Formula One 2002 [R]

Fine. Until they start doing it in front of two men and a dog because everyone else is off watching CART.

Nobody is saying "gift other teams wins". Series that try to impose penalties on good teams are admitting that their formula is weak and usually implode when a few manufacturers get pissed off at the tinkering that hurts them and take their toys home with them (see the DTM or touring cars for examples).

CART doesn't do this and yet the competition is fierce and the formula allows for excting racing.

The problem is not that Ferrari, McLaren and Williams are so good that they merely rotate the championships between them. It's that the other teams don't have the resources to be as good as the Big Three. Part of this is the invetibale outcome of "laissez-faire economcs" business model of letting teams rise (or mostly fall) on their own or even increasing the imbalance by giving travel funds (and who knows what other help) only to the top temas. Needless to say, the logical outcome was acheived and most of the sponsorship and other resources have gone to just a few teams, creating a massively unlevel playing field which has warped the definition of "best" into "best at collecting sponsorships".

I found it interesting that CART's formula was so strong that when the ultra-rich teams like Penske and Galles tried to build their own chassis and when Alfa-Romeo and Porsche thought they could just waltz in and buy victory like they can in F1 they were spectacularly unsuccessful.

Well, soccer in Europe was around before TV too and it is slowly learning to adapt to the current realities rather than cling to some false ideal of "purity" or some imagined "golden age" in the past. F1 lives by TV these days and if gets too boring for too long it will die by TV if it does not successfuly adapt itself.

Because those people pay the bills. If they go away in sufficient numbers, say goodbye to your free live TV coverage and all that sponsorship $$$. My advice for people who want racing to go back to the pristine days of 1961 is to forget F1 and get involved in club racing because I suspect such people will be happy to trudge to Snetterton (UK) or Nelson Ledges (US) and watch Formula Fords if it means they can leave the great unwashed race-loving (as opposed to high-speed parade loving) masses.

Someone earlier in this thread stated otherwise and also noted the decrease in coverage of F1 in the general sports media. Maybe we ask him where he got his fgures.

 

F1 will probably always be popular in some areas (Brasil, Italy, UK) the way soccer will always be even if the current TV money bubble collapses. I do wonder what would happen in Italy if Ferrari ever folded or got out of F1...

Still, it's a TV world these days and if you don't put up the TV numbers, you'll pay for it at the next sponsorship negotiation.

I suspect that part of the deal is that many people around the world haven't seen CART yet and therefore don't know how much better the racing is.

Then there's the well-known foreign preference for anything in sports (as opposed to movies or music) that isn't American even if the American "product", for lack of a better term, is demonstrably better (see the reactions to the USA's run in the World Cup) that will help sustain F1 even if CART gets its collective headout of its metaphorical ass. The thinking will be "Sure F1 is boring - BUT AT LEAST IT'S NOT AMERICAN!".

Finally, F1 (much like the World Cup) does benefit from the nationalism inherent in having one's country's driver or team winning. Would Brasilians still be so rabid for it if there were no Brasilian drivers?

So F1 is hardly going to completely fold tomorrow depsite the most boring season in a string of rather dull seasons. Still, CART's events in Brasil, Australia and Japan have to be making Bernie and his buddies rather nervous, especially the road racing ones like Surfers Paradise ("Oy, mate, you mean road racing doesn't HAVE to be boring?").

 

Basically, the majority of F1 supporters do enjoy a good 'race' but they wouldn't want a race to be brought about unnaturally. Most F1 supporters want to see the best winning. This is why CART, despite being shown in the UK and involving plenty of Brits over time and ex F1 drivers, hasn't taken off here. People can see through it.

 

CART isn't NASCAR which is justly famous for manufacturing artificially close racing via bogus yellow flags. It took me years as a kid to realize that when NASCAR TV announcers talked about "Debris" on the track they weren't referring to a French racing driver.

While I have seen a few questionable yellow flags in CART on ovals, if Brits imagine that CART pulls the kind of crap NASCAR pulls all the time, they are sadly misinformed. I think they're just envious that the Yanks have got it mostly right while they're stuck in the mud at Silverstone yawning while Schumi and friends trundle about with only pit stops to occasionally shuffle the order. This will upset the F1 purists but I'd rather watch the BTCC than most F1 races these days - unless you're going to tell me that you've also "seen through" those "unnatural" BTCC races.

 

I for one, enjoy the technical aspects of F1 that give it the quality of an arms race.

Sure you may have to be a technogeek, but that is also part of the competition. Look at Renault/Benetton The team went from being good to crap and is now on the technical rebound, and Williams with thier BMW power which looked so bad SS in acceleration to the Ferraris last Season yet now don't seem to have that same advantage. Even McClaren as unbeatable as they looked in the 90's now appear second rate to Ferrari.

You'll never have more than 3 or at most 4 teams consistantly winning GP's at any time, has it been any different in the past?

I prefer F1 to NASCAR or IRL or CART which tries to hold back innovation at all costs. Innovations that eventually make thier way into consumer automobiles.

With regard to teams just buying success???

How long has Porsche dominated F1??? or even Alfa??? Just look at Jaguar they suck SS and will do so for some time, Toyota looks better but still have a long way to go. Renault look good but they have a history in the sport so its not just money (although its very important).

 

You're right, I have 'seen through' those mysteries.
Just this weekend I watched the BTCC 6th round at Croft.
I couldn't stand the fact that an extra 30kg had been added to the leading Honda to even things up a bit.
It's not just this season that this has happened obviously. I remember when Muller in the Audi's a few years ago were pulled back because they were too good.
I don't like it but having said that, I understand why Touring cars do it. The propensity for the leading cars to break down or fall off the track is less than it is in F1. And so without that 'evening' up the BTCC would be (by your measure) even more boring than F1. That's fair enough, I understand this. However you still fail to realise that despite the fact that this parity among teams that happens in BTCC, CART and NASCAR still isn't drawing viwers and crowds like F1 does. People know that its false. People appreciate that it's far more about the team than the individual driver.

 

Good things about CART/IRL

1. More overtaking
2. Retro cars
3. Unfamiliar, therefore new.

Bad things:
1. Oval tracks=boring to watch.
2. American commentators (obviously unavoidable, but they all suck, whatever the sport).

 

The silly season is the most interesting thing in F-1, but it is almost finished before it starts.

Ferrari has almost confirmed their drivers next season, pending Schumacher wants to retire or not(I personally think that he will go for his 6th title). McLaren should annouce their driver lineup at German GP. Hakkinen would not be back. They would keep the same guys at McLaren. Williams will also keep the lineup. Nothing happens with the big three. The biggiest thing in the silly season were the future of Button and Villeneuve. Button just signed with BAR. Basically, Villeneuve's future is the only thing left until the Spring of 2003.

 

There also won't be many engine changes. Jordan is expected to use Ford engines next season, otherwise everything will stay as it is I think (okay, mabye Arrows/Minardi).

Does anyone know about possible new teams? I think Alain Prost wanted to start already this season with a new team, but he was too late. Is he expected to start next season? Others?

 

This is very nice if you follow the technical progress but how many people really do? My guess is "not many". I bet the technical aspects of F1 are just not terribly interesting to most F1 fans let alone the general public. I could be wrong but I believe that the nationalist angle is MUCH more important to F1 fans than the inner workings of active suspension, electronic traction control or the chemistry of tire compounds.

The trouble now is that only ONE team per season has a realistic chance at winning races and everyone else has to just hope that that one team's cars both crap out if they are to win. You are correct that this WAS a feature of F1 in the immediate post-war years (when Fangio and Ferrari dominated) until the mid to late '60s but after that there was a period when fields were deeper than the current petri dish.

It would also help if the FIA adjusted the formula and their race tracks to re-introduce the spectre of cars actually passing each other on the track for position as a possibility. At least then some of the battles between the more equal also-rans would become entertaining as the drivers of the team-du-jour rocket away from the rest of the field.

This is not true of CART. CART's stable formula has helped contain costs and made for very deep fields where not one but TEN teams have a realistic shot at winning races. CART has also introduced engine innovations and welcomed such new safety items as the HANS device. CART and IRL did develop the "soft" wall that would probably have saved Senna's life if F1 had developed such a thing. Most of the innovations have been less splashy than F1's but then F1 has BANNED many innovations such as traction control, haven't they? Now why do you think they've banned things if they're truly at the cutting edge of technology?

Anyway, I'll repeat what I said earlier. The TV format that racing series will live or die by demands that the place for truly cutting edge technology be sportscar endurance racing, not CART or F1. Many (probably most) of the new goodies you'll find in your street car are really developed in sportscar racing, not F1, as it is. Since F1 has banned certain innovations that were either developed first in sportscars or created by F1 teams and then subsequently used and developed in sportscars, it seems that Bernie and his pals at least partly agree with me.

Actually, Alfa Romeo's parent company FIAT has dominated F1 recently through their Ferrari team in case you hadn't noticed.

The difference is that Porsche made and Ford/Jaguar is making only half-assed attempts compared to Ferrari/FIAT, Renault and Honda who all concentrated their efforts and spent like drunken sailors in their bids for dominance. I doubt Jaguar's budget is anywhere near Ferrari's or even BMW's. I don't know what Toyota's budget is but I never said that spending yields immediate dividends. But if Toyota does it right and puts their money where their mouths are, they might be the one dominant team in a few years once Ferrari reaches the developmental dead end with their current car.

Remember, Porsche spent years trying to cut the mustard in CART and utterly failed. As for Porsche's failure to break into F1 with the Arrows team, unlike Renault and Honda when they were dominant in F1, Porsche were also trying to juggle all their various sportscar programs at the same time and so they didn't concentrate their resources on F1 and therefore they sucked.

 

Yeah but where was the fake full course yellow flag to bunch up the field again?

Anyway, having to hobble one competitor is an admission that their formula is bad and that a team has found some loophole to exploit. For some reason, touring cars in particular seem to be prone to this kind of thing and it was the death of the DTM, for example, when either Opel or Mercedes pulled out because of weight penalties. I'm glad CART doesn't do this.

Actually, I think it is because, unlike F1 which has shrewdly built itself into a global monopoly under FIA auspices, touring cars are still limited to national audiences and therefore the balance of power between them and the various manufacturers is vastly different from F1. If, say, Ford/Jaguar and Toyota get pissed off and pull out of F1, Bernie can say "don't let the door hit you in the ass, guys". The BTCC series can't quite do that. They have to try to balance the hapiness of their manufacturers and when they get stuck with someone who takes advantage of a poorly devloped formula, they are forced to either change the rules midstream or try to keep at least some kind of near parity with weight penalties. F1 doesn't have to worry about things like this.

I think you're wrong.

First, as I said before, if people believe CART engages in "fake yellow" shenanigans like NASCAR, they aren't "seeing through" anything, they're merely misinformed.

Second, I don't think you appreciate the power of TV to have made F1 what is it today and the fact that F1 was able to become a truly global brand because the FIA limited the ability of competing series like CART to enter global markets. You do realize that the FIA has forced CART to limit itself to ovals if it wants to hold new events outside the USA, don't you? Why would they stoop to this is F1 is just so much more inherently interesting to spectators than F1? Could it be they're afraid of what would happen if people saw an open wheel road race that featured passing for the lead and more than two cars with a realistic shot at victory? I think that's a goodly part of the reason.

Finally, I also think you underestimate both cultural inertia and the ability of nationalism to sustain interest in F1. People watch F1 because they know F1 and don't know CART the same way Americans watch oval racing instead of road racing or baseball and not soccer because they know oval racing and baseball and they don't know road racing or soccer.

As for nationalism, the Italians get to be happy because Ferrari is winning. The Germans get to be happy because Schuni is winning. The Brasilians can still bask in Senna's memory for a few more years and that Baricello fellow isn't doing too badly either. The Brits get to sit by their TVs in hopes that the Ferraris will break down so that a Williams or a McLaren can win. And, of course, most countries that host F1 can't also host a CART road race. In Australia, the CART Surfers Paradise event has been extremely popular despite having the supposedly superior F1 also available to them and it's not just vacationing Yanks in the stands at Surfers Paradise.

 

To change the topic a bit. What do you all think of the modifications to the Hockenheimring.

To be honest the circut is not bad. Better than many in F1 (Hungaroring).

However, this was not just any circut. This WAS Hockenheim, one of the most unique circuts in F1 and they ******************ed it up!

Damn Germans.

 

Don't know what to think about the changes. Was a nice long passage through the woods, but OTOH top teams with high speed engines even had a bigger advantage than on other tracks.

RESULT:

1 M Schumacher
2 Montoya
3 R Schumacher
4 Barrichello
5 Coulthard
6 Heidfeld

M Schumacher's victory was never endangered. R Schumacher was second, but short before the end of the race he had to make an additional pit stop due to technical problems. Barrichello again was the victim of Ferrari trouble with problems during a pit stop. McLaren couldn't go the pace with Ferrari and Williams. Only 9 drivers saw the final flag.

 

McNish will probably go somewhere else, if not out of F1. Rumors link either Frentzen, Alex Wurz (current McLaren tester) or Jos Verstappen (former F1 top prospect who never delivered) to Toyota for '03.

 

I think Wurz is staying on as McLaren test driver.

 

I found a good interview with Jean Alesi that also tells a lot about F1 driving. Alesi is driving German Touring-Car Masters (DTM) this season.

Q: Isn't it strange to have a roof over your head during the race?
A: Oh yes, there's no sun, but also no air and you're having a better view.
Q: Your actual car is having about 350 hp less than a F1 car. What was your first impression of your Mercedes?
A: Everything is different. The CLK is twice as heavy, but only has about a tenth of the F1 grip.
Q: Is it easier to drive a DTM car?
A: No, much more difficult. In F1 today everything is working automatically.
Q: Did you have to change your style of driving?
A: You've got to drive softer. I think I didn't have as many turn-arounds in all F1 years as in the test drives before the first DTM race.
Q: Is it a big difference between DTM and F1 weekend?
A: In F1 everything is about motor tuning, tire choice, electronics and the wings. You've got endless variation possibilities. That's why one meeting and briefing chases the other from Thursday until Sunday. In DTM the engine is not allowed to be changed, the whole weekend is less tensed.
Q: Which DTM pilots could drive F1?
A: I don't know.
Q: And vice versa?
A: I just see four drivers who could win in the DTM.
Q: How does your career go on? Is America a topic?
A: I was watching the races there. But all interesting cars were occupied, same for next year. But the level is the same as DTM, so why should I change?

 

Nothing special, they just wanted to know whether he wants to drive in some US car series.

 

Joe

I agree with a certain amount of what you have said but this comment I must dissagree with.
CART & IRL had to have the "soft wall" as the cars race right next to the wall and the wll is needed to stop cars spinning off.
In F1 the technology to slow cars down once they leave the track is more subtle ,e.g. sand to slow cars down, tyre walls, etc.

The soft wall idea is more relevant whan a car is racing right next to the wall and you cannot have the slowdown area between a wall and the track. This happens in Oval racing but in open track racing the slowdown area is a better bet.

 

Ever been to Imola or Montreal or Hockenheim or any of several F1 tracks where there are high speed areas with no room for the "Kitty Litter" and where the tracks still have the same barriers like the one where Senna died? F1 needs the "soft wall" at several tracks but why haven't they mandated it yet? Instead, we get endless chicanes and tracks that seem to be designed to make it impossible to pass.

 

Wow, a whole five page thread where I agree with nearly everything joseph has to say. Bravo!

 

I read an article called "Week of rumors". This is what might happen this week:

- Arrows is close to be sold. Former BAR boss Craig Pollock is expected to get the team. Two US-Americans are his sponsors: one was earning his money by building power plants in California, the other one is member of a whisky-dynasty. Austrian beverage producer 'Red Bull' seems to be out of the race. They wanted to buy the team and hire two American drivers to improve their position on the US market.

- Current Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw is expected to replace Niki Lauda at Jaguar.

- Minardi is giving a two races break to Alex Yoong. Jos Verstappen might replace him. Yoong's contract could be quitted by Minardi (didn't qualify for 3 races - 2 were allowed in the contract), but they need the sponor money. On the other hand Prince Walid from Saudi-Arabia thinks about adding Minardi to his shopping cart and this would probably mean the end for Yoong in the F1.

 

If Pollock buys Arrows, that would probably put Jacques Villeneuve in an Arrows ride next year, no?