GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: Dare on February 03, 2011, 03:05:04 PM
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Amen
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Mike Gascoyne reckons F1 doesn't need new innovations such as moveable rear wings, what it needs are better circuits that facilitate passing.
Although last year's Championship proved be one of the more thrilling with four drivers in the hunt for the World title heading into the final race, Abu Dhabi, it petered out into a boring procession.
Contenders Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber, who were first and second in the title race, chose the wrong strategy and found themselves stuck behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov with no way to overtake.
It was a boring end to a season that suffered far too many processional races.
However, this season, the powers-that-be are hoping for more overtaking after introducing moveable rear wings and bringing back KERS.
Gascoyne, though, feels what F1 really needs it circuits that facilitate passing.
"You can make an argument that says, 'we had a cracking season last year and why would you want to change anything?'," the Team Lotus tech chief told Reuters.
"Then you could say, 'yes but we had three or four incredibly boring races'.
"If on certain circuits you have cracking races every year then why don't we stop going to boring racing circuits?
"The shame is that, Monaco apart, a lot of the races now that are really boring are all the purpose-designed tracks built in deserts where you could have done absolutely anything that you want.
"Bahrain and Abu Dhabi were the two most boring races (of 2010).
"It's pretty disappointing that you've got two massively boring races on circuits where you had literally carte blanche to do anything you liked. You could have had elevation change or moved sand wherever you want it."
As for the use of moveable rear wings, which allow the drivers to open a slot in the wing to give their car better straight-line speed over their rival's, Gascoyne says the concept will still have to be tweaked.
"I think the governing body has to be willing to change how it's implemented to ensure that it works in the way it's meant to. Very often we've done things like this and they've done more harm than good."
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The major detriments to passing are technical, not the track layout. The cars create 'dirty air' that is difficult to drive through. The moveable wing actually solves this problem.
The other major problem is the 'marbles' that come off used tires, and accumulate right off the racing line. Trying to pass means giving up traction, along a less than ideal path. Until that can be solved, passing is always going to be difficult.
At the Toronto Indy I saw them use a truck with giant fans to clear the track during yellow flags. Given the number of yellows and safety cars modern F1 has, that's certainly a possibility.
Besides that, a solution would involve working with Pirelli to create a tire that does not create on track debris (and yet still wears to necessitate pit stops)
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I'm siding with Gascoyne on this one. And now they want us to have another boring desert circuit in Austin. :sick:
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Yeah, I also agree with Mike on this one. Change the circuits and go to more GOOD tracks!
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Im with Jeri on this one.
Question to cosworth151, williamsfan and Mike Gascoyne ( in no particular order ;)), define "good", what aspects of track layout facilitate overtaking that the "desert" circuits are lacking?
Cheers,
Cam
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Using the statistics at Clip the Apex
http://www.cliptheapex.com/community/ (http://www.cliptheapex.com/community/)
the average number of overtaking moves per race over the past few years, by circuit:
Silverstone - 24.92
Interlagos - 24.25
Spa - 23.29
Hockenheim - 22.17
Monaco - 11.11
Singapore - 6.02
Abu Dahbi - 6.00
Valencia - 2.11
Can you name a good race at any of the Tilke-dromes?
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Using the statistics at Clip the Apex
Can you name a good race at any of the Tilke-dromes?
How about Turkey? The so called 'Diabolica' turn 8 is a match for anything on most classic circuits.
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That's not a circuit, that's a corner. I agree, Turn 8 at Istanbul is a fine corner. Still, I could put Turn 8 on the Route 33 bypass around Lancaster and have just as good a circuit, if not better.
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What was it about "Lies, damned lies, and statistics"? Im sure I could have some fun with those numbers. However Im not actually questioning the statistics or trying to defend Mr Tilke.
So what is wrong with his layouts that results in his tracks being at the bottom of the list and not the top? Surely he wouldnt deliberately set out to layout boring tracks. So what aspects of track design genuinely contribute to overtaking in modern F1, that Mr Tilke has missed? (several times!)
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Some one convinced Mr. Tilke that passing required long straights leading to slow corners. In fact, the turn that leads onto the straight is more important. A driver should be able to close up on the car in front, or set the car up to gain an advantage. When the cars were less dependent on front wing, there were a number of passing attempts at the Hungaroring down the straight. Drivers would take out a bit of wing to gain top end. Now they can't get close enough at the exit of the last corner to slipstream by. The next generation of cars should be able to pass easier if they are ground effect more than wing cars.
Lonny
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Tilke is also more interested in "gimick" tracks rather than good racing. I really don't care if the Shanghai track is in the shape of the Chinese character for prosperity. I'll take Monaco, Spa or Indy any day.
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Tilke is also more interested in "gimick" tracks rather than good racing. I really don't care if the Shanghai track is in the shape of the Chinese character for prosperity. I'll take Monaco, Spa or Indy any day.
There's nothing wrong with a 'gimmick'... after all Indy and Monaco both are.
But I agree, the idea of creating a track into the landscape, rather than carving out an arbitrary shape, is far more romantic. F1 cars change over time, the rules, the designs; a perfect passing place for one season is useless the next. Setting out to create a 'passing zone' is a fool's errand.
Find a nice country road, or an abandoned aiport, put in a grand stand, and you've got your F1 track. (You'd think Texas would have an abundance of back roads that would be perfect for this?)
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There's nothing wrong with a 'gimmick'... after all Indy and Monaco both are.
What???? The crown jewel of F1 and the oldest, most honored dedicated motorsports venue on the planet are gimicks?????????
How can you even think of comparing those two great tracks to one that could have been designed by the Chinese equivalent of Big Bird? ("Here's today's letter. Let's make a track out of it!") :sick:
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(You'd think Texas would have an abundance of back roads that would be perfect for this?)
Most of them are straight lines, flat and dusty...just like the middle east.
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There's nothing wrong with a 'gimmick'... after all Indy and Monaco both are.
What???? The crown jewel of F1 and the oldest, most honored dedicated motorsports venue on the planet are gimicks?????????
How can you even think of comparing those two great tracks to one that could have been designed by the Chinese equivalent of Big Bird? ("Here's today's letter. Let's make a track out of it!") :sick:
F1 ran at Indy specifically because its history. And they included part of the oval in the track design. I don't know what else to call it besides a gimmick (that is to say, a feature that sets it apart.)
As for Monaco, running cars through downtown of an ultrarich city instead of a dedicated race track? Who does that?
I'm just suggesting that a gimmick isn't necessarily a bad thing as a starting point: it just can't be the end point. After all, a carriage with a motor in place of a horse was once just a gimmick, and that turned out okay.
And a Big Bird track would certainly be a great way to attract more young Americans into the sport :-*
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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
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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...
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.