The dangers of an in-season testing ban.

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Originally Posted by Jon 'Massa' Beagles

pun·ishplay_w2("P0661600") (phttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/ubreve.gifnhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/prime.gifhttp://img.tfd.com/hm/GIF/ibreve.gifsh)
v. pun·ished, pun·ish·ing, pun·ish·es
v.tr. 1. To subject to a penalty for an offense, sin, or fault.
2. To inflict a penalty for (an offense).
3. To handle roughly; hurt: My boots were punished by our long trek through the desert.

v.intr. To exact or mete out punishment.

It does none of these things.

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It penalizes them by not allowing them to test. If this is not a penalty, then what is it?

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It simply does not reward them ANY MORE than they are already rewarded for the success they are currently enjoying.

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They are not rewarded by the success, they have worked bloody hard for it and deserve it. So if they have done a better job, why artificially help those who are not as good?

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In no way am I saying to screw anyone, you are blowing this way out of proportion...testing for lower ranked teams would lend a hand to those who struggle due to lower budgets and have less advanced equipment available to them. They would still have to do their jobs well in order to use the data they gather though...so it is not an instant guarantee of performance.

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Tough luck, F1 is not a charity where you deserve help all the time. You want to do better? Simply do your job better.

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I think that nowadays teams entering F1 are serious about it due to the tough barriers to entry, we are no longer in the days of the 'garagistes' etc you know...and to suggest that Minardi were about 'comedy' is to devalue the effort of all the dedicated engineers and mechanics etc that worked their butts off on a shoestring budget to produce some frankly incredible results considering their circumstances.

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What incredible results did they achieve? Minardi was comedy to me, they were so far behind everyone else that it stopped being funny. They did not do a very good job, because they never had money and were always looking for handouts. I was always hoping they would go under and would be replaced by a competent team.

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Your ignorance of and disrespect for them is both perplexing and shocking to me.

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It is not disrespect when you call a loser a loser. Simply statement of a fact.

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I used 90% as an expression meaning 'the vast majority of,' which in my experience it is...I apologise for not having proof of this figure. *Chastises self* :p

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Have you tested a car in the windtunnel, in your experience?

[/QUOTE]
We should reward success, but take into account the circumstances it comes in. As such maybe the answer would be to let the teams with a lower budget have more testing allowance, thereby eliminating the possiblity of rewarding a lack of success.[/QUOTE] No. F1 is not a charity. They compete to be the best and everyone should have equal rules for it. If some teams have more money, it is because they have done a better job of securing funding.

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

It penalizes them by not allowing them to test. If this is not a penalty, then what is it?

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It is a lack of a reward.

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

They are not rewarded by the success, they have worked bloody hard for it and deserve it. So if they have done a better job, why artificially help those who are not as good??

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They receive cash for their position in the F1 Standings iirc, but the reason for another team not doing so well could easily be related to a lack of resources rather than to any lack of application or effort. I'm not saying this should be rewarded, but rather that these teams should be given the opportunity to have more laps than the others to level the playing field somewhat.

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

Tough luck, F1 is not a charity where you deserve help all the time. You want to do better? Simply do your job better.

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Doing your job better only goes so far if you can't afford the materials and man power with which to do it better. F1 is indeed not a charity, hence why help and support needs to be given to those with less. Let's both start an F1 team...me with 100 million pounds of funding, youi with 20 million pounds. Who do you think is realistically going to do better? Of course the one who used their money better, and I'm sure your opinion is that you would do better. But having so much more money than you would make achieving top 10 finishes far easier for me than it would be for you...yet you would have no help or support, and no extra reward for the level of success that we both achieved. Fair? No. And yes, life is not fair...that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and change it though!

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

What incredible results did they achieve? Minardi was comedy to me, they were so far behind everyone else that it stopped being funny. They did not do a very good job, because they never had money and were always looking for handouts. I was always hoping they would go under and would be replaced by a competent team.

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They did not do a very good job because of a lack of money, yes. Had every other team been budget capped I think you would have seen Minardi move up the grid fairly rapidly...they worked miracles on a budget that was frankly tiny. In 1999 it was estimated at 50 million dollars compared to a conservative estimate of 225 million dollars at Ferrari. (http://atlasf1.autosport.com/2000/bri/faq.html)

That year they scored no less than 7 Top 10 finishes that season, would have scored 5 points under the current system...their drivers were the current Ferrari test drivers, who were hardly the creme de la creme of F1 racers!

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

It is not disrespect when you call a loser a loser. Simply statement of a fact.

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You implied they were comedic, idiots and not serious about F1. These are not statements of facts. Those Minardi employees became Toro Rosso employees (the majority of them anyhow) and with a slightly larger budget they went as far as winning a race...a very impressive achievement.

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

Have you tested a car in the windtunnel, in your experience?

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I can honestly say that I have not, and yourself?

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

No. F1 is not a charity. They compete to be the best and everyone should have equal rules for it. If some teams have more money, it is because they have done a better job of securing funding.

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It may be for that reason indeed. Though it is a fact that most sponsors go for more established teams, look at the troubles Brawn had in attracting sponsors despite 7 race wins in the row and almost complete dominance! With everything geared to helping the larger teams (economics, history, sponsor habits, driver habits...) something must be done to help the smaller teams. Or you can kiss Toro Rosso and Williams good bye, and any other prospective applicants who wont survive for that long without some assistance.

And equal rules would be in place...were the budgets of a more established team to shrink then they too would be allowed extra testing time.

You act as if this is gifting points to lazy idiots, but extra testing is no guarantee of that...rather it only gives the opportunity to improve the car with the correct application of data.

OK, lets stop getting anal about a word. Punish may be wrong and should be substituted with Handicap. I don't think anyone would argue that sucessfull teams not being extended the same opportunities to test is a Handicap.

Unlike my old mate Gazza, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the smaller teams that have come through the ranks like McLaren and Williams to what they are now. In doing so, they have evolved and gained a heritage that defines their ethos and identity.

So, lets chuch an unfair (as in it would be fair if everyone had it and unfair if only some do) advantage at USGP and get them competing at the same level.

Isn't that a dis-service to Williams. They have struggled for years and succeeded where others have failed. Yet some upstart with no history in F1 gets preferential treatment.

Does that seem fair?

Let them develop as is their right without trying to engineer results. We've had enough of that.

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

Let them develop as is their right without trying to engineer results. We've had enough of that.

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:up:

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

Isn't that a dis-service to Williams. They have struggled for years and succeeded where others have failed. Yet some upstart with no history in F1 gets preferential treatment.

Does that seem fair?

Let them develop as is their right without trying to engineer results. We've had enough of that.

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Well, as Williams would be eligible for extra testing due to their smaller budgets I highly doubt they would be arguing too much about their past.

Engineering results is something I am also against...engineering competition when necessary, as I believe it may soon be, is something I am however very much for. I personally would prefer a method like this to constant rule changes, but I do concede that some may prefer the rule changes.

ioan: Sorry, but if you think race mechanics only work during race meetings you do not know as much as I thought you did.
During the season they do not work 5 day weeks but usually 7. Work days in the shop are more likely to be 12 or 14 hours not 7 or 8. Their time 'off' is getting to and from the races. Getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning to catch a flight. All nighters in the factory are not uncommon. Today because of Parc Ferme rules they do not get the all nighters at the track as a regular occurrence.
Read Steve Matchett's book 'A Mechanics Tale' to see what life as a race mechanic is really like. Your 9 to 5 job does not normally have the thought in the back of your mind of 'Did I miss something or make a mistake that could kill people?' That thought is always lurking somewhere and I do not know a mechanic who has not screwed up some time or other. Usually, thank god, it just results in a DNF.

Note: I was one. Not F1 but a pro series. I totally burned out after 6 years. Two years later I went back to a limited schedule for less than a year.
I did stay as a race mechanic for another 9 years but only in amateur racing with far less pressure, travel and MUST have the car ready did not exist. There were still lots of late nights but the tracks were never more than a 8 hr. drive. Not days as with pro racing and often 20 plus hours driving a day. If not that catching the red eye special at 1 am after a weekend of too little sleep.
Don't ever try to tell me mechanics, engineers and race personell have it easy!

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Originally Posted by Easy Drifter

ioan: Sorry, but if you think race mechanics only work during race meetings you do not know as much as I thought you did.
During the season they do not work 5 day weeks but usually 7. Work days in the shop are more likely to be 12 or 14 hours not 7 or 8. Their time 'off' is getting to and from the races. Getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning to catch a flight. All nighters in the factory are not uncommon. Today because of Parc Ferme rules they do not get the all nighters at the track as a regular occurrence.
Read Steve Matchett's book 'A Mechanics Tale' to see what life as a race mechanic is really like. Your 9 to 5 job does not normally have the thought in the back of your mind of 'Did I miss something or make a mistake that could kill people?' That thought is always lurking somewhere and I do not know a mechanic who has not screwed up some time or other. Usually, thank god, it just results in a DNF.

Note: I was one. Not F1 but a pro series. I totally burned out after 6 years. Two years later I went back to a limited schedule for less than a year.
I did stay as a race mechanic for another 9 years but only in amateur racing with far less pressure, travel and MUST have the car ready did not exist. There were still lots of late nights but the tracks were never more than a 8 hr. drive. Not days as with pro racing and often 20 plus hours driving a day. If not that catching the red eye special at 1 am after a weekend of too little sleep.
Don't ever try to tell me mechanics, engineers and race personell have it easy!

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I'm pretty sure they the race mechanics don't work 7 days a week every week, neither do they work more than 40 hours a week.
And there are several reasons to that, one of them being the European legislation.

Every team has well trained personell at the factory at the race track and the test track (less of these ones now).

Anyway, the in season testing was ditched to cut costs, and bringing a special testing team to the track when you have the race team already there would be pi$$ing money down the drain and it isn't realistic.

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Originally Posted by Jon 'Massa' Beagles

Engineering results is something I am also against...engineering competition when necessary, as I believe it may soon be, is something I am however very much for. I personally would prefer a method like this to constant rule changes, but I do concede that some may prefer the rule changes.

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I believe that the best way to close up the field is not to change the rules for very long periods (5 years at least).
In 5 years time even the poorer team will have invested what is necessary to extract 99.9% of the performance under a certain set of regulations, the richer teams will fight between them and spend a fortune to get the available 0.1%, but on the track that might translate only to a tenth of a second per lap, maybe two. And this means that they will be able to fight the big ones in the right conditions and even beat them every now and than.

This is only my opinion, but I often thought about this and always came to this conclusion.

Spot on drifter.

Unless you've been there its impossible to know the pressure. In fact you working on a pro-team instead of F1 probably had even more pressure as you most likely did the work of about 6 F1 mechanics alone?

Never sat that side of the pit wall myself but I was always hugely grateful/amazed when the boys could somehow get the car I wrecked on sat back on the road by the Sunday.

Disagree with that last one Ioan. The most radical rule changes in 15 years have just taken place and the grid is separated from front to back by what? 1.5 seconds. That's a tiny gap.

The rules had been stable (largely) for a good number of years before this one yet the gap has never been tighter.