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[Sgt.Pepper]

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The buildup to the season promised much, but with one race gone there is renewed fears that we have another 19 borefests on our hands this year... Whitmarsh has suggested that the tyres all be super soft compounds, and two stops be made mandatory, but I thought they were wanting to take the emphasis off pitstop tactics

today I was suprised nobody pitted with 15 laps to go, fired on afresh set of softs and lapped massively quicker...

More ill thought out rule changes from f1?

[R Soul]

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I think they should allow the top 10 qualifiers to start the race on fresh tyres, then they won't have to pit so early. In the race, those early stops meant they had to preserve their second set of tyres for much of the race if they didn't want to stop again.

They should also get rid of the requirement to use both types of tyre in the race. If a team wants to make hard tyres last for a whole race, they should be allowed to try it.

The drivers should be allowed to change their setups between qualifying and the race. If a driver with a fast car struggles in qualifying, it's no good if that driver has to struggle in the race as well. How is he supposed to make up positions? He should be able to start the race with a faster car.

It also doesn't help that engines have to last so long. I don't want drivers to back away from a fight so that they can preserve their engines for the next race. I know it's a cost-cutting measure, and I know costs need to be reigned in, but what about the cost of struggling to find sponsors because too many races are processional?

[Platen Glass]

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http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/82145 - the Whitmarsh comments.

Compulsory pitstops are a gimmick and when you have to have these gimmicks (and consider making even more stops compulsory thereby doubling the gimmick), you have to look at what has gone wrong. And it smacks of desperation when you talk about making tyres that wear more quickly so that people will struggle in order to make overtaking more likely.

Some people naively thought that banning refuelling would make people overtake "because they would have to" when clearly in the past they would have overtaken if they could have done.

The main problem is that they've had at least 15 years to sort out the overtaking problem but for some reason they've never had the courage to introduce some aerodynamic rules that would allow this.

[Lapworth]

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I appreciate things might be able to improve the show slightly for this year but they should have already thought of this..

Those double diffusers were found to be legal, but should have been banned for obvious reasons straight after being found legal, just like Mclarens rear wing, just like Ferraris front wheels.
Also the cars now look as complex as they did before the 09 rules come into play, get rid of all those bloody fiddly aero bits that help cause this problem, not next year or the year after but now.

i was so excited about this season just as i was last year but unfortunately F1 is fast becoming the most expensive joke in motorsport..

[graeme]

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The main change that I would bring in is to give the teams an hour or so on Sunday morning to change the cars for the race and re-introduce the Sunday morning warm up 1/2 hour.

This used to reveal that the quickest qualifiers weren't necessarily the fastest race cars and vice versa.

And give race fans a reason to get up early to go to the circuit !!

[James Allen]

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The main change that I would bring in is to give the teams an hour or so on Sunday morning to change the cars for the race and re-introduce the Sunday morning warm up 1/2 hour.

This used to reveal that the quickest qualifiers weren't necessarily the fastest race cars and vice versa.

And give race fans a reason to get up early to go to the circuit !!

+1 for this man.

Absolutely on the money.


The problem since 2003 has been, the car that is more or less the fastest has qualified at the front, and the slowest at the back. The race fuel qualifying just delayed the inevitable shake-out after the pitstops. So fundamentally, the guy behind cannot keep up with the guy in front, never mind attempt to pass him.


"Back in the day", you had excellent qualifying cars... 2001 Jordan for instance... that were crap race cars. But that pace differential can only be shown with different setups.

[Disgrace]

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• The Disgrace

Zzz...

[Skies]

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Is it just me who thinks it's the track and not the rules?

I bet if the season had started in Brazil we'd be raving about how good the race was.

[Oonga Boonga]

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I have been banging on about this for a good few years now, improving overtaking should be the absolute number one priority of the governing body, and instead they only ever seem to take half hearted measures.

This is Mosley's great fucked up legacy, not anything else.

The rules that were introduced for 2009 were supposed to help improve overtaking and when it was clear that it didn't work, the FIA did nothing to immediately start bringing in further technical changes that may have done so, for 2011.  Okay, so once last year they realised that things were fucked, they didn't have enough time to sort things out for 2010, but the fact that they didn't try for 2011, just shows how the governing body really doesn't take it seriously.

I am now of the opinion that we won't ever see any meaningful technical rule changes unless TV audiences start to plummet, because there is some kind of fucked up culture amongst the F1 governing body, that they couldn't give two fucks about overtaking.

[graeme]

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They can start for next year by demanding that the new loop in Bahrain is a complete waste of time and should be removed. It may be OK for endurance racing but not for a F1 race.

I was amazed on Saturday that after following one flying lap in Q3 to find that half the session was over - something wrong there - completely underwhelming.

[Lapworth]

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Is it just me who thinks it's the track and not the rules?

I bet if the season had started in Brazil we'd be raving about how good the race was.

Yeah your right to a degree it is the track, but if Bahrain is a crap track for F1 why the hell is it on the calendar in the first place!

[SCIROCCO]

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what an absolute snoozefest. I actually didn't watch half of it and went to do something else, then watched the highlights (What little there were) on iPlayer.  

Oz better be better or I'll be well pissed off. It's one of my fave races.

[R Soul]

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Is it just me who thinks it's the track and not the rules?

I bet if the season had started in Brazil we'd be raving about how good the race was.

That issue was brought up in October:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8307309.stm

I agree about Brazil, after all, Button did quite a bit of overtaking last year. What does Brazil have? A sequence of tight corners (but not those awful razor-sharp corners that Tilke gives us) leading to an uphill straight. And it's quite bumpy, which might upset the aerodynamics, especially the diffusers. And we just had the Crown Prince of Bahrain promising to get rid of the bump in the new section of his track. I'm glad Brundle told him off.

[Platen Glass]

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The main change that I would bring in is to give the teams an hour or so on Sunday morning to change the cars for the race and re-introduce the Sunday morning warm up 1/2 hour.

This used to reveal that the quickest qualifiers weren't necessarily the fastest race cars and vice versa.

And give race fans a reason to get up early to go to the circuit !!

+1 for this man.

Absolutely on the money.


The problem since 2003 has been, the car that is more or less the fastest has qualified at the front, and the slowest at the back. The race fuel qualifying just delayed the inevitable shake-out after the pitstops. So fundamentally, the guy behind cannot keep up with the guy in front, never mind attempt to pass him.


"Back in the day", you had excellent qualifying cars... 2001 Jordan for instance... that were crap race cars. But that pace differential can only be shown with different setups.

Yes. I also mentioned in another thread that Q3 was a disappointment because it was slower than Q2. So I was thinking exactly the same. Allow the Sunday warm-up.

Also, tyres - I'm quite happy for them to have a set allocation so they don't take the piss and use loads which wastes money, but I think qualifying and the race should have their own separate allocations, so drivers don't fuck up their race chances by over-committing in qualifying.

[SCIROCCO]

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Maybe they should just give each car a sub-machine gun mounted to the nose cone, that would make it interesting.

The problem is we have a skewed vision of the past where we remember or get repeated the best bits of old races. Whereas in reality most the races of the 60's 70's and 80's and 90's where mostly just as boring. If the only clips you see on youtube or remember are the stunning few moments then you assume all of it must have been exciting.

The only way for F1 to change this IMO is more standardisation. Same chasis, engine etc. Otherwise it will stay the same as it always has. Its either standardise the rules or relax them completely and allow teams to do what they want.