What Would You Change in F1 thread

[call_me_andrew]

There's a lot of threads with different ideas about tires, aero, track dates, etc. So I decided to just create one thread to rule them all. Let your imagination go here.

I'll start with my changes.

The tracks:
-No more Imola. Ever.
-A race in Mexico.

The races:
-No more "closed pit road".
-Make each race about 20 miles longer.

The cars:
-Raise the minumum weight by 75kg.
-Stretch the minumum wheelbase to 315cm.
-Create a maximum surface area for front and rear wings.
-Ban winglets.
-Bring back ground effects.
-Bring back slick tires.
-No part of the front wing can eclipse the front tires.

[ArrowsFA1]

-Bring back ground effects.


Williams technical director Sam Michael has suggested that a reintroduction of ground effect cars could be the answer to improving the opportunities for overtaking in Formula One.

"I do think you can benefit from following the experience F1 had in the 1980s of using ground effect more than we do now. The things that have probably made F1 worse is getting rid of ground effect, and lifting the front wing – it's gone up 150mm in the last five years. Both those things made the cars very sensitive to onset flow."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/60494

Sam agrees with you :up:

[gloomyDAY]

The tracks:
-No more Imola. Ever.
-A race in Mexico.

The races:
-No more "closed pit road".
-Make each race about 20 miles longer.

The cars:

-Ban winglets.
-Bring back ground effects.
-Bring back slick tires.
Preach on brother!

My feelings are about the same. Ground effects would make F1 more fun to watch. Giving the cars an opportunity to overtake would make things a lot more interesting.

[Marbles]

There's a lot of threads with different ideas about tires, aero, track dates, etc. So I decided to just create one thread to rule them all. Let your imagination go here.

I'll start with my changes.

The tracks:
-No more Imola. Ever.
-A race in Mexico.

The races:
-No more "closed pit road".
-Make each race about 20 miles longer.

The cars:
-Raise the minumum weight by 75kg.
-Stretch the minumum wheelbase to 315cm.
-Create a maximum surface area for front and rear wings.
-Ban winglets.
-Bring back ground effects.
-Bring back slick tires.
-No part of the front wing can eclipse the front tires.


You're hired. When can you start?


I've been asking about ground effects for a while but some of the more technically gifted are quick to shoot the idea down. It's nice to see someone in the know positive about it. I am in full agreement on all your points.

Tracks:
Any new track I would like to see in a more natural landscape or city setting. Although I like Turkey, these sterile, featureless, cookie cutter road courses are anything but natural in appearance.

Races:
Abolish the NASCARification of F1. All lapped cars have to get out of the way? As the leader, I had 10 cars and 45 seconds back to second place and now the caution comes out and I have nothing? This comes from an organization that didn't even use a safety car 12 years ago and used to stop a race when it started raining and used aggregate times in the scoring only 15 years ago. What's next? Lucky dog gets a lap back?

Pit crews have to be cut by half for safety's sake or split the crews and provide a second pit for each team. You don't need a dozen guys for a single car. Is an F1 pit stop twice as complicated as a Champ Car stop? Of course, any change like this would first require a tragedy to take place.

Cars:

No more carbon fibre brakes.

Throw out those stinkin' rev limiters and introduce a fuel limitation. You get to use the same fuel you use now but you don't get to use anywhere near as much.

F1 continually screws itself when making rule changes in an effort to keep a "speed" performance edge on the rest of the motorsport world which results in lap times being quicker by mid-season the following year. They need the balls to make real changes. They should have gone to a 2 litre V8 in the last change. Get rid of grooved and rains and use an all-purpose tire.

[ShiftingGears]

Slicks
Less sterile Tilke tracks
I suppose ground effect is the only solution to allowing overtaking while retaining downforce and not standardising the chassis
More undulating natural road circuits using public roads, in the vein of Reims, Clermont Ferrand, Spa, Pescara...(they do want f1 to be more road car relevant, don't they? ;) )
More challenging circuits like Suzuka and Spa and Monaco
Imola, with less chicanes. If anywhere, safety needs to head in a direction so that the challenge and aesthetics of the tracks and circuits arent affected.
Less point and squirt circuits, and more flowing circuits.
DEFINITELY NOT 4wd cars with traction control. Ideally F1 should have cars that have excessive power to grip ratios without driver aids.
No safety cars, f1 did fine without them, and its an artificial way to try and improve the show. Flags are fine, and much easier to ensure that drivers see them with those cockpit lights. If they want to improve the show, MAKE SURE THE CARS HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO OVERTAKE! You don't need cars close together all the time to have a good show, but there needs to be the opportunity to pass, and that opportunity to pass given the cars aero, decreased body width and carbon brakes make it increasingly smaller.

[Hawkmoon]

There a too many stupid little annoying rules that adding nothing to the racing other than unnecessary complication.

I'm talking about fuel-in qualifying, forced tyre use in races and long life homologated engines. None of these things have done anything to make the racing better and they certainly haven't slowed the cars down much.

[Ranger]

Current Safety Car rule is crap, it must be said. Throw that on the fire.

Bring about a team-numbering system a la pre-1995, or go for the nominal numbers like in MotoGP. The FIA would be doing us a favour by making the numbers visible too. Honda have that idea right at the moment.

It must be said that this single-manufacturer tyre in F1 isn't doing a whole lot of good for the racing. Change that (even though I would've said to go for 1 make last year).

Free up engine and aero regs. F1 needs variety. Cost would be a problem here, but F1 teams are just going to spend the money elsewhere anyway.

Ban Traction Control.

Anything that makes the racing better, basically.

[ClarkFan]

There's a lot of threads with different ideas about tires, aero, track dates, etc. So I decided to just create one thread to rule them all. Let your imagination go here.
The cars:
-Raise the minumum weight by 75kg.
-Stretch the minumum wheelbase to 315cm.
-Create a maximum surface area for front and rear wings.
-Ban winglets.
-Bring back ground effects.
-Bring back slick tires.
-No part of the front wing can eclipse the front tires.

I can sign on to these, but also ban ballast. I'd also widen the front and rear tracks to improve cornering balance and add more "mechanical" to grip sources. I also definitely like switching the aerodynamic package towards ground effects, though I would limit the profile areas to the side pods, requiring a substantial flat bottom running from the centerline of the front wheels all the way to the back of the car. If the profiles discharge just in front of the rear tires, the effect on following cars should be much less than the present rear diffusors.

Getting rid of carbon brakes would be good, too. Increased braking distances mean more chance to outbrake another car. I would also look for other places to reduce the use of carbon fiber, like suspension arms (but not the main tubs - Kubica's accident was the nastiest I have seen where the driver was basically unhurt).

Lastly, I would advocate an engine formula based on BTU/sec of fuel flow. Turbos allowed, diesels allowed and cars that run on cow manure allowed. Fuel formulas would be homologated before the season (when the FIA has time to carefully analyze fuel composition), with vicious penalties for cheating on fuel compounds. It promotes efficiency and when the FIA needs to reduce power levels, they can simply reduce the allowed energy flow rate, rather than turn an entire generation of engine designs into instant junk.

ClarkFan

[call_me_andrew]

I forgot to mention knock out qualifying. That'll go.

And I do think it would be good to cut pit crew size down to 11 or 12, which would include replacing the mechanical jacks with on-board pneumatic jacks.

I don't think you can get rid of the saftey car. Kubica's crash at Montreal should prove that.

I don't know if I'd force a change to the numbering system, but the numbers should be more visible.

[Cozzie]

No more Kimi!

[fan-veteran]

As everybody know the situation is very complicated :) . Consider these:
- Formula 1 is being considered to be the pinnacle of technologies used in a racing cars
- 'real' , 'pure' racing means that the driver must govern the whole processes of braking, acceleration, steering, gear change.
- as in every racing series there must be rules which limit a lot of things of technical aspect. They also must be clever enough to limit the possible expenditures on development, and more - to make the races as close as possible.

Also we have a set of tracks, and the configuration of the typical track puts some issues on the cars (for example ovals are one point, road 'tilke style' courses are very different).

What we should do with the so called 'strategy'? I mean all that stuff with different tyres, fuel quantities, number of pitstop enterings. Should we reduce these variations or keep them?

And what about tracks? Definitely they have a very big influence over the overtaking possibilities and the races.

I propose to make cars slower on the corners (a big limits on aero, small front and rear wings only, ground effect based aero) and faster on the straights. We need i high tech stuff (it's F1) - so we must keep the carbon brakes, but if the speeds are quite higher then the braking will be more 'racefull'. I can't see a challenge in safety if the top speed for example in Monza is 370 km/h instead of 330, or in Canada 340km/h instead of 315, or in Indy 380 vs 320. These are straights and all have a large 'off zones' at the end.

And to be 'pure' racing there must not be ABS and TC. These things are high tech (as F1 requires) but they simply substitute the driver.

[ShiftingGears]

Oh and chicanes - I still highly dislike the chicanes at Monza, they made the racing much worse.

[leopard]

Ferrari car looks quiet, It needs more sponsor!

[Kevincal]

More penalties for obvious blocking. This one-move rule is crap in my opinion. That way there would be more passing without changing anything else. You swerve accross the track while looking in your mirrors? Stop and go penalty for you...Hell, that just gave me a great idea...NO MIRRORS!!! ;) That would fix that problem...And no Nascar-type spotters either! :D

[RaikkonenRules]

I would cahnge the rules to this:

Moto GP points system
No Traction control or ABS brakes.
Drivers get to choose their car numbers like in Moto GP
No more Barcelona

Have an Allstar Challenge style race a week before the first grand prix where only previous grandprix winners and anyone who has either qualified on the front row or finished on the podium are entered. A race for the rest of the drivers will be just before with the winner and a fan voted driver will make the AllStar race

[GridGirl]

Three hours worth of practise on a Friday. Testing usually bores me at the best of times and so did Friday at the GP. I can see why they do it to save money, but its just boring. I would rather have seen less F1 and a decent support race in its place. To be fair though, as I'm not going to another GP till next year its not going to bother me again. I'll just have to stock up on magazines or something next year.

[Brown, Jon Brow]

I would cahnge the rules to this:

Moto GP points system

NOOO... all motorbike series have rubbish points systems. The points system should be how it was until 2003. 10,6,4,3,2,1



Drivers get to choose their car numbers like in Moto GP



NOOOOOOOO........The driver that finishes 1st last year should be number 1.


Get rid of the engine for 2 races rule. I bet that Alonso would of had a go at Kimi yesterday if he didn't have to save his engine for the next race.

No fuel for qualifying. It's boring when you know how much fuel each driver at the front of the grid has.

[RaikkonenRules]

NOOO... all motorbike series have rubbish points systems. The points system should be how it was until 2003. 10,6,4,3,2,1



NOOOOOOOO........The driver that finishes 1st last year should be number 1.


Get rid of the engine for 2 races rule. I bet that Alonso would of had a go at Kimi yesterday if he didn't have to save his engine for the next race.

No fuel for qualifying. It's boring when you know how much fuel each driver at the front of the grid has.

I know let's have BJB driving instaed of Alonso :p :

[Brown, Jon Brow]

I know let's have BJB driving instaed of Alonso :p :

Most sensible thing you've ever posted! :eek:

[FIA]

1. Qualifying

I would make two knockout sessions, one with low fuel soft tyres and one with race setup. The two times put together make your lap time.

OR

I would have a single lap knockout session with the 7 slowest cars are knocked out first. 14 left, but if there second time don't beat the first of the slowest 7 they are put where there second time would put them and the same with the final 10.

2. Race

I would make the point system 15,10,8,6,4,3,2,1 and use the soft and hard tyre only once each per race.

[fandango]

The thing I would change is this:

F1 is supposed to be a team sport, so I would make sure each team has the same manpower at each GP weekend. In football big teams like Barça aren't allowed to have more people on the pitch just because they have more money. This would allow for more upsets, and give clever poor teams a better chance against rich ones. It's more interesting to watch human endeavour than expensive machinery winning.

I wouldn't bring back ground effect cars - they're too dangerous when they go out of control. Instead, I'd bring back slicks and get rid of traction control. I'd also like to see them changing gears again, with clutches and gear sticks. Remember when they used to miss a gear?

I like the current qualifying format.

I'd give a few extra points for a big win. 10 for a win, but another 1 or 2 for a twenty second gap or something, just to discourage coasting to the end.

[Hawkmoon]

Qualifying:
- No race-fuel. Ever.
- Leave the rest of the system as it is. It works and provides air-time for everybody.

Engines:
- No more homologated, rev-limited, long life engines.
- Max capacity but no restriction on number of cylinders.

Tyres:
- Two types - 1 very soft and fast but short lived, 1 very hard and slow but long lived.

Race:
- Refueling pitstops are banned. Cars must start the race with enough fuel to make the finish. The maximum amount of fuel allowed is set by the FIA. This will encourage teams to find a way of making powerful but fuel-efficient engines. If the cars are getting too fast the FIA can reduce the amount of fuel allowed so the teams will have to turn down the engines until they find the fuel economy again. I believe this would create a link between F1 engines and road car engines as car makers could dircetly use their efficiency techniques from F1 in their road cars.

- Pit stops for tyres are permitted but are not compulsary. Each driver can use either the soft or the hard tyre in whatever combination they like. The hard tyre will easliy make the race distance but is very slow, 2-3 seconds a lap (perhaps more) slower than the soft. The soft will only last 20 laps (or so) before it becomes largely undriveable.

I believe this would allow teams to roll the dice on tyres at any point in the race. Imagine if Kimi is trailing Alonso with 20 run. They're both on the hard tyre. Kimi decides that if he stays on the hard he's bever going to catch and pass the Spaniard so he dives into the pits, bolts on a set of softs and sets off after Alonso. Kimi's got a 2 second a lap advantage, 25 seconds to make up and tyres that may not make the distance. That sounds like a GP finish I'd like to see.