Won’t Get Fuelled Again
Back in November I wrote about qualifying on low fuel and how I would miss the loss of the fuel-predicted grid. At the time I had mixed views; I hadn’t been privy to watching F1 when qualifying on low fuel was the norm but, as many fans seemed genuinely excited by the prospect I thought (and hoped) my pessimism would be unfounded.
Qualifying itself was fine, it wasn’t fabulous. I’d watched and had been happy that Formula One was back but it wasn’t as exciting as it could have been. I would have loved to have had the qualifying weights published so I could have had a stab at predicting each teams’ fuel consumption but it was not to be, even though the FIA had temptingly left a space for the pdf file of fuel weights on their site. But why was qualifying not as good as I’d hoped? I’d put that down to the drivers’ uncertainty over their cars handling on low fuel given the loss of extensive winter testing. The quirkiness of the new extended Bahrain circuit couldn’t have helped much either. Still, we had the race to look forward to and the race-refuelling ban would spice up the action as teams gambled on a safety car deployment and misjudged the amount of fuel to carry or they found that the cars handling characteristics changed so much as the race progressed that pitting for tyres would be essential… or so I hoped.
The race itself turned into another of those processional events where there was a distinct lack of overtaking. If it hadn’t been for Sebastian Vettel’s dodgy spark plug dropping him down the order we would have had the situation where the three front runners ended the race in that position, albeit with Alonso and Massa having swapped position. But a race review isn’t my plan for my post, I want to look at some of the reasons for the lack of overtaking; even the drivers feel that the race wasn’t as challenging as it could have been.
Are the new regulations to blame?
The ban on in race refuelling was put in place because the overtaking working group (OWG) felt that much of the overtaking for position was gained during pitstops and less so on the track. So this year the ban, coupled with an increased differential between the points for gaining a place were meant to act as encouragement to overtake on track. But these ideas don’t take into account the physics of overtaking; it’s all very well saying you have to overtake on track and the extra points are the “carrot” to make it work but the fundamental problem of being physically able to overtake in the wake of the preceding car have not been addressed.
“I caught up with Michael and then sat behind him for the rest of the race, I couldn’t get any closer.
You lose downforce, you lose front and rear grip. You don’t have traction, so you can’t exit a corner quickly. Michael was very weak on braking. I’d be eight car lengths behind and catch up on him but there was no way I could go past. It’s not like the old days. You could follow cars then, you could slide up the inside, you could race. It’s very different now.”
Jenson Button
Finding a cure that will assist overtaking will not be easy, changes to the technical regulations over the last few seasons haven’t done much to fix the problem yet we still had exciting racing, albeit with most of the overtaking courtesy of pitstop refuelling. If we now remove that element of strategy are we left with boring processional races this season? It’s something that the teams are concerned with too.
Whilst Bernie follows the money trail, teams know that without the support of the fans they will find it harder to attract sponsors and hence the money that provides for their technological input and allows them to be competitive racers.
“The most important people are the customers – they are the people who pay to come to races, or watch it on television. We are beholden on them to put on a good show and we should see what we should do.”
Nick Fry, Mercedes GP
So what can be done about it, at least in the short term?
Martin Whitmarsh, in his role as Chairman of the Formula One Teams Association is also of the belief that something must be done and done quickly, to resolve the situation and make the racing both exciting and challenging.
“Formula 1 has to be entertaining, people have to be switched on to what is going to happen in the race, if it’s processional they are not going to be. Today was not the best show, we know that and we have all got to work together to improve it.
I personally believe that more challenging tyres will help the spectacle of the show. We do need to look at mandating stops, we do need to look at the tyres and make them more fragile, and we do need to work on making the cars capable of racing close together and easier to overtake.”
Martin Whitmarsh, FOTA Chairman
Whilst I think a second stop and more friable tyre compounds (as long as safety wasn’t compromised) would help, I’d much prefer to have refuelling return. For me, it added another strategic layer to the racing and if we are to get back to more exciting racing, at least in the short term it’s something that should be considered.
Refuelling… mandated pitstops… they both fail to deal with the lack of overtaking on the track, moving it into the pitlane instead.
And as popular as it is to blame Tilke, there isn’t a lot of overtaking on the tracks that were around before Tilke and have changed little since. If you can design a car in order to make it difficult to overtake you can bet that teams will do so. Maverick(Quote)
You’ve either been watching, too much CSI, or you’ve been listening to too much of The Who!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Slowflow(Quote)
Thank you … he he I wondered if anyone would appreciate the title. saltire(Quote)
Someone last year in the forum mooted the idea that teams could deliberately design the rear wing in such a way as to make it harder for another car to overtake. Are the technical rules at odds with the teams designers on the desirability of overtaking? saltire(Quote)
Put it this way, Ross Brawn sat in a room with all the other teams discussing the new aerodynamic regulations including the aim for a smaller diffuser – and then went away and produced a double diffuser. Maverick(Quote)
I thought that was because they wouldn’t listen to him, when he said they’d got it wrong (without revealing what was up his sleeve, of course)? Pitmonster(Quote)
That’s irrelevant – the point is he knew it was against what they were trying to achieve and did it anyway. It’s no criticism, just an illustration of the way teams think. Maverick(Quote)
Nice article Salty
Agreed, it was fairly dull, but it still held my interest.
The bigger problem is the over-relience on aero-downforce, @ the expense of mechanical grip, and the resulting loss of traction! In modern F1 following in a cars Aero-wake disrupts the efficiency of the trailing cars Aero & Cooling, and a % of the cars performance just drops away.
Simplify the aero & bring back KERS
regards,
Slowflow Slowflow(Quote)
It’s March : Check
It’s the Monday after the first race: Check
Still no overtaking in F1 : Check str8y(Quote)
Before we get carried away with blaming the pitstops or lack of them… just how many classic Bahrain GPs have there been? Maverick(Quote)
2006 was alright
str8y(Quote)
Oh No! That was Turkey!
:) str8y(Quote)
There is a simple way of increasing overtaking…
Get. Rid. Of. Wings.
Not a new suggestion, I know, but Occam’s Razor suggests that it is the best. I know that no team boss is ever going to want to get rid of a large advertising hoarding bolted to their car, but in the end it may benefit them. I find having Frymarsh One whinging about friable tyres to increase overtaking a huge conflict of interest. If the FIA were serious then they need a completely independent body to do the review; just look at how ineffective the OWG insiders were.
A couple of years ago Max made the asinine comment that Formula One “is not an entertainment”. Well, as with so many things, Max was dead wrong. Without being entertaining there will eventually be no viewers. No veiwers, no TV. No TV, no sponsors. No sponsors, no money. No money… well. Then GP racing reverts to the days of rich boys punting home made specials around Brooklands for japes. So the cars may keep their 200mph billboards, but what will they put on them? Already there are quite a few bare wings this year; even the rear view of the McLaren is remarkably free of commercial branding.
At worst, and possibly in the interests of keeping a modern car attached to the track, wings need to be taken back to the technical level of the early 1970s. At best, get rid entirely. All this geekfest talk of overtaking in the pits being somehow exciting is missing the target by so far people behind you ought to take cover. John C.(Quote)
I’m not saying it’s an ideal solution but it may have given us a few surprises yesterday if we’d still had refueling. Isn’t it better to solve the overtaking issue first without losing ideas that do add to the enjoyment? saltire(Quote)
The trouble is that people within F1 are far too apt to use this sort of excuse to avoid the big issue. What we need is a strong groundswell of fan opinion that tells the FIA that what we enjoy watching is motor racing, not high-speed formation flying by inverted aeroplanes. That means wheel to wheel dicing, slipstream slingshots, and cars not so rigidly bolted to the track that they look like they corner on rails. For the last 20 years I have been listening as talking head after talking head witters on about points systems, or run off areas, or the latest wheeze to try and persuade drivers to pass each other on the track, and nothing has worked. Allowing drivers to go back into their nice, safe little “I don’t have to try on track because Ross/Frank/whoever will work out a strategy for me” mindset is dangerous. Banning wings is simple. Banning wings can be quick. It takes far less development money to remove wings from the equation than it would to properly sort KERS, for example. John C.(Quote)
Stuart Codling has written another cracker of a post on the same subject… it’s well worth a read. Linky saltire(Quote)
I’m presuming that without Wings, the cars would be slower than Indycar ? str8y(Quote)
Martin’s been listening to my comments from the last two years about the key to F1 is the tyres. The suggestion about rock hard tyres from elsewhere is wrong – that makes the tyre 100% reliable and predictable, the tyres need to degrade in a way that there are two different strategies: thrash around and use more of them, or look after them and save the pitstop.
Bridgestone went far too conservative. Spenny(Quote)