Mar 11, 2016 12:14:25 PM
- easy_rider911
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Mar 11, 2016 12:14:25 PM
Same here. Sure, there were lots of battles behind the Mercs, even good battles between the two Mercs, but it just hasn't been enough to keep me interested. If there's at least one more team that can regularly fight at the front, then I'll start watching again. Until then, I'll watch about 10 minutes (if that) of each race like I've been doing for the past couple years.
That pretty much nails the problem. The way they have setup the rules and limited development and testing, if a team is lucky enough to come up with a clever advantage at a rule change, it becomes persistent. It's gotten even worse over time, with the teams pretty much (with a few exceptional cases) locked into a specific order, where most of the racing is between teammates, and even there there is often little overtaking because of the aero on these cars.
To make matters worse, every "fix" they are trying these days is a gimmick. DRS, the new qualifying format, the radio ban, etc. All of these things are designed to "mix it up" by introducing an element of chance or a false advantage. But fans don't want to see races decided by random and arbitrary factors, they want to see races won by great driving, and the more gimmicky, less honest they make it, the more people will be turned off to it.
I'm watching the recording of qualifying, and I think the new format is a complete flop. I don't think it achieves it's goal of making qualifying more exciting; not at all. If anything it's actually less exciting because drivers get eliminated in the middle of laps, so there's none of the excitement to see if the driver is going to put together a flyer and bump himself far enough up the order, he's just in the middle of his lap and he's eliminated; he goes out not with a bang but a whimper.
I really hope they revert this. Some people may have thought it sounded good in theory, but, in practice, it's awful.
Edit: And the way it ended with everyone sitting in the garage the last few minutes was ridiculous.
Shambolic and boring!! Very poorly thought through before being implemented. Some commentators thought it was a disaster and Martin Brundle suggested it should be "Put in the skip!"
Let's hope the previous qualifying format is restored for next week's event!
"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out."
It's sad to see how far F1 has fallen. It'll be saved, I'm sure, but how? There are a bunch of old men (mainly Bernie) running the show, and they're completely out of touch with reality. You have F1 refusing to offer a streaming package (paid or free). Meanwhile, the WEC offers a GREAT streaming package at a very fair price, and you have series like Blanpain and IndyCar that upload their races onto YouTube where you can watch for free.
F1 is just a shadow of what it used to be.
What was wrong with the old days qualifying? Give every team one block of one hour all together and that's it. There might be traffic slow downs and the fastest car might not be in front. The races would be better...
The previous three round knockout qualifying was pretty good. I usually went right down to the checkered flag in each session, with some suspense in Q1 & Q2 as to whether certain drivers would make it to the next round or not, and Q3 also often ended the same way for pole, with the track often improving (but sometimes deteriorating, catching people out) right to the very end.
This one was ridiculous. In Q3, particularly. The teams didn't think they could beat the cars in front of them, because they had already done their best laps early, so they just parked, what was the point. The worst qualifying session ever. A complete farce. What a disaster for the drivers, the teams, the fans, and the sport.
The worst change in Formula 1 ever, to date, at least.
Apparently, the teams told Bernie & co that this was what was likely to happen in Q3. But they went ahead with it anyway. I guess they didn't believe them.
(Probably, their strategists figured out this was the "best" way to play this particular game.)
The first 19 laps were the best racing seen for a long time - Shame that Ferrari made the wrong tyre choice following the red flag..
So glad Alonso is okay following that spectacular crash!!!
"Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out."
Yes, that was a big mistake sending Vettel back out on the super softs when they knew before the crash that Hamilton was on a one stop strategy. The red flag was a gift to them and they didn't take it; But what a start Vettel made.
I can't believe Alonso was able to literally walk away from that crash. His car was nothing but a heap of rubble afterward.
Some decent racing, although there'd be a lot more of that if they limited the aero on the cars. I don't know why they keep focusing on gimmicks and making the cars faster, when none of that makes for good racing, and the stuff that would make for good racing they go the opposite direction. But, glad to see them revert qualifying to the "old" format. I suppose this race will make for a good trivia question in 15-20 years.
Just for your information, they switch back to the old qualifying format.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/35850766
From what I understand, the original proposal (by Ecclestone?) was to put the winner of the qualifying on 10th start position, so there would be more overtaking in the race. The teams opposed that silly idea, but to do something they agreed on the new format.
Mar 20, 2016 5:39:52 PM
Quali with terrible, I'm happy to see that they're back.
As for the race, it was more entertaining than most recent races with lots of action I felt. Congrats on Mercedes, they seem to have the edge again in terms of performance, although this race wasn't really good for measuring the competition. As happened to Alonso, rookie mistake!! Ferrari too made a strategic mistake which cost Vettel.
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Well, that was a silly idea, too. Imagine that they reversed the Q3 order for the start, so 10th position is pole. The best strategy then is to sit in the garage and wait for everyone else to go out, see what time they get, and then go out and put in a slower time. So, basically, the cars would spend Q3 in the garage and then they'd all come out with just enough time to put in a lap; a game of chicken to see who gets nervous and goes out first. (Assuming you have to put a lap in at all.)
There is no qualifying gimmick proposed yet that will work to both "mix things up" and get all the cars out on track for the fans to see them running. They should just give up on these "ideas" and focus on what will give good, honest racing: limited aero, unlimited engine development, and perhaps requiring the teams to reveal their technology at the end of the season.
Imagine if everyone else knew at the end of 2014 how Mercedes achieved their engine advantage. They'd all be able to incorporate that into their own designs and innovate on top of that for the next season. It's a short window between seasons, so they'd have to work quickly, and it probably wouldn't erase the entire advantage that, for example, Mercedes had in a single season, but it would limit how long a clever innovation leads to dominance.
It's like the winged keel on Austraia II in the 1983 America's Cup, which gave the challenger enough of a performance advantage to defeat Liberty and take the cup to Australia. But, by the next America's Cup in 1987, Stars & Stripes 87 was able to incorporate and extend these design ideas and return the Cup to America.