What do you hate the most about F1?

[Brown, Jon Brow]

Why do you hate that? Do we really need more spykers on the grid?

At least it would give Spyker some one to race against.

[buckwheat]

Imola. If it comes back I will hurt myself, and it will be your fault

[V12]

At least it would give Spyker some one to race against.

Exactly. Minardi went from a respectable mid-grid team in the early 90s to perennial backmarkers by the end of the decade - not because they had particularly got worse off - but every team behind them hit the wall!

It's a competition - someone has to be at the back. It doesn't make them a shambolic outfit. I'd have nothing against F1 putting the anchors on a potential Andrea Moda or Life, but looking at some non F1 single seater teams around, ART/ASM, Carlin, Arden, Super Nova, and there's a load I've missed - all quality operations who would no doubt add value to an expanded F1 grid. Natural selection and economics would keep the entry list at a sensible size anyway...no need for artifical restrictions to preserve a team's "franchise" *shudders*

[RaikkonenRules]

I wish I had been around for the 30 plus entry lists of the early 90s.

[OmarF1]

Exactly. Minardi went from a respectable mid-grid team in the early 90s to perennial backmarkers by the end of the decade - not because they had particularly got worse off - but every team behind them hit the wall!

It's a competition - someone has to be at the back. It doesn't make them a shambolic outfit. I'd have nothing against F1 putting the anchors on a potential Andrea Moda or Life, but looking at some non F1 single seater teams around, ART/ASM, Carlin, Arden, Super Nova, and there's a load I've missed - all quality operations who would no doubt add value to an expanded F1 grid. Natural selection and economics would keep the entry list at a sensible size anyway...no need for artifical restrictions to preserve a team's "franchise" *shudders*

Your post made me wonder something, maybe a little bit different, but got the inspiration by thinking about crappy teams, is really money that significant in an F1 Team, or crappy F1 teams have mediocre engineers?

but it is a vicious cycle because the more money a team has, the more they can pay to a fantastic engineer, (am I right RB-Newey?), but there's the Toyota case too, they are ultra rich and they suck so bad, and Renault had a limited budget and they were smoking Toyotas, Hondas, Ferraris in 2005 and the beginning of 2006, they must have some talented dudes in there.

The point is, cans somebody explain how it's money spent in F1, wing tunnels??, some are owned by the team, some run 24/7/365, why is it so expensive, eletric power bills?, I Don't know, still i think F1 wastes too much money when there are people dying of starvation everyday.

cheers.

[V12]

Your post made me wonder something, maybe a little bit different, but got the inspiration by thinking about crappy teams, is really money that significant in an F1 Team, or crappy F1 teams have mediocre engineers?

but it is a vicious cycle because the more money a team has, the more they can pay to a fantastic engineer, (am I right RB-Newey?), but there's the Toyota case too, they are ultra rich and they suck so bad, and Renault had a limited budget and they were smoking Toyotas, Hondas, Ferraris in 2005 and the beginning of 2006, they must have some talented dudes in there.

The point is, cans somebody explain how it's money spent in F1, wing tunnels??, some are owned by the team, some run 24/7/365, why is it so expensive, eletric power bills?, I Don't know, still i think F1 wastes too much money when there are people dying of starvation everyday.

cheers.

I think there's a saying - "speed costs money - how fast do you want to go?" A team will ultimately spend however much money it has available to it. Of course - some teams will spend more wisely than others - so money isn't the ONLY factor, otherwise Toyota would run away with things. In Renault's case most of their staff bar Schuey/Brawn/Byrne had been around from Benetton's successful era in the mid 90s, but it was only once Renault bought into the team and they got a world class driver/team leader in Alonso that everything clicked back into place for them. There's no simple answer to how best to spread your resources, otherwise we could all be team bosses.

But a simple comparison with Renault and Toyota would be - while Flavio, who by his own admission has never been an F1 man, simply hires the best he can for the job and lets them all get on with things, with minimal interference from either himself or Renault HQ, Toyota bogs itself down with multiple layers of management structures and committees which may be appropriate for running one of the biggest and most successful volume car manufacturers on the planet, is not necessarily suited to running a successful F1 team.

To answer the first part of your post - it's probably a bit of both. While there is only so much money to go around in F1, it's also true that there probably isn't enough top-notch personnel to go around for 15-20 fully competitive F1 teams even if they were all had a high level of funding, although they should be given the chance to prove me wrong, but Max 'n' Bernie decided to cap the number of teams at 12, so they can't.

[slinkster]

It can be pretty poncy for the most part; moving away from the racing/sport/fan aspect and more of a high-profile-business-men-orientated money spinner for the corporate world.

James Allen.

Lack of excitement in some races.

I'm not liking the new qualifying system at the moment.

People/fans who take it far too seriously and make out they're a bigger fan because they understand every nut and bolt and tweak that some greasy engineer makes. I like it for the racing... deal with it.

[wmcot]

I thought of a couple more things I hate:

1. I didn't realize just how much I hate the 2 or more week delays between races.

2. I HATE how every website has to post interviews with EVERY team before EVERY GP and always get the same answer - "We have made improvements and we are hoping to do better at the race. Our drivers love the track at XXXXXX. etc."

[jens]

2. I HATE how every website has to post interviews with EVERY team before EVERY GP and always get the same answer - "We have made improvements and we are hoping to do better at the race. Our drivers love the track at XXXXXX. etc."

I forgot to mention before, but this is the second thing that really annoyes me too. Like a copy-paste before every GP weekend. Therefore I skip most of the articles and "news". Someone should try to be different and write an article with title being "Everyone is looking forward to have a good weekend." : That's a better version instead of writing the same preview on tens of occasions for each team/driver.

[philipbain]

I wish I had been around for the 30 plus entry lists of the early 90s.

To be honest F1 is better off with having smaller grid of better quality, its one area where I completely agree with Bernie, some of the non pre-qualifying teams were worse than bad, most of them werent good enough to compete in lower formulas, let alone F1. 1989 was the year when F1 had the most cars trying to qualify, with 39 cars going for 26 spots, and with 26 cars automatically pre-qualifying it was left to the remaining 13 cars to compete for the remaining 4 spots in qualifying proper, hence you got utterly hopeless teams that would be packing up and going home by mid morning on the Friday of each GP weekend, it's just not sustainable or desirable to have such a situation. By the mid 90s non-qualifiers were a thing of the past and general standards were increasing in F1, it's true that Minardi were a victim of this as other teams either quit or got better, leaving them to fill the back row most of the time.

btw. Things I hate about F1:

James "cock" Allen - he just talks rubbish whilst calling anything on track a long time after i've already worked out what has happened, Murray Walker had the odd gaffe but 95% of the time he was well ahead of the game, Allen is just plain cr@p

Ad Breaks in coverage - I don't see why its acceptable to interupt the race when it seems that sports like football can be shown by the same broadcaster without interuption during play. Why the hell it isnt on the beeb anymore I don't know (and it's not rose tinted specs talking, I have a large collection of old races from the BBC years and the races are so much more coherant without breaks)

Aero sensitivity - the cause of F1's lack of overtaking, I say free up the underbody as this reduces this problem quite dramatically and restrict wing sizes drastically (tricky though from an advertising space point of view!)

more grip than power - F1 cars should have masses of power, so much that the cars havnt got sufficent grip to really cope with it, this was the case in the mid 80s and it was a golden era for some great driving talent which shone as a result, my fear is that a future F1 with 450BHP and the sort of downforce that the cars generate now will result in slightly upscaled F3 cars which also have more grip than power.