What makes F1 a sport (emotive) rather than a technology demonstrator? How do driver aids influence this? Where is the balance between technology and human?
Here's a potted story so far from another thread ....
richard_leeds wrote:Contrived limitations are what differentiates a sport from mere function.
The amount of automation is rather contrived so we have an irrational middle ground between full automation or have double declutching and manual wrenches at pit stops.
autogyro wrote: Sport?
Maybe just in F1.
For the privileged maybe.
xxChrisxx wrote:Take an example ...
Football... the objective is to get goals, playing with ones foot only is highly restrictive, more goals would be scored if you are able to throw the ball in the net.
Although the above is true, it kind of defeats the point of making it artificially hard for the organic bit in the middle of the car. There is a reason it's called 'Formula'.
autogyro wrote: So you are saying that F1 must be restricted by any means, simply to make it a competition between a few privileged drivers?
Are you not forgetting the reason F1 was started in the first place. It was a technological competition originally between nations and then between high technology groups. The drivers were simply the best available to help win, not the main reason. The more you restrict technical development in F1, the more you take away it's reason for existence. The drivers can always race karts with high power. That would be just as much a driving challenge.
xxChrisxx wrote: Let's take your point further of not restricting it. We now have the technology to allow cars to drive themselves round a track, they would do this flawlessly and much faster than any human possilbly could due to perfect consistency. Why not implement this? Then we can get rid of the driver altogether.
This is the natural conclusion to, its a showcase for technology, and drivers aren't important.
Most technical implementation is for driver saftey, we can make cars that are on the order of seconds (if not tens of seconds if allowed) quicker per lap if given absolute freedom. The problem is no human can handle the car.
Bottom line, the TV masses don't give a --- about the technology, they are;t engineers, people want to se a driver race.
WhiteBlue wrote:Flexible or active wings, active suspension and other performance enhancing technologies that do not interfere with an autonomous driver could all make a return when a new engine formula appears after 2012. Much of these technologies were cut because cars were developing excessive performance. Once the engines are cut down again and fuel efficient design is introduced those things can help reduce aerodynamic drag and gain performance with lower power.
Giblet wrote:I have no problem with certain game changing technologies remaining banned. Just because something is obviously better and makes the car faster doesn't automatically make the sport better to.
We had a big discussion about Active Suspension before already, and disagree or not, to me active suspension (in it's 90's form, not talking about newer better ideas) was too much of a game changer. Other teams had to have active ride, and we had a season with 2 classes of cars in the field. Each time a game changing tech comes in, the sport goes into tech catchup mode, and the sport aspects get lost in the mire, and the WDC for that year becomes slightly less impressive.
There are reasons boxers don't wear helmets, goalies don't sit in the net holding a piece of plywood, and baseball players don't modify their bats to hit better.
Well 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
