how to to make F1 more exciting by radical technical changes

[Abstractness]

In short:
1. Make spoilers illegal.
2. Allow fan cars.
3. Don't use the fastest tires.

1. Make spoilers illegal: Spoilers loose down force due to turbulent air of the car in front, which makes overtaking a lot more difficult and makes the entire sport more boring. In karting a lot more back and forth overtaking happens because there are no spoilers. That's why Lewis Hamilton thinks it would be the worst idea to increase aerodynamic down force next season. A more radical step which I would take would be to outlaw spoilers all together.

2. Allow fan cars: The human eye is not good at perceiving strong accelerations of objects which are already traveling at a high speed. The spectators don't really see the strong 5g braking since it only takes place at very high speeds. Also in slow corners the cars look very slow because there is no down force. Also the acceleration at the start could be much more impressive if down force would be available at slow speeds. A obvious solution to all of this would be to allow power generated down force similar to the Brabham BT46 fan car. The safety would still be high since the rules can be adapted such that the down force does not increase additionally with speed. And increased speed in slow corners would not be much of a safety hazard if the tracks are adapted a bit.

3. Don't use the fastest tires: With today's very small slip angles the cars look as if they would be running on rails. It is very difficult for the viewer to see how the car is behaving physically. If the cars are driven at larger slip angles, more steering corrections and oscillations of the angles can be seen, which would make it a lot more exciting to watch. Such driving styles are going to be used if the tires have a larger optimal slip angle. Also the tires should be larger or the cars lighter to allow the drivers to use more aggressive driving styles without worrying about wasting the tires.

[toraabe]

Several things.
1. Better tracks. Faster with fast corners like old osterreichring old interlagos where you can go flat out for 50 seconds. Paul richard is another fast circuit with fast sweeping corners. .
2. A total revamp of the aero. If you ban complex front wings and instead using the floor ( Groundeffect with venturi tunnels) and limiting the angle and the height of the rear diffusor and angle of it, the airwake of the car will be much cleaner and also permitting close racing.
3. Wider and softer tyres for better grip.
4. More horsepower. If you had 1200 HP in race trim and 600 kg net weight, those cars with groundeffect would be like rockets and capable of perhaps 10 seconds faster laptimes in Melbourne. Monza could reach 1.15 pole..

But is this wat we want ? . Both yes and no. With these rules you could reach 240 mph top speed in baku...
Maybee to dangerous... But spetacular ... yes

[notsofast]

Perhaps it's time to embrace the future. Let the constructors build a real car, but let the drivers control the car remotely, from a simulator. The requirement for constructors and drivers to be skilled doesn't change, but safety improves a whole lot. This opens up whole new possibilities.

[ChrisDanger]

I know it's not exactly what you had in mind, but...

1. Stop glorifying the past.
2. Stop expecting every race to be "epic".
3. Instad of focusing on who gets to the top of the podium, watch the entire field as well as the development of teams over the year and across years.
4. Follow some of the technical development going on.

If you do one or more of the above you'll notice that Formula 1 is far from boring!

And importantly these can be accomplished by anyone willing to open their mind a bit, instead of the rather futile practice of coming up with suggestions on a thread on the internet which will have absolutely no effect on any changes in F1.

[Shooty81]

Perhaps it's time to embrace the future. Let the constructors build a real car, but let the drivers control the car remotely, from a simulator. The requirement for constructors and drivers to be skilled doesn't change, but safety improves a whole lot. This opens up whole new possibilities.

You can already have that:

http://ets.redrc.net/

Regards
Shooty

[Abstractness]

2. A total revamp of the aero. If you ban complex front wings and instead using the floor ( Groundeffect with venturi tunnels) and limiting the angle and the height of the rear diffusor and angle of it, the airwake of the car will be much cleaner and also permitting close racing.

Why not just use powered ground effect like I said at the beginning? It would be have the same down force in the fast corners as they have now, hence maintaining the safety.
But with it F1 would be much more spectacular to watch because of the high grip around the slow corners.
If a current car brakes into a chicane it starts to brake with 5g which then falls off to 2g before the corner, so the spectator can not perceive the strong braking forces. With powered ground effect it would start to brake with 5g and then maintain maybe 4g at low speed which would be perceived strongly by the spectator. Same with the throttle: the cars would initially accelerate with 4g with the engines they always had.

3. Wider and softer tyres for better grip.

As I said the important thing about tires is just to have larger optimal slip angles as well as making them more durable.

btw here's what epic racing without wings looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlLD8LL8lkg

[wesley123]

1. Make spoilers illegal: Spoilers loose down force due to turbulent air of the car in front, which makes overtaking a lot more difficult and makes the entire sport more boring. In karting a lot more back and forth overtaking happens because there are no spoilers. That's why Lewis Hamilton thinks it would be the worst idea to increase aerodynamic down force next season. A more radical step which I would take would be to outlaw spoilers all together.

F1 cars run wings, not spoilers.

This is a wing:


This is a spoiler:

2. Allow fan cars: The human eye is not good at perceiving strong accelerations of objects which are already traveling at a high speed. The spectators don't really see the strong 5g braking since it only takes place at very high speeds. Also in slow corners the cars look very slow because there is no down force. Also the acceleration at the start could be much more impressive if down force would be available at slow speeds. A obvious solution to all of this would be to allow power generated down force similar to the Brabham BT46 fan car. The safety would still be high since the rules can be adapted such that the down force does not increase additionally with speed. And increased speed in slow corners would not be much of a safety hazard if the tracks are adapted a bit.

You mean the car you couldn't drive behind because it kept sucking up debris everywhere?

Also, downforce is dependent on speed, so a fan wont magically give you the same downforce everywhere. Plus, at low(er) speeds the car is limited by mechanical grip, not downforce.

And how is dynamically reducing downforce with speed just as safe? To run a corner at 250kph you need more downforce than to run that same corner at 100kph

3. Don't use the fastest tires: With today's very small slip angles the cars look as if they would be running on rails. It is very difficult for the viewer to see how the car is behaving physically. If the cars are driven at larger slip angles, more steering corrections and oscillations of the angles can be seen, which would make it a lot more exciting to watch. Such driving styles are going to be used if the tires have a larger optimal slip angle. Also the tires should be larger or the cars lighter to allow the drivers to use more aggressive driving styles without worrying about wasting the tires.

Even with higher slip angles it would still be near impossible to see the car move from a grandstand, so unless you want the cars to drift(which would look pretty funny tbh) this is pretty much a no-go.

Also, they look like they run on rails because that is the fastest way. You lose speed with sliding, which makes it something you'd want t avoid.

[dsrankin]

They just need to simplify the wings and take away a ton of downforce. Allow them more freedom with engines and lower the grip levels. This will help bring it back to the drivers and make for better racing. More power and less grip...

[SteveRacer]

I always thought it would be interesting to see a modern car running a bias tire. Maybe it was a combination of things but the bias tire cars always seem to lap the track with an exciting bit of yaw to them.

I was also curious what a modern F1 car would look like if we never got caught up with all the aero downforce. For example, modern version of a 67 Lotus. While it may not corner great, the top speeds would be incredible and the braking zone would be incredibly long. I envision fantastic on track battles.

This would be a huge step backwards but the on track action could be epic.

[flickerf1]

I always thought it would be exciting to see cars ala 2008. The cars were very different from each other aesthetically; these days the cars seem quite similar, but with some key differences. I want to see innovative ideas that exploit the rules as well and are generally genius concepts. Like FRIC from Mercedes, F-Duct from McLaren (which I believe was the predecessor of DRS) , Adrian Newey's reinvention of the EBD.

Also, as much as I love these complex front wings, in my opinion, should be simplified. It simply makes it to difficult to follow another driver closely; causes the driver behind to damage their tires. With simpler front wings, close racing could be improved dramatically. Making cars lighter would be a boon as well. If my memory doesn't fail me, weren't the cars of 2008 something like 590-600 kilos? Imagine a Mercedes V6 turbo in something as light as that!

I don't have anything to say on Pirelli. Their tires have much improved since the shambles that was 2013.

[Abstractness]

You mean the car you couldn't drive behind because it kept sucking up debris everywhere?
Also, downforce is dependent on speed, so a fan wont magically give you the same downforce everywhere. Plus, at low(er) speeds the car is limited by mechanical grip, not downforce.

As I previously said "the rules can be adapted such that the down force does not increase additionally with speed".
So the specific construction used by the Brabham team would not be legal anymore.
For instance skirts would remain illegal. Instead the air would be sucked up vertically by a more centrally placed fan. The air would flow in from all sides. The underside of the car would have more of a doughnut-like curvature to produce a strong ground effect even when the car is standing. So it wouldn't be limited in the same way as a current F1 car. And of course you could construct it such that it doesn't shoot out debris. If there are no wings and underside is not constructed to turn the driving speed into downforce then the correlation between driving speed and downforce is much lower then in current-days F1 cars.

And how is dynamically reducing downforce with speed just as safe? To run a corner at 250kph you need more downforce than to run that same corner at 100kph

I'm not sure what you mean but the car I'm talking about would be just as safe in the high speed corners because it would generate the same amount of downforce as a current-day F1 car in high speed corners.
But system would need to have enough momentum such that in case of power failure the fan keeps on rotating for a while to allow the pilot to slow down before the downforce disappears.

Even with higher slip angles it would still be near impossible to see the car move from a grandstand, so unless you want the cars to drift(which would look pretty funny tbh) this is pretty much a no-go.

The viewers on the grandstand are not what brings in the real money, It's the people behind the TV. So it would make a difference.

[wesley123]

You mean the car you couldn't drive behind because it kept sucking up debris everywhere?
Also, downforce is dependent on speed, so a fan wont magically give you the same downforce everywhere. Plus, at low(er) speeds the car is limited by mechanical grip, not downforce.

As I previously said "the rules can be adapted such that the down force does not increase additionally with speed".
So the specific construction used by the Brabham team would not be legal anymore.
For instance skirts would remain illegal. Instead the air would be sucked up vertically by a more centrally placed fan. The air would flow in from all sides. The underside of the car would have more of a doughnut-like curvature to produce a strong ground effect even when the car is standing. So it wouldn't be limited in the same way as a current F1 car.

The fan car worked by sealing the floor, it's an requirement in making the whole thing work. If air can just freely flow in it wouldn't create much of a suction effect, as the whole thing needs to create a vacuum under the car. At least, that was the thought with the BT46 as well as the Chaparral 2J.

And of course you could construct it such that it doesn't shoot out debris.

And how exactly would that be done?
The way I see it it would require a filter that would prevent the car spewing out debris, which will get clogged up and reduce downforce over time.

And how is dynamically reducing downforce with speed just as safe? To run a corner at 250kph you need more downforce than to run that same corner at 100kph

I'm not sure what you mean but the car I'm talking about would be just as safe in the high speed corners because it would generate the same amount of downforce as a current-day F1 car in high speed corners.
But system would need to have enough momentum such that in case of power failure the fan keeps on rotating for a while to allow the pilot to slow down before the downforce disappears.[/quote]

The whole fan car idea isn't in a position where the fan would retain momentum in a failure as it's application requires it to be driven to work, it isn't using flow through it as a way to maintain momentum, it is creating the flow through by itself. If it was just augmenting natural flow, then yes, it could be build to retain momentum(but you'd still lose downforce as the fan slows down), but that is not the case.

Even with higher slip angles it would still be near impossible to see the car move from a grandstand, so unless you want the cars to drift(which would look pretty funny tbh) this is pretty much a no-go.

The viewers on the grandstand are not what brings in the real money, It's the people behind the TV. So it would make a difference.

[/quote]

Except those viewers can already very well see what the driver is doing.

[langwadt]

if you want faster times and higher speeds just have the guys running the timing tweak the numbers, no one can tell the difference by looks alone

[Edax]

In short:
1. Make spoilers illegal.
2. Allow fan cars.
3. Don't use the fastest tires.

I think one of the realistic options is to bring the gearstick back. it is much harder driving constant laps while driving with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the stick. many of the passes in the prepaddle area were preceded by errors shifting or steering.

one which Probably doesn't qualify as technical, is to include a mandatory joker lap. Key is to aim for a deficit where statistically it is difficult to find a gap. Something like 5-10 seconds would be best. It could spice up strategy .

[Greg Locock]

But system would need to have enough momentum such that in case of power failure the fan keeps on rotating for a while to allow the pilot to slow down before the downforce disappears.

Well OK, let's see how big a flywheel you'd need to keep a 45 hp fan (say) running for one second (say) before half the downforce vanishes? Show your working. Yes, you'll have to make some assumptions.