Technical Radio ban- revisited

[RasputinLives]

But he has to switch it on the actual grid. He clearly forgot. I doubt very much the team would have distracted him from watching the lights by shouting down the radio at him even if they were allowed too.

It's all a mute point anyway. If a driver was attempting to pull away in 2ND gear and they came on the radio to tell him he was getting it wrong before the start then we'd all be up.in arms that it was driver aid. Not sure why this is different.

I see the logic behind the Hamilton issue this weekend but I think it's a rarity and next time it happens it won't be an issue because Lewis will know what to do. This is being used to push another issue. The Mercs are not as dominant now they can't micromanage their complex system and they Don't have full control over whether they let their drivers race or not.

Do we really want to go back to the days of Hamilton gaining on Rosberg but being told to switch his engine mode down because Nico has done the same thing?

 

[FB]

The question was asked by the commentators as to whether they could have advised the drivers via the pit boards. Is this allowed? I'd be happy for the drivers to be given advice this way as it means: 1. It only happens once a lap 2. The drivers have to use some skill to read the boards as they blast past the pit lane.

 

[gethinceri]

That is as complex as it needs to be.
"Mode 12b" on a pit board.

 

[Jos the Boss]

Or maybe a letter a lap in order to spell out a message on the pit board so like T...R...A...N...S...M...I...S...S..I...O...N... .... F...A...I..L...U...R...E would take you 19 laps or so and by that time, you would've had the failure!

 

[TR]

The question was asked by the commentators as to whether they could have advised the drivers via the pit boards. Is this allowed? I'd be happy for the drivers to be given advice this way as it means: 1. It only happens once a lap 2. The drivers have to use some skill to read the boards as they blast past the pit lane.

The answer is no, this is currently not allowed. All the restrictions for radio messages also hold for pit boards.

 

[Titch]

Then surely any info on the pit board is illegal, like the lap the driver is on and his position in the race, after all it's information he can use to improve his position in the race. Why aren't pit boards banned ?

 

[snowy]

It'll be interesting to see how Kyle Busch gets on when he joins Haas F1 next season...

"what no spotters!?"

 

[TR]

Those things are on the list of allowed messages: Analysis: The full scope of F1's 2016 radio ban (I think this has been amended further) They include:

* Lap or sector time detail
* Lap time detail of a competitor
* Gaps to a competitor during practice session or race
* Number of laps remaining

Rereading that it seems that these rules are also in place during Friday practice. That makes no sense to me at all. During practice teams should be allowed to do all the coaching that they want (it is practice after all). It makes no sense to require them to wait until the driver gets out of the car to do it.

 

[TR]

But he has to switch it on the actual grid. He clearly forgot. I doubt very much the team would have distracted him from watching the lights by shouting down the radio at him even if they were allowed too.

There is a sea of time between the first and last car arriving on the grid, plenty of time to walk through a checklist with the driver, notifying him of any wrong settings. Anyway, in the previous years we have seen no problems with drivers with wrong engine settings at the start. This years since the teams are no longer allowed to remind the drivers we have seen several instances. (Rosberg in Spain and Verstappen in China come to mind.)

These instances are a direct consequence of the radio ban, no doubt. That is not necessarily a bad thing though.

It's all a mute point anyway. If a driver was attempting to pull away in 2ND gear and they came on the radio to tell him he was getting it wrong before the start then we'd all be up.in arms that it was driver aid. Not sure why this is different.

Totally agree there.

 

[Wombcat]

Actually I don't really care what the teams tell the drivers on the radio. As far as I'm concerned they can tell them anything they want.
I don't really need to hear most of it though.

 

[ebs001]

According to Wolff these settings are all programmed in and they got them wrong because of a mess Friday. He also said that it was a safety issue as did Hamilton. Here's quotes from Wolff :
"The settings were wrong because we had a messy Friday where we couldn’t configure it in the way we should have done. So it was preset in the wrong way. And it happened a little bit earlier on Lewis’ car than on Nico’s car, I think it was three laps earlier.

"You’re permanently trying to optimise the modes and this was an optimisation which we felt we needed to have on the car and which needed the right calibration."

Hamilton also said "The radio ban as far as I’m aware is supposed to stop driver aids, and it wasn’t a driver aid, it was a technical issue. Formula One is so technical – it’s far too technical almost – and to have that many switch positions, it’s something that you should be able to rectify because the only people that can see the issue are the guys in the garage."

Vettel said the radio regs were a joke.

 

[FB]

I'm sorry but simply pull in to the garage and let the engineers sort it. If it compromises his race but makes it safer for him and other people on the track then it's the right thing to do.

 

[Kewee]

I tend to agree with the drivers. If the engineers have technical information the drivers don't have, surely they should be able to share that information. There's a big difference between driver aids and correcting a technical issue. When I realised Hamilton was being hampered and was unable to race I went to bed, never done that before. All I wanted was to watch a motor race and that wasn't what I was seeing.

 

[Kewee]

The drivers have to use some skill to read the boards as they blast past the pit lane.

Especially at Baku when they're doing 220mph on the main straight past the pits.

 

[Dartman]

If it has happened before, perhaps Mercedes should brief their drivers as to the default setting, from Rosberg's car it seems that each driver can have a crib sheet.

 

[ATL11]

If this was an issue with Manor race engineers, would they even be discussing this?

It has been an issue with Manor, they broke the rules earlier this year to resolve a problem

Think my comment was a more cynical than in the literal sense, just it only ever seems to be an issue to F1 when it involved the so called 'Big Team's, as typically they're the ones we hear on the TV feed. Not sure they're would have been as much traction on the potential change if all we'd heard Marcus Ericsson didn;t know the right key selection to change to the correct engine mode.

Though I would ask all F1 teams from now onto add to their check list when on the Grid:

Car
Driver
4 wheels
ENGINE MODE IS THE RIGHT BLOODY ONE
Fuel

 

[Wombcat]

If Ericsson or Haryanto are asking for advice, we'd not be talking about it, since it wouldn't be aired.

 

[Il_leone]

Why not have fewer knobs and buttons on a bloody steering wheel for a start then it would not be that difficult to manage

As for radio ban I agree with it because the best drivers are meant to just drive at the wheel and not be told by the pit how to drive from their pit crew

Its a formula one car they are suppose to be driving not a spaceship

 

[The Artist.....]

Il_leone - the irony is when drivers like Alonso come out and say that the reason that they need radios to the engineer is because it is like racing a spaceship!

I'm not sure why all those settings are necessary; given them a setting for boost pressure, a manual gearbox, a foot clutch, and an adjustable brake balance, along with possibly an adjustable anti roll bar. Anything else is completely unnecessary!

 

[tqchr]

Why not have fewer knobs and buttons on a bloody steering wheel for a start then it would not be that difficult to manage

As for radio ban I agree with it because the best drivers are meant to just drive at the wheel and not be told by the pit how to drive from their pit crew

Its a formula one car they are suppose to be driving not a spaceship

I think this is one of two possible routes. The cars and steering wheels are quite obviously extremely complicated, and the number of different settings is disproportionate to the amount of information the drivers can get on the steering wheel (as well as reasonably process in a single lap or on a single straight).

One solution is, as you say, to simplify the cars and leave fewer settings for the drivers to adjust. The problem is that the cars have been designed to be this complex. In a sport where most people agree that cost is an issue, asking the teams to redesign the cars to make them simpler for the drivers would impose an unecessary cost on the teams. At the very least, it is the kind of thing that should be phased in over a number of seasons, allowing the cars to gradually evolve into simpler systems.

Another solution is what I guess Mercedes was getting at today. Regardless of the amount of information Rosberg could see on the steering wheel, it's unlikely he would ever work out on his own that he should select some "driver default" setting, and shift through and avoid seventh gear. It's fine for the team to tell him this, because it's clearly not coaching - it's about making the car survive to the end of the race. If you wanted to implement this, all that would be needed is relaxation and clarification of the current rules in those areas where it's purely a reliability issue and not a driver coaching issue.