champion” given we are talking about a driver who, in the latter stages of his career, was repeatedly beaten by younger and less experienced drivers.

            In fact, at times his performance was so bad that even his own mechanics were mocking him – there is a famous clip from the Japanese GP where, after repeatedly spinning off the track, his own mechanics were sitting in the pit garage laughing at how bad he was.

            His attempts at trying to psychologically destabilise Button in 2003 were hopelessly misguided as Button demolished him that season, eventually leading to him being thrown out of the team for underperforming. In 2005, Massa consistently outperformed Jacques throughout the season – in the early part of the season, Villeneuve was the slowest Michelin shod driver full stop – whilst in 2006 he was also consistently lagging behind Heidfeld before BMW terminated his contract due to poor performance.

            Furthermore, multiple teams considered his set up and development skills to be poor, whilst he also had a terrible attitude towards his pit crews and pit wall (I can’t think of many people in the pit lane who spoke of him in a positive light) that often poisoned the environment within a team.

            Asides from that, you also have to seriously question the judgement of a man who firstly thought that Stefan GP was a viable racing team in 2010, before then attempting to form a partnership with Durango – a team that was eventually expelled from the GP2 series for repeated safety violations (such as using dangerously worn components) – to buy his way back into the sport in 2011.

        2. They make correct assumptions. 100m runoff vs 5m runoff is a big difference.

          Break to late with current asphalted runoffs… no problem, 4 wheels off the track, lose 0.1s and back to work.

          But with with a gravel trap 1m off the track.. you do not break 4m late. You just dont, infact you tend to break maybe 5-10m early… just in case. Bringing an opening for a driver behind who can break at last second and overtake.

          Punishing mistakes harder, results in drivers taking larger risks to go fastest… more exhilarating for them, more dramatic for us.

          And to give them full credit, F1 is very much trying to curb the runoff violation thing. Automatic penalties for all 4 wheels off the track should be mandatory. And they will slowly go in that direction.

          Would we want F1 without runoff? No there is no reason to have 1-2 people killed per season. But mistakes must get punished more.

          1. @anon What a load of tabloidy drivel. Unless of course you were hanging out in the pit lane and thus you ‘can’t think of many people in the pit lane who spoke of him in a positive light.’ Or you have quotes?

            The fact is JV’s talents and experience are only of the highest level, and recognized as such by the vast majority of racing insiders. Come on man, he’s an Indy rookie of the year, 500 winner, CART Champion, F1 ‘rookie of the year’, and F1 World Champion. And nobody does those kinds of feats alone. He is so highly regarded and you are so off the mark with your assumptions.

            JV never tried to ‘psychologically destabilize’ JB. Politcally motivated Richards tried that on JV though and blindsided him by, right during the car reveal and press conference that year, verbally placing JB on a pedestal as ‘the team’s next World Champion,’ and when dismayed JV was asked by the press what he thought of that he said that when JB showed himself on the track then he would know there was something to respect about his abilities. Within a handful of races their girlfriends were having lunch together, and well before the season was over JV was acknowledging JB’s work. The melodrama came from Richards, not the two drivers.

            All the while JV was suffering massive unreliability, moreso than JB. And what I always remember JV saying at the time, when he was bested by whoever the driver on those occasions where reliability issues weren’t the decider, was that he was always trying the extreme things with the cars to find the big chunks of time, for what was there to lose. He was not interested in besting his teammate to feed his ego, who would settle for any tenth of a second here or there for their own confidence and to garner that from key people that might help forward their careers. He was interested in finding a second or more to get back to the top 3. That’s how confident he was in his own proven abilities…to sacrifice appearance for the real work and the real risk…of looking the lesser, having already won poles, races, and Championships. Yet he shone so often, masked by bad cars no different than Alonso today, but you just choose not to invest in that side of his story.

            He has since come second in P1 at Lemans with Peugeot, raced in NASCAR, and it’s feeder series, back to the Indy 500 a few years back where he had a great day, Rallycross, FE…am I missing anything? TV amd magazine commentator, because his opinions born of experience in F1 that goes back to his childhood, are meaty and valued by media. Truly anon, ask yourself if this giant that you try to portray as a slug would have gotten to put all that on his resume if he was anywhere remotely like you picture.

            Name another driver that has done so many disciplines…by agreement and contract with many many parties to have orchestrated all that, who had to have been believers in him, Think about it. If he was really all that difficult and useless, would he have garnered all the support he has? Surely his list of activities overwhelms your tabloid trash. You can do better.

    4. @keeleyobsessed @casjo @david-a @bascb At any rate Villeneuve’s time enjoying the challenges of Formula E are now over – he’s been replaced by Mike Conway.

      See, it is less forgiving…

      1. Indeed he has been @keithcollantine. Interesting timing with that interview. Looking forward to see how Conway does in FE

      2. I’m not sure that it’s proof that it’s less forgiving, it’s only the first time he’s been replaced mid-season in Formula E, it happened twice to him in F1.

  3. Makes you wonder, the son of a Nazi sympathizer politician, who dabbled in F1 team ownership before becoming the head of a non-profit organization can afford orgies and still is able to give near GBP.1million per year to an organization trying to muzzle the press, where does the money come from? Don’t mention Delta Topco.

    1. Well, Mosley did first sell his stake in the team and that must have made him some money @hohum And the FIA pays a nice salary as far as I know. As for the family – did the UK take the estate away from them? If not, that would be a very solid starting point to say the least.

      1. @bascb, I believe that his parents were only interned during the war so, given that both his father and his mother had substantial personal fortunes, their estates would have given him a strong starting point.

        Furthermore, you can also add to that the fact that Mosley had spent several years as a practising barrister before he entered the world of motorsport – I would imagine that he would have been relatively well paid for that employment. Add to that several decades as a paid legal advisor to FOCA, and I can see how he could have amassed a reasonably large personal fortune.

      2. @bascb, I don’t believe the Mosely fortune was confiscated as no laws were broken but I can’t see him (Oswald) being welcomed back into the old school tie club of British business and I think the death tax that killed of so many land owning family fortunes in the 20th. century would still have applied. Maybe I just have a suspicious mind.

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      22nd January 2016, 7:13

      We should thank Max for spending £3.8mil to keep him in the press and remind us of his escapades.

    3. The press is not “being muzzled”, Max Moseley (and others, most of whom don’t have the financial resources to defend themselves from libellous attacks by the likes of the mail) simply campaigned to try and prevent newspapers from breaking the law, hacking the phones of dead crime victims, conducting targeted campaigns of harassment with no news value, and other horrific abuses.

      Since the government is still under the thumb of the newspaper men (and it it a tiny number of old, rich, men) and has attempted at every stage to cripple any meaningful reform, an independently financed regulator isn’t a bad thing. I applaud him for it. Without him and a few other high profile or well funded activists it would have been very difficult for ordinary victims of the press to ever get close to telling their stories to an enquiry.

      1. And who cares what his father did anyway! What has that got to do with his children?

        Honestly some of the comments in here are as bad if not worse than the Daily Mail itself. Half of the people on this website go on and on about the Murdoch’s of this world and then go spouting his headlines at his victims!

        1. Honestly some of the comments in here are as bad if not worse than the Daily Mail itself.

          Quoted for truth.

        2. Financial background.

  4. Question to those of you who follow the WEC — will you be watching Le Mans or European Grand Prix qualifying this year?

    1. Why not watch both? Le Mans will be streaming live over the internet. Tv to the right laptop to the left….. Problem solved

    2. I will definitely be watching Le Mans. I probably won’t even watch the European Grand Prix until Monday morning. I hope I am wrong, but it looks like the F1 race will be rather tame from the layout. The only thing that might make it interesting will be the safety car deployment which is bound to happen at least twice.

    3. Haha. Le Mans, but obviously I’ll record both.

    4. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
      22nd January 2016, 8:14

      @jackysteeg Le Mans, but I’ll record qualifying and watch it if things become dull at la Sarthe – not that that’s particularly likely.

    5. I’ll probably skip Q1 to watch the start of Le Mans and then watch Q2 and Q3.

      1. It is the only interesting part of the 24Hr race!

    6. @jackysteeg This is exactly why I prefer a ratio of three screens per eye…

    7. Le Mans start… for sure. That is the best part of Le Mans.. full grid, everyone stretching their elbows out… Heroes are made on first hour… zeroes are counted by the end.

      I dont perticularlly watch WEC live… but Le Mans every year for last 4 years. It is the greatest race in the world. I tend to sleep around 2 hours in those 24 hours… drives girlfriend insane :D. But still gotta love it. Cars driving to see, who drives most distance in 24 hours. Some magic in that.

      That being said, if F1 race happens at mid day, so 3-4 hours before Le Mans finish… why not watch F1, then tune in to Le Mans… also we have multiple screens at home. Why not watch both…

    8. I will be having a full Le Mans set-up, and accept that I’ll be effectively watching F1 from Twitter only. I don’t have a TV license, so would have to go to the gym or my parents’ house to watch Baku. Both options would limit how much of my usual Le Mans “live text commentary” I could do. Ideally, I’d have my backup computer working again by Le Mans, so I could dual-screen the event, but even then F1 wouldn’t be shown on either.

  5. F1 has been unlucky in the sense that when the gimmicks to improve racing were introduced, the regulations permitted 2 eras of dominance. I don’t limit these gimmicks solely to either DRS or Pirelli though. Track limits has made the sport out to be a bit of a laughing stock at times when we consider the period of outrageously over-officious stewarding. I am of the view that Berger and Villeneuve are right and tougher tracks should be introduced. I find the number of poor tracks brought into the calendar recently adds to F1’s bad luck.

    It is reflected both in the COTD and in Vettel’s interview that the new tracks are less appealing. Obviously, the solution is not to line run-offs with petrol barrels or spikes, but a greater penalty for leaving the track is necessary. I feel the sport is filling out too many risk assessments on tracks which in turn imposes limits on gravel and grass. I understand that grass is slippery when wet and that gravel can roll cars but I think we’ve reached the other extreme. Too often the drivers don’t seem challenged which is a shame given the improvement in the spectacle we would have if were. Unfortunately, I don’t have a concrete solution for track limits but I think it’s important that the issue is addressed before every track is neutered.

    I feel Formula 1 has an on-track image problem at the minute but I am confident that sooner or later, someone will wake up at the top of the sport and think small improvements can be made. If they concentrate on removing most of the gimmickry and focus on the getting back to basics, I’m sure the sport will see greater viewer satifaction.

  6. What are the essential elements of your pre-race routine?

    Sebastian Vettel: A good pee. Otherwise you are under pressure in the race! (laughs)

    This made me chuckle!

    1. And people say Vettel has no charm, charisma, or personality…

      1. Fudge Ahmed (@)
        22nd January 2016, 15:56

        I think that particular spitbomb was diffused years ago with his appearance on Top Gear and especially last year with his constant press conference antics with the Merc pair.

        1. That doesn’t stop the claims though…

    2. At least he didn’t vomit..

  7. Just saw a video of a lap around Baku. Any1 know what is happening with that part of the track that isn’t bitumen? It looks like stones.

  8. Eeee when Jacques and Gerhard were lads…

    https://youtu.be/Xe1a1wHxTyo

  9. I really thought that the whole tracks are too forgiving had been explained before.
    Most of the tracks used by F1 are used by other motor sports as well, including motorcycles and gravel traps are dangerous to the bike riders.
    Then there is the aspect of F1 driver safety. Most people like a spectical and love to see cars crashing and burning, but you should go and see a stunt show if that is what you want to see.

    1. @aliced, as you say, there is the question over whether the public is willing to accept the flip side of making the racing environment riskier, which is the increased likelihood that a driver – or, for that matter, marshals and other members of the public – might suffer serious injuries as a result?

      After all, it has to be said that, in Berger’s era, the sport took a somewhat more relaxed attitude towards even relatively serious injuries. We have seen in recent years how drivers like Perez and Alonso required an extended period of convalescence due to concussion injuries that, in previous years, probably would have been untreated – Piquet Sr stated that, when he crashed heavily in 1987 and suffered from concussion, he never made a full recovery from his injuries in part because he was rushed back to the cockpit for the following race.

      1. Yes, remember what happened to Berger himself in 1989 at the same spot as Piquet’s crash…and then to Senna five years later. Berger’s been quoted many times wishing he’d made something happen about making Tamburello safer.

        But is it really about the walls? Or the astroturf, grippy concrete strips and wide flat kerbs that (don’t) mark the edge of the track?

  10. DRS works really well at the hungaroring. It’s drivers close to each other into the braking zone.

  11. The overall thread of what JV and Berger are saying is correct – even the so called “greats” occasionally made mistakes that left them stranded in gravel or with damaged cars.

    If there’s genuinely a safety issue (not buying it’s for Mortorcycles that use the tracks as most MC tracks have gravel) then something needs to be done to at least penalise mistakes (or deliberately driving off the track)
    In this age of technology, there’s no reason why it can’t happen, there’s all sorts of options – immediate discharge of all battery power from the MGU’s, switch on pit lane limiter for 5 seconds, or just signal race control and apply a 3 strikes rule (3rd offence in the race is an automatic drive through).
    Bring it in – at least then we can be sure that those drivers who can keep it on the track receive some advantage for staying mistake free and keeping it on the black bit.

    1. immediate discharge of all battery power from the MGU’s, switch on pit lane limiter for 5 seconds, or just signal race control and apply a 3 strikes rule (3rd offence in the race is an automatic drive through).

      You are correct, all these measures can be applied. But that does not change the fact that there is a faster route available than the ideal line on track. It feels wrong to impose track limits on drivers when there is a faster route, knowing it’s their nature to find the fastest line possible. My solution would be: make sure that going off track is always slower or more dangerous. How? Dunno yet.

      1. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
        22nd January 2016, 11:42

        @matthijs maybe it’s possible to put sensors on the white line that somehow detect when a car has crossed it completely out of the track. Then discharging the battery or some other way to punish the mistake can turn on automatically.

        1. Or give all drivers those electric dog collars which give an electric shock when crossing the white line.
          @matthijs, @omarr-pepper, @dbradock

          1. Candidate for COTD lol

          2. This made me laugh very hard!

    2. What a great idea… Make sensors on the car to detect when all 4 wheels cross the white line… and remove MGU-K and MGU-H for 10 seconds.

      You cross that line and petrol power for you only.

      1. Really great idea with the battery discharge following all 4 wheels off, all done automatically. If already discharged, then for the next lap. (all or half?) For qualifying it’s of course time disallowed.

        And it shouldnt’ matter where the car goes off.

  12. The fact FOM have not designated marketing department is just ridiculous. If Bernie wants more positive spin on F1 then he needs to put his hand in his pocket and pay for a good, positive marketing strategy. If you leave it to the independent media, they will always want to sell copies of X magazine or achieve Y number of clicks on their site and there is such a small amount of positivity coming from the movers and shakers within the sport, that negative stories are getting more attention because a) they get the results the journalists bosses want and b) there are so few good news stories that without all this negatively then there would be almost nothing to write about.

    RedBull- love them or hate them, they know how to promote pretty much anything that takes their fancy, look at the ski slope stunt. FOM need to realise that they need to fight for an audience, my young nieces and nephews are more interested in watching streamed content to a tablet of phone than they are about being sat in front of the TV, they get bored with 1 thing and so search another. Gone are the days where there was only 4 channels to choose from, which meant on a Sunday there was a 1 in 4 chance people were watching the F1 coverage. Do they not realise that platforms have to compete against each other now for our interest and limited viewing time.

    On the whole, FOM can’t complain about negative press if they don’t have a fully dedicated team working tirelessly to put a positive spin on things. Besides Bernie doesn’t help things with his red herrings and cryptic messages. I’m afraid the man is so out of touch now that he is hurting F1 at its core.

  13. JV has a point so far as the tarmac run offs go. I have never understood why the track can’t be lined with a strip of turf about 5-10m wide and then have tarmac after that. Surely that would give a suitable punishment to cars running wide while remaining relatively safe. To my mind it would also improve the look of the track, because you would see far less of the tarmac runoffs, and if the TV shots are framed properly, may not see them at all.

  14. Please please no more stories or kinks about Villeneuve. The guy merely seeks publicity us always critical and frankly bleedin boring !!

    1. Or links even !

      1. JV may be well past his prime, but he is right.

        I recall an article in Jan 2000 of Motorsport magazine, where they interviewed several past world champions about what they wanted for F1 in the future – Stirling Moss & JV among them. JV made the point that simply by getting rid of the (then in use) grooved, hard tyres and going back to big, wide slicks would both increase mechanical grip making overtaking easier, but also force teams to run less wing as the tyres would generate much more drag. Thus, overtaking and being able to follow one another would be easier.

        Stirling Moss also made the point that overtaking should occur on track, while the cars are moving, rather than in the pits (via strategy) when they are not…

        Regardless of personal opinion about JV and his life choices/current racing ability/etc. his basic points about a lot in F1 is spot on.

        So instead of trying to find one person to replace Bernie, maybe a new F1 management group which contained JV, Berger, Mansell, Webber, Montoya, Brawn and Stewart might be the direction to go in?

  15. if you thought track limits in f1 were bad…. in the imsa united sportscar series over in america the is no track limits-

    https://youtu.be/am_HsprxfME?t=5m9s

    1. LOL! :D Watching now… it looks good. People are racing for real. Tire war, no DRS… m m m. They are going for it.

      1. @jureo, what tyre war? The series runs a standard specification tyre by Continental and was formed from the former Continental Sports Car Challenge series (I think you can guess what tyres they used).

        1. @anon IMSA wasn’t formed from the Continental Sports Car Challenge Series. CSCC still exists as a feeder series to IMSA. This incarnation of IMSA came from a merger of ALMS and Grand-Am. The Continental race tires(which are actually made for Continental by Hoosier Tires) are the spec tire in 3 of the 4 classes. GTLM is an open tire class, but all the teams except the Falken Tire team used Michelins. Falken tires has pulled out of the series, but until last season they always had better wet weather tires than Michelin. Michelin had to improve their wet weather tires a lot to catch up, which they did.

    2. @ PeterG The COTA race for IMSA is an aberration, and it really just underlines the differences between traditional tracks and the new style F1 circuits. Unlike WEC and F1 cars IMSA sports cars don’t have GPS tracking. The race director said they couldn’t police track limits uniformly and fairly at COTA, so to be fair he told the drivers to take whatever line they wanted. This isn’t an issue at any other IMSA race(i.e. Long Beach, Road America, Road Atlanta, VIR, etc), because if a driver exceeds track limits in any other race they’re either spinning off in the grass or in the wall.

  16. The only thought that ever comes to mind when Villneuve talks about the old days is

    “… And I was wearing an onion on ma hip, which was the style at the time…. Gimme four bees for a quarter, you’d say…”

  17. Villeneuve comments are pretty funny since his rather short-lived Formula E career (if you can call three races a career) has just come to an end and he’s been replaced by Mike Conway http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2016/january/mike-conway-to-race-for-venturi-in-buenos-aires.aspx

  18. Fudge Ahmed (@)
    22nd January 2016, 15:49

    You gotta love Google Translate sometimes… From the Berger article;

    “Can Ecclestone and Todt manufacturers still take off their pants or are they gone too far with their participation?”

  19. The current F1 suffers from many issues, but I don’t believe “more room for error” could be one of them. I also don’t agree with gaining advantage by simply cutting corners on the tarmac runoffs instead of taking the corner, but this is not common, and quite rationally penalized (maby these runoff areas could have a rougher surface which lets the car still roll, but bnot with full speed). But raceday situations show, that during wheel-to-wheel actions anything can happen, sometimes both drivers make a mistake, sometimes only one of them, sometimes neither of them, however, they still might end up leaving the track. But if they have the runoff, they can come back and try again. Isn’t that we want to see? Or do we want drivers to end up in the walls or stuck in the gravel instead?

    If there is no room for error, how on earth are we expecting the drivers taking risks and making a move on each other, overtaking?

    How many times do we hear the drivers complaining after an accident on the team radio, like “he pushed me wide”, “i had nowhere to go”, “he left me no room”. And after a few of this, they simply won’t try anything on the track. They rather sit pretty behind an opponent, waiting for the next pitstop, to make the move off-track, instead of ontrack. And as the off-tracks moves work quite well, why would they try anything else? It’s obvious, that overtaking is problematic because of the aero rules (dirty air), and the tyre behaviours (quick degradation), but if we don’t change these, i don’t think that shrinkening the room for error would imporve anything on the racing.

    At the end, the drivers are human beings, and not machines. Why would they have to be errorless at all? Most of the track position changes come from driver errors. And why aren’t the machines errorless? With so many technical failures last year, it would be crucial for a driver to trust his car. I personally don’t really like the way drivers have to race, saving the tyres, saving fuel, managing resources, waiting and waiting and waiting. It would be much beneficial if these guys could go flatout all the race, with a reliable piece of a machinery, and challenege each other ON TRACK, and if they can’t get past first, they try again and again. But this would suggest a certain level of driver error, which must be enabled and tolerated.

  20. LOL :D I gotta comment,…

    to all the people who belittle Jacques Villeneuve…

    The fact is JV’s talents and experience are only of the highest level, and recognized as such by the vast majority of racing insiders. Come on man, he’s an Indy rookie of the year, 500 winner, CART Champion, F1 ‘rookie of the year’, and F1 World Champion. And nobody does those kinds of feats alone. He is so highly regarded and you are so off the mark with your assumptions.

    He said it best. Jacques Villeneuve is a world class driver. Who are you to belittle him? What are your credentials? How many F1 world championships have you won?

    Kinda reminds me of people who come around and say Vettel is not really any good, just had great car…. or Michael Schumacher wasnt briliant, just dirty and had team behind him.

    What else Sebastian Loeb is quite poor because he failed to become WTCC champion?

    Makes me sick.

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