Stop-Pit-Stop

gribbli

Points Scorer
Valued Member
So I was having a think about some of the responses to the safety car poll and it got me thinking about the fairness of the outcome when a safety car is introduced into a live event.

Now I know that the commonly dragged out expression when this subject is brought up is 'thems the breaks deal with them' and I fully appreciate that all teams say that they know what they are in for, but consider the following:

How it effects the points over the space of a season is what really matters to all involved, so there clearly arent enough SC incidents to make the argument that it (points wise) evens itself out over an acceptable period of time.

And secondly, an atypical scenario is that driver X loses points, or even loses the Win of a race because driver Y put his car into a wall, conversely other drivers have gained points without any justification - Now we can say thems the breaks, but its one hell of a cop out.

So after the long winded introduction, i'll get to my point. The SC isn't the real cop out, I personally believe the process of pitting for 'the other' tyre is (the first thing everyone does the minute the SC is deployed). In my mind it is in no way different to the pitting for fuel, it's a mechanism for introducing randomness into the results to give the illusion of competition.

I really don't get excited when I hear tyre manufacturers rubbing their hands together with glee at the thought of bringing silly tyre combinations to events to 'make things more exciting' (aka having an impact on the result wildly beyond their remit).

I'm a true believer in the idea that once we remove false mechanisms of implying competition exists, only then would the FIA be forced to take a real sober look at what needs to be changed - so my starter for 10, get rid of pit stops all together!

Thoughts, mumblings and spare straight jackets welcome as usual :snigger:
 
Fully agree.Anything that artificailly changes the result, to spice up the show ie two tyre compounds should go.
Then and only then will the FIA and hopefully FOTA through their various working groups address the problems in F1.
If push comes to shove, they might even find a good solution.
 
I feel that stopping the pit stop; ie. banning tyre changes as well as refuelling, will do what every similar rule has done in the past.
The theory has gone: Limit COMPONENT X ? Teams careful ? Increase of skill

What has happened is: Limit COMPONENT X ? Teams careful ? COMPONENT X developed for longevity rather than speed ? Increased reliability ? Decreased entertainment.

I feel that the pit stop should not be mandatory, as they are now, but it should not be banned if a team feels that it would advantage them to pit.

Now I know that Safety Car does not even itself out, but it is true that smart thinking when it is deployed by the teams can reap dividends. Red Bull's decision to keep Webber out was counter-intuitive but was extremely successful even if Vettel took his drive through.
 
I like a lot of others wish for the day when mandatory tyres and pit stops disappear from the sport.

Only then will we truly see different strategies and as has been said, the SC lottery will come to an end.

Hopefully, some of the teams will have realised after Mark's win at Hungary that pitting immediately isn't always the best choice.

I think it was after Lewis was pitted for tyres earlier in the season that one of the team principals said track position was far more important than fresh tyres and that would seem to have been borne out several times now.
 
F1 has some great minds but collectively they become one huge numpty. Safety Cars and pitstops have been a major pain in the butt and every change in the rules appears to compound the problem.

Ditch the two tyre rule, do not make tyre changes compulsory, close the pitlane when the Safety Car comes out and things will be better.

It took them a decade and a half to figure out that refuelling was :censored: so I fully expect a wait of another decade and a half for them to catch up with me on this one.

You are right on the money with the false mechanisms, they are unbelievably counter productive and yet so persistent.

They have introduced pitstops to Formula 3, the cars have to come into the pits, a lollypop man taps the front wheel and off they go again. How incredibly ****ing stupid is that!? :o
 
Here's a theory, what do you think?

Individually, the teams fear the SC because it can hurt their drivers.

Collectively, they recognise that it's good for the TV viewing figures. Particularly at places like Monaco and Singapore...
 
Now that re-fuelling has gone (and I hope it never comes back) they could close the pitlane during Safety Car periods quite easily. They should also wave lapped drivers through quickly, which should also help avoid the situation we had on Sunday where Hamilton ended up with Yamamoto, a lap down, between himself and Alonso and so was unable to attack the Spaniard on the restart.

I have always hated the compulsory two-compound rule; an unnecessary, unsuccessful gimmick that should have been ditched already. Let the teams decide what compounds to run and when. Then, as Brogan alluded to, we might see some really imaginative strategy choices by the teams.
 
Well Part of my thinking behind this is that, for example, if I were to introduce a rule tomorrow and said rule had the side effect once used a couple of times of drivers losing points through no fault of their own - there would be public outrage and an insistence to have the rules changed.

I also think there are other elements to the whole argument, like the fact that they bleat on about how teams need to find ways to save money then enforce a rule which mean teams have to use up copious amounts of 2 different types of tyres in all 5 sessions in order to ensure they can compete well on both.

On reflection I agree that it should probably be optional rather than ruled out, so why not do the best thing and tell the tyre makers to just make a few compounds available i.e. ones with full, half, third the lifespan of a given race obviously with differing performance and let the teams decide if pitting is the best option fro them.
 
snowy said:
You are right on the money with the false mechanisms, they are unbelievably counter productive and yet so persistent.

Hmmm, I wonder; would a driver-operated adjustable rear wing, usable only by the chasing driver if within one second of the car ahead, constitute a false mechanism? :s
 
Chad Stewarthill said:
snowy said:
You are right on the money with the false mechanisms, they are unbelievably counter productive and yet so persistent.

Hmmm, I wonder; would a driver-operated adjustable rear wing, usable only by the chasing driver if within one second of the car ahead, constitute a false mechanism? :s

It would constitute one giant brain-fart from anyone involved if they think that that's a good idea.

There'll be penalties all over the place with that false mechanism!
 
Chad Stewarthill said:
snowy said:
You are right on the money with the false mechanisms, they are unbelievably counter productive and yet so persistent.

Hmmm, I wonder; would a driver-operated adjustable rear wing, usable only by the chasing driver if within one second of the car ahead, constitute a false mechanism? :s

Good point.If the movable wing had been allowed at Hungary Vettel would have blasted past Alonso on the straight, and Alonso could have only sat there like a dummy and watched.

When this idea was introduced I looked closely at the implications and my opinion can be found here.

http://www.formula1journal.com/2010/07/ ... tsman.html
 
sportsman said:
Chad Stewarthill said:
snowy said:
You are right on the money with the false mechanisms, they are unbelievably counter productive and yet so persistent.

Hmmm, I wonder; would a driver-operated adjustable rear wing, usable only by the chasing driver if within one second of the car ahead, constitute a false mechanism? :s

Good point.If the movable wing had been allowed at Hungary Vettel would have blasted past Alonso on the straight, and Alonso could have only sat there like a dummy and watched.

When this idea was introduced I looked closely at the implications and my opinion can be found here.

http://www.formula1journal.com/2010/07/ ... tsman.html

Sat like a dummy and watched until he was in a position to deploy his movable wing and overtake again. This scenario could then be repeated ad nauseum!

I hate this idea, but I'm also a little sceptical that merely adjusting the rear wing is going to assist the chasing car that much. It'd also affect the balance of the car quite severely wouldn't it?
 
It would affect the balance, true. But the balance is no so important on the straight.The balance is critical in cornering.ie oversteer understeer characteristics.
In reality it works in a very similair fashion to the F duct.
 
We all got on fine without the SC, and a lot of the time yellows can be waved and drivers told to go slow around whichever turn the debris is at. Its what used to happen. If there is a particularly big incident then red flags can go out, but that doesn't happen often anyway. So as to avoid any "unfairness" hen if the race is 75% over don't restart to avoid confusion, and award full points like they currently do. If less than 25% completed form a new grid from the current positions, and discard the laps already done. If somewhere in the middle then maybe release cars from the end of te pit-lane at the correct intervals so that the result isn't affected. Is this a good system?
 
The safety car's primary purpose is to bunch up the pack to give the marshals and medical team a clear window in which to work each lap of the circuit.

The only problem with the current rule is they don't close the pit lane.

Without refuelling, I fail to see why they don't do this.
Even with badly worn tyres, it wouldn't be an issue driving at safety car speeds so drivers could just follow the safety car around until it pits and then make the decision to carry on racing or pit for tyres.

Of course, anyone who pits just before the safety car is deployed is going to have an advantage but short of recording all the positions and gaps on the circuit and then duplicating it after the safety car pits, there's not much that can be done about it.
 
Surely allowing cars into the pit lane under the safety car has the opposite effect - you could have cars pitting and rejoining while the safety car is on the opposite side of the track. If the whole point of the safety car is to bunch the pack together (which it is), then to my mind, closing the pit lane while it's out is the only sensible option. It's not as though anybody is going to run out of fuel as might have happened previously and it avoids the dangerous mad rush for everybody to pit at once and then be desperate to jump rivals in the pit lane.
 
I think my views on pit stops are fairly well documented in other threads. I despised the "three sprint" races we had to suffer in the refuelling era and would be quite happy to see pit stops done away with completely although I like the idea of letting a team choose a "to stop or not to stop strategy" but I'm not sure what the implications would be for the tyre supplier. I suppose if each team is, as per the current system, allocated a number of sets of differing compounds for a weekend this wouldn't be a problem.

One idea on the safety car, why can't the laps behind the SC be excluded from the race time and an average of the racing laps be used to decide the result? TV still has something to cover and the race finishes at about the time it was supposed to but a driver who builds up a lead keeps the lead.
 
The worst thing about averaging is that you don't need to then be able to overtake in order to win a race, its essentially like the OT in the pits scenario we had.

As I see it, the SC gives no-one an advantage as long as they don't Valencia the thing, so its just a case of who's intelligent enough to do something that'll work.
 
But the current SC rules severely penalises a driver who is right behind his teammate as he has to queue if they both pit at the same time.
That can push him right down the order through no fault of his own.

As for advantages, anyone who pitted the lap before will gain the lead of the race once everyone else pits.

I don't know if there is a "perfect" system but the one we have now basically turns races into a lottery.
 
Back
Top Bottom