Pirelli 2013

[fiohaa]

There was hardly as much strategy with fuel as there is with these tyres, with refueling you had a race that consisted of several sprint races. Also how has driver skills been reduced? Perserving tyres is a good and big skill, one that was once good to have when we didnt have specific tyre changing rules etc but then it was taken away when we got refueling cause they you did flat out between each fuel stop and didnt even think about tyres. But now the tyre management is back and its GOOD!

so youre honestly telling me that you prefer to watch drives managing tyres than being let loose and racing as fast as they can?
if thats what you prefer then fine.

but thats not why i watch motorsport.

[fiohaa]

[...]
Today's set of rules has made for some entertaining races and, at the end of the day, it is all about entertainment.

That strongly depends on how one defines "entertainment."

I think today's F1 bears little resemblance to any period in F1 history, which was "entertaining" enough. The copious overtaking the new rules were meant to "restore" never happened in the first place; it was all a myth, perpetuated by sensationalist storytelling about "the good ol' days," when men were men, and women were men, too. (Huh? I don't know, either.)

Again, it doesn't really matter, though. Those of us who shutter at the thought of DRS zones and paper mache tires are vastly outnumbered by those who eagerly lap up both. So, this new paradigm is likely to stick around for a while.

its easy to understand why they lap it up. F1 has never been as big as football but they are trying to make it as commercial as possible, especially now that its floating on the exchange and the pay per view model. The whole enterprise is now first and foremost a business - to maximise its shareholders wealth.
To do that they need to bring in casual viewers, because the 'proper fans' aren't as many as football or rugby - and they won't care how overtakes are happening or why, they just want to see lots of passes, lots of different drivers winning, a story, a nice narrative.

The corporate sponsors don't want to see cars blowing up or failing, or crashing, so they have minimized risk as much as physically possible - tarmacing gravel traps, no racing in the wet, countless penalties for things which used to be just racing incidents.

the pirelli tyres was an easy way to generate the on track 'action'.
the only valid argument i can see for supporting tyre management racing is that the team with the biggest budget won't necessarily win, because no matter how clever the engineer, they don't know exactly how long the tyre will last, not even during the race.

saying that...the team who has won it the last 3 years arguably have the biggest budget and most resources. So........
i certainly did not enjoy the schumi domination years, but there were years like 94,97,98,99,00,03,05,06,07,08 where you had a minimum of 2 drivers head to head every race, and they would push each other to the last lap.

Races like Suzuka 2000 or Hungary 1998 would never happen now. they never will it seems.

[Richard]

Its been a long long time since drivers were only bound by the physical limit of the car staying on the track. Fuel saving and overtaking engine modes have been around for a long time. I can't see much difference between "save fuel" and "save tyres".

The constraint is now obvious because it stands alone so that makes appear to be crude. We can't blame the tyres for that, they are the last line of defence from F1 becoming a time trial.

[bhall]

They could always open up development again. The bean-counters won't allow that one, though.

[fiohaa]

We can't blame the tyres for that, they are the last line of defence from F1 becoming a time trial.

please elaborate, i dont understand what you mean by 'f1 becoming a time trial'.

[Richard]

With everlasting tyres, no refuelling and modern reliability there would be no need for pits stops and no need to worry about breaking the car.

Once drivers had got around the chaos of the first few laps they would simply race in formation, fastest at the front, slowest at the back. Admittedly the inexperienced drivers wouldn't be able to keep the consistency, but the guys at the front would do that.

In the Bridgestone era we could turn off the TV after the final pitstop and know the result. So if Pirelli tyres became everlasting with a ban on refuelling the entire race would be like that final stint in the Bridgetsone era.

[Just_a_fan]

Exactly, Richard.

[bhall]

Not really. There's still DRS, and we've yet to see its impact alone.

[Huntresa]

Not really. There's still DRS, and we've yet to see its impact alone.

What would DRS do if they are still in a formation ? Just switch around each lap.

[bhall]

Action is action, is it not?

It's all senseless to me.

[flmkane]

I dont think that we'd end up with everlasting tyres in the event of proper tyre development, especially in the case of a tyre war.

This is because Tyre manufacturers would make the tyres such that you can run a stint flat out, change them, then run another very fast stint, instead of one long slow run.

[flmkane]

[...]
Today's set of rules has made for some entertaining races and, at the end of the day, it is all about entertainment.

That strongly depends on how one defines "entertainment."

I think today's F1 bears little resemblance to any period in F1 history, which was "entertaining" enough. The copious overtaking the new rules were meant to "restore" never happened in the first place; it was all a myth, perpetuated by sensationalist storytelling about "the good ol' days," when men were men, and women were men, too. (Huh? I don't know, either.)

Again, it doesn't really matter, though. Those of us who shutter at the thought of DRS zones and paper mache tires are vastly outnumbered by those who eagerly lap up both. So, this new paradigm is likely to stick around for a while.

its easy to understand why they lap it up. F1 has never been as big as football but they are trying to make it as commercial as possible, especially now that its floating on the exchange and the pay per view model. The whole enterprise is now first and foremost a business - to maximise its shareholders wealth.
To do that they need to bring in casual viewers, because the 'proper fans' aren't as many as football or rugby - and they won't care how overtakes are happening or why, they just want to see lots of passes, lots of different drivers winning, a story, a nice narrative.

The corporate sponsors don't want to see cars blowing up or failing, or crashing, so they have minimized risk as much as physically possible - tarmacing gravel traps, no racing in the wet, countless penalties for things which used to be just racing incidents.

the pirelli tyres was an easy way to generate the on track 'action'.
the only valid argument i can see for supporting tyre management racing is that the team with the biggest budget won't necessarily win, because no matter how clever the engineer, they don't know exactly how long the tyre will last, not even during the race.

saying that...the team who has won it the last 3 years arguably have the biggest budget and most resources. So........
i certainly did not enjoy the schumi domination years, but there were years like 94,97,98,99,00,03,05,06,07,08 where you had a minimum of 2 drivers head to head every race, and they would push each other to the last lap.

Races like Suzuka 2000 or Hungary 1998 would never happen now. they never will it seems.

Lets not forget that a lot of the casual viewers also want to see some madly fast cars, cars which look, sound and perform like they are out of a science fiction movie. I cant believe this element gets overlooked by a lot of us hardcore fans.

[kilcoo316]

Not really. There's still DRS, and we've yet to see its impact alone.

It would be to all intentions and purposes, zero.

If you have the fastest car qualifying at the front, the slowest at the back and the rest spread in between, with tyres of race-length-durability then the field will stretch out over the race duration.


The time delta needed for a car to overtake another in F1 was about 2.5 seconds (averaged) a few years back. DRS and the tyres have brought that down to around 0.5-1.5 seconds (dep. on track, mostly over 1 second). The vast majority of that pace differential is coming from the different tyres though, not DRS - if you can't accelerate under their rear wing leaving the previous corner - you ain't overtaking, no matter if you are 10 kph quicker at the end of the straight.

[bhall]

I disagree.

But, more importantly, where did this idea come from that the only alternative to the Pirelli soft-boiled eggs is tires with race-length durability? That rule was so despised it only lasted a year.

There's a middle ground, and DRS, mandated compound usage, and mayfly tires are nowhere near it; they reside on the short-attention span side of the spectrum. (And they're all just non-answers to a question that's a bit bigger than the scope of this thread.)

[strad]

You read the posts and you can just about graph the age of the posters...IF the modern F1 fan rules the roost for much longer, F1 is dead.
Anybody that saw the glitz and glamour ads that NBC was running to promote F1 and its coverage, saw every thing that is wrong, in my eyes, about modern F1.