re: F1 2019 Season Thread (Next race: Dec. 1 Abu Dhabi)

Indy has been great this year, everybody should watch this afternoons race. Rossi, Herta, Power, Newgarden and Sato all at the front is going to be exciting to watch, and Road America is a great race track.

Watching it now, they’re 8 laps in and this is already more interesting.

DRS seems like you’re just being handed a pass, plus it always results in such a huge difference in speed that the person you’re passing has no shot to stay on your tail and put up a fight, shite is lame.

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So Rossi's 20 second lead is more dramatic than Hamilton's 13 second lead?

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You're looking at one race. IndyCar has had six different drivers and five different teams win races this year. F1 has two drivers and one team winning all the races.

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Point being made is that F1 movement to a spec series isn't going to solve the issue.

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There's no real fix for F1, same as LMP1, because the manufacturers demand the ability to gain an advantage by outspending the other guys. The other side of the equation is that F1 is like a cult. Fans somehow keep watching this farce. If the fans stop watching in years that one team dominates like this, then maybe they will take drastic action to make the field more competitive.

Somebody winning like this in Indy is a once every ten year type event, it’s not even comparable to Mercedes winning comfortably 90% of the time right now

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Rossi will win the championship at Laguna Seca is my prediction

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Rossi and Newgarden has been the two most consistent drivers this year in Indy. Either one deserves it in my opinion. I hope Pagenaud gets hot and can make this a 3 way race but I don't see Rossi or Newgarden dropping off any at this point.

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Tires that actually degrade, creating a large changing advantage gradient throughout the race. Cars that are smaller and seem to handle contact much better.

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Yes, the reds vs blacks were awesome to see in this race. Not just what we saw on camera, I was following Sato on blacks vs Bourdais and Hunter-Reay on reds via the live timing board. Sato passed both of them in the last few laps to salvage P10. As the announcers were saying, after a few laps the reds just fell off a cliff.

Guys. Read the thread title. This is a F1 thread. Quit trying to distract from the exciting F1 races this year. What a snooze fest. I hope verstappen gets Bottas seat next year. I know it will happen eventually, but put that Dutchman in a Mercedes pronto so at least the P2 Mercedes will be competitive after the first turn.

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Took me two years to realize that this is simply part of the F1 tradition. It's the only way they know, and the fans embrace it.

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That's very true. F1 is the heavyweight class of motorsport and it's hard to create good racing in such a system because there will always be teams that can outspend the others. If you put a spending cap on, first of all, it will be hard to enforce but more importantly it will limit the innovation. Basically the goal of F1 is to try to produce the fastest cars you can within the rules of the sporting regulations. So a big part of F1 is the enjoyment of the cars themselves and not the racing to the same extent.

If you want good racing, you'll need some sort of limitations. IndyCar is a good example. It's some of the best racing in the world but it's essentially a spec class. And those limitations are completely counter to the DNA of F1.

All of that said, I think limiting downforce would be a great way to help bunch up the field and make it more about the driver than the car. Nowadays everything is about aero. If you can produce more downforce with the same or less drag than everybody else, you win. Period. Aero has created faster cars but it hasn't made for better racing. Designers used to think in terms of mechanical grip vs. aero grip. In other words how much grip is from the suspension components and geometry and how much is from downforce. These days, it's all from downforce. The suspension is set as stiff as possible so that the aero components can work efficiently. I think going back to less downforce will place greater emphasis on engine and suspension design and will make the cars harder to drive, requiring the best drivers in the world to really be the best drivers in the world. But again, that sort of limitation runs counter to the F1 philosophy.