Is the recipe for PASSING realy that difficult?

[Astro1]

I know that there are hundreds of threads littering the boards with numerous ideas on how to improve overtaking etc., etc. Maybe I'm being naive and or ignorant but I find it difficult to fathom that we have so many ideas from so many personalities in F1 on how to get this done and NO RESULTS.

Paddy Lowe went as far as suggesting that it's not the cars that need changing bur rather the tracks. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 307309.stm

Then there are ideas about brake disk compounds and various gimiks suggested by different F1 personas.

I can only speak from the limited racing experience that I have, that when there is a large disproportion in relative terms between engine power and mechanical grip, you have overtaking. The idea being that it's that much harder to bang out consistent lap times. There is a greater mistake factor and also greater potential when all goes right. Greater uncertainty, greater tire management skill required etc.

One guy gets the exit right before a straight, and the other doesn't and there you have a classic pass into the following corner. The guy that got the turn right and got a good grippy run out the corner is going to use significantly more of the available engine power down the straight than the guy that didn't. That's a pass. Who knows maybe on the next lap it's the other way around and you may see a battle. (Wow those are a thing of the past).

All these "difficulties" and inability and ideas in F1 make me really wonder. I know I'm sounding arrogant, but it can't be that difficult to understand why passing happends especialy for the drivers and sport insiders.

Passing has gone, because they have taken engine power away from the drivers and have provided relatively balanced aero and mechanical grip levels with the apex speeds going through the roof! Sure when the car is glued to the pavement and there is less room for error you won't have passing. Where as before the drivers had numerous areas of improvement somehow we now have drivers saying "I ran a perfect lap".

One example I can suggest is dirt racing in whatever form. Lots of power and no grip and hundreds of passes. I don't think the recipe changes for F1.

Put more responsibility for a perfect lap in the hands of the driver and less in the hands of the car and you will have passing.

Another way to look at it, is that "the edge" is really thin. I just got one of those toy racing sets for my nephew. The ones where the cars are on a magnetic rail, and there are two tracks. I see current F1 very similar to that. Up to a certain speed, the car will remain on track, but if you exceed by just a little bit it goes off flying; all because the car is glued to the track and limits the driver factor. This leaves no room for small mistakes that lead to passing and instead lead to relatively violent offs.

More power + less grip = classic passing.

[marcush.]

it is rather obvious that the overtaking issue is all but easyespecially when youre ignoring the whole picture.

Making false assumptions and pulling conclusions of it will never ever leed to more overtaking.

looking back ,the pure speed differences thru the field was much bigger in the good ol days of F1.
and reliability ,especially gearbox was really a factor.

Today a dnf because of engine or gearbox issues is barely existant.

human factor: wrong strategy, pitlane errors ,speeding in pitlane , talking too much on the radio

I don´t get the idea behind reducing grip levels or brake performance as a overtaking enhancer.
I always thought the more difficult things get the more the human being has to explore the outer rim of his ability the more likely he´s going to make mistakes...
not by falling asleep but on lack of ability.

A real overtaking enhancer would be to create ways around a track where it is simply not possible to protect ,because theres more than one possible line available.
But this would of course leed to NO Fights ,the fast cars storm to the front in no time ,pole position is meaningless as you can easily win the race starting from the back ,given the fastest car.

So ,in my view todays seemingly lack of overtaking is nothing more than a lack of racecraft and commitment on the drivers side in my view.

I don´t think this was any differnt in the days back then ,but it was not as obvious becuase you had so many DNFs masking the issue..

so maybe in todays world we do too much in terms of trying to cure something wich is not ill at all ....

hey if you got trouble following a car too close it DOES NOT help moaning around.
I wonder just why we never heard about a team developing a front wing especially efficient when run in dirty air...if overtaking was that important i´m sure it would have happened...

[compo]

[marcush.]

that sounds like karting

in my oppinion the problem is the amount of restrictions put on development and this means that the cars are all very similar and tend to run similar strategies
BUT 1 thing that never gets mentioned is that to overtake means going onto the dirty parts of the track so you cant go round the outside on corners and to pass up the inside means going on the dirty stuff on the straights then when you get to the corner you dont have any grip and its game over
so what you need is a distinct advantage either straight line speed or grip and as i said the restrictions dont allow this to happen

goony

if theres more than one line available you will quickly reshuffle the order fast cars to the front slow to the rear,as no defending is possible.
so then I´d prefer reverse grids as you still have the defending and fighting .

I don´t think passing should be made easy,see handford device..

I thought about a very short pit entry exit whereas the track is quite long to reduce the loss when pitting .this would of course open possibilities to work on tyre startegy (high risk with lots of pitstops but no mercy for the tyres or steady going no pitstop ...it might add something ...)

[compo]

[compo]

[WhiteBlue]

The solution is very simple. Limit the downforce to 1,25 tons as the OWG was briefed to do. But then they created a bunch of loop holes including DDDs and the dowenforce is back to over two tons. As a consequence you have much more grip than they were meant to have and more dirty air.

If there is an absolute limit of downforce teams cannot focus on more downforce, they will focus on getting that downforce with the least drag. It would improve the fuel efficiency massively and bring more passing.

[ISLAMATRON]

yep

[flynfrog]

Double the power cut the tire width in half remove relablity requierments no more three race engines and no more 4 race gearboxes. I think the wing package works pretty well right now even with the DDD.

[Ogami musashi]

I think this thread will go like the others because people are maybe looking at several variables but they keep on ignoring that there're several kind of overtaking situations.

For instance, you talk about mistakes, but you can also overtake when you are faster.


Hopefully, the inevitable cut in downforce will show how limited this view of "less downforce = more overtaking" is.

when we'll be stuck with 1250kg of DF and not less because after GP2 cars will be faster, you'll see that we will have to look at the million other variables F1 has against overtaking to realize that some fundamentals are not good.

[marcush.]

For instance, you talk about mistakes, but you can also overtake when you are faster.

speed alone does not make it:
look if you try to overtake some agricultural device on a road with modest traffic
If you are close to the bumper of the thing it is not only dangerous but also taking ages to accelerate out of the ` slipstream`and the distance it takes to complete the pass is unnecessarily long.
I don´t know why this should be any different in a race situation.Stuck in the gearbox the guy in front dictates the speed ,simple as that.Any possible advantage or better performance is nullified or at least it is badly compromised.These guys
are living with a lot of pressure anyways I don´t think anyone of them is really impressed by the looks of a car appearing in his mirrors.
Try to late brake into a corner ,off line you will ruin your tyres in no time.so this will only work two or three times with fresh tyres but at the expense of your speed potential over that stint .
So my view on this is:
some guys just lack racecraft and maybe instinct for the opportunity ,just why on earth there are guys who regularly overtake and do clean passes and there are others who seem to struggle even lapping backmarkers is a more than obvious indicator .
Of course this is quite a bit over the top as I really believe these guys all can drive well above the level of a gifted amateur but you really can see who is and who is not able to read the traffic.

[Astro1]

I think that if you look back at history, you'd see that my view, though simplistic is fairly level headed correct.

All the problems stated above are true, but they all stem from a root. That root, is the proportion of engine power to grip. It doesn't get more simplified than that. If you are going to solve a problem, you best solve it's root not it's consequences.

The problem today is, that even if you exit a corner better that the guy in front, you don't have enough engine power at your disposal to make a clean pass. (Leading to all those optimistic out-breaking adventures).

Another way to look at it, is that the current engine power/grip level proportion is so balanced that it doesn't penalize mistakes. A car that made a slight mistake does not suffer enough down the straight because the guy behind doesn't have the engine power required to take advantage of his near perfect error free corner exit. (sure there is the slipstream problems following through a corner, but that is just the effect of too much downforce).

If the cars had more power than grip, your success and failure of a pass attempt would be dictated by your ability to put it down after the apex. Provided you have power to put down. And if you did, you would be able to use significantly more power out of the corner than the guy that got a slightly worse exit. That makes the penalty of an error through a corner more severe. As a mistake means that guy behind, has the engine power to make a pass attempt down the straight into the next corner.

Today however, it doesn't matter because a slight mistake vs no mistake does not penalize the mistake as the guy trying to make a pass, getting the perfect exit doesn't have the engine power to capitalize on the slight error of his opponent. And I'm not talking about significant errors, I'm talking about getting the turn just a bit better than the guy in front.

Passing will happen, when the perfect lap is limited by grip rather than engine power. Currently, there is simply too much grip level (and next year there will be even more grip and less power no KERS) for the amount of engine power to achieve passing. Next year will be even worse, when cars are carrying a tank full of fuel as the fuel weight is effectively an engine power penalty in (power to weight).

The solution is to allow for significantly more engine power, and to limit aero loopholes such as the DDD which destroyed any attempts at achieving what OWG was trying to accomplish and that was reducing down-force levels to raise the proportion in the favor of engine power vs grip.

You are not going to get passing when the apex speeds are increasing. If you look at F1 over the past few years, you'd see that the apex speeds have increased while the overall lap times went down. All this point to too much downforce and too little power.

I keep referring to the (cars on rails) kids racing set and if you can imagine taking away a lot of the power, making it easier to get the corners right and more difficult to accelerate out of them and you can get a picture of current F1. They've made it too easy and too balanced.

Close the DDD loophole, give the engines more freedom and power, and run a harder compound and you will get passing because it would make the pilots more accountable for even the slightest of errors because the guy behind has the goods to capitalize.

[marcush.]

so yes its that difficult.

-how about that :any driver not completing at least 2 clean passes of a competitor racing for position will not be eligible for a superlicense the following year.

[machin]

More power + less grip = classic passing.

I don't have shares with Ford or anything (I know I've said this before).. but have you guys watched Formula Ford racing? Very low power and pretty good grip and the overtaking is amazing... more overtakes in one lap than a whole season in F1!

I'd say the formula is:- Less Downforce = classic racing

[Ciro Pabón]

I say it's the tracks. Heck, I've saying it for years now.

Have you ever seen an IRL/CART/Champcar race? There is plenty of overtaking and no problems with downforce.

So, for every design there is a right track. If you have 2 tons of downforce, forget about 200 m radius curves: you cannot race in that kind of circuit.