I started following in narrow track grooved tyres but I prefer by far the looks of 1989-1992 (or 1972-1992 2.15m width rule era generally). Narrow track cars with narrow rear tyres always looked goofy (like a junior category) to me, especially when the rear wings were narrowed in 2009 and the goofy looking short front wishbones at silly angles (for aero).
By comparison, the 1989-1992 cars with fat rear tyres and small front tyres set far away from the body on long wishbones look wide, mean and "correct" IMO.
Having lost some of the overly fussy bodywork of the 1970's for sleeker designs, they are now wide, mean, sleek and they just look right, no?
Watching the cars trackside at historics, it's the 2.15m F1 cars with the fat rear tyres and high wide rear wings that in person also look perfect and spot on.
I absolutely do not understand why fans prefer narrow track F1 cars to full track F1 cars, or they prefer the narrow reduced width rear tyre?
Yet instead of going up from 2.0m track to the traditional 2.15m track, we are going down to 1.9m track.
Oh well, at least we aren't going all the way down to 1.8m track...Would it really be so hard to go back to the above proportions? 245/640-660 R?? front tyres (the actual rim diameter doesn't matter, Goodyear were 640mm diameter, Bridgestone went up to the 660mm maximum permitted) and 385-405/660 R?? rear tyres (or 670-680mm diameter, 680mm is a pretty common diameter for other racing cars), 2.15m track?
Would making the front tyres much narrower than the rears again, and moving the mandatory weight distribution rearwards, encourage teams to make much shorter cars? (Or you could just set the maximum wheelbase at 2900-3000mm and tell the teams to like or lump it!)
[To be fair, the 2.0m track cars with narrow front and narrow rear tyres from 1993-1997 still look reasonably in proportion. It's only the 1.8m track cars that look really squashed and goofy, unfortunately the squashed front suspension look still remained somewhat in 2017 due to how the front tyres were scaled up despite never having been scaled down in the first place. (Who at the FIA decided that reducing the "free" roll stiffness of the cars in 1998 would make things better?!)]
Why are the FIA pandering to fans and moving the tyres closer to the body in 2026? Is it really true that narrower 1.9m track combined with inwashing front wing and inwashing floor vane will reduce the width of the wake behind the car?
Obviously the actual 1.8m track era had dire racing and dire dirty air problems, despite the cars being physically narrow (partially due to the tyres being too close to the body than 2.15m and 2.0m era, thus making flow control of front tyre wake far more critical?).
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Of course all the 1960's cigar cars are really beautiful, I quite like the early wing cars after a maximum rear wing height had been introduced. But that's another age (outboard fuel tanks allowed among other things!) and there's no chance of the cars looking like anything like that again!
