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Author Topic: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'  (Read 4753 times)

Offline lkjohnson1950

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #15 on: February 09, 2011, 05:53:11 PM »
Let's be honest, if Monaco wasn't in the middle of downtown and didn't have an 80 or 90 odd year history, we would call it boring. It's almost impossible to pass there today.

Lonny
Lonny

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Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #16 on: February 09, 2011, 06:21:25 PM »
I agree Lonny, the race itself is right up there amongst the dullest in the calendar.  It does live on the glamour and prestige these days.  However, I do and always will love Monaco whereas I don't care for many of the newer circuits...

Offline lkjohnson1950

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #17 on: February 09, 2011, 06:25:54 PM »
I agree Lonny, the race itself is right up there amongst the dullest in the calendar.  It does live on the glamour and prestige these days.  However, I do and always will love Monaco whereas I don't care for many of the newer circuits...

Exactly, well said.

Lonny
Lonny

Offline Cam

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #18 on: February 10, 2011, 11:34:35 AM »
Had a visit to cliptheapex and have skinned the cat somewhat differently to cos.  As I said before I knew I could have some fun with the numbers

Cos’s numbers were as follows
Average Passes
Silverstone       24.9
Interlagos         24.3
Spa                 23.3
Hockenheim       22.2
Monaco             11.1
Singapore           6.0
Abu Dhabi          6.0
Valencia            2.1
Old track average     21.1
New track average     4.7

I get different numbers, if you look at the average number of passes in dry races only from 1983 – to 2010 I get
Average Passes – Dry Races - 1983 - 2010
Silverstone       22.7
Interlagos         22.1
Spa                 20.1
Hockenheim       21.0
Monaco             9.3
Singapore          13.3
Abu Dhabi         9.5
Valencia           6.3
Old track average    19.0
New track average    9.7

Not quite so bad, still twice as much passing at the old tracks.

One thing you find from looking at the data is that there has been a significant decline in the amount of passing since 1983, so the old tracks are advantageously weighted by containing data from the whole period. So I extracted the average from the last 10years and get the following (again, dry races only)

Average Passes – Dry Races - 2001 - 2010
Silverstone       15.8
Interlagos         21.7
Spa                 11.2
Hockenheim       15.9
Monaco             6.1
Singapore          13.3
Abu Dhabi         9.5
Valencia           6.3
Old track average    14.1
New track average    9.7

Hmm, the argument is starting to look a bit thin

And for my final trick I would like to include the data from Turkey for the last ten years in the new track data and you get the following

Average Passes – Dry Races -2001 - 2010
Silverstone      15.8
Interlagos      21.7
Spa             11.2
Hockenheim       15.9
Monaco             6.1
Singapore          13.3
Abu Dhabi         9.5
Valencia           6.3
Turkey         20.0
Old track average    14.1
New track average    12.3

Conclusion, you can torture statistics till they tell you anything you want. But the situation is not as bad as it seems and many would like to make out.
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality - Byron Katie

Offline Scott

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #19 on: February 10, 2011, 12:31:21 PM »
Wow Cam, good work!  That's certainly eye-opening.   :good: :good:

Of course it's still a shame that Tilke is making tracks - I like Jeri's idea of taking a landscape (preferably an interesting one, not a flat desert) and lay a track on it, instead of carving out a track based on someone's recipe.
The Honey Badger doesn't give a...

Offline Cam

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #20 on: February 10, 2011, 01:06:46 PM »
Wow Cam, good work!  That's certainly eye-opening.   :good: :good:

Of course it's still a shame that Tilke is making tracks - I like Jeri's idea of taking a landscape (preferably an interesting one, not a flat desert) and lay a track on it, instead of carving out a track based on someone's recipe.

Thx, Scott.

I agree and yes Jeri is onto it talking about the way the good tracks respond to the land they are built on and not someone sitting at a CAD screen with another computer running simulations next to it.  Its easy enough to see and feel the thrill of eau rouge or a lap around Monaco, but clearly a lot harder trying to create it from scratch.

As a loose analogy I give you Australian Top Gear  :o.

Cam
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality - Byron Katie

Offline cosworth151

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #21 on: February 10, 2011, 01:31:03 PM »
And what are the chances of having a wet race at Bahrain, Abu Dhabi or Austin? How often are the race week-ends at Spa or Interlagos totally dry?

When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how good a race at one of the new tracks was?

The road course at Indy was far, far better than all of the Tilke turds put together. Some people didn't care for the 9-10-11 complex, put that's been changed. (Too bad. There was a great photo spot there.  :good:  )

I will agree with you on one thing, Jeri. A Big Bird track would be better than all of those Mickey Mouse circuits that have been added to the calendar in the past ten years. It sure couldn't be any worse.
“You can search the world over for the finer things, but you won't find a match for the American road and the creatures that live on it.”
― Bob Dylan

Offline Alianora La Canta

Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #22 on: February 10, 2011, 02:06:54 PM »
So what is wrong with his layouts that results in his tracks being at the bottom of the list and not the top?

Warning! Long post alert!

Hermann tends towards "technical" circuits; there's only one way to go fast at those tracks and if your car is good it will be at the front throughout. Therefore faster cars don't find themselves behind slower ones to even try to overtake. As a general rule, compromises aren't needed if you have the right car, and if you have the wrong car, the only thing that might help you is sheer dumb luck (which tends to result in the type of position improvement that doesn't show up in statistics - but sheer dumb luck is hardly a Tilkedrome prerogative).

Also, grip tends to come in two versions on Tilkedromes - the grippy bit and the non-grippy bit. This is because Tilkedromes, due to their positions frequently being in places with little other high-performance racing, effectively hit the "reset" button every single time the F1 cars arrive and don't clear up much during the weekend because the local racing scene can't support many support races. Sand makes the whole process happen quicker, hence why "desert" got juxtaposed with "boring".

Thirdly, the very fact that Hermann Tilke has designed such a large proportion of the circuits now on the calender means that most drivers have learned the pattern of how he works before they've even reached F1 (unless they got to F1 via the Americas or Japan, where pre-Tilke circuits dominate). Learning Tilkedromes is incredibly easy for the drivers and the predictability means there's little reward in investigating the track further. This leads to predictable driving with predictable (and overtaking-free) consequences.

Pre-Tilke circuits tend to have a wider variety of corners, straights and grip levels. As a result, there are multiple ways to be quick. Cars that have strengths in different areas of their design will be fast in different ways and therefore have a chance to overtake each other even if they are on average the same speed. Cars quick at one pre-Tilke circuit may have adapted well to one circuit's set of quirks but not necessarily to another's, meaning that there is more incentive to explore different ways of going quickly rather than just following the computer (an expensive of getting a car to go quickly - which is most reliable if the variation of circuits is limited).

Why is Turkey different from the other Tilkedromes (as Cam's statistics demonstrate)? Firstly, Turn 8 obligates a compromise. To go at optimum speed through that section, it is necessary to compromise one's speed through the final section (which is where quite a bit of the overtaking happens). However, Turn 8 optimisation tends also to bring benefits to the first sector (where overtaking can happen, but most often in the opposite direction). There is nothing between the last and first sections, so no chance for the overtaker to get away.

Secondly, Turkey is subject to large first-corner pile-ups in a way that the other Tilkedromes are not. First-corner pile-ups tend to shake up the order a lot wherever they happen, resulting in an overtaking increase.

There are several things about Turkey which mean that another designer could have got even more overtaking out of it, but even the two previously-mentioned differences help considerably.

Monaco is only a gimmick because it's stayed the same while the world around it has changed (it was decidedly *not* a gimmick when first devised in the 1920s, at least in terms of track "design"). It tends to get away without being called boring largely because it's a bit of a weirdness magnet.
Percussus resurgio
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Offline John S

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Re: 'Boring desert circuits are F1's problem'
« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2011, 07:43:10 PM »

Thanks Cam & Ali for helping vindicate Turkey, I still hope to get there to see a race before Bernie takes F1 away.

Having been to Silverstone on several occasions I'd say if you designed a new track like it elswhere you would probably be accused of laying out a boring track with next to no gradient changes. Brands Hatch and Donnington, for all their other issues, offer real gradient changes and a much more exciting layouts for drivers and spectators.

 
Racing is Life - everything else is just....waiting. (Steve McQueen)

 


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