F1

What's changed…

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #307340
    glynh
    Participant

    I was watching some classic races earlier (80’s onwards) and I noticed that while a lot has changed most the complaints were the same. Tyres had to be managed, overtaking was hard and certain engines or teams dominated.

    Just for fun I wondered what others thought had got better, worse and stayed the same.

    My random things are ;
    The camera work is better now (and I think it’s underapreciated just how good we have it now)
    Defending is worse.it might stop drivers being held up but Drs has made it very hard for a slower car to do well.
    One or very few teams dominating has stayed the same.

    #307344
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    For something obvious: safety is signficantly improved and I mean that in every aspect possible. Until basically my dying day I will have this picture I saw when watching the 1986 Italian Grand Prix in mind, where a bunch of Italian marshals removed a car stranded on the backstraight (not next to, on) whilst the race next to them basically went on as if nothing happened. It is a literal miracle that nobody was killed in the late 80s and, to be brutally honest, 1994’s deaths were accidents waiting to happen.

    I agree on the TV work, especially with the inserts it is much, much easier these days to get a full picture of everything going on in the race.

    #307396
    dragoll
    Participant

    The changes I’ve noticed from late 80’s through til now is, gravel traps are being removed in favour of tarmac run off, fences are so far back from the action that spectators need binoculars to see the cars, there isn’t anywhere near the same amount of sponsorship on the cars, live timing is a huge improvement over relying on broadcasters to be honestly telling you about important gaps, tyres didn’t use to have stripes on them, there use to be pre-qualifying to ensure we saw the fastest 26 cars on the grid, although the spread between 1st and 26th was astronomically higher than what we see between Mercedes and Manor today. Before Mercedes came to rule the roost in the last couple of years, I would have said that total team domination was uncommon in the modern era, even people complain about the RBR championships, that in my view wasn’t total domination because there were other teams that were legitimately in the hunt for the championship, today Mercedes demonstrates what the lates 80’s and early 90’s domination looked like. The broadcasts from Sky are far superior to anything I’ve witnessed in the past. Although not hard for an aussie fan as back in the 80’s they had one race where they showed 5 laps of the race, then switch to the golf to watch a few holes being played, then switch back to the race to show another 5 laps, ludicrous times they were.

    There are loads of differences, I do really like the modern era of F1, people complain because they don’t know any different, I myself like to have a whinge over different things as well, but overall, the quality of what we’re seeing on TV is far better than it was in the late 80’s and early 90’s. People romanticise about the “good old times”, but truth be told, they romanticise about the battles on and off track, the characters, not about coverage or the slowness of the tail enders back in the day. One day in the future, you guys and gals will be talking about how good that Mercedes car was of 2015 and how valiantly Vettel and Ferrari were trying to topple them, etc…

    #307397
    dragoll
    Participant

    One obscure fact, as Channel 9 in australia boasted this at the time, it was down to a Channel 9 camera man at the Adelaide GP we have to thank for the first man to capture F1 cars by zooming into the car and out as the car approached and turned the corner, before then, they use to take wide angle shots of the cars without zooming. The zooming helps to create a little bit of action/speed where there is none.

    #307400
    glynh
    Participant

    @dragoll That is interesting, it’s weird to think that even camera angles were ‘invented’.

    #308023
    GeeMac
    Participant

    Yup, that is all true. As much as people want to put their rose tinted specs on and say that everything was better in X era, the “problems” we have now (fuel saving/tyre management) have always been part of the game. In the past though, doing these well was seen to be a skill and doing it well enough to get a great result (i.e. Berger in Mexico 1986 or Mansell at Silverstone in 1988) was lauded as an act of genius rather than just “boring racing”.

    Glad people are talking about the camera work, because I think the improvement in camera technology is partly to blame for the loss of spectacle for the TV viewer. When watching the “F1 Rewind” shows on the beeb I am always struck by how frantic the races look (90’s races in particular) because of the choppy camera work. The on board shots from the 80’s also look insane because the camera is bouncing all over the place, which they don’t do now giving the (incorrect) impression that the tracks are all billiard table smooth.

    #308082
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    @klon Is there a picture, or a video with that incident?

    #308080
    GT Racer
    Participant

    The on board shots from the 80’s also look insane because the camera is bouncing all over the place

    That was down to where teams had the camera mount points on the cars than anything else.

    Back in the 80s/early 90s most teams used to have the engine cover bodywork extend around the cockpit so it all came off in 1 piece. The cameras were mounted to that & given how it wasn’t part of a solid structure there was a lot of flex in it so we saw a lot of vibration in the in-car camera image.
    However there were teams (Williams for example) who didn’t have the engine cover wrap around the cockpit, It was more as we see today… Just an engine cover. As such when cameras were mounted on there cars they were mounted on the roll structure & the image featured a lot less vibration, About the same as what we see today actually.

    Also the tracks of the time were a lot bumpier than what we see today & the cars had a bit more suspension travel to cope with those bumps & this also affected what you saw through the in-car cameras.

    In terms of trackside cameras, Back when FOM were just starting out the F1 Digital+ service in 1997 as put a lot of research & effort was put in to trackside cameras, Coming up with the best ways of panning/zooming to capture the sensation of speed & we actually did a lot of work revising existing equipment to meet what we wanted to do as well as inventing some new things to get some new shots.
    For example take the remote controlled cameras, A lot of effort was put in to coming up with a way of getting them to pan faster & we tried different lubricants, motors & mounts until a solution we were happy with was found.
    We had innovations such as a cut to live button on every camera so that if a camera operator saw something happening infront of him he could press it & his camera would immediately be cut into the main broadcast which allowed us to catch a lot more overtakes, accidents, spins etc.. live.
    We were putting in-car cameras in new places, giving new angles & we started playing around with different lens types to try & better catch the feeling of speed.
    It was the same with the audio, We spent ages looking at mic placement around the track not only to catch the best quality but also the best stereo separation as the cars passed by.
    For example-

    It was a great time to be around motorsport broadcasting because we were introducing so much innovation back then, always trying new things, bringing in new technology & really pushing motorsport broadcasting to a new level. its just a shame it had to end at the end of 2002 as we had a lot of new stuff in the works, a lot of those ideas just kind of died because people were let go, budgets were cut & the pressures of been the worldfeed broadcaster left less room to try new things.
    you still see it at times with things like the thermal imaging in-car camera & then the thermal imaging dual camera overlay shots, but its less frequent than it used to be sadly.

    #308084
    Atticus
    Participant

    Wow, @gt-racer, that’s some amazing insight.

    As for me, I guess it’s another quite obvious remark that track layouts changed massively – gone are the naturally undulating high speed corners of Brands Hatch, Kyalami and Zandvoort as are the low downforce challenges of the old Hockenheim, the Österreichring and Imola.

    The calendar is much more homogenous now: 5.5-kilometre cookie-cutters with 2/3 low speed corners, 1/3 medium speed and next to no high speed stuff, camber or major elevation changes.

    #308085

    @geemac Yeah, the camera work nowadays is too good and I guess I’ll say is sort of less “authentic”.

    It’s a (lttle?) bit like comparing songs on Genesis Live (1973, released before Selling England) to their studio versions on Tresspass, Nursery Cryme, and Foxtrot.

    The Live version was better compared to the studio version whhich was polished…probably a bit like mad.

    (The same goes for Rush and Fly by Night (studio) vs The 5th Order of Angels (live), if you’ve heard of it)

    #308086
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    @keisalex
    Here you go: https://youtu.be/z-QRikJLqVw?t=13m41s

    It’s actually worse than I thought. In my memory they at least waved yellows, but, as the video evidence shows, no such thing.

    #308087

    Nonquestion, In my view you are comparing F1 today with it’s worse decade, especially the latter half. I understand that we are comparing Turbo with Turbo but we’re also comparing monopoly with monopoly.

    #308182
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    @klon Thanks mate. It really looks awful. Seeing this, every single safety matter they improve, it looks justified.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.