drunkf1fan wrote: ↑24 Jun 2019, 07:56
ENGINE TUNER wrote: ↑24 Jun 2019, 05:04
Jackles-UK wrote: ↑24 Jun 2019, 02:49
The cars have a maximum width of approx 2m I believe - how difficult would it be to install a narrow (one car’s width, perhaps?) strip of gravel/grass/bumps 2m beyond the edge of the track at points of corner exit where drivers are currently tempted to run a wide to gain time? Surely this is the easiest and safest answer to that problem as the gigantic tarmac run-off area is still in place beyond that deterrent should a high-speed accident occur. Street tracks already have Armco/Tec-Pro barriers for this effect so I can’t see how a safety issue can arise.
Maybe this way the drivers will stop pushing their luck with track limits and drive within the boundaries of the rules. Run wide and drop a wheel onto that = the car is significantly affected. “Force” a car wide onto that (still some scope for arguments, I know) = a penalty is applied.
Simple.
Why should are car that is forced off the track by another competitor be even more penalized? Why should a car avoiding a spinning or crashed competitor be even more penalized? Why make the track less safe for someone with a mechanical failure?
Paint a white line and penalize drivers who go all four off (unluss forced to do so by a competitor? That is far more simple.
Do you complain when a basketball or football player is penalized for going out of bounds? Do you think they should put gravel or grass around nba courts? Every sport in the world has bounderies, none of them intentionally put dangers around them to penalize the participants. There is absolutely no reason to put these 20 incredible drivers in any further danger than necessary when simple rules pertaining to out of bounds have already been established.
See this is what I never get when people talk about how run off should penalise drivers badly.
Sure, if you make a mistake, mess up and go wide gravel punishing them is fine, but seeing a race with 8 guys in the second half of the race isn't great for the fans. But also what if you're driving great and some idiot slams up the inside, hits you, causes you to spin out and instead of spinning out into a nice run off area so you can get back on track, you're stuck in gravel and your race is over?
The idea that only cars who make mistakes end up off track is ridiculous and so obviously wrong.
As you say, we can easily penalise people but somehow people complain about that, but love the idea of gravel/grass run offs that can just as easily ruin a completely innocent driver who is the victim of someone else's bad driving.
Brundle's the same "I want them to be penalised for going off track with gravel/grass".... "omg, how could you penalise a guy who went off track"..... wait, what? An incredible amount of hypocrisy going on recently. There is plenty going wrong with the FIA, the tires are a disaster, the regulation changes aren't great, but turning on everything that works randomly because people just want to hit out at every aspect of F1 is not going to fix anything.
If the rules get broken, and fair driving is no longer a thing then racing won't be any better with the same cars and tires, if they fix the cars and tires, then with the current fair racing rules, we'll have great racing as we've had before. The rules aren't broken, and insisting that fixing them(getting rid of them) will somehow make cars easier to overtake is absurd. Breaking something that works because you think it will fix something that doesn't when it in fact won't have any effect is just people being reactionary and illogical.
The other thing fans need to be better with, also especially pundits who get to shape a lot of fans views, is miscategorising incidents.
you've got brundle, Crofty and even Ricciardo banging on about how Hamilton did the same thing as Vettel in Monaco in 2016... except just because it was a situation he missed a corner and defended doesn't mean the situations are identical. Fundamental difference is Vettel left no room for Hamilton and pushed him off track, Hamilton left ~1.4 cars widths for Ricciardo, allowing Crofty and brundle to refer to it as an example of the same thing being unpunished is terrible for the image of the sport. In effect they are misleading fans and riling up anger when it's plain to see they are completely wrong in comparing the two incidents as the same, when in fact 10 seconds of video from the right angle could actually be used to calm the fan base and explain exactly why what Hamilton did was an example of great fair driving and what Vettel did was over the line and required a penalty.
Just because incidents are similar broadly, fans and especially pundits need to be much better in highlighting the differences. Stewarding decisions have actually been pretty consistent for a long time, it's mostly fans comparing two pretty different incidents as the same thing.
It could help if the FIA clarify how they give penalties though. Take the Vettel vs Bottas and the Kimi vs Ham penalty. These decisions were again consistent, the fans understanding of them wasn't. They were consistent because the stewards have always taken into account what they did and the result. Meaning Vettel got a 5 second penalty because he screwed bottas but also sent himself to the back, which is effectively a partial penalty already so they added 5 seconds to that. For Kimi he hit Hamilton who went to the back as Bottas did, but Kimi effectively got away with it and stayed in the same position so he got a 10 second penalty. People saw this as a worse penalty and being inconsistent and Brundle/Crofty rather than sensibly explain the difference played up the drama which is imo terrible for F1. If they simply say Vettel got less time because he screwed himself while Kimi got a larger time penalty because he was able to carry on with no real loss then the difference is obvious and it's no longer considered another example of inconsistent penalties.
Well said, I do think you touch on two things
a) 'quality and attitude of commentary' - which, looking at RTL.DE (who seem to have become more reasonable and impartial in the last few years), and thinking about much of the 2007 Spain/UK difference in view of who is at fault at McLaren - is quite an issue, and asks a lot of journalistic integrity from those commentators. Which, frankly, Sky do not seem to have, but instead a 'emotion, and controversy/excitement' policy; quite an issue now they also are the English F1tv voices (which is why I used the much more measured, and usually quite excellent, though with less people on the ground, bbc 5 live radio from the F1 app)
b) the fundamental problem still is that the cars, aero, tyres, etc. just aren't well suited to fighting on most of these tracks, which means that drivers often have maybe one or two changes, or revert to things like Ricciardo did 'at least I tried', which give us excitement, and also controversy, because he used the part of the track that is meant to make it safe for cars and motogp, so when a competitor pushes you off from between the white lines you don't automatically lose the race/health/life, but that's not quite fair racing; problem is, often it was the only way to get some attempt, so then people are unhappy that every attempt is blocked.
In the end, Hamilton's 'blame the rule makers' (for example) is quite correct: Brawn and co really have to try and make a difference for 2021, whatever the pushback from the teams.
But also, this situation with the cars isn't new at all, though at different times refuelling (ugh, but, it gave some drama, and options), tyre war/different tyres, and less reliability masked it to some extent; oh, and commentary that maybe looked at what interesting things were going on and explaining those, instead of stirring controversy in the hope it engages viewers.
And, in the past, maybe our expectations were different, because there were definitely races in the 1990-2000's when I had a race on, but wasn't watching with three screens trying to follow everything, expecting to hear and see everything, but rather had the images my broadcaster showed, and then a sort of radio commentary of what actually was happening (not shown on the screen) by the guys in the commentary booth.
What also often makes me enjoy races a bit more, is just having the F1tv 'FX' audio track, ie. without commentary, just cars and car radio (well, and live timing, and data track).
