UlleGulle wrote: ↑11 Jun 2019, 08:49
IMHO neither Vettel or Hamilton would have pulled the moves they did in the age of Senna or Lauda. The risks would have been to great, and even racingdrivers seem to like to keep their limbs. The advancement of safety in racing has caused more of a TV-game-racing attitude to crashing, and this in turn has created the need for rules to regulate "fair racing". Eje Elgh, who raced Formula 2 in the seventies, commented the Perez- Ocon crash at Spa with the words that he wouldn't have positioned his car that way during his career, due to self preservation and will to survive.
What we see is an increasing amount of artifical racing, where drivers put themselves in positions to force the other driver to let them trough or back of or get a punishment.
My humble suggestion to return to "pure" racing would be to punish all drivers involved in causing a SC or VSC with DSQ from the next qulifying session, with the subsequent start from the pitlane. Then you can rejoin the track any way you like, and move in the break-zone at your pleasure, but if that causes a crash, that will really hurt your standings in the championship.
Interesting thoughts. I do have to say Hamilton was following the racing line. Don't know if that classifies as "putting yourself in position to force the other driver". And if it is, why that driver isn't allow to do that because he wasn't the one who made the mistake.
I do agree drivers take more risks. However, I neither would call this artificial. The decision making still happens with the drivers, and are free to do so as they ever were. They are just less risk-averse.
Also, I disagree with your suggestion. The reason why is because causing a SC/VSC is down on luck. You can make a tiny mistake, clip a barrier, spin out of control and hit every wall around you, spreading carbon fibre everywhere. Or, you can ram into one another on purpose and skid off into the run off area without pieces on the track, which would only amount for a yellow flag.
Maybe we should look at the run off areas and see how they can punish more. Now a grass runoff does punish quite hard. Vettel lost a lot of time cutting the corner there, and you can spin quite easily on it. But, the issue is also that in order to keep yourself from spinning, you need to carry a lot of momentum over the grass, so you aren't slowing down as much as you should be.
There are solutions to that: replace the grass with tarmac and add in high grip strips, like the ones you see at Paul Ricard. The blue stripes are made to slow you down, the red stripes are made to slow you down quite extremely but also shred your tyres. Arrange a pattern in the run off area where you either need to go a long way around on the blue area to avoid the red area, or cross the red area and having your tyres loose chunks of rubber. This is quite a safe but also punishing way to avoid excessive corner cutting.