An open letter to Bernie Ecclestone

you couldn't give a stuff.....

Not to the point that I'm willing to write off the sport as a whole after the 3rd GP of a 19 race schedule.



I don't remember FB penning a whole lot of diatribes during Seb's purple patch. I do remember a whole lot of index fingers though.


It's not mine, yours, Bernies, or the FIA's job to see that Ferrari (et al.) catch up. It's their job, and if it takes another winter, so be it.
 
And last season I said nothing, just sat back and enjoyed the racing. Your point is? Ah yes, I'm a Hammy Hater, at least in your mind. I have tried to address the elephant in the room, quite blatantly but you are not prepared to enter in to discussion so what's the point of you responding to this thread apart from to draw out an argument?

Also, and for sake of boringly repeating myself, please go back and read the original post (which I doubt you will) and try and see beyond your own tunnel vision regarding the other points mentioned such as DRS, wider engine regulations, the move to circuits away for the main fan base, the move to TV coverage which isn't available to all. But these issues won't allow you to generate an argument so you ignore them.

This it was, is and always will be.
 
To what end? To fantasize about what will never be?

Ecclestone is powerless to address these issues. And even if he was able to, he couldn't possibly care less for the fans voice. He is about the bottom line. This it was, is and always will be.

I think you (and others) are wrong about F1's ultimate fate. I'm sorry that my tunnel vision of the sport conflicts with yours.
 
I'm sorry Keke but in what way is Ecclestone powerless to address which circuits are used or how the finance of the sport is distributed? He has 6 votes on the war council. He carries a third of the voter power, all he has to do, as he has done a hundred times, is wave a magic cheque under the noses of whoever's support he would like to gain and there's the voting block right there. Can you please explain why Red Bull are paid a bonus for being who they are and yet Sauber, a team who have taken part in races for over 20 years and helped re-introduce Mercedes into F1 via their links to Ilmor, get absolutely sod all ??
 
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The problem is that before you can fix a problem first you have to admit that there is a problem, like I said on another thread we hear nothing from Jean Todt or the FIA about it so they obviously don't think there is one and the best that Bernie can do is blame it on Toto Wolff.

Unless these people start doing something F1 is dead in the water...
 
Here's an issue we have to consider. Safety. Some people have suggested we just give a length, width and height of the car and leave the designers to do what they do best. Does that include bringing back sliding skirts for example or will the dreaded rule on "fixed aero that is having no degree of movement...." have to stay on the books?

We're on a sticky wicket here because pretty soon someone will say, they're too fast. We need to control the speed of the car. Slow them down a bit. We know F1 drivers are fit guys and face most of the same G-Forces that a fighter pilot would but how much can they take in a car when cornering? One of the problems with the ground effect era was that corning speeds went through the roof. In the turbo era speeds were brought under control by boost pressure limitations which were heavily disliked at the time.

How do you control a designer without controlling the design? Every rule in F1, especially as they've become more and more restrictive, is studied to the Nth degree to find that tiny advantage. If a rule in the book doesn't specifically say no then a designer will do it. This goes back to the very beginning. Remember there were no rules on how many wheels a car had to have? No probs, let's build a six wheeler. The somebody thought hmmm let's put four wheels on the back. Fortunately common sense prevailed. Look at the monster wings on sticks that teams shoved on top of cars in the late 60's.

As soon as the amount of cash started increasing so to the calls to control spending grew alongside it. The main reason alongside safety that Turbos were first banned after 88 was because they were deemed too expensive.

In my opinion, there are 6 things that effect how fast a car goes, The Driver, Under body aero, Over body aero, The engine, The Tyres and the Brakes/Suspension.

We can't throw open all the doors at once. It would be too much too soon. What we have to do is put the variables back in the system. The motorsport world has become too good at it's job. I firmly believe that open design rules on engines is the best way to start. Why not have diesels? V10's, V8's etc. Come up with a simple way of providing a single controlling factor for all (fuel flow regulation would almost certainly do it) we'd have a start.

Aero is the biggest problem. This 'dirty air' business has been going on for years. How do you solve that without putting so many regulations into it that they all end up looking the same?
 
You are assuming that Jean Todt and the FIA actually think, the FIA having given away to most decision making, once the rights were ceded under Max to Bernie and he sold them on, why bother? you have to go right back, Bernie, Max and Charlie ran F1 and would have continued to do so had not Max had an unfortunate incident. It would seem selling Brabham sponsored the FIA takeover. Bernie and Charlie carry on, but is Max still really out of it?
 
Going back to FB's original post, I 100% agree that F1 needs to move in that direction for the long term health of the sport, as well as returning to what F1 is supposed to be. I think one of the first things that needs to be done is improving the show, and I don't know about other fans but I know I'm fed up with seeing the best drivers in the world race to a lap target the engineers set for them instead of race each other. Let the engineers build the best car possible, and let the drivers take care of it on race day. Possibly drastic measures but get rid of ALL radio communications from the pit wall to the driver, and give them tires that they can actually ****ing race on.
 
Yeah, those engineer instructions aren't really in the spirit of racing, are they? Yes, my dad would have loved to be able to tell his drivers to do that, and have them actually do it, so he had less work to do rebuilding the car between every race, but it does stifle racing. If the engineers want to race the cars, why not go into another field, such as robotics - I believe there are AI Car races already?
 
If the cars are that complicated that the drivers can't drive them without such help from the engineers on the pit wall there is something seriously wrong. But should we allow the pit wall to be able to alter the cars settings without the drivers involvement? I know he's the butt of a few jokes on here but Pastor Maldonado has stuck it in the wall on more than one occasion fiddling with the settings on his steering wheel.
 
If you want to open up innovation then you go for the following set of regulations :-

  1. No car may be bigger than x by y by w
  2. All cars must be open wheel in design
  3. No car may have more than a power and can only use b fuel during a race
  4. All cars must carry a g-force sensor that will ensure that no force greater than c is experienced by any driver during a race, if the force of c is exceeded then the car must be retired at the next available entry to the pit lane.
  5. Keep all the stuff about how to get through crash testing and general safety of individuals.
Give it a bit of fiddling around with the various values and let the teams get on with it. But do expect you will never see an F1 car look or hear it sound the same ever again.
 
NIce, but I'd replace 3 with:

No car must start the race with more than X Joules of petrol equivalent on board, and refuelling is banned.

I'd also get rid of 4, but allow the g-suits that pilots wear to be used.

Awesomes!
 
In terms of fuel, let them all use the same fuel, distributed centrally.

I dont know, maybe use it as success ballast, but in reverse. If you won the last race, you get a reduction in fuel allowance of 10%?
 
NIce, but I'd replace 3 with:

No car must start the race with more than X Joules of petrol equivalent on board, and refuelling is banned.
I love that, it allows for alternate fuel technology to be used - hydrogen, electrical, natural gas, petroleum, whatever they think they can make work, while still being safe to handle. Well phrased!
 
F1 should basically take the WEC rules (adapted for open wheel racers) and reduce the race to max 2 hrs.

Since all types of engine are allowed all the existing investment by all car companies racing in the WEC is carried over so diesel, electric, petrol or whatever engines race side by side and immediatly we have a lot more potential engines for teams to select from.

Anyone getting within 107% starts up to a max of 28 cars per grid

Teams to split the cash ; 60% of the prize fund equally split to all teams that qualify in at least 80% of the races (if you do not hit the 80% qualifying rate then you get only half of your share of this payment); the remaining 40% of teh prize fund is split in relation to how many points your team scored in the season.

We can limit aero by having it single element rear wings and small front ones...

Open choice of all tyre compounds (none of this prime and option crap) and its up to you whether or not you stop for new tyres at all . Keep only one tyre manufacturer.

Allow testing days after each GP but the top two manufactures represented in the top three finishers cannot test at that event. A possibly vain attept to let others catch up a little during the season.... It also saves costs as everyone is there already and no-one is forced to test if they have no need, desire or new bits. Added benefit is that reserve drivers the chance to get miles in as well.
 
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