The Formula One Topic

[Dave]

At least it's not the fault of the team. Different story if there was a catastrophic mechanical failure that was entirely the team's fault. Like Senna.

[Voyager One]

What a boring race. Not even Hungaroring is this boring... I've literally fallen asleep.

And that stupid sharp and tight bend in the pit lane entrance? WTH? 60 kph limit because of that? On a brand new track? Who designed that, a 6-year-old child?

From my point of view, an F grade for the "new and beatiful" circuit. I hope it will be taken off the calendar very very soon if this happens next year again.

[Pyoro]

Yeah. Rosberg driving 52 laps and doing the second fastest lap of the race on the tires - says it all, really.

Maybe it'll marginally improve next year with (surely) softer tires, but otherwise I don't have much hope. And I think the contract already lasts until 2018 or something, so not much hope for a quick bail-out. Apparently Bernie ... excuse me, Formula 1 receives 50 Million € simply for racing there.
Money, always ruining everything good. *sigh*

[Dave]

Decent tyres would make all the difference.

Pirelli were super conservative (they probably had to be).

I imagine a drop of rain would do the trick too.

Not an inspiring circuit though is it?

[Pyoro]

I doubt either will help much with those corners. 90° are killer for any overtaking, you can't cut inside and you can't go around outside. Straights are too short for anything except overtaking with vastly superior cars (like the MGP this year).

It's always going to be boring, unless they suddenly decide to redesign the whole thing ^^;

Anyways, not many races left. Hamilton seems to firmly have the upper hand now, but somehow I think it'd fit this ridiculous season if he'd DNF'd in the last race and Rosberg took the prize thanks to the double-points rule. ^^

[Voyager One]

ridiculous season

Schumacher's Ferrari era springs to my mind...

It's always going to be boring, unless they suddenly decide to redesign the whole thing

Unfortunately, I think the same.

And I particularly disliked those wiiiiiiide tarmac escape areas. Too easy. You make a serious error and nothing happens, you get away with it, maybe losing a position...

[Chrill]

Can we talk about Formula 1 from a Swedish perspective? In the last three races, Marcus Ericsson have been the fastest of the bottom 4. In the last two, he also qualified better than the others from that bottom group. In Russia yesterday, he outpaced Maldonado and Sutil during his stint on soft tyres before losing time with less grip on the harder tyre.

Caterham say they have reverted his break setup to a much simpler style of brake-by-wire system. They did this in Singapore. All of a sudden, he runs a steady one second per lap faster than Kobayashi. Now, the Japanese bloke is admittedly a fast driver. SO YES I'M HAPPY FOR ERICSSON OK.

[Dave]

Would have been very impressed if he'd still managed to be the slowest of the four... Ahem

[Chrill]

Hermann Tilke gets a lot of stick for designing useless circuits. He is crap. Still, how easy is it to design an F1 circuit in a city? Most new tracks are street circuits and more are coming (Baku, potentially New York and Las Vegas, etc.).

I had a go at Stockholm. My goal was for a track that would be "fun to drive" as well as provide opportunities for overtaking. I also wanted a track that went past a few sights. Finally, driving in a city, I wanted to reduce the amount of 90 degree turns to a minimum while still acknowledging that they could not be avoided entirely. Here's the result. Any clues on how to improve it - what to add or remove?

I admit that the long straight up to the first corner is far from great. Still, definite DRS overtaking zone. The circuit passes the Royal Palace and the House of the Riksdag (Swedish parliament), both located on the island which altogether makes up the city zone of the Old Town. Also, great view of the water for quite a while. Perhaps most importantly for a street circuit, this design provides a road for residents living inside the area to enter/exit. This is especially good if, say, an ambulance needed to reach a building within the circuit premises!! Also, clearly there's ample space for pits at that long Eastern straight.

[Pyoro]

Indeed, courses like Sotchi are hardly his fault. And lots of the other things he's done are also not really his fault - if the FIA goes and tells him that classic corner X is too dangerous and needs to be different, well, what can he do...?

Funny idea. Maybe I'll take a look at the Munich map later, but I doubt anything sensible is possible here
As for your course - I'd fear that those corners would still be too tight for overtaking under usual circumstances. Well, it's pretty much the problem all streets circuits have. ^^

€: I guess you could theoretically built a course around the English Garden. ~6,8km lap with (basically) 4 90° corners. Yeah, sounds exiting

[Chrill]

This has developed into a game at an F1 forum I frequent. Rumours put street races in both Las Vegas and Madrid. Las Vegas requires use of the Strip and so you really haven't got a lot of options for road. It's all 90 degree corners. Take a look at what my friend created for Vegas.

Then, admit that you can't really do it much better than that... Ugh.

256ha8j.jpg (109.06 KiB) Viewed 2877 times

And then, I had a go at Madrid. This uses a portion of the Gran Vía which is basically a hotspot for nightlife and shopping in Madrid. I guess it's the Strip of Madrid!!

This Madrid street circuit clocks in at 5.54 km (or 3.44 mi) which is exactly the same length as Sepang, Malaysia!

madrid_1.png (1.56 MiB) Viewed 551 times

[Chrill]

Both Caterham and Marussia are struggling to make it to USA. Money issues as always. If only F1 possessed some huge pot of money that could be distributed in such a fashion to allow these small teams to function...

[Pyoro]

Ha!
"Nice" to see the worst of that old shareholder and partial ownership and whatnot stuff coming together at Caterham.
"As administrators for CSL, we are seeking to maximise the outcome for its creditors and other stakeholders."
Yeah ... I'm totally rooting for them. ^^

Guess they'll miss at least the next, perhaps the next two races. Not a big loss, bit a loss nonetheless.

[Chrill]

It's a bigger loss than two cars and two drivers. We're down to 20 cars. Marussia is also in trouble and may well go the same path. That would give us an F1 race with 18 cars. That's 10 cars in the points, 8 cars out of it. That's 8 cars less than the maximum grid of 26 cars. If we're down to 18 cars for next year, teams will have to field a third car. We could have a podium with only one team. We need the variety. We need backmarkers really. I always did love Minardi.

[Pyoro]

I'm positively glad we're not at 26 cars. Too much lapping is annoying. ^^

Haas F1 Team is pretty much confirmed to join the circuit in 2016, no? If that works out and (which I guess is not as certain as anyone would like it to be) at least everyone else aside from Marussia and Caterham survive, well, then we'd be back at 20 cars. Which is enough for me.

And teams won't do a third car next year, no matter what happens.

[Chrill]

Teams have already hinted that they are preparing for a third car. I believe Ferrari and Mercedes are gearing up for it already. Red Bull has so far not wanted to commit a third car.

Bernie Ecclestone has said both Marussia and Caterham will miss the American Grand Prix. If Ferrari and Mercedes field third card in 2015, we would still have 20 cars. That's the minimum. Part of the show Ecclestone sells to race arrangers are that a minimum of 20 cars will be on the grid.

[Marshy]

There are also rumours that Auto Union...or should I say Audi, are preparing to use it's Le Mans and DTM budgets to join the F1 ranks. Rumours might I say again, and the likelihood of it actually happening are minimal.

http://www.carthrottle.com/audi-rumoure ... 1-in-2016/

[Chrill]

These rumours have appeared many times. Audi were the ones pushing for 4 cylinder engines. When F1 settles on 6 cylinders with the hybrid and turbo and whatnot, Audi dropped out. However, if they are now working on an engine.. yeah why not? They might develop it in-house and see what it can do. If it's good, go for it. If it's meh, they might not bother.

[Pyoro]

Audi (sometimes Porsche) and BMW (ever since they quit) basically are rumored to do something roughly every year, in Germany perhaps a bit more than elsewhere.

Personally I certainly wouldn't mind. A field with Ferrari, Renault, Honda, Mercedes and Audi sounds good and healthy. Decent variation and not so many engines that they can't supply one or two other teams as well. And I'm pretty sure Audi can produce something competitive if they want to.

On the other hand it'd be a huge blow for the DTM. Then again, the series lately has been rather boring ...

[Pyoro]

Wellwell, a Rosberg pole. Didn't expect that, in all honesty. Just didn't seem as quick as Hamilton lately, and perhaps also not as sure of himself (which isn't surprising. First time fighting for the world title is always difficult, we saw this with others before ^^). Now a victory tomorrow surely would make things a bit more interesting, if it actually happens ...

Great success for Sutil also.