Sports Articles: Formula 1: Melbourne Talking Points
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Formula 1: Things To Think About After Race 1 In Australia
1. Good to see Ferrari and Red Bull can pretty much match Mercedes on race pace. Also good to see Haas and McLaren have closed the performance gap as well. Augurs well for a good racing season on tracks that allow for overtaking.
2. Virtual Safety Car is a mess and needs to go. Not so much that cars can pick up places by diving into the pits, though that is an oddity that ruins the whole point of using it rather than a normal safety car, but the pointlessness of it was shown by the need for a normal safety car to clear up anyway. At least a proper safety car closes up the pack and improves the racing afterwards, also often leads to some overtaking when it goes.
3. Worrying to see cars can still not follow other cars closely and race properly. No matter what happens aero is still king in F1 and it is not leading to better motor racing, even if it does make the cars faster. The authorities do not help by removing complex systems such as blown diffusers etc, as they create downforce that is not so adversely affected by following another car. By abolishing things like that, it has just made the problems worse.
4. The desire to reduce costs is not helping the racing. Cars are unable to attack due to fear of damaging the engines. This limitation on numbers of engine units is a really counterproductive strategy to the race itself. The races should not be about driving to a delta time, that is what endurance racing is about. This should be the fastest drivers on the ragged edge driving the wheels off their cars. Instead we have drivers at half pace nursing engines or tyres. Yawn.
5. Surely it would be more productive to dump complex engine modes? Having steering wheels made to a set pattern that does not allow for all these switches, knobs and dials they are festooned with. For one those things are damned expensive and so that would be an immediate reduction in costs. Secondly it would allow drivers to concentrate on driving and have to deal with any fuel savings or overheating issues by adjusting their driving, rather than letting some computer do it all for them.
6. The halo is aesthetically horrible and does not make any sense. I still do not understand why the cars are not built along the lines of the road cars that they are supposed to be technology test beds for. If they are not going to go to a closed cockpit, then surely they need to treat them like convertibles and go with a windscreen, like they used to have, in front of the drivers. Then they can be used to improve the design strength and aerodynamics of windscreens on roadsters. This halo idea is just useless for a road car, so should never be in the thinking at all as it is just a wasted technology development.
Written by Tris Burke
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