Dull

• No more street tracks they are almost always processions. Racing on proper purpose made tracks only.

• Easier over taking is essential. To do this we need less dependancy on aero. I suggest smaller wings and banning rear difussers. The alternative is to go all out on ground effect. But the first option is easier to implement. If this works then DRS could be dropped.

• Long lasting tyres but with 2no. mandatory pit stops per race. This way we get flat out racing but also the tactics of the pit stops. No more looking after your tyres and driving at 70%

• Tyres allocation should be split up so you have x amount for practice, x amount for qually and x amount for the race. This would ensure action on all days, all sessions as no one would be saving tyres for the race.

• Fuel carried by each car to be the same amount and more than enough to go flat out all the way to the end. No more ridiculous fuel saving 10 laps into the race.

• New rule that the race order when a safety car is deployed is the race order when it goes in. All cars are permitted to stop and regain the position they had prior to the SC. Only fair.

That will do for now, I'm sure I have more.
 
I have a couple of gripes with your suggestions Greenlantern101

• I suggest smaller wings and banning rear difussers.
Diffusers create very little drag, they work with air pressure and speed much like ground effect. They don't affect the trailing car nearly as bad as the fat rear wings.

• New rule that the race order when a safety car is deployed is the race order when it goes in. All cars are permitted to stop and regain the position they had prior to the SC. Only fair.

So you're fighting for the lead, and pit for the undercut ending up in tenth. Then the safety car comes out and everyone ahead of you gets a free stop. That's just a different kind of unfair.
 
Greenlantern101

Street tracks - we all love Albert Park - so what is the difference between each street circuit?

Why not just tyres - any quantity, any type, anywhere?

Why not ban pit stops during SCs and then allow the 'natural order' to resume?
 
Can't really ban pit stops during SC periods as cars may have received damage in a crash that needs repairing. I think we need to get rid of the safety car altogether except for times when radio communication is compromised.
 
Street tracks - we all love Albert Park - so what is the difference between each street circuit?
Albert park is rather unique in the street circuit world. The track is wide and open, plenty run off. I am happy if that is the exception to the rule.

Why not just tyres - any quantity, any type, anywhere?
Problem with that is transporting the tyres. You would need a heck of a lot to give teams unlimited choice.

Why not ban pit stops during SCs and then allow the 'natural order' resume?
So you're fighting for the lead, and pit for the undercut ending up in tenth. Then the safety car comes out and everyone ahead of you gets a free stop. That's just a different kind of unfair.
Ok fair enough no pit stops unless you have damage from the incident. Old tyres could be an issue but not if we go with my 3rd suggestion.

Diffusers create very little drag, they work with air pressure and speed much like ground effect. They don't affect the trailing car nearly as bad as the fat rear wings.
Its not really about drag is it? I'm not an aerodynamicist but I though the diffuser was the main cause of 'dirty air' disrupting the front wing of the following car? Compressed air under the car suddenly expanding must create a lot of turbulance ?
 
There are good street circuits and bad street circuits, and the same is true of purpose-built venues. F1 ought to be racing at the best venues in the world - personally, I'd be much more keen to see Catalunya ditched than Monaco.

Dullness is in the eye of the beholder, of course. I worry that people should be careful what they wish for, though. Those who forget Hungaroring 2002 are doomed to repeat it...
 
Dull is entirely subjective. A dull race can be where your least favourite driver wins despite there being battles and incident up and down the grid. An exciting race could be where your favourite driver wins from lights to flag and nothing happens. Just as well we are all different isn't it?
 
A technical note:

The rear diffuser is the device that shapes the air flow as it exits the flat under floor of the car and is critical to the creation of ground effect. It works by enhancing an area of low pressure behind the constrained space (between the floor of the car and the road) thereby causing the air to accelerate as it exits. This creates a near vacuum underneath the car "sucking" it to the ground. In combination with the aerodynamics of the bodywork and wings which increase the downward air pressure on top of the car is what constitutes the overall aerodynamic grip. Removing or limiting any or all of these elements can make the modern F1 car undriveable.

F1 isn't dull but if it keeps getting dumbed down to comic capers it will be.
 
OK then, I'll bite. What is the opposite of 'dumbing down' in this case, and why would it reduce the dullness?
 
Fenderman If the diffuser was removed and the rear wing reduced other things can be done to increase mechanical grip such as wider rear tyres and wider cars like what we used to have before aero stopped overtaking. To say the cars would be undrivable without a diffuser is rather negative. The designs would adapt.
 
Let's just look at the evidence of what happened prior to the "dumbing down".... 2009 was realistically the last year before all the dumbing down... What did we have? Processional races, no overtaking, no point in turning on on a Sunday afternoon!

You might even claim that that was dumbed down because of fuel stops... Well let's look at 1992.... Other than it being a British championship, the racing was turgid!
 
Making drivers have to drive slowly for whatever reason and making it easy for them to overtake each other seems to me to be dumbing it down. When 2013 cars are slower than they were five years ago that to me is dumbing it down. So from my purely subjective and comfy position the opposite is give teams and drivers the latitude and tools to go faster, for longer and if the overtaking is bloody difficult so be it. As some else posted (sorry I forgot who) a race isn't a race just because there's overtaking every couple of minutes.

I can understand why some might describe Monaco as dull if they're not interested in the ambiance or atmosphere of the event. I will go so far as to agree that Catalunya is usually dull because I don't think that event has any character. So I don't claim to have a recipe for reducing dullness since I don't think that's a problem. For me the issue is authenticity or the lack of it. I'm lucky enough to have a very long attention span and ludicrous levels of patience, but I appreciate the fact that others are less fortunate. So I enjoy race long battles of frustrated pass attempts even if that magical overtake never happens.

Likewise, I can handle an event where one can't tell whether or not the folk's are working hard and driving their guts out even when it transpires that they're not. What I find depressing or dull is watching an event where everything is 75% of what is possible and it's obvious that that is what is going on. Now that is dull .... like this year's Spanish GP. Monaco wasn't dull because it's got to be very hard work driving cars that are way too fast for the circuit and the guys who got it wrong were very entertaining indeed.

As far as solutions go I have littered threads with mine already. More mechanical grip; less aero'; let the techies innovate; let the drivers use every device at their disposal and at their own discretion. Oh, and open up the engine regulations so that alternative configurations can be brought into the formula so that there is more competition on the engineering front.

There, have a good munch Galahad :D
 
Fenderman If the diffuser was removed and the rear wing reduced other things can be done to increase mechanical grip such as wider rear tyres and wider cars like what we used to have before aero stopped overtaking. To say the cars would be undrivable without a diffuser is rather negative. The designs would adapt.

I didn't say it would , I said it can. My point was that the diffuser is essential to create ground effect. Ground effect and mechanical grip is good in my book and I would love to see the return of wider wheels and big fat grippy tyres.
 
Thanks Fenderman. I have a lot of sympathy for your position and I used to share it - to some extent I still do. I thought of myself as a purist, I opposed all technical restrictions on the teams for cost-saving reasons - engine restrictions, spending limits, single suppliers, testing and so on. Actually, several of those I still find problematic.

My belief now is that liberalising the regulations would actually lead not to more diversity but to more similarity. The teams' years of experience, backed up by highly sophisticated simulation tools, mean that the optimum package for a given regulation set can be defined much more narrowly than in the past. Which team gets closest to the summit quickest depends predominantly on the size of their resource, and only secondarily on the creativity of their thinking.

This, I am sure, explains to a large extent the evolution of F1 from the early 1990s up to the pre-Pirelli period. After billions of pounds of accumulated spend over the decades, the teams had engineered the excitement out of the sport. They were able to run flat-out for the entire distance without any concerns regarding reliability, fuel or tyre consumption. Aerodynamics undoubtedly contributed hugely to the problems with passing, but in many races the question never arose; the cars lined up in speed order from fastest to slowest and finished the same way. It was actually an early artificial innovation, single-lap qualifying, that rescued several of the races in the Schumacher/Ferrari period from being even duller than they turned out to be.

What appeals to me about the Pirelli situation is that it is fair, in the sense that all the teams have the same product to work with and the same access to it (secret testing notwithstanding) but crucially, they don't have control over it. This, coupled with the characteristics of the tyres, means that teams have had to widen their narrow performance windows to give themselves some flexibility with tyre usage, bringing the optimum within closer reach of the less well resourced teams - not necessarily over a season, inevitably, but at least for specific cars at specific races.

For the drivers, this requires a level of consideration and planning that is new to many, but is actually consistent with how Grand Prix drivers have had to operate historically - albeit certainly not for the same reasons as in the past. Seeing that multi-dimensionality, or lack of it, adds to my viewing pleasure in a way that is unconnected to overtaking. I've never necessarily believed that the quickest driver is the best one; each has his strengths and weaknesses and the current formula exposes them quite ruthlessly.

Of course there is a balance to be struck, and F1 needs ultimately to remain a meritocracy. The best car/driver combination doesn't always win the championship, but they should always be in contention to do so. The last thing I'd want is a lottery, and this season at times things have swung too far in that direction. Pirelli have an incredibly difficult job to produce tyres that everyone can use safely with no testing, taking into account how cars will develop over the winter, and manufacturing only four compounds to cover every eventuality of circuit condition and climate. The Hard is too soft for Catalunya; the Super-Soft is too hard for Monaco. The sport should be looking at ways to help them - obliging each team to hand over an example of the previous year's car for testing, for example; increasing the number of compounds available - so that Pirelli are better able to hit the "sweet spot" of 2 or 3 stop races at all circuits.

In my ideal world, having the tyres as an unpredictable factor should allow other areas of the car to be opened up for development, and hopefully next season this will happen with the engine and ERS, if nothing else. Thus over a season, the team that does the best job collects the cups, while we retain the week-by-week uncertainty of who is going to be fighting for the win.
 
As with so many other things in life F1 id controlled by computers. The computers and critically the software used by all the teams is similar so the final design finishes up being effectively the same.

Alec Davidson said that Honda arrived at a circuit with the cars set up from the computer data ; during the free practice sessions this was incorrect for the state of the circuit but as more laps were done more rubber was laid down and the circuit evolved into being "correct" for the setup. So maybe to make it more difficult free practice should be abandoned, the first session should be qualification with there being no parc ferme until the end of it.

Is there a tongue in cheek smiley?
 
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