There are a couple of aspects of Formula 1 that make it very compelling to watch (my opinion of course, take as you will):
- Accessible aerodynamics (it's on the road in front of you, not up in the air)
- Technological developments (e.g. this year, one of the teams has a steering wheel they pull toward/push away themselves to change the geometry of the front wheels)
- Watching high-performing athletes demonstrating the ability to operate a machine at speeds over 200mph and still having the capacity to understand the strategic situations unfolding around them, even gathering information from the crowd in the grandstands, or the tv screens that flash past them as they navigate the track
- Seeing an inter-disciplinary team design and operate a machine that fuses aerodynamics, mechanics and hybrid propulsion systems, driven by a human operator, monitored in realtime by a team of engineers distributed around the world
- On-the-fly risk/reward decision making in race strategy from observing current data whilst incorporating gut feeling based on past experience to great effect
The balance of importance between driver and constructor is quite unique in sport. A sufficiently good car can make an average driver competitive (e.g. Bottas), but also a sufficiently good driver can make an average car competitive (e.g. Schumacher).
Plus everyone involved is such a drama merchant (or crook!) that the season often plays out like a soap opera.
After spending years trying to put myself in a position to work in the sport, now I mostly just follow F1 for the politics and gamesmanship more than the racing itself.
There are much more fun motorsports to watch, but rarely do they come so packaged with intriguing technical drama.
A few years ago I did a spec Job application to RBR racing
I wasn't cheeky enough to mention the two DNF's (ran out of fuel) they had had the previous season, and how as a former Research Assistant / Experimental officer at a world leading hydro dynamics RnD org - I would have at least made sure the second one did not happen
I would have identified the issue and put plans in place to make sure it didn't happen the second time - any idea how much a DNF costs a top F1 team?
I worked on Campus at Cranfield Uni (close to RB and Maclarren) At a tier 1 research organisation in hydrodynamics, there was one US lab that was working at our level.
I worked on research projects and managing out risk like this is a big aspect of the work. If the materials for a single run of an experiment cost as much as for a small flat you take great care not to fuckup or at least not to make the same mistake twice
I also did a niche specialised Vocational Course in thermofields basically to support military /aerospace.
Were I an interviewer, I think I would have actually really liked that one. It demonstrates real understanding of how human mistakes get made and prevented.
That was brought home to me, when I asked the guy that I shared an office why they used band new non rechargeable batteries for each run of a particular experiment - testing how to improve mixing for the chemical industry.
He commented that some of the runs cost 20k (about 10x my salary at the time) in chemicals to fill the tank (this was a full size 1:1 experiment) so using a brand new set every time made sense - and also the environmental cost of disposing of the several tons of chemicals was not trivial either.
Interesting though that compared with most individual series vs motorsport as a whole, F1 has more races (or at least, this season certainly would have done), and Liberty was rumoured to even be pushing for a 25 race calendar (nudging even closer to the BTCC calendar, and they do 3 per weekend...).
If the double-headers do well this year, I can see that being how they manage that many next year.
Yeah, but Indycar was only something like 18, WEC 8, WRC 14, Blancpain 10. An F1 race isn't a rarity in itself compared with most other motorsports, even MotoGP was only scheduled for 20.
The balance is probably around 90% the car and 10% the driver. In the years of RB dominance, a subpar driver like Webber almost got the championship. OTOH Alonso lost a decade in Ferrari and McLaren while being, tied with Hamilton, the best driver in the grid.
The 10% of what the driver adds to the mix is what makes Hamilton champion instead of Bottas.
Dunno if it's a valid comparison, but my kid races indoor karting. He's average level, that means he's within 1.5% of the best in race conditions (i.e. on a 40 seconds lap, he's about than 0.7 seconds behind the best on average). And given the time it took to reach that, I'd say that being a competitive pilot may be just 10% of the victory, but those 10% are super tough to reach.
I've been doing a bit of karting lately and the difference between a 58s and a 59s lap is crazy. Super hard to shave that second off, but it's also so obvious that the guy doing 58s laps is way faster.
Last year there was a hobbyist race on my local track and the person who won it was a guy who mainly practices at home on his computer. I imagine a gokart simulation is close enough to the real deal that training on it actually can help a lot. You can get much more fine-grained feedback on how well you're taking certain corners etc. One thing that trips me up is understanding the kart - my local ones have somewhat poor acceleration, so it seems it's not actually best to take the corners as sharp as possible and try to accelerate out of the corner, but instead try to maintain as much speed as possible going into the corner, even if you end up on a bad line. This would be easy to test in a simulation, but I just have to go by gut feeling.
The 1st rule we've learned is : you look all over the place, not just the kart in front of you.
The 2nd rule we've learned is : no skidding, never. That's really hard to do. But look at top pilots, they don't skid.
The 3d rule is : you do your best time on every single lap (super good pilots do almost the same time on most of their laps, within 0.3 sec range; it's hard to believe they do it, but they do !).
4th rule : figure out the best trajectory. According to my kid's teacher it's a question of 10 centimeters here or there (good luck figuring that out !).
Strangely, passing a car is the last thing you learn. But in retrospect,it's normal : most of the time you run after the one in front of you. The opportunities to pass another pilot are rare (most of the time you're much faster so the blue flags forces them to let you pass).
As a dad, I'd say : find a good teacher, it makes a big difference.
I don't think that matters as much as you might think. We have 3 race classes at our local track. The Pro guys (top level) are easily 1-2 seconds above the Pro-am guys (mid-level). Some of these pros are not exactly lightweights and are considerably above the minimum weight. Yet they manage to slaughter everybody else out there. You would think they had a disadvantage to the people who are running the baseline weight in the kart, but you sure can't tell it.
Now imagine that the wealthy father of another average level kid is allowed to enter the race with an expensive kart that makes 10% more power, has 10% more grip and overall gives the driver a "free" 1.5 seconds per lap. Suddenly an average driver can crush a top notch driver every time.
Because that's F1. There's not a balance driver/car. There are good cars, average cars and poor cars, almost all of them driven by good drivers. In karting (and many formula cathegories) the reverse scenario is true: there are good drivers, average drivers and bad drivers, all driving similar karts.
>>> Now imagine that the wealthy father of another average level kid
Indoor kart racing is, in my country, affordable to, say 50% of population (you may have to make some choices though). Count +/-120€ per month (2 training session + 1 race). Swimming lessons are 30€ per month I'd say.
Outdoor karting is really expensive and is for the 1% (which I'm not part of :-)). Count 1000€ per race, gasp !
F1 is well, for ultra rich :-) Plan robbing 1 bank, or 10 (binary joke intended).
But according to many, indoor karts makes you a great pilot because the machine doesn't compensate for your failures.
I have family that do outdoor karting, and they are learning just how expensive it gets. They are certainly not the 1%, and are actually considering switching their kid to spec miata as running a actual car is cheaper than karting. The kids they race against are sons (almost entirely sons) of ex f1 drivers, leading political figures of nations, and ultra wealthy. And this is all US based karting which has no segway into f1. It's truly a 1% sport, you either need to be ultra wealthy or very quickly get supported by someone with that level of wealth.
I've done outdoor KZ class (125cc 2 stroke, 6 gears, both front and rear brakes) karting, apart from a very wealthy parent most kids that make it to the top in Europe drive for factory sponsored teams.
So then I would like your prediction on who would become WDC:
* Hamilton/Verstappen in a Williams?
* Antonio Giovinazzi in a Mercedes?
Don't forget the classic "to finish first, you first have to finish"...a drivers skill is not just better reaction time or better peripheral vision, it's also mental calm, not making stupid mistakes on lap 69 of 70, situational awareness etc.
I have occasionally (and very recreationally) raced on track days. I do not know kart racing well, but even in a relatively slow (15 year old BMW) car, it's incredibly scary to race towards a brick wall at ~180 km/h and only brake at the last moment.
So I think that 10% is a lot of skill and dedication, but also a sort of numbing to that fear.
I've done a lot of track days. You realise how big the skill gap is between an average person like me and a proper fast driver.
I've occasionally gone into a corner way faster than I should with my abilities, frightened myself, but the car has stuck to the track. It made the corner. I couldn't do this intentionally, even knowing that I can throw it into the corner x mph faster than I'm comfortable with and I will come out the other end pointing in the right direction, I still can't do it.
Then you realise that if I gave my car to a racing driver, he would drive it like that in every corner of every lap. Because he has to, because if he doesn't he's giving away time.
It blows my mind.
My limit for how fast I can drive a car is so much lower than even an average road cars physical limits.
Agreed, I'm much more at the limit of the kart for every corner. If i crash, its not much $ out of my pocket. The value of the car is always at the back of my head when doing track days - even when its relatively "cheap", and thus I am slower. It take me much much longer to get up to the limit on the car :/
Also, a good driver might not be a good team member which might put them in a disadvantage. Räikkönen was considered one of if not the fastest on the grid during his best years but iirc wasn't very good as a team member in the car's development phase which hampered his and his car's performance
You can put whatever driver you name in a Mercedes from 2014 until today, and he will end at least in second place in the championship. I cannot imagine a single driver, not even Maldonado, that would end worst than 2nd except due to incredible bad luck with the car reliability.
Verstappen is an incredible good driver that probably deserves to win multi-championships. But as it is now, Bottas is closer to that achievement than him.
The ratio varies - I would say it depends on the car, teammates and team. But ultimately driver skill is what determines who gets to drive for Mercedes, Ferrari etc. So once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams or leaving F1 all together.
> once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams
That's not always the case. Eddie Irvine spent 4 years as n.2 to Schumacher pretty happily, only changing teams because Jordan offered more money. He was pretty spectacular on good days but nowhere as good as The Michael.
Right. The current era is definitely more competitive than past eras. Teams were often cash strapped back then, so sponsorship money trumped driver skill in some teams. Also Ferrari was very much Schumacher’s team. Irvine was his supporting driver much more than a true teammate, unlike what we have these days in most teams, including at Mercedes and Red Bull.
The driver matters more when the cars are close in performance. Any driver on the grid would have been either World Champion or runner up in a Ferrari in 2002 and 2004, Red Bull 2011 and 2013, Mercedes in 2014-2016 and maybe 2019. The only opponent would be the team mate. The car matters nearly zero in the fight with a mate, that is only about driving skill: how to be fast and when, when to try to overtake and when not, etc. Most F1 drivers are very fast but not all of them are as wise in their driving as they should be. Some of them regularly end a race and score points, others regularly crash or throw away good results. (And some drivers are there because they are backed by sponsors with the money needed by the teams they drive for.)
It’s also the balance that the FIA has never managed to maintain to anybody’s satisfaction.
A lot of the issues with F1 stem from the fact that it’s actually two seperate competitions. If you let constructors build the fastest car that they safely can, then two bad things happen. Firstly, the fastest car will win. Secondly, the teams with less money can’t compete. The F1 brand is about having the most technologically advanced cars, but really it has to constantly hold the best teams back in order to keep things competitive. That’s why the regulations are so hopelessly complex (this years new regulations have to cover up the holes in last years poor regulating...), and it’s why anything that is truly innovative is nearly always instantly banned.
F1 is constantly swinging between a state of dominant constructors (Mercedes the past 6 years), and being more like a spec series (the new 2021 regs). If F1 wanted to actually live up to its brand, it would let the constructors build mostly whatever they wanted to. But if it did that, it would also have to divvy up the prize money more fairly to keep the lesser teams from going under, which it’s never going to do because of how political it all is.
A budget cap is one solution to keep design regulations to a minimum and ensure that smaller teams can compete. F1 introduced a $145 million budget cap for the 2021 season, going down to $135 million for 2023-25 seasons. Right now the three biggest teams (MB, Ferrari, Red Bull) spend somewhere around half a billion or so per season.
But that’s not a solution for balancing the concerns of the two competitions. The new regs are going to bring F1 closer to being a spec series than it’s ever been before.
The budget cap is just a little over the current Haas budget. Personally I don’t find the prospect of watching a race with 10 Haas level teams in it to be a particularly compelling idea. I’m also not that excited about the idea of constructor innovation being limited to what you can achieve with a Haas budget.
The budget cap is probably the bluntest tool available for addressing constructor performance balancing. For example, the current chassis rules make aero incredibly complex to design (which is expensive), and makes close racing impossible (because of all the dirty air). They would have been better off simplifying those rules (and maybe bringing back ground effect). Look at how well Racing Point performed last weekend, they nearly got a podium. The only significant change they made was copying the Mercedes 2019 aero kit.
I would be very surprised if Haas is spending anywhere close to the incoming budget cap. They arguably have the smallest expenditure thanks to the Ferrari parts deal and contracting the chassis out to Dallara. Of the current teams, I think only Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mclaren (by a much smaller margin) are spending above the incoming cap.
Sealed ground effect will probably not return to F1, not for performance reasons but safety. Introducing the seal greatly increases downforce but once it is broken, the dropoff is incredible. Maintaining that would be nearly impossible with surface imperfections and debris on the track.
The Haas budget for last year was ~ $170 million, not all of that goes to capped expenses, but after you account for that it puts them just under the new cap (Williams, Toro Rosso and Alfa Romeo all spend less than Haas). Renault, McLaren (about $270 million each) and Racing Point (about $190 million) are all above it. There are also 0 teams currently under the cap who make their own engines (Renault is the lowest budget non-customer team). So in terms of budget the current cap really does push everybody down to about the same level as Haas.
Regarding ground effect, the new 2021 regs have already brought it back. They’ve simplified the wing designs, and moved a lot of the downforce to ground effect. It’s not the same level of ground effect that F1 had in the 70s/80s, it’s more like the current IndyCar ground effect design. But the result from a following car perspective is the same. Moving the downforce from wake generating bodywork to under the chassis. However the overall effect is less downforce and therefore slower cars on circuit.
Those numbers are pretty generous, I would beg to differ on at least some of them. [1][2][3]
My mistake when you mentioned ground effect, I thought you meant sealed (skirts and fans). The ground effect you mean is already a thing in present F1 thanks to diffusers. The new rules have just made the diffuser bigger and simplified the front and rear wings.
The budget cap was revised down after Covid hit (down to $145 million from $175 million), to stop the midfield from going broke, and Ross Brawn says they’re going to lower it further in the coming years [0].
You can’t figure out exactly what teams that’s going to hit, because publicly available finances don’t have enough detail. But it’s either going to bring spending more or less in line with Haas or Racing Point, who are both pretty close in terms of spending anyway. The reason McLaren (a relatively big spending team) are so publicly in favour of it is that they’ve had some pretty serious financial trouble going on recently.
I'd go with something more radical: a 2x5 meters max box, 100 kg of gas for the 300 km race, 600 kg minimum weight, 50 million budget maybe including the drivers (there is a very long line of them) and maybe a max downforce test if it can be made hard to cheat. Then let the teams do whatever they want.
Somebody will optimize for the engine, somebody for the aerodynamics, somebody for the suspensions, somebody for the tires (buy them from whoever they want) etc. I guess very few will spend much on the driver.
At the beginning they'll be slower than the current cars (which are only marginally faster than the v10s of 2004) but year after year they'll improve new areas of the design and get fast again. I expect a lot of technical drama and very different solutions. It's going to be back to the 70x and 80s with today's technology and processes.
It could definitely be managed better, to optimize for what they seem to be trying to (sport + performance).
Budget caps seems like a cop-out though, as eventually the budgetary rules inherit all the complexity in the current technical rules.
I think some kind of FRAND forced tech licensing / transfer + shared manufacturing would be an interesting solution. Whereby a hyper-optimized solution by a leading team can be licenses (or is outright open sourced) for the next season. And similarly, where all builders have access to a neutral manufacturing facility (a la TSMC).
This reminded me of Finnish folk racing Jokamiesluokka[1], where the owner of the car has to entertain offers for the car after a race and must sell the car if there's a willing buyer. This is to keep the cost of cars down.
This is similarly done in American short-track racing as well with the “engine claim” system - I’ve normally heard of it on dirt but I wouldn’t be surprised if asphalt series do it to.
Below is just one example of how these rules can be structured.
Customer teams get exactly the same engine that the works team uses. The reason they don’t perform as well is that they still have to design the rest of their car (which includes a lot of performance impacting design), and they also may have to modify the engine to fit it in their chassis.
This and the difference in resources. Only Red Bull managed to systematically outperform the factory team of their engine (Renault.) McLaren is more on an even ground with them but still a little bit better. Renault is not pouring much money in their car.
And people who like to think about possible unfairness could argue that manufacturers build about 100 engines per season, test them, then pick the ones to keep, the ones to give to customers and the ones that turned out not to be good enough for racing. It's hard to get the very best engine if you are only a customer and you're really competing against the manufacturer and not only an appearance.
I wouldn't call Bottas an average driver. His temperament and consistency of top performance is commendable. He has played second fiddle to Lewis for a long time, which is a shame. The car does give him an edge but I would bet most teams would hire him in a flash if he decides to shop around.
I agree completely with all points, though it's nowhere nearly as entertaining as it was up until ~2007. I mean there have been only a handful of GPs that were interesting over the last few years. Coincidentally yesterday's GP was definitely one of them. I mean it's not often you see almost half the cars break down.
Are you sure it's not a case of selective memory? I remember old F1 races to be quite boring compared to today, if you don't care about who is going to win the constructer championship.
Overtakes shot up because of DRS, which was introduced because reliability had gone up so massively that races had become too predictable. Before DRS, the 2000-2010 decade was ending up producing "Monacos" on most weekends.
Pre-2000, reliability was more on par to what we saw this weekend (45% of cars not finishing), which made it much more exciting on average.
Early/mid 2000s were still pretty unreliable; it was only with the introduction of parc fermé and the car not being allowed to be touched between qualifying and the race that we started seeing the vast majority of cars finishing. It was definitely processional, but that wasn't really down to the reliability.
It's not just about overtaking through - previously, strategy relating to fuel and tyre changes was a big part of a race, now this strategic element is all but gone.
Tyre changes are still absolutely critical. Case in point: yesterday Albon's last stint on softs would have likely pipped an otherwise-dominant Mercedes to P2 and possibly even P1, had Hamilton not "touched" him out of contention.
I personally didn't like fuel changes, probably because I started watching F1 before they were introduced and it made me mad that a less efficient, less-reliable engine could now win over more solid ones. They are also spectacularly dangerous for drivers and crew - as Jos Verstappen can attest.
Refuelling actually hinders the importance of team strategies as once the car is fuelled, there's a fixed point at which a pitstop has to happen by. Without that, and with the degradation of tyres offering a similar performance hindrance as higher fuel levels, there's far more freedom in strategy, with similar consequences for the wrong call costing a race (or the right one sealing it).
I have watched almost all of them actually. And while I was ~10 in the late 90's and not interested, I have recently watched GPs from that era and none of the recent GPs can stand up to the Schumacher vs Hakkinen races. Many of the drivers these days lack character if you ask me, with very few exceptions. And some shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a race car imo. The Austrian GP was interesting simply because of all the mechanical retirements which is relatively rare these days. The only race with similar record in recent years was Hockenheim last year(also incredibly interesting) but it was mostly due to crashes.
Fair points. I enjoyed the Schumacher era. But Hakkinen gave us just 2 years as double champion. Where as up until 2018 we had 3 multi champions racing against a new generation of highly talented drivers. 4 championships wasn’t enough to save Vettel a seat at Ferrari with the depth of talent we currently have on the grid.
It’s also getting tighter at the front. Knock Mercedes down a peg or two and 2021 could be a 4-way fight, with Maclaren joining Ferrari and Red Bull to challenge the Mercs.
Like many other drivers, Hakkinen was a bit short on luck. Similar to Raikkonen for that matter who missed out at least on a second championship because of an unreliable car. Don't get me wrong, I agree that today's cars are much faster, safer, yada-yada.
But I did mention Hakkinen-Schumacher for a reason - though they were direct competitors and had very different driving manners, you could see how they had immense respect for each other and acted like true sportsmen off the track. Whereas now you have a ton of spoiled brats (some multiple world champions at that) who cry like babies every time the wind isn't blowing their way, others who have seats only because they have rich daddies, while people like Hulkenberg are sitting in front of the TV at home... I mean look at teams alone - there are only two teams with solid relationships between drivers inside of them - Norris-Sainz and Raikkonen-Giovinazzi(I suspect because Raikkonen simply does not care and is only there because he enjoys driving).
And I don't see how this will improve in the future. What I'm trying to say is that I'd much rather watch a real race as opposed to a soap opera, which is what today's F1 resembles more. Not just from drivers' prospective but from teams themselves.
Part of why I find F1 boring when I've tried to watch it in the past is that the camerawork is so technically orientated. They pan with the cars so perfectly that there's little sensation of speed. You could be watching RC cars on an indoor track.
With the ubiquity of drones nowadays there would seem to be a lot of options for more exciting viewing.
This comment doesn't make sense. F1 uses onboard cameras extensively- look up the Halo HUDs which overlay speed, throtte, brake and g-force on the Halo device in the cockpit camera view.
Although the speeds those cars move at isn't possible to convey on camera- what looks like 60mph is usually a three-digit speed. Drones wouldn't be able to keep pace, which is why they're used as static cameras rather than chase cameras.
I agree with your general sentiment. I have stopped watching lately but the last great season I remember was the one when Lewis Hamilton won the championship in the last corner of the last race over Felipe Massa due to some other driver not finishing. I think it was in the late 00s.
And reportedly not particularly significant except in a few specific circumstances (i.e. to warm tyres in qualifying outlaps or behind a safety-car). Didn't seem to make much of a difference this weekend.
Do u really feel an average/top driver can strategize during the race?
The race engineer has X10 data, X10 mental bandwidth, and X10 domain practice (that's his day job!)
There all these radio moments (Hamilton "how r we behind them?" after spinning out in Germany etc) .. which really makes it clear that the driver focus is very local (both spatially and temporally), as it should be!
His racing antics and desire to win at any cost aside, Schumi was brilliant. There were way less real time metrics of pit stop strategies, more variables like refueling and less sensors in the car. He was a master strategist and now with each team having dedicated teams around data and strategy, I doubt we will see a complete driver like him.
Calling your pit stops makes sense, sort of, for drivers. Top drivers like Vettel (well pre-Sbinalla Vettel) have a better "feel" for the tires and can gauge how they are doing. But this often times is risky and breaks down in races because the human brain, especially under the pressure of F1 racing, is not going to be tracking thousandths, hundredths, or even tenths of seconds off lap times over 4-5KM of traveled distance. You can hear frustration in engineers voices when trying to convince a top driver they need to get new tires after ignoring previous calls to "box" (come in for a pitstop).
Everybody has their off moments, but I’d say the top drivers strategize pretty heavily (even if your only counting pit strategy as strategy). Even then I’d say driver called pit strategies have about as much chance of working out as team strategies (which are mostly guess work). The only strategy the driver can’t really contribute to is the mechanical preservation strategy, because they can’t see nearly as well what the condition of their engine is. But even then, that strategy is the same all the time - make the engine and gearbox last the required number of races.
This is certainly a true point. A lot of the shots now are cars racing towards a stationary camera; hard to gauge distance (and thus speed) and the background is static.
If you sometimes see spectators phone recordings of F1, where they try to pan their phones with the cars, you can clearly see the insane speed.
Example of F1 broadcasting angle that makes the sport a lot more exciting:
I still enjoy watching F1, but something the way the cameras were back in the Senna era were just... raw and guttural. You could feel the speed and the closeness of the drive to the track. Perhaps it was because they were imperfect/shook or whatever
Hmm, I guess there's some level politics in every situation where humans have power over other humans, but I don't understand why that would make F1 compelling to watch.
> Technological developments (e.g. this year, one of the teams has a steering wheel they pull toward/push away themselves to change the geometry of the front wheels)
I’ve fallen out of love with F1 over recent years. Could you kindly expand on this tech? Does the push/pull change the toe or camber of front wheels, or something else?
It adjusts the toe of front wheels and it's called DAS (Dual Axis Steering). This is only currently being used by Mercedes in F1. In simplest of terms and from what I have understood, it can reduce friction and tyre wear on long stretches by having 0 toe (parallel front wheels). And achieve better grip on corners by moving the front wheel outwards.
My understanding is that it changes the toe of the front wheels, and is used to slightly increase speed on straight sections.
There are rules limiting what can control the steering / suspension components of a car, and that's one of the reasons why this is controlled by pushing/pulling on the steering wheel rather than something else.
It's the toe - the primary "advantage" is that they can warm up the tires on formation / restarts without having to scrub back and forth. That scrubbing motion wears especially hard on the rear tires.
- The fact our planet has enough pollution to deal with already, I'm not saying Formula1 is extremely polluting, but whatever it adds is quite unnecessary for just an entertainment purpose (my opinion of course)
By pollution I meant all the transports between races, all the services, products, material needed, all the people (spectators, staff, etc..) coming to races, their transports, food too, the transport and products for their food. It can go deep, those are all the hidden costs in terms of pollution, that people easily overlook
I didn't think about the gas consumption really. I'd have said the same about a cycling race (and I love bike, but practising, not watching). The pollution comes from all the surroundings, transports, materials, organizations, services, broadcasting, littering, ..
Even harder to see the J-vanes on the Ferrari (not helped by there being only 10 photographers round the tracks at the moment, so many fewer pictures than usual) but I've found a couple photos of the SF1000's vanes:
It'll be interesting to see if they change cape/J-vane philosophy with their much vaunted aero upgrade for Hungary in a couple of weeks. There certainly seem to be some pretty fundamental issues with their 2020 car at the moment. I'm sure their newly legal engine isn't helping them but watching some of Vettel's onboards from yesterday[0] there's clearly something aerodynamically wrong too, the car just isn't planted in any phase of cornering.
People who are not normally interested in F1 are finding the Netflix series Drive to Survive a more accessible version to spectate. It's not just highlights in chronological order, but a distillation of the main themes of the season, e.g., certain inter-team battles, intra-team rivalries, fallouts between teams and suppliers, regulations, etc. The behind-the-scenes glimpses are fascinating.
I remember (pre-family when I could easily give-up a large chunk of my weekend) tuning in to the beginning of TV coverage on Saturdays (qualifying) and Sundays (race day) primarily to watch all the build-up about the developments since the previous race, particularly all the new technical changes; the relentless engineering efforts are immense and we only get a tiny glimpse of it.
These cars could in theory be even faster. They stopped in season testing years ago; there are limits to the amount of high performance computing they can do; many parts are standardised. There's a tension in the way the sport is regulated to constrain the vast budgets of the larger teams so that smaller teams can try and compete, and ideally new teams enter the sport too. In addition, the aerodymics evolved to such a degree that the wake each car leaves behind makes it almost impossible for cars to follow closely and overtake, leading to uninspiring processions on race days. So regulations are constantly being added to try and ensure a spectacle (DRS, degrading tyres, forcing sub-optimal front and rear wings). But they continue to innovate at a staggering pace.
When DRS (Drag Reduction System -- used in set portions of the straights, a car that's within 1 sec of a car can deploy DRS, that causes the rear wing to have less drag and can potentially allow an overtake). But absolutely amazing lateral thinking from the teams saw innovations like the "F-duct" that was eventually banned and then the so-called "Double DRS". They are channeling relatively small amounts of air-flow through little vents and holes to create small but improvements to their aero performance.
And when in-season testing was removed, all teams rolled out state-of-the-art digital car simulators that have become incredible sophisticated; they design new aerodynamic parts, such as a tiny adjustments to their front-wing, then they test the part on the simulator before actually building and taking to the next race.
The constraint is not the budget or testing though. You could make much faster cars with even less money if you removed some of the constraints (particularly in minimal car weight, engine size, aerodynamic effects, fuel, etc.). You don't want them to be much faster for safety reasons - if they go much faster then there would be too many situations where the human reaction time is not sufficient to avoid an accident. The Group B (Rallying) competition suffered from too many accidents and was disbanded.
So I watched Drive to Survive and loved it, so much so that I would like to get into watching F1 proper, but when I tried it just doesn't hold my interest (although admittedly I mostly attempted to watch random races on YouTube). Do you (or anyone else) have any tips on what and where to watch to get into it?
Perhaps it's time I get a proper subscription for the TV coverage and watch it like you say over the weekend.
I think the more you understand about the race, strategy, technology, rivalries, and race-craft will definitely help you enjoy a GP much more. It's combination of all these things that make it that much more than just cars going around a track quickly. The Austrian GP just gone was very exciting, especially the end!
Try watch a few more races and even check out the F1 subreddit /r/formula1 - its a good community that share plenty of news, clips from new and old races etc - and if you have any questions, they're all very helpful
The first season I watched was a little tough to follow. There's a lot of new information being thrown at you and teams and all that fun stuff to wrap your head around.
I typically just watch qualifying and the race. But it's a time thing. Qualifying if I fast forward through things still takes about 40 minutes. The race is typically a solid 2 hours or so. That's nearly 3 hours each weekend it's on and we haven't even dove into the pre-race and post-race bits or the practice sessions.
Things get interesting, like in yesterday's race, when penalties start playing into things (which resulted in different podium finishes yesterday) and some of the technical issues that happen (of which there were several during the Austrian GP, as only 11 finished the race).
I'd say yesterday's race had a fair bit happening in it, but not super duper exciting stuff.
The big part of the problem is, at least so far this year, Ferrari is once again behind the eight ball, Mercedes is (once again) running the pack, and Red Bull are sort of somewhere in the mix there.
The more exciting parts of the race are the team placing 4th, 5th and 6th. Those are typically much more exciting, but they rarely air much of those parts of the race.
r/formula1 is a good place to keep up to speed as well.
Drive to Survive was my gateway drug as well. Since then, I've watched every race, and qualifying if I can help it (which can sometimes be even more exciting). I'd suggest watching current races - you'll know most of the people involved from watching DtS, which makes it much more compelling.
Also, I've found a few podcasts that I listen to during the week that help me stay up to date with the storylines of the season. In particular, Missed Apex[1] and Shift+F1[2] are my go-tos. The former is a little bit snarkier and opinion-based, the latter is more straightforward and factual - both are good. Check out their race previews/reviews, it will give you some things to pay attention to when watching a current race.
I wish I still had the ability to block out ~3 hrs per day on race weekend. Alas those days are long gone.
A few years back, the free-to-air channel, Channel 4, lost the exclusive rights to broadcast the live events. Sky bought them up. Nowadays the Channel 4 offering has become a highlights package, and frankly that's been a pretty good outcome for me. Actually, I don't mind the reduced coverage of the actual car-on-track phase, but it's also not as in-depth on the pre-/post-race analysis, which was where a large chunk of the interest, intrigue and drama occurs.
Also, being able to record using a DVR means I can just tune in whenever it suits me, even if I'm dipping in for 15-30mins over a number of days. At least there's often two weeks between races.
Justst be aware the Netflix series sometimes show things out of context, or just straight up wrong, chronologically wrong etc to make it more entertaining.
I'm probably not up for a move to the UK, but if you don't mind, could you tell us a bit more about your job?
What sort of projects have you been able to work on? What's the work culture like? Do you find the actual technical problems you work on exciting, or is it more the domain that excites you (i.e. building and operating a racecar)?
Sure. The role (and myself) are in the aerodynamics department, developing and maintaining software for the aerodynamicists. The role of the aerodynamicist is to develop the bodywork of the car (wings, ducts, chassis shape etc) to improve aerodynamic efficiency. This is done primarily in computational fluid dynamics simulations [1] (virtual) and scale model testing in a wind tunnel [2] (physical) before being tested on the actual race car. My group works on the software to analyse the data output. Think data science dashboards with lots of real time and historical data. Due to our requirements, the tools are designed in house with input from users. In my time here I have worked on interfacing with the HPC cluster, improving visualisations and improving our backend stack amongst other things.
For your last question, it is a bit of both. I went to university with the goal of working in F1 and the competitive aspect is definitely there but as I was not a comp sci student the technical problems are still interesting. Developing aero is very visual heavy as ideas are implemented as 3D CAD designs and often reviewed as such. So it's not just a more complicated stock ticker that needs to be shown.
I've always been curious... do you worry about job security given how teams are sold and/or restructured every other year and how heavily they dependend on sponsors and results?
That is an interesting question. For me personally, no, not at my current life situation. For the most part, teams are subsidiaries of larger corporations and there is a little bit of security there. The privateer teams other than that pose some job security risk but most staff are highly skilled (normally to a post graduate level) and would be no different than joining a startup which might go bust at the end of runway.
Watched a lot of F1 in 90s/00s, stopped after 2017 season. Current regulations make it very predictable. Most offending rules are:
- limit on testing means that whoever makes the best car after regulations change will win until next regulations change (2010..2013 Red Bull, 2014.. today Mercedes), others have very limited means to catch up
- scoring system introduced in late 00s rewards reliability over racing, and gives miniscule reward for 1st place: now you get 25 for P1, 18 for P2, and in 80s it was 9 or 10 for P1, 6 for P2, and in 1980s only 11 of 17 results counted towards championship, so drivers would often take more risks to get for results. Now they just drive home safely.
Limiting on testing is just taking away the unique Ferrari advantage. Previously they just took their design out on their private racetrack next to the lab. Now they have to test as all the others: virtually in computer simulations. And for a short time on the track.
It's much more interesting to do the simulations virtually. Some even do the windtunnel testing now virtually. But only the richest.
So how do you explain that now after each regulation change and until the next, one team wins every constructor and driver title?
Previously, dominance was never that total, not even during Schumacher/Ferrari era (and Schumacher was way better driver than Hamilton). But since 2010, no competing team is able to catch up.
On paper it looks like Mercedes are dominant and have been since the V6 engine era. For sure the first couple of years they had a massive lead.
But the stats disguise the fight; the fact that Mercedes have won didn't mean their position wasn't earned, frankly they've had a fair slice of luck in several races. For the last two or three years one could easily argue that Ferrari had the means to take them on and beat them, but their campaigns have unravelled for various reasons. Many races they've had to earn that win and many seasons where there was a fight throughout.
The fact that Maclaren has vanished into obscurity despite originally having a Merc engine, and RedBull and Ferrari getting in others faces so often has actually allowed Mercedes to keep their head down and get on with bringing home their maximum potential points haul per race.
It is neither. All teams big or small use a wind tunnel. Simulation and regulation limits on computation mean that a virtual only development program is impossible. Virgin Racing tried it a while back and flopped completely.
What some teams do though is use outside wind tunnels owned by others, like another team or Toyota Motorsport in Germany
There were years when not all results counted - each driver had to discard the four worst results or something like that. That favored "win or crash" drivers over reliability.
I read Adrian Newey's autobiography, "How to build a car", last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the engineering side of motorsport.
Judging by yesterday’s race, the real key is just having your car finish the race (said in jest but there were nine DNFs in yesterday’s Austria Grand Prix and close to having a few more with Mercedes gearbox issues).
The true beauty of motorsports for me is the symbiosis of man/machine/environment interaction, the best drivers are are able to adapt their driving style to the limits of their car/setup in respect to changing weather.
I used to like watching it, until it became boring.
The cars got wider and more sensitive to the car in front, that overtakes became rare, even with DRS (*Drag Reduction System - that allows the back wing of the car in the back to fold to reduce drag at certain points in the track, if the car is close enough to the car in front).
Also, Mercedes started dominating it, to a point that the only battle in the race was in the mid-field. The winners were almost always, already decided at qualifying (unless some reliability issues happened during the race).
TBH, I think its better now that they're trying to level the playing field. Before (circa 2006 when I used to watch every single race) it was basically whoever had more money to spend.
>The winners were almost always, already decided at qualifying (unless some reliability issues happened during the race).
I don't think that's fair. FWIW, in the 2019 F1 season only 8/21 races were won by the driver in pole position.
I agree. 2019 was better. But still not enough, I feel. I got tired of Mercedes winning :).
Because of the COVID, they have pushed some of the needed reforms further out, which is unfortunate (like max $ spend per team, engine specs, reduced sensitivity to the car in front etc.).
I see the formula one body always trying to change rules that effect car performance. The goal, more overtaking and competitive racing.
My question is if they were to have more technology limitations meaning less area of improvement would that balance of 90% car 10% driver change for the better. Say 60% car and 40% driver. Wouldn't that make it more competitive?
The problem is that a lot of the investment comes from the large automotive manufacturers. Despite the fans and media interest in the drivers' championship, what really counts within the sport is the constructors' championship (the two are strongly correlated, of course).
What makes the sport more interesting to the fans is not necessarily what motivates teams to participate. One could argue that there are many other formula and racing formats that get that balance between the car and driver, but it's not necessarily something that gets people tuning in. People watch F1 because it's supposed to be pinnacle of automotive engineering and racing. So if I'm a team boss of one of the top 3 teams, I'm not going to be interested in artificially handicapping the sport so that the smaller teams can get in the mix.
However, they've seen repeatedly that fans get bored when it's the same couple of teams who are wrangling for the podium and there's not much excitement per race. So teams at the top will begrudgingly let the regulations be altered to try and spice things up, but nothing too significant. Unfortunately it'll take a downturn in F1 rights income & viewership to make the teams think twice about how to fight this tension between the competitiveness vs status quo. But then the big teams will think, why am I investing hundreds of millions in F1 when I'm not winning when I can spend a fraction in DTM or Le Mans and start building up prestige from other events.
Take the Monaco race, the quintessential F1 race. Watch the pole position lap from the driver's viewpoint and it's the up there with the most amazing 70secs you've seen in sport. However, watch the full race and it's typically a dull procession. As a fan I'd be glad to see the back of it, but sport itself love it.
I think you captured this perfectly with your explanation. I did not take into account the teams. I was solely concentrating from a fans perspective in error or from being a fan myself. So this delicate balance won't really change much due to the reason you outlined. I'm curious in your opinion what do you think could change that will affect the sport in a positive manner (from a fan and business perspective)?
Bold move by this technician helping out their worst competitors. You normally don't do this, even if Ferrari looks really poor this year and would need some help. They are just redesigning their front, because their J-Vane is not good enough.
automated cars would obviously eventually become faster than F1 drivers, it's just there's no interest in it (unfortunately).
The biggest interest to most people are the drivers and they strongly dislike driver aids. I'd prefer every driver aid under the sun and have a real engineering battle. I'm obviously in the minority here.
Formula E is under very tight budget constraints in order to lower the barrier to entry. I look forward to the day when the series is established and they can start to compete on things like motor construction and battery tech to drive the field forwards.
The racers like whatever makes them go faster. When ABS and traction control was allowed everyone was using it. It just made you faster. But the current rules ban them with the goal of trying to make the driver matter more.
One of the sports all time great (Micheal Schumacher) won all of his championships with traction control most likely. The teams used their own computers in the cars then so it was basically impossible to police and thus the ban was lifted in 2002. The ban was put back in place when the onboard computer in the cars was homologated (everyone uses the same computer by McLaren)
- Accessible aerodynamics (it's on the road in front of you, not up in the air)
- Technological developments (e.g. this year, one of the teams has a steering wheel they pull toward/push away themselves to change the geometry of the front wheels)
- Watching high-performing athletes demonstrating the ability to operate a machine at speeds over 200mph and still having the capacity to understand the strategic situations unfolding around them, even gathering information from the crowd in the grandstands, or the tv screens that flash past them as they navigate the track
- Seeing an inter-disciplinary team design and operate a machine that fuses aerodynamics, mechanics and hybrid propulsion systems, driven by a human operator, monitored in realtime by a team of engineers distributed around the world
- On-the-fly risk/reward decision making in race strategy from observing current data whilst incorporating gut feeling based on past experience to great effect