Formula 1 2022 (Will Contain Spoilers)

[davymead]

RB can as boringly usual rearrange the chairs, but like me and a good many of my circle, folks have just walked away.
Watched over the weekend some excellent BARC racing from Donnington. No Bo77ocks just guys giving their all racing.

 

[bob6600]

It was on catering

 

[Mactech]

Behind all the political white noise in F1, Toto Wolff actually revealed last week the root cause of Mercedes lack of performance this year.
He said it could be traced back to a decision last October when the team believed they could run the new regulation ground effect cars 'on the deck'
You can see how this has happened within a team who had just learned how to do this with last years car and gain a drag reduction which caused a certain Red Bull boss to accuse them of cheating!
I suspect with the thought of the new stiffer sidewall 18" tyres giving more control over ride height, they would centre their limited wind tunnel time around that premise. They probably also failed to recognise the full impact of new simplistic damper regulations.
Then, along came that Porpoise when the car got to the track and forced them to raise the car up outside the design window.

Ferrari also had a big porpoise problem, but as Martin Brundle observed last week trackside at Austin, their car also has remarkably good damping, allowing it to settle instantly after the initial bump. My own experience suggests that heavy control of the rebound damping can cause premature tyre deg. A trait Ferrari have certainly been suffering this year.

Adrian Newey has design experience which stretches back into the previous ground effect era and perhaps explains why Red Bull managed to come up right at the start with a really good compromise of aero, tyres and damping.

Despite all the development over the season, the basic design premise on each of the cars has remained 'baked in'

 

[zipdip]

Well tuned into this thread this morning and nobody is talking about the races,I have all but switched off F1 not watched the last three races,if you can call them that,as always Mactech has explained things well,but when you have one team putting out cars that are 1.5 seconds a lap quicker it makes for dull racing,I understand that the last race had some excitement,but I will not search for what happened,l have lost interest I think.

 

[Deleted member 126251]

Well tuned into this thread this morning and nobody is talking about the races,I have all but switched off F1 not watched the last three races,if you can call them that,as always Mactech has explained things well,but when you have one team putting out cars that are 1.5 seconds a lap quicker it makes for dull racing,I understand that the last race had some excitement,but I will not search for what happened,l have lost interest I think.

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum & the British drivers are not at the front of the pack, British members have lost interest but have the convenience of RB to blame instead of “sour grapes”.

£ to a pinch of $h1t that if Hamilton was still dominating there’d be a lot more talk about races and less whingeing about RB & the FIA.

Sadly there are too many haters that are unable to acknowledge MVs skills. As a Ferrari fan I’d like to see them doing better but still enjoy watching the races when I can.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum & the British drivers are not at the front of the pack, British members have lost interest but have the convenience of RB to blame instead of “sour grapes”.

£ to a pinch of $h1t that if Hamilton was still dominating there’d be a lot more talk about races and less whingeing about RB & the FIA.

Sadly there are too many haters that are unable to acknowledge MVs skills. As a Ferrari fan I’d like to see them doing better but still enjoy watching the races when I can.

I disagree. MBClub members - and many others who have no no interest in Mercedes or Lewis Hamilton - have been turning away from F1 for some time. Ironically the dominance of Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes-AMG was cited as a reason fairly regularly.

Who’s winning is not the cause, it’s the lack of close racing throughout the field, and the dominance of one driver or team. Even the FIA have tried to address that by changing regulations and rules but have enjoyed limited success at best.

How winners win has become an issue again recently, and that has centred on Max Verstappen and Red Bull. This hasn’t been an issue for a while but Ferrari, Michael Schumacher and others have caused controversy in the past, and others before them.

 

[st13phil]

Behind all the political white noise in F1, Toto Wolff actually revealed last week the root cause of Mercedes lack of performance this year.
He said it could be traced back to a decision last October when the team believed they could run the new regulation ground effect cars 'on the deck'
You can see how this has happened within a team who had just learned how to do this with last years car and gain a drag reduction which caused a certain Red Bull boss to accuse them of cheating!
I suspect with the thought of the new stiffer sidewall 18" tyres giving more control over ride height, they would centre their limited wind tunnel time around that premise. They probably also failed to recognise the full impact of new simplistic damper regulations.
Then, along came that Porpoise when the car got to the track and forced them to raise the car up outside the design window.

Ferrari also had a big porpoise problem, but as Martin Brundle observed last week trackside at Austin, their car also has remarkably good damping, allowing it to settle instantly after the initial bump. My own experience suggests that heavy control of the rebound damping can cause premature tyre deg. A trait Ferrari have certainly been suffering this year.

Adrian Newey has design experience which stretches back into the previous ground effect era and perhaps explains why Red Bull managed to come up right at the start with a really good compromise of aero, tyres and damping.

Despite all the development over the season, the basic design premise on each of the cars has remained 'baked in'

As always, many thanks for the engineering insight.

Regarding the “Adrian Newey effect”, my gut feel at the start of the season when RB came out of the blocks with a much better resolved platform than anyone else was that Newey's experience from the ground effect era was probably the decisive difference.

Throughout my career I’ve learned that there are often engineering approaches that look to be both elegant and effective that (almost!) no-one in the team can understand why they haven't been deployed before. Then one of the “old lags” in the team pipes up, “yeah, we tried that 20-odd years ago, but couldn’t make it work because…”. If you don’t have one of those “old lags” who's been there and done that, you can spend a great deal of time and effort driving down a cul-de-sac.

 

[Stratman]

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum & the British drivers are not at the front of the pack, British members have lost interest but have the convenience of RB to blame instead of “sour grapes”.

.......................

My main reason for losing interest is the (in my view) blatant favouring of one particular team by the sport's administrators. Why they do it I don't know, but if in doubt follow the money. The bottom line is I can't believe what I'm seeing is fair and above board.

 

[baxlin]

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum & the British drivers are not at the front of the pack, British members have lost interest but have the convenience of RB to blame instead of “sour grapes”.

£ to a pinch of $h1t that if Hamilton was still dominating there’d be a lot more talk about races and less whingeing about RB & the FIA.

Sadly there are too many haters that are unable to acknowledge MVs skills. As a Ferrari fan I’d like to see them doing better but still enjoy watching the races when I can.

Sorry, but why didn’t I need to see who’d written this post ^^^ to know…

Back to the discussion, though. Although I’m not a Ferrari fan, I do think it would have been so much better and enjoyable to watch the racing had RBR had more consistent competition from whoever. But unfortunately, Ferrari have let themselves down this year (both strategy and drivers) on too many occasions.

 

[Mactech]

As always, many thanks for the engineering insight.

Regarding the “Adrian Newey effect”, my gut feel at the start of the season when RB came out of the blocks with a much better resolved platform than anyone else was that Newey's experience from the ground effect era was probably the decisive difference.

Throughout my career I’ve learned that there are often engineering approaches that look to be both elegant and effective that (almost!) no-one in the team can understand why they haven't been deployed before. Then one of the “old lags” in the team pipes up, “yeah, we tried that 20-odd years ago, but couldn’t make it work because…”. If you don’t have one of those “old lags” who's been there and done that, you can spend a great deal of time and effort driving down a cul-de-sac.

Fully agree, and I think I was in motorsport long enough to have played both roles.
When I was still very much an innovator in the early sportscar ground effect days, I was lucky enough to have designer Tony Southgate able to kerb my wilder ideas. He didn't design winners for the Indy 500, the Monaco GP and Le Mans by accident!
A couple of decades on I was playing the role of 'old lag' as Project Manger at Bentley and able to help cultivate some of the ideas from the 'bright young things' and warn of the perils of some of the other proposed paths.

 

[190]

Not long to wait now to hear how lenient the Red Bull penalty will be. I'll eat my hat if they lose points from last year.

Red Bull punishment to be announced on Friday


And Alonso got his points back on appeal by making the case that the rules hadn't been followed.

Alpine win bid to overturn Alonso US GP penalty

 

[davymead]

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum & the British drivers are not at the front of the pack, British members have lost interest but have the convenience of RB to blame instead of “sour grapes”.

£ to a pinch of $h1t that if Hamilton was still dominating there’d be a lot more talk about races and less whingeing about RB & the FIA.

Sadly there are too many haters that are unable to acknowledge MVs skills. As a Ferrari fan I’d like to see them doing better but still enjoy watching the races when I can.

Or you could argue that, as this is a predominantly British forum, we have, as a nation a well known revulsion towards cheating in what ever form it manifests itself in. Nothing to do with ‘sour grapes’ or ‘who’ was cheated, it was plain and simple cheating. Now obvious that things will carry on in the same way this season, I stopped watching.

 

[BigJase88]

Imagine a race where red bull. Merc. Ferarri. Mclaren. Alpine of Alonso and the Aston of Vettel were level pegging and you had no idea who was going to win every week. That would be something

 

[Petrol Pete]

^^^^ It would be called 'racing' I imagine , it's an idea , let's hope it catches on .

 

[davymead]

^^^^ It would be called 'racing' I imagine , it's an idea , let's hope it catches on .

 

[SpikyMikey]

^^^^ It would be called 'racing' I imagine , it's an idea , let's hope it catches on .

Back in the dim and distant 80's and 90's, I used to regularly go and watch this thing you call 'racing'.
It was the British Touring Car Championships, which also had some juicy support races like the TVR Tuscan Challenge.
Happy Days

 

[Bellow]

Strikes me that what is hampering F1 is the fragility of the tyres. Too difficult to 'switch on' (Mercedes's problem) and too easy to 'switch off' when degraded (Ferrari's problem).
More durable tyres would broaden the competiveness of the teams struggling with either of the above and allow driver's to be more aggressive without it rendering their tyres useless a few laps down the road.

 

[st13phil]

Strikes me that what is hampering F1 is the fragility of the tyres.

I agree - to an extent - but ISTR that tyre degradation was supposed to inject "excitement" into races that had become processional.

We have a strange situation now whereby it's an odds-on favourite that (with the odd exception, and barring collisions) an F1 car that makes the start line will also cross the finish line, such is the mechanical reliability of the current generation of cars. Long gone are the races where up to (and sometimes more than) half the field were DNF's due to some sort of car failure. Ironically, those failures were what often gave rise to opportunities for a driver / team who looked to have no chance in the championship - or, indeed, the race - suddenly being back in the game, thus bringing a fight for the championship back to life.

Tyre degradation, and making use to two different compounds during the race, was adopted for the same reason that refuelling was (re-)adopted: to create the opportunity for the race to be "shaken up" either as a result of changing positions when a stop was made, or due to the increased opportunity for Mr C0ck-Up to make a call when the stop occurred. The irony is that refuelling was eventually abandoned due to the very obvious fire risk it entailed, and tyre degradation is both hated by the drivers who can't "push" whenever they want (thus limiting on-track fighting for position) and carefully managed to the point of the stops not affecting the race order by the best teams using clever simulation techniques.

 

[Deleted member 126251]

Sorry, but why didn’t I need to see who’d written this post ^^^ to know…

Back to the discussion, though. Although I’m not a Ferrari fan, I do think it would have been so much better and enjoyable to watch the racing had RBR had more consistent competition from whoever. But unfortunately, Ferrari have let themselves down this year (both strategy and drivers) on too many occasions.

I think you are making my point for me. People were happy to see LH dominate for ~10 years. Now that he is not dominating, F1 is boring.

Ferrari have been awful for a while now. I keep watching and hoping.

 

[Deleted member 126251]

................ well known revulsion towards cheating in what ever form it manifests itself i...............

So no cheating in soccer, the most watched & loved sport in the country? No awful behaviour from supporters when their team does not win? No cops keeping opposing supporters apart.......etc.