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2017 Wish List

Discussion in 'Formula 1' started by Smithers, May 12, 2015.

  1. Smithers

    Smithers Well-Known Member
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    MB's thoughts on how the 2017 regulations should look.

    Thoughts?

    Meanwhile, there's lots of talk in various meetings about changes for 2017. Here's my initial discussion list.

    1) Increase downforce, lowering the car by reducing the step and plank underneath, and improving ground-effect especially with front-wing end fences. Make the front-wing much less complex and susceptible to turbulence while following another car, and therefore hugely cheaper too.
    Open up a few of the imaginary exclusion ‘boxes’ around the car to ensure ingenuity and evolution. Have a much cheaper and wider fixed specification two-piece rear-wing which creates drag and slipstream effect, thereby moderating absolute top speed to maintain circuits run offs, but also keeping sponsorship space. Get this right and then lose DRS.
    2) Wider and 18” diameter wheels and tyres with much more grip and durability.
    3) Lose 50kg from the cars. They are currently 125kg overweight compared to days gone past. Difficult, but try to find a way.
    4) Keep the same hybrid engines, they will migrate towards 1000bhp peak anyway, but work on improving the sound and also a much lower fixed-price for customer teams. A discount is massively cheaper for the manufacturers than a redesign. Commonality of parts will slash costs and equalise motors. This should have been done from the outset.
    5) Open up the rules on sharing components. It's crazy that everyone must create bespoke items to identical regulations. We can't see these parts so share them, slash costs, equalise the cars more, and knock the money off the grandstand prices. I'm talking about brakes, gearboxes, chassis for customer teams, and so on. We want to watch racing, we don’t have X-ray eyes to see under the bodywork or in the CAD and CFD computers.
    From 2017 onwards I never want to hear a driver saying he's holding back to protect his tyres again, or an engineer say on the radio ‘to avoid interaction at the end of the race we’ll...’
     
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  2. TopClass

    TopClass Well-Known Member

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    David Coulthard puts together a similar sort of wishlist of his own on BBC:



    The Spanish Grand Prix was not exactly the most exciting Formula 1 race there has ever been, and that has inevitably revived the debate about whether F1 needs some form of surgery to recover some magic.

    This is a hot topic in F1 - the teams are meeting this week for the latest discussions over whether to change the rules for 2017 to make the cars more exciting and spectacular.

    I don't pretend to have a magic formula, and I don't want this to be seen as 'my agenda to fix F1'. It is not that at all.

    But I do have some views on the state in which F1 finds itself, and I do believe there are areas in which it could be improved.

    Speed

    In my view, the current era of F1 should always be pretty much the fastest period of the sport in history.

    Technology advances. We're used to mobile phones getting lighter, doing more things, having better battery life, more capacity. The 100m world record gets ever lower. Man goes further and longer into space. Yet in F1 the cars are several seconds slower than they were 10 years ago.

    Of course there are a number of reasons for that. There is no competition between tyre manufacturers. Refuelling was ditched five years ago. The cars were slowed down for safety reasons.

    Some people would argue that the cars cannot go on getting faster and faster because they would eventually get too fast for the circuits.

    I'm not so sure about that. Look at Monaco, the next race. We have been racing around there since the 1920s, and we will continue to do so until a car clears the catch fencing and ends up perched in a grandstand somewhere.

    Hopefully that day will never come, but as any parent who has seen their small child fall over and hurt themselves knows, you cannot take all the danger out of life.

    Of course it is unacceptable not to make F1 as safe as it can be, and we should be using technology to do that.

    But danger will always be there in a sport in which men race projectiles at more than 200mph. And I think it is fundamental that the DNA of F1 should be: "Wow! Did you see how fast they are?"

    They might not say so publicly, but I know that the current drivers are all a bit disillusioned with the current F1 because the cars are so slow compared to previous years, and the drivers are so far within their ability levels during the races.

    You watch the in-car camera through somewhere like Turn Three in Barcelona. That should be right on the edge, heart in mouth, nearly flat-out, like it was a few years ago. Now they all have to take a massive lift through there.

    The other day I was voicing some commentary from the 2000 French Grand Prix, which I won after angrily gesticulating at Michael Schumacher because his driving had annoyed me.

    The cars looked properly fast. Of course, F1 still looks quick. But the difference was quite striking.

    Tyres

    You will very rarely hear them saying it publicly but, without exception, no-one in F1 likes the construction and compound range of the current tyres, and people are very negative about Pirelli as a result; hardly good PR.

    I have no doubt that, if challenged to do so, Pirelli could build much racier tyres.

    The bosses of the sport do not want a tyre war between different manufacturers, but I I don't understand why. After all, there are chassis wars and engine wars.

    As long as the boundaries were set out - no testing, limits on costs to teams - there is no reason why a tyre war would have to have cost implications.

    The tyres are clearly part of the problem of the lack of overtaking in F1 at the moment. They are so sensitive. There is so much tyre management.

    While I am commentating, I find it very difficult not to be exasperated when Mercedes suddenly go a second quicker than they have been when they need to do it.

    The drivers I know who compete in the World Endurance Championship, where they use Michelin tyres, tell me that they push on every single lap through a 24-hour race. This sometimes involves using just one set of tyres for two or even three 45-minute stints.

    That's great for them, but it used to be what I was doing when I drove in F1. The only time you backed off was if you were in the final stint of the race and you had a 20-second lead or something.

    Now, it is the other way around, and the times the drivers are completely on the limit during a grand prix are a small minority. Sometimes they never are.

    A corollary of this is that if the drivers are not pushing, they are far less likely to make a mistake. You don't see so many as you used to. And mistakes add excitement.

    The Physical Challenge

    There was a time not so very long ago when F1 was physically and mentally exhausting for the drivers. That is no longer the case.

    For any normal human being, the cars would still be impossibly tough to drive. But F1 drivers are finely-honed athletes of the highest calibre and the current cars simply do not stretch them.

    When you look back and see the likes of Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell struggling to stand up after races, it's not that they were not in good shape, the cars were simply very tough to drive and they were challenged the whole way.

    Along with the tyres, part of the reason why that is not the case now is the fact that the cars start with full tanks of fuel, which is always going to make the cars handle differently, look slower and and be less interesting for the drivers.

    There was no refuelling in the days of Senna and Mansell either, with the exception of 1983, but the cars were physical in different ways then.

    It's important that the drivers enjoy what they're doing and feel challenged by it. If the car is lighter and more racy, it feels better.

    If the cars are faster and more demanding to drive, however it is achieved, drivers will radiate enthusiasm, through the engineers, teams and media.

    We marvel at someone walking across a tightrope between two skyscrapers because it is almost certain death if he falls. You don't want him to fall, but the fact that he might makes it interesting viewing. If he was just walking along a white line painted on the pavement you wouldn't watch.

    Humans react to feats of daring and part of that has been removed.

    Aerodynamics

    I
    t was quite striking to hear Lewis Hamilton of all people saying to his Mercedes team during the Spanish Grand Prix that he could not get close enough to Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari to try to pass him.

    I don't have the answer, but surely there must be a way to design the aerodynamics of an F1 car so this is not such a problem, whether it be by having more of the downforce created by the under-floor or whatever.

    It is not beyond the F1 designers to come up with a solution to this

    After all, IndyCar racing must have found a way, or their cars would not be able to run so close together on oval tracks.

    If F1 could do that, it could get rid of the DRS overtaking aid, which is still struggling for acceptance because it is so obviously artificial.

    Aesthetics

    The teams and the FIA are considering making the cars wider again, so they are the same width as they were before the current dimensions were introduced in 1998.

    I felt at the time that the cars looked better when they were two metres wide, as they were until 1997, than when they became 1.8m wide the year after. And I still feel the same way.

    Look back through history, and some road cars look good and some look ugly. The ugly ones looked bad at the time and they look even worse now. And the ones that looked good at the time still look good now.

    The fundamentals of what defines visual attractiveness do not change, so there is nothing wrong with going back to see what worked and learning from that.


    http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/32699924
     
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  3. DHCanary

    DHCanary Very Well-Known Member
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    It's something that several of us on here, and no doubt in the wider F1 community have said for ages: Aero development is sinking millions of pounds into a technology with zero applicability elsewhere (so teams can't profit off tech) and serves to make overtaking harder.

    I'd like to see a budget cap on aero spending, and the regs tightened to lower downforce and make development in key areas extremely limited, so the time gains possible from aero work become inconsequential. At least aero spending should be easy to limit, its hard to disguise a wind tunnel test, or CFD calculation as something for a road car, or other area of a big enterprise.

    Then to speed the cars back up, bring in huge sticky tyres that replace the aero grip lost with mechanical grip. That should also make overtaking, and driving on the edge easier. If aero is to be limited then other areas need to be opened for development, and for me that should be battery tech, energy recovery and deployment, and mechanical areas like suspensions, brakes, etc.

    Whilst it might be a bit harder to introduce right now, the engines all have common mounting points to allow teams to easily change supplier, so that should be extended a "plug and play" battery system. All the electronics are managed from a FIA supplied ECU anyway, so it shouldn't be impossible.

    You could argue that aero development is much more visible and easier for fans to spot, but whilst some fans might get excited about Ferrari adding a 10th element to their front wing, nobody can understand why. At least with mechanical changes the logic is more intuitive.
     
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  4. EternalMSC

    EternalMSC Well-Known Member

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    My wish- Remove David Croft and Simon Lazenby from TV.
     
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  5. Smithers

    Smithers Well-Known Member
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    Fat rear tyres and a big rear wing seem to make the most sense.
     
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  6. Chelsea Pensioner

    Chelsea Pensioner Well-Known Member

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    Get rid of contrived excitement like DRS, tyre nonsense which has drivers not going flat out to conserve the useless things, fuel flow limitations, engine development restrictions.
    Lets have some proper racing where the best car and driver count for something.
     
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  7. ched999uk

    ched999uk Well-Known Member

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    Make tyres soft and sticky and say max of 5 sets during race. Remove lots of aero, make wings much simpler (less cost) only 3 different wings (3 front, 3 rear) per season. Need to reduce reliance on aero and increase mechanical grip. Maybe allow active suspension (maybe standard controller) and more flexibility (more power, more storage allowed, maybe unlimited recovery and storage) on hybrid systems.
     
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  8. Eat Sleep Watch F1 Repeat

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    My wish:
    -Bring back the tyre war
    -Take away run-off areas on the circuits
    -Get rid of the tracks that only exist because they have plenty of money (Bring back the historic tracks that the fans love)
    -Open up the regulations on aero and make them less strict so we can see who what the best designers can come up with
    -Tyres with more endurance so drivers can push to the limit for most of the race
    -Financial support from the FIA or the Supplying teams to the lower end teams
    -This one is for the broadcasters, employ commentators and pundits who 1) Know what they're talking about 2)Take F1 seriously and don't spend all of practice and most of qualifying and the race making jokes and plugging their pointless shows (David Croft) 3) Are not bias towards one driver or team

    There is probably more I can think of but the post will be too long.
     
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  9. Big Ern

    Big Ern Lord, Master, Guru & Emperor

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    there were some pretty good tussles going on, I saw at least 4 'round the outside' over-takes. I'm not surprised this has come up now, right after golden boy lost to Rosberg, but why was it quiet during his winning streak?

    As to regulations
    open tyres
    more in season testing
    relaxation on engine development
    smoother aero dynamic lines
    if you can pay for them, you have as many engines as you want.
    customer teams, let the guys who make the best car get some money.
     
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    Last edited: May 14, 2015
  10. allsaintchris.

    allsaintchris. Well-Known Member

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    Tool.
     
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  11. East_Stand_Always

    East_Stand_Always Active Member

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    Hi all.

    Viewed this forum a bit but mostly lurk on the Hull City page. (enough said).

    I've long thought like a few on here that the aero packages are too complicated. I want a return to a two step front wing with adjustment allowed and a return to a simple rear wing. Lose all the barge boards and winglets. The cost in developing these is a black hole. Remember the simple McLaren M4/4 from 1988. We don't need a return to old technology but that kind of Aero yes! Surely the FIA could introduce regulation parts too. This would also keep costs down. Maybe suspension components and maybe engine cover etc. It works to a degree in BTCC at the moment. Regulation suspension and front and rear subframes. Just put it on whatever car you want (within regs).

    Keep the 1.6 turbo but let them run hell for leather. I'm not for this tactical approach. Or with refueling allow teams to use a bit more fuel using fuel tokens (virtual). This will allow teams to run a bit quicker on favoured tracks.

    My wish is a return to sprint racing with fuel stops and no artificial enhancements but we won't get that.
     
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  12. Smithers

    Smithers Well-Known Member
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    The 2017 Canadian GP foreseen
    So just how will the proposed rules revolution for 2017 impact the sport in two years' time? Sky Sports Digital imagines F1's trip to Canada two seasons hence...
    By Sky Sports Digital

    As the debate continues about the proposed changes to F1 in 2017 suggested by the sport’s Strategy Group, the Sky Sports Digital team look into their crystal balls to suggest the impact F1’s latest 'rules revolution' could have on race day when F1 returns to Montreal in two seasons' time...
    Please note that none of the suggested driver-market changes are predictions Sky Sports Digital believe will occur, but are merely a means of fast-forwarding the current grid by two years for the purposes of this feature.

    2017 Canadian GP Report
    F1 faces a fresh bout of unwelcome criticism after Sebastian Vettel maintained his world title push with victory in a disappointing Canadian GP - prompting critics to urge the sport to rewind to its golden age of 2014-15.

    While the latest range of cars are indisputably faster than their predecessors, there is increasing concern about the sport's failure to overcome its longstanding battle to clean up the 'dirty air' a close-following car has to endure and the worthiness of a tyre war which is currently determining the shape of the world championship.
    Vettel was never challenged at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and led home team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the sister SF17-XWing Quattro by a comfortable 14 seconds as Ferrari continued to dominate world championship rivals Mercedes in a race that managed simultaneously to be both soporific and insanely complex.
    Lewis Hamilton appeared on the podium but it was Fernando Alonso who eventually claimed third place after his fellow Silver Arrows' misfortunes continued with a second disqualification in as many races.

    In truth, the fare served up was as bland and dull as the grey clouds which blew moribund from the St Lawrence River and will surely lead to more questions being asked about the wisdom of implementing this season’s comprehensive technical and sporting shake-up.
    The changes – featuring wider, lighter cars with bigger wheels and more “aggressive” aerodynamics – were introduced to make the field faster, along with the return of refuelling. That they have succeeded can be seen from the fact that Vettel’s fastest lap was over five seconds quicker than the previous benchmark, set by Rubens Barrichello back in 2004.

    But although the cars might be more impressive to watch than their predecessors, getting two of them to keep close company remains the holy grail for those handed such tasks in the sport’s confusing panoply of strategy and working groups. They’d probably have more success mating pandas.As far as the majority of the 100,000 crowd was concerned, the cost was a wholesale lack of track action - aside from those sat on the pit straight, opposite where virtually all the jostling for position was taking place as a mind-boggling array of tyre and fuel strategies played out.

    For the record, Vettel won with a Pirelli supersoft-soft-supersoft-soft compound strategy which neutered Bottas’s soft-soft-supersoft-supersoft deployment, while the two Mercedes ran on contrarian Michelin-shod strategies of soft-soft-supersoft-soft and supersoft-soft-supersoft-soft.
    Yet such was the confusion afterwards that Professor Stephen Hawking, who conducted the podium interviews, had to tell the top three precisely what had happened.
    Heads were also being scratched elsewhere, with Hamilton remaining the centre of attention as the sport continues to argue over trivialities that are likely to bemuse fans further.

    A fortnight ago at the Monaco GP, it was his crash helmet that brought censure from the FIA after a design advertising Hamilton’s new album breached the rulebook.
    And the budding record label mogul again had to face the governing body’s own brand of music on Sunday after Mercedes’ use of a DJ alongside their roster of pitwall engineers and strategists was questioned by rivals. The official reason for the move is one of sports psychology: mood music that inspires Hamilton to push to the maximum when necessary and also manage his pace when required.

    Yet rivals are convinced that Mercedes are in fact circumventing the radio ban that prevents teams from giving drivers information which might enhance their performance on track. “It’s something that’s been a long time coming,” complained Audi. "Mercedes claim it’s a sports psychology tool but, purely and simply, it’s another form of communication. “You might hear bad boy rap lyrics but it’s easy to use such profane language as coded messages.”
    In common currency fast gaining value in the paddock, it was another ‘Noah’ of a race, with franchises Haas and Force India following obediently behind their respective works Ferrari and Mercedes teams.

    Still, there was a slice of history to be made as Danica Patrick came home fifth behind Haas team-mate Esteban Gutierrez – the best-ever result for a woman in a Grand Prix. The Audis of Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Rosberg finished eighth and ninth respectively, while there was joy unbounded down at plucky little indie Williams, the sole remaining independent outfit on the grid, for whom Jenson Button claimed a rare point with 10th.
    “This is a huge achievement for us,” a tearful Claire Williams said afterwards. “It stands alongside any of the nine constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ championships we’ve won previously". However, Button's fellow veteran Kimi Raikkonen finished out of the points after once again struggling to recover from a disappointing performance in qualifying.

    McLaren-Honda’s problems also persist, with the works team actually conspiring to finish behind franchise ART. Max Verstappen was 12th but the sister MP4-32H/17XFU2 of Stoffel Vandoorne limped home a thrice-lapped 18th. Vandoorne fell victim to the latest in a string of operational errors by the team, who mistakenly opted to use all four Pirelli tyre compounds on the young Belgian’s car. McLaren boss Ron Dennis, who re-gained full operational control of the team at the start of the season - and who also manned their refuelling rig during the race - has announced an enquiry.

    Speaking of which, it’s understood that F1’s powers-that-be have decided that they’re not happy with sport in its current guise and have proceeded with the formation of another new working group tasked with improving ‘the show’. In a similar move to that announced last time, and the other times before that, fans will also be invited to give feedback. “The cars look great now but the racing’s taken a turn for the worse, hasn’t it?” Bernie Ecclestone said. “I’m not happy. We need to get it back to how it was two or three years ago.”
     
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  13. DHCanary

    DHCanary Very Well-Known Member
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    It hits the nail on the head about overtaking, the proposed regulations definitely don't favour on-track action.
     
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  14. BrightLampShade

    BrightLampShade Well-Known Member
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    I thought the teams were the ones to propose this. Literally what does the strategy group actually do? <doh>



    Plans for refuelling in 2017 set be dropped due to team opposition

    Plans for the reintroduction of refuelling to F1 in 2017 look to be dead in the water following a meeting at which representatives of the teams expressed unanimous opposition to it.

    It’s understood that the FIA’s Charlie Whiting will now report the findings of the meeting back to the F1 Strategy Group, whose members came up with the idea in their May 14th gathering.

    Tonight’s regular Thursday F1 team managers’ meeting morphed into a meeting of the Sporting Working Committee, whose role is to refine regulations. Refuelling was one of two main items on the agenda, along with 2016 tyre rules.

    Surprisingly perhaps the main opposition to refuelling was on the basis that it would be detrimental to the show, rather than cost or safety.

    Data analysed by various team strategists and presented at the meeting provided solid proof that refuelling would not improve the racing – for example in 2010, the year after it was stopped, there were twice as many overtaking moves as in the previous year.

    It was also agreed that if refuelling came back it would again have to be on the basis of drivers qualifying on race fuel, a concept that the teams felt was not successful, as it did not present a true picture of who had the fastest car.

    Although cost was not the main driver of today’s decision it’s estimated that a return to refuelling would cost £1m in the first year, and then £500,000 a year thereafter. Some teams have expressed doubts over safety, as the desire to have fast pit stops that depend on the tyre changing time would require much faster flow rates than previously, for example a 33 litres per second flow as opposed to 12.
     
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  15. El_Bando

    El_Bando Can't remember, where was I?
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    Save that. We will come back in 2 years and see how correct it was.
     
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  16. SgtBhaji

    SgtBhaji Well-Known Member

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    Rocket cars
    Land mines
    Blue shells and Banana Skins
    Sink holes
    Explosions
     
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  17. Piebacca

    Piebacca Well-Known Member

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    I don't know about the rest, but Danica Patrick won't ever finish fifth in an F1 race.
     
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  18. El_Bando

    El_Bando Can't remember, where was I?
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    #18
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  19. EternalMSC

    EternalMSC Well-Known Member

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    We also need a big boss to defeat at the end of the game.
     
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  20. EternalMSC

    EternalMSC Well-Known Member

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    F1 2015.
    Save tyres.
    Save brakes.
    Save fuel.
    Save my electricity.
    Turn off the TV and don't watch F1 till things change.
     
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