Given both red Bulls took totally new engines for this weekend I think there was clear signals to perez to not fight and the slow stop probably just reinforced it to him. Perez just saying team result. Its like he's accepted his one race win now.
And apparently running a floor that seems to be making things worse. Merc really dropped a bollock with this car
Pros It’s changed the competitive order The midfield is genuinely unpredictable Racing seems to be better and cars can follow more for longer, but it is still hard to pass, so you need to earn it. Cons The gap from the front two teams to the midfield. I think my mind has adjusted to the car’s weight and size now and it’s bothering me less than it did. Ferrari might be fumbling it, but in the first era of new regs we have two cars at the front, which seem competitive with each other, but generate their speed in different ways, which I think has to be a good sign.
Does anyone know what George is referring to when he say’s there’s a simple fix? Is it just a minimum ride height? The technological solution is active suspension, but that won’t be the work of a moment for all teams.
I can only presume its ride height as that's the only immediate change thst can be made. Obviously making a much stiffer floor is the solution but that brings weight. I think that the speed traps showed that it wasn't just bouncing that was an issue for mercs. It's the slow stuff
Apologies I wasn’t meaning Mercs issues specifically, George has been talking about how the cars are in his opinion, unsafe. https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/34075602/george-russell-current-f1-regulations-recipe-disaster
interesting. i mean its a well known issue that when ground effect loses DF its a massive loss and in the distant past cars did go off big time however, all things being equal I read this as "minimum ride height regulation" and that helps Mercedes massively. sadly when a safety issue helps your team directly you do get called out for making the point for less then pure motives. Say we set a minimum ride height regulation that just happens to be exactly where mercs no longer bounce madly and the other teams all have to come up to that level, then one team is clearly benefitting more than the others. where is "safe" with this effect? IMO Its hard to know as other cars like ferrari look woeful down a straight bounce but the second the are turning in they are stable and very very good. the red bull is slammed to the floor. they have clearly got it down and the others have not. The question is really where is the most danger to drivers going to come from? bumps on track? fast sweeping corners with no run offs? teams just running too low and knowing they are? I mean we just saw a car get its rear wing duct taped up and set out on a 20mph track..... surely thats more unsafe and risked every driver following him.
To me the main problem is that to eliminate the car's floor hitting the track they need to raise the ride height but if 1 or 2 teams do that then they lose downforce and thus lap times. So no team wants to be disadvantaged running a higher ride height. Mandating a higher ride height than the rules state part way through the season is unfair on the teams that have managed to produce cars that have high downforce and don't hit the track when bouncing. So far, and I hope it stays this way, no driver has stated that they have crashed due to the floor hitting the track and losing grip. As the teams are gradually reducing the bouncing it would appear that the issue is reducing. If we were seeing crashes then mandatory ride heights would be necessary but currently that doesn't seem the case. I do feel for the drivers but it's their choice to drive and they are very well compensated.
I agree with some of what you say but struggle with this element. Damaging your body should not be a requirement and also, the bouncing may have an impact on the brain too. The sport could have longer term issues here if physical harm is deliberately ignored by a team. What I do agree with is if one or two teams can design a car that copes then it is an individual team issue, abeit several teams, and it would be wrong to force a minimum ride height. But leaving some teams to have to raise their ride height will remove the spectacle with a two tier race, a bit like the turbo vs normally aspirated engines we once had. In hindsight, more testing should have been allowed during the winter months. What to do now? Increase the budget and allow more between races testing might help. Those, such as Red Bull can also benefit from this in other ways so doesn't deliberately remove their advantage. They can take the opportunity to improve their car in other ways.
Anyone get the feeling we will have a technical directive for 2023 designs? I do hope teams can solve the issue themselves to be fair and it can’t come soon enough, I’m sick of seeing the bouncing! Makes me feel sick watching and listening never mind driving the things!
The cars aren't death traps, but I could certainly imagine some serious back problems if this lasts years. As much as it would pain me to see Mercedes getting a get out of jail free card, I do think the FIA will have to step in. Teams will always favour performance over safety and its the job of the regulations to prevent them from doing so. As they are, the 2022 regs are failing to achieve that.
There should have been some anticipation of these issues prior to these regs coming in and some pretty intensive testing of a common solution. This isn't the first time this has been an issue. It looks really bad on the Merc and actually looks painful. Yes it's their fault for not being able to find a solution, so they either have to lose performance for the sake of the drivers, or the sport comes up with a long and short term term solution for all teams. The ideal thing to have happened would have been for this problem to be anticipated prior to introduction and coming up with a standard active suspension solution. Bit late in the day for that now though.
Good thoughts here. Thinking some more today, I wondered if a viable approach would be to measure vertical impacts and have a regulation where a car is black and orange flagged, if there are too many high g impacts. The cars probably already have the needed accelerometers to do this and it would protect the drivers without altering the competitive order unfairly.