2020 Tuscan Grand Prix - Mugello, September 11 - 13

[RZS10]

Here's his 3rd start onboard ... poor start + the other aforementioned factors

[PlatinumZealot]

Perez ran out of tyres quite early. He was on softs. Was Stroll on softs too?

[AMG.Tzan]

Here's his 3rd start onboard ... poor start + the other aforementioned factors

What the hell?? Why did it slow down so much after leaving Vettel's slipstream? Did he have an issue with the engine??

Anyway...should have gone for the inside! And during the first 5-6 corners there were some risky chances he could have taken to get that 1 maybe 2 points (if he had closed to Raikkonen)!

A shame...

[langedweil]

I have deleted roughly 10 pages of posts.

Thanks for cleaning out Hollus !

[Bsowles]

I have deleted roughly 10 pages of posts. If anyone comes here and wonders where sunday night and most of monday went...


Anyways, the forum policy is NO POLITICS. Please respect that.

Thread opened again, by the way.

Hollus, Thank you for your effort on our behalf. I have no excuses except that this is such an absorbing site I get dragged along despite saying to myself I will not.

Your efforts are appreciated, and apologies from myself, and I am sure on behalf of others.

Edit, PS this is not an arse kiss, We still need a big stick waved

Agreed ^^^

[Andres125sx]

Did FIA provided any explanation about the SC switching off lights so late?

[kalinka]

I thought the race was brilliant.

We do need to talk about that safety car restart crash though - that was really ugly and had the potential of what happened to Billy Monger. Thankfully, it didnt. What a horrendous incident though...

Are there no "spotters" employed in F1 teams? I thought there is at least a few people who follows the critical camera angles or standing on pitwall at race starts/restarts and can warn the driver if there is a stalled car/or anything dangerous on the grid...and making sure the driver is aware the cars in his blindspot. I can hear those kind of spotter-driver communications constantly in Indycar, and not only on ovals. Is it maybe some stupid rule again that forbids this in F1?

[e30ernest]

I thought the race was brilliant.

We do need to talk about that safety car restart crash though - that was really ugly and had the potential of what happened to Billy Monger. Thankfully, it didnt. What a horrendous incident though...

Are there no "spotters" employed in F1 teams? I thought there is at least a few people who follows the critical camera angles or standing on pitwall at race starts/restarts and can warn the driver if there is a stalled car/or anything dangerous on the grid...and making sure the driver is aware the cars in his blindspot. I can hear those kind of spotter-driver communications constantly in Indycar, and not only on ovals. Is it maybe some stupid rule again that forbids this in F1?

I don't think a spotter would have helped in that restart incident. On restarts like these, the only way a driver won't get left behind when the front runners punch it is to watch the car in front of them and anticipate/go as soon as the car ahead goes. If you relied on a spotter, you add the reaction time of the spotter, to the delay it'll take them to actually talk to you then your reaction time over that... You'll get rear-ended instead.

Re-watching this start, it looks like Russel was the one who had a gap in front. He then accelerated to close in on that gap then slowed down as he caught up behind everyone else. Everyone behind Russel took this as their signal to go hence the pile-up.

[kalinka]

If not a spotter, then his race engineer should have at least warned him to close that gap, way before anything happened. Also, I don't know why would they(drivers) have to rely on the SC lights on the track . Drivers well behind the leader should be regularly warned for SC coming in as soon as team becomes aware.

[e30ernest]

If not a spotter, then his race engineer should have at least warned him to close that gap, way before anything happened. Also, I don't know why would they(drivers) have to rely on the SC lights on the track . Drivers well behind the leader should be regularly warned for SC coming in as soon as team becomes aware.

I don't think that was the main contributor to the accident though. IMO the main issue was that the new SC rules say you cannot pass until you cross the start/finish line instead of the previous SC line. This means that on a circuit where the tow from the straights is substantial (like this), the leaders will likely bunch everyone up all the way until just before the line.

The cars behind could not see the front runners, they can only see 1-2 cars ahead with the halo and how low they sit. So they are reliant on seeing the reactions of the cars directly ahead to react on whether to go or not.

Russel had a big gap in front either because he wanted to get a good run up to the cars ahead (by anticipating the go), space to warm his tires further, or space to cool down his engine. When he closed in on that gap for the restart, everyone behind him thought that the race was on again. The cars directly behind Russel were able to slow back down (Magnussen). However the cars behind that didn't have enough time to react so they piled on.

[Wass85]

In my opinion overtaking should be allowed as soon as the leading driver makes his move.

[kalinka]

If not a spotter, then his race engineer should have at least warned him to close that gap, way before anything happened. Also, I don't know why would they(drivers) have to rely on the SC lights on the track . Drivers well behind the leader should be regularly warned for SC coming in as soon as team becomes aware.

I don't think that was the main contributor to the accident though. IMO the main issue was that the new SC rules say you cannot pass until you cross the start/finish line instead of the previous SC line. This means that on a circuit where the tow from the straights is substantial (like this), the leaders will likely bunch everyone up all the way until just before the line.

The cars behind could not see the front runners, they can only see 1-2 cars ahead with the halo and how low they sit. So they are reliant on seeing the reactions of the cars directly ahead to react on whether to go or not.

Russel had a big gap in front either because he wanted to get a good run up to the cars ahead (by anticipating the go), space to warm his tires further, or space to cool down his engine. When he closed in on that gap for the restart, everyone behind him thought that the race was on again. The cars directly behind Russel were able to slow back down (Magnussen). However the cars behind that didn't have enough time to react so they piled on.

I'm aware of Russel's reason why he wanted to do that, but that can be avoided. There are system for this in other series ( Indycar ), where the restart is not automatic, and can be cancelled if the cars are not lined up correctly for the restart. It was a failure to enable racing only from the start/finish line, but not tweaking anything to support that.

[nzjrs]

In my opinion overtaking should be allowed as soon as the leading driver makes his move.

How do you judge when he has made his move?

[jz11]

I agree about added reaction time while waiting for a "GO!" from a spotter for first few cars after the leader, but the back of the pack has 2-3 seconds at least before they see the guys in the front pick up speed, if there was indeed a spotter for them, they would have avoided the accident because the spotter can see the whole pack and warn the guys at the back about danger ahead - which in this case was the front of the pack that hadn't yet started to accelerate

anyway - someone with the top view of the restart and drivers ear could have seen the disaster coming and warned to start to break earlier to avoid this sort of crash, sometimes the same thing happens on standing starts as well, if FIA is truly about safety, they'd make this happen, maybe forbid the spotter to give the GO signal, allow him only to tell the driver to slow down to avoid possible danger ahead - a slow car or still car at a standing start, or a slow pack on a restart

I don't much follow Indycar, but I've seen them having spotters telling drivers to go high or low to try and avoid trouble ahead if someone spins, crashes in a wall or similar, I can also understand people in the pits not wanting the responsibility to do this

[basti313]

In my opinion overtaking should be allowed as soon as the leading driver makes his move.

How do you judge when he has made his move?

It is a simple thing in many racing series...pack comes together to the last corner, lead car crosses the line, lights go green, racing starts.The way they did it in F1 with a quarter of a lap time for the lead car to disappear is completely uncommon.

I am surprised by all this discussions...last week the stupid discussion about pit lane lights that were thoroughly marked in the track description for the weekend. This week Bottas claims they were well aware about how the safety car starts will be and still...the midfield gets surprised...like this is something unheard of and never discussed in the team.
These drivers need to start preparing for the race and not just earn millions. This is the same nonsense like if a soccer player tells after his red card "I did not know the rule".