Technical Value of the Media

[AeroCFDEng]

From watching/reading mainstream media and following this forum from afar I have noticed that there is a general frustration with the lack of competent tech talk. However some are respected such as Gary Anderson a former engineer. Hover McCabism Blog has shown that even someone with his background says things that are untrue. There is also a lot of admiration for Scarbs. Often on YouTube videos his explanations are either outright wrong or make no sense. However, I suspect saying that on here will not go down well. And people seem to assume whatever he says is true and he often defends with “ive spoken to engineers” now my guess is that if they actually leak any true technical info to a journo they’d be sacked pretty quickly. My point here is to get the general feel of others with more technical backgrounds.

[jjn9128]

I suggest reading some of the technical features on the front page here - we have a few engineers writing articles

I tend to agree there is little technical value in the media these days, I believe Scarbs has just been let go by the motorsport network. The decline in technical articles is coinciding with an increase in tabloid level journalism - even Coulthard was trying to stir s**t between Vettel and Hamilton after the Mexican GP. So I assume they found clicks and comments were higher on some opinion piece about Vettel's "errors" or Hamilton's latest haircut.

Teams don't give anything away, aerodynamicists and designers don't attend races anyways, so what gets into the media is normally like chinese whispers - 2nd hand from someone who doesn't fully understand and is trying to hide the truth.

If aero is your thing (guessing from your id), there are a few good blog posts on salient edge, likewise totalsim have done a few blog posts on F1 aero. Racecar engineering have had some decent articles in the past, print copy not web, I haven't bought a copy for a while so not sure of late.