FIA ban media from pit lanes

[MOWOG]

Another solution would be a mandatory minimum pit stop time of 5 s and standard wheel fixtures.

Yes. Many other racing series do this. Making pit stops part of the competitive process virtually ensures that mistakes will occur, especially as the teams strive to make their pit process faster and faster. It's all very exciting for us fans today. Sometimes it seems the cars never even stop completely before all four tires are changed and they start rolling again.

As Scotty86 said: "So as per usual it seems the symptoms rather than the causes of the problems are being dealt with...."


There are many, many aspects of a race that are negatively impacted by the lack of an enforced minimum pit stop time. Refueliing, for example. Isn't it fairly idiotic to force the cars to run on full tanks at the start of the race just because the sport cannot devise a safe way to add fuel to the cars?

No minimum pit stop time has cost us the strategy factor in racing, as teams used to have to devise the best plan to balance the faster speeds allowed by carrying less fuel against the time required to make a pit stop. And that has led to all this silliness about Bernie-tires that artificially self destruct after 7 laps or so.

Give them a minimum time they must be stationary in the pits, reduce the number of crew members allowed to work on the refueling/tire changes and add a function to the on board computers that limits car speed to 20 kph for the first 100 meters and I think safety would be dramatically increased while re-instating some of the strategic elements that USED to be part of racing.

Maybe I am just old and yearning for the "old days", but I think a sport that bills itself as the "smartest guys in the room" when it comes to auto racing could devise a lot more intelligent approach than what they have created today.

Stupidity is as stupidity does.....

[CBeck113]

This is a quick fix to reduce the risk, in this case the number of targets. Additionally, reducing the number of crew members would has two positive effects: 1) same as above and 2) increase the necessary time for the pit stop.
It also offers more chances for errors (good for the fans).
I personally would like to see refueling return, just to see the cars run light more than once per race (at which point, with the exception of Germany, they are protecting their position). This would also reduce the stress on the tires ( ).

A little further off topic: the cars nowadays have no factor that forces them to "heal" during the race, i.e. late braking with steel disks forced you to take it easy for a few corners afterwards. That made racing more variable, and using the tires to do this backfired majorly. Maybe this should be a separate thread... Feedback welcome!

Back to the topic: it never would have happened if RB didn't try to screw over on eof their drivers to help the other.

[tim|away]

I think there are two different things beings discussed here. Rear wheels coming off and unsafe resleases in general. Those are two different things, even though one might argue that a wheel that comes loose is an unsafe release from a technical point of view.

There are basically two approaches to deal with the issue of unsafe releases and wheels coming loose. Either the FIA introduces really harsh penalties, therefore leaving it to the teams themselves to come up with responsible measures to avoid this from happening in the future or the FIA establishes standard procedures that hopefully won't leave any room for misinterpretation.

I know that it isn't going to be the way the FIA deals with things (and probably rightly so), but somehow I find the idea of teams having to solve these problems themselves rather attractive. Every team would have to come up with an elegant solution that meets the risk vs benefit ratio. If the penalties were harsh enough, the teams would think really hard about this, as it just wouldn't be worthwhile to take the risk.

[motorloon1993]

Oh so this means no more "Down to you, Ted..."

Thankfully not, caught this on twitter.

Ted Kravitz ‏@tedkravitz 4h
Correct! “@ThatSillyGinge: My understanding is that @tedkravitz is technically in the garages, not the pit lane, so it shouldn't affect him”

[SiLo]

Or they could just bring back refuelling, then they would have plenty of time to change the wheels. They could almost do it 4 times in some cases.

[langwadt]

I think there are two different things beings discussed here. Rear wheels coming off and unsafe resleases in general. Those are two different things, even though one might argue that a wheel that comes loose is an unsafe release from a technical point of view.

There are basically two approaches to deal with the issue of unsafe releases and wheels coming loose. Either the FIA introduces really harsh penalties, therefore leaving it to the teams themselves to come up with responsible measures to avoid this from happening in the future or the FIA establishes standard procedures that hopefully won't leave any room for misinterpretation.

I know that it isn't going to be the way the FIA deals with things (and probably rightly so), but somehow I find the idea of teams having to solve these problems themselves rather attractive. Every team would have to come up with an elegant solution that meets the risk vs benefit ratio. If the penalties were harsh enough, the teams would think really hard about this, as it just wouldn't be worthwhile to take the risk.

I'm sure the teams are doing their very best to not lose a wheel, the "penalty" for that is usually that you don't finish the race

[tim|away]

I think there are two different things beings discussed here. Rear wheels coming off and unsafe resleases in general. Those are two different things, even though one might argue that a wheel that comes loose is an unsafe release from a technical point of view.

There are basically two approaches to deal with the issue of unsafe releases and wheels coming loose. Either the FIA introduces really harsh penalties, therefore leaving it to the teams themselves to come up with responsible measures to avoid this from happening in the future or the FIA establishes standard procedures that hopefully won't leave any room for misinterpretation.

I know that it isn't going to be the way the FIA deals with things (and probably rightly so), but somehow I find the idea of teams having to solve these problems themselves rather attractive. Every team would have to come up with an elegant solution that meets the risk vs benefit ratio. If the penalties were harsh enough, the teams would think really hard about this, as it just wouldn't be worthwhile to take the risk.

I'm sure the teams are doing their very best to not lose a wheel, the "penalty" for that is usually that you don't finish the race

It is a fair point, but one would imagine that some people behind the scenes are doing some serious risk analysis when it comes to efficiency. If we follow your logic, it's worthwhile to consider if teams were better off intentionally taking half a second longer per pitstop on average in order to reduce the risk of malfunctions during the pitstops. At the moment, quite the opposite is going on and teams seem to aim for the next world record rather than consistency - realistically you can't have both at the same time, but you can balance benefit and risk.

[ebare]

IMO, they might be dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes. Even though It’s fairly reasonable to say that there is always be risk factor involved every time people have to come across with objects in motion. Under the circumstances, and applying the very basics in security, if it is impossible to eliminate danger per se, it must be reduce as much as possible, and by removing one avoidable risk factor, as putting a cameraman there is, they’re acting just logically. That’s what ACO did at Le Mans, where filming crews have specified areas to work, among other rules, however off topic. Besides, if they can install a camera in one driver’s helmet, is that so difficult to suspend a camera?

On the subject of a mandatory time for a pit, please just give me a second… Sorry. First image across my mind was Lewis over steering at the exit of Nurburgring’s pit entry turn, braking on the last second, trying to loose as less time as he could, and then have a coffee and buy the newspaper while the crew services is car:

To deal with the symptoms, agree that the preferable solution was to electronically control if the wheels were correctly fitted and fastened, and just release the car if/when that would be the case. Teams use to have guns that controlled those functions automatically which were banned by the FIA, making mandatory to be the mechanics to control the function manually, surely teams already circumvented the rule, in order to be as effective as they can, notwithstanding, pits stops are so fast that is easy to have issues.

[langwadt]

I think there are two different things beings discussed here. Rear wheels coming off and unsafe resleases in general. Those are two different things, even though one might argue that a wheel that comes loose is an unsafe release from a technical point of view.

There are basically two approaches to deal with the issue of unsafe releases and wheels coming loose. Either the FIA introduces really harsh penalties, therefore leaving it to the teams themselves to come up with responsible measures to avoid this from happening in the future or the FIA establishes standard procedures that hopefully won't leave any room for misinterpretation.

I know that it isn't going to be the way the FIA deals with things (and probably rightly so), but somehow I find the idea of teams having to solve these problems themselves rather attractive. Every team would have to come up with an elegant solution that meets the risk vs benefit ratio. If the penalties were harsh enough, the teams would think really hard about this, as it just wouldn't be worthwhile to take the risk.

I'm sure the teams are doing their very best to not lose a wheel, the "penalty" for that is usually that you don't finish the race

It is a fair point, but one would imagine that some people behind the scenes are doing some serious risk analysis when it comes to efficiency. If we follow your logic, it's worthwhile to consider if teams were better off intentionally taking half a second longer per pitstop on average in order to reduce the risk of malfunctions during the pitstops. At the moment, quite the opposite is going on and teams seem to aim for the next world record rather than consistency - realistically you can't have both at the same time, but you can balance benefit and risk.

I think that the pitstop race has partly become a competition on who gets bragging rights, kinda like the fastest lap of
the race. Sure occasionally half a second makes the difference on who gets out in front of who, but most of the time
it gains nothing, at the risk of losing everything.

As I said the teams already have all the reason in the world to make sure all the wheels are on right
I'd say that releasing the car into another car going down pit lane is more of a hazard and a minimum pitstop time and/or slower speed leaving the box would only make that worse.

[i70q7m7ghw]

I've been saying for a long time that we don't need 20+ people to change 4 tyres on a car.

The number of team personnel allowed to service the car should be limited for a start. I also agree on a minimum pit stop time, that would definitely reduce the errors. Also ban the traffic light systems. Webber was released because the traffic lights went green. In all these cases it's almost always a case of the traffic light giving a green when it shouldn't.

The FIA constantly talk about making F1 technology more road-relevant. Last time I went to Kwikfit for some new tyres it wasn't anything like a F1 pit stop.

[hollus]

On the matter of why the wheel came loose in the first place:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108722

...led to the gun slipping in his hand as he removed the nut. This slippage led to the 'go' trigger – which is sent to the jack men to indicate that that wheel is attached – being accidentally depressed by the gun man's thumb.

Something that couldn't happen with the old "hands up" signal, although that is slower and had its own set of problems.

[Tim.Wright]

Simple solution here, put the go button 1 meter away from the gun man.

[aral]

Simple solution here, put the go button 1 meter away from the gun man.

Sure. Why not put it at the back of the garage, and there will be a race by all four gunners!!

[MOWOG]

Simple solution here, put the go button 1 meter away from the gun man.

Elegant! =D>

The FIA is 100% responsible for creating a climate in which unsafe pit stops are virtually guaranteed to happen. By not specifying a minimum pit stop time, the teams will strain every sinew to reduce the time as much as humanly possible. This places enormous pressure on the pit crew and makes human error inevitable.

There is NO good reason to want sub 3 second pit stops. Make the car remain stationary for 5 seconds, 6 seconds or whatever amount of time the solons of the sport deem reasonable and the teams will simply add that time into their calculations when deciding when to stop and how often.

No matter how much they practice and how professional they are, the unrealistically short pit stop time in today's racing is a disaster waiting to happen. Human error can never be fully controlled for, just like the 777 that landed short of the runway in San Francisco a few days ago. The crew THOUGHT the automatic speed control was activated, but in fact it was not. Human error. 2 people dead. Dozens injured. How long before a major disaster in the pits brings the FIA to its senses?

As was said much earlier, the FIA is treating the symptoms, not the cause. That's just stupid.

[Ray]

Makes it less crowded atleast. No guarantee it will not happen again, but odds getting diminished.

Not true. The only non-team personnel allowed in the pit lane when there are cars on track are employees of the FOM. Who aren't affected by this new ruling. Nothing has changed, its a measure by the FIA to appear to be doing something while in reality doing nothing to prevent this from happening again. They are treating the symptoms and not implementing a cure. Will Buxton has been very vocal on Twitter about how this does absolutely nothing to improve safety.