This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Porsche 917 CanAM was a great car, no one blamed Porsche for making that car; but the series died as the competitors left
Toyota Eagle MkIII was a great car, but IMSA GTP collapsed at the end of it
Mercedes CLK-GTR was a great car, but GT1 series collapsed
Mercedes W05 and W06 are great cars, no one blames Mercedes, everyone congratulating them for the great car, but these are cars which could lead to a series collapse.
Red Bull is just saying that aloud as it is their style; straight with no bull s**t; It is for FIA to act on.
This kind of like 2005 when Michelin had a wonderful tyre but at the end of it was not good for F1, regulations changed.
WilliamsF1 wrote:Porsche 917 CanAM was a great car, no one blamed Porsche for making that car; but the series died as the competitors left
Toyota Eagle MkIII was a great car, but IMSA GTP collapsed at the end of it
Mercedes CLK-GTR was a great car, but GT1 series collapsed
Mercedes W05 and W06 are great cars, no one blames Mercedes, everyone congratulating them for the great car, but these are cars which could lead to a series collapse.
Red Bull is just saying that aloud as it is their style; straight with no bull s**t; It is for FIA to act on.
This kind of like 2005 when Michelin had a wonderful tyre but at the end of it was not good for F1, regulations changed.
Strawman argument if i ever saw one!
Edit: to expand on my comment, the difference is the CanAm et all were virtually unrestricted series, if you had the will to spend the money to catch up, you could. Right now in F1, Ferrari and to a bigger extent Renault and Honda are totally screwed. Imo they will never catch up with the current token system in place.
Last edited by djos on 17 Mar 2015, 09:04, edited 2 times in total.
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WilliamsF1 wrote:Porsche 917 CanAM was a great car, no one blamed Porsche for making that car; but the series died as the competitors left
Toyota Eagle MkIII was a great car, but IMSA GTP collapsed at the end of it
Mercedes CLK-GTR was a great car, but GT1 series collapsed
Mercedes W05 and W06 are great cars, no one blames Mercedes, everyone congratulating them for the great car, but these are cars which could lead to a series collapse.
Red Bull is just saying that aloud as it is their style; straight with no bull s**t; It is for FIA to act on.
This kind of like 2005 when Michelin had a wonderful tyre but at the end of it was not good for F1, regulations changed.
Well.. The domenance Mercedes is showing is nothing new for f1, RedBull is even forgetting seasons like 2013, where Vettel won the last 9 races with great ease, or 1984 and 1985 with the MP4-2, 1988 of course, 1989, etc etc. the season which on paper should have been the most interesting one, 1982, when Rosberg won it with just one victory, nobody remembers. Everybody is talking about 1988 and when Ferrari was very dominant with Schumacher.
1988 was good because Prost was like Hamilton now, WC two times already, dominant, strong and he was fighting his young opponent Senna. And Rosberg is a good driver, but he is no Senna.
djos wrote:RedBull were never ever 1.5 seconds per lap faster than every one else!
Singapore 2013 comes to mind. But McLaren, Williams and Ferrari all dominated the sport a few times with cars that would lap the whole field. With ease.
djos wrote:RedBull were never ever 1.5 seconds per lap faster than every one else!
Singapore 2013 comes to mind. But McLaren, Williams and Ferrari all dominated the sport a few times with cars that would lap the whole field. With ease.
Merc - stopped developing their car from May, while being faster than the Bulls in the early part
McL - shot themselves in the foot with a new concept when they should have just evolved the previous race winning car
Ferrari - messed up and were focusing on 2014
Domination it was by Red Bull
But still we had a close 2010 where Ferrari and Mcl could challenge Redbull for victory on most days
2011 Pirelli. McLaren had a car for a few victories, had double diffuser not banned Red Bull would not have won.
2012 rule change, Alonso should have won that with ease
2013 was a write off
djos wrote:Yep, still no 1.5 seconds per lap domination.
Iirc the last time that happened was when Shuey was driving for Ferrari.
Because back then Schumi didn't have to save anything at all. No fuel flow limit or PU restrictions. Now they have, so they have to try and save whenever they can. For example: lift and coasting, turning down the engine, limited fuel flow, managing the tires and managing the gap, etc.
WilliamsF1 wrote:Mercedes W05 and W06 are great cars, no one blames Mercedes, everyone congratulating them for the great car, but these are cars which could lead to a series collapse.
F1 contains more cars that you suggest "could lead to series collapse" than just the 2 you are mentioning.
In over 80% those cases the gap between the front running car and the opposition was greater than we have today.
And that is just in the last 25 years which means F1 ought to be dead if, as you say, great cars lead to series collapse.
Simply not true.
Can Am, IMSA,GT1 and I'll add ITC all collapsed because of a lack of manufacturer support, and other growing series like DTM could attrack larger crowds for a cheaper competition.
Comparing F1 to these series is like comparing premier league football to Division 2 football leagues.
What happens in either league is not relevant to the other.
maccafan wrote:
Totally disagree. 99% is due to the engine. If the engine pushes really good then you can afford pushing the aero. You would not care if it is effective downforce or not. Just recall that RB had to reduce the downforce in the beginning of 2014 because it was causing to much drag.
Well theres an argument that makes no sense
If 99% is the engine then where are Lotus, Williams and Force India in this then? If your saying only 1% is down to the chassis then your suggesting that the 4 merc powered teams would be in a league of there own then the 1% is what defines there order. This is of course not true. Merc are over a second a lap ahead of there fellow merc engine users as well. This would lead me to believe that Mercs success isn't 99% down to the engine.
It's also interesting that Williams philosophy at the moment seems to be (same as last year) to go for a low drag car. Why would they do this if the engine allowed them not to worry about "uneffective" downforce
I don't think it's productive to dissect Horner's rights to make this argument, but actually expand the discussion to the state of the sport and what could happen in the future.
The way I see it, given the token system and the other limitations on developing the engine, right now only Honda has a chance of catching up in 2015 or 2016. And I use "chance" in a very loose way, as we have not yet seen their full potential. The others? With every year that passes, getting 10HP from the PU becomes gradually more expensive and harder. It's pretty naive to think that the key to the Merc is in the separation of the compressor to the turbo or in things that we, or the rivals, could gather by looking at pictures. So it's not like they can use Merc's solutions as inspiration, but rather acknowledge that for every year when the number of tokens reduces, you have less areas to improve and gain those 10HP.
Don't compare what happened 20-30 years ago with what happens now and think that "everything is going to be alright". F1 is entertainment and entertainment has changed A LOT in this time. In order to gain new fans to the sport, you need to put on the best show you can think of, as there are a lot more alternatives than before. Key here is being able to put on a show that is able to surprise the audience, that's part of the reason why football gets so many people to tune in: it has simple rules, the underdog can actually win and anything can happen: surprise turn of events, spectacular goals, etc. More to the point, the masses need great racing much more than they need technical gems and the fact is that the money of the masses allow for the technical gems to be created.
So we have three possible outcomes:
1. Do nothing and, given the current state, I bet no new engine manufacturer will enter F1 in the coming years. If nothing is done, it's pretty clear to me that Merc have the WCCs and the WDCs locked with the current engine formula under the current rules. Attendances will drop, TV ratings will drop and not just because F1 is not aligned with the 21st century's way of presenting sports in social media, but because there is no event, no emotion, no show to put on, irrespective of the number of channels you can show it on.
2. Change the rules so that, given a certain % difference between two engines (already a big question on how you could measure it), the team behind gets additional tokens or, even better, discard the token system entirely. This will still require teams to figure it out for themselves, but at least they will be able to do it. Biggest problem here is that everything becomes a spending war. Alternatively, and this is the idea I like the most, standardize a lot of the PU components, so that, even if one manufacturer has a huge R&D budget, the limited scope of development would restrict the possible gains.
3. Some huge OEM decides to enter. At that point, depending on their budget and the expertise they could gain from the current engines, they could produce an engine that will put the Merc PU to shame. The only ones I can think of are Audi and BMW. Problem with this is that, even if they'd start now and manage to attract all the best talent in the business, this effort would take at least 2, probably 3 years to implement.
