The Official 2017 Formula One Season *Bahrain Results*

gav Wrote:
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> but from the point he got in a Ferrari he was fantastic,


At that time was Ferrari the best car in the F1 circus, would be a shame if he didnt point.

ocon number 31 not 34.

Quote
landex
At that time was Ferrari the best car in the F1 circus, would be a shame if he didnt point.

I was more referring to his performances compared to the most successful driver in F1 history.

@gav: regarding what you said about McLaren's finances, now that I take a look at it again I think you´re right, they´re not in a so desesperate situation.
It still is somewhat strange to me that they´ve lost so many sponsors to rival teams in just 2-3 years. But I agree with you that they´ll work it out soon.



@landex: Well, if Massa is the worst driver ever, in which category do we have to include drivers like Ricardo Rosset?

Massa isn´t one of the greatest, but he is a good driver and a great team player. Only Schumacher has more starts with Ferrari than him. You cant achieve that if you´re a bad driver. Maybe one can argue he had great cars in his hands with that mid-2000´s Ferraris, but he achieved what he achieved with Schumacher, Kimi and Alonso as teammates. Compare his results with other no.2 drivers and you´ll get what I mean. He isn´t less than a Webber, a Coulthard, a Berger or a Barrichello.

Pascal Wehrlein reaches deal with Sauber for 2017.

Quick question for anyone who knows their stuff, is it written in the rules that the new rear wing needs to slope backwards? I hate that look, it's bloody stupid, reminds me of the A1 cars. Similarly, when viewed from above are the front wings going to be "V" wings as well??

I really hope not.



[www.thisisf1.com] <----------- article from F1 Racing website this is F1.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2017 07:37PM by Laton.

Im im not mistaken it is in the rules.

The rear wing endplates are something that caught my attention. They roughly (and I mean,roughly) reminded me of the mid and late 70s, mostly the Lotus from 1979. So I looked a littlo into it a while ago. If i remember correctly the bottom of the endplate must start in line with the rear wheel center line, while the top of the endplate must begin like 20cm behind. It was something like that.

Regarding the deltoid shape of the front wing, I guess it has something to do with mantaining the current distance between the wing and the front tyres, now ith a larger nose. What I don´t really know is how is it written, though.

Honestly, I think the changes are not so awful but they´re just trying too hard to make the cars look futuristic. It would have been nice if they gave the teams more freedom to go with different approaches. but thats a little utopic isn´t it?





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2017 06:00AM by Frantic.

Added the "Live on:" for each track (UK channels - Sky Sports F1 UHD and Channel 4HD).

Manor Racing is now in administration and after talks with American investors (led by race promoter Tavo Hellmund) proved unsuccessful, it seems unlikely that they will make the grid for 2017.

Sad to see them go, their fate was sealed with Sauber's points in the later stages of the season. But they never really looked like improving and are the final nail in the coffin of the three failed new ventures from 2010 or whenever it was.


In other news, Mclaren released a graphic thing on their Facebook group today which seems to confirm that the front wing will have diagonal sloping wings as will the rear wing. I really hate that look! I hope I'll get used to looking at them.

Isn't it sad to know that the sport will only ever get worse from here on in?
The best period for me was the 1990s, the sport was filled with great characters and all time greats, fantastic rivalries, beautiful cars by and large without lots of aero bits, natural overtaking, amazing v8, v10, v12 engine sounds and a core of brilliant tracks before they were to be sanitised/emasculated.

It's only going to head more towards being eco friendly, move away from traditional venues, and be used as a vehicle to sell cars. Privateers will be priced out and the manufacturers will dictate the formula to better sell their eco friendly cars with all the trickle down, energy saving technology

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Tahitian GP Circuit
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Easter Island Circuit
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In many ways I agree. I look at the nineties era through rose tinted specs as it was the era which inspired me as a seven or eight year old boy. Beautifully sleek looking cars which were quite frankly an assault on the senses with characters to match. I loved it.

I've only watched the current hybrid cars from the trackside once, which was the post British Grand Prix test... and although (too much info alert) my waxed out ears may have played a part I simply couldn't hear the buggers. They are extremely underwhelming to watch trackside and I sincerely doubt they would have caught the imagination of the eight year old me.

That's part of the problem with F1 today. Combined with absurd politics and the ultimate fact that it doesn't know what it wants to be. It's very difficult to love it in the way I once did.

Initially I was excited at the prospect of the hybrids.. I thought it'd make the technology more relevant. But it hasn't really. And worse the excitement has been systematically engineered away.

If we cast an honest eye over it, has F1 ever really been relevant? Almost certainly not. Does it really need to be?

Well I don't believe so. If it's future automotive technology which floats your boat then look no further than Formula E. For it boasts quality entrants and drivers coupled with an influx of manufactures focused on the future of electric propulsion.

If F1 really wants to regain some of its allure then it needs to sort out the rediculous revenue distribution.. firm up some expedancy control and open up the regs to reintroduce some variety whilst welcoming back some normally aspirated fuel guzzling ear splitting excitement.

Frankly... I'm fed up of hearing about the thousands of combinations of engine settings available from the steering wheel of an F1 car. Honestly if I'd wanted to spend my Sunday watching someone pilot the starship @#$%& enterprise from a touchscreen then I'd put on Star Trek.

It's the analytical nature of F1 now. There are sensors for everything and the management of tyres is at a bonkers level.

Half of the fun of F1 in the past was the unpredictability of it - that's why we love all sport - but that has all gone now, either in terms of the fastest car or reliability.

We've said it for years, but give them a steering wheel and pedals (I'll even let them keep the semi-auto boxes) and pretty much leave it at that. One basic engine map so the drivers are having to manage that torque and not the car, and the diff switch should have two settings - one to race and one to lock the diff to bring back a car with a puncture.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2017 06:28PM by gav.

J i m Wrote:
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> Initially I was excited at the prospect of the
> hybrids.. I thought it'd make the technology more
> relevant. But it hasn't really. And worse the
> excitement has been systematically engineered
> away.
>
> If we cast an honest eye over it, has F1 ever
> really been relevant? Almost certainly not. Does
> it really need to be?

Newey said in a recent interview, that the whole hybrid thing was sold under the guise of translation of technology to road cars. But he doesn't believe it all. He considers it to be marketing. As he pointed out, if it DID translate into road car technology, then we should expect the manufacturers that take part in F1 to hold global dominant technological positions over those manufacturers that are not in F1 in the next few years to come. He is sure that we won't see that.

That being said, there have been a lot of things that was invented in F1, that has migrated to road cars. A lot of them are now banned driver aides. I dunno. The problem really is that F1 wants to be the pinnacle of motorsport technology. On the other hand, if it is, how do you stop the driver from becoming irrelevant, and is it even possible to produce F1 cars any more, that are fiery brimstone monsters from the depths of hell itself? Formula E could well become the future of F1. Personally, I just find electrical cars to be extremely underwhelming.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

When the hybrid regulations were drafted I don't know if anyone could have predicted Formula E's rise, even if it has some very annoying quirks.

Also, F1 and motorsports generally needed to try and take the lead with efficiency considering it could have been easily made a scapegoat regarding energy usage. Perhaps this issue is not quite as pertinent now with the oil price dropping but if my timeline is correct that was hard to predict back when the regs were being created.

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X (@ed24f1)

The rise of Formula E, perhaps not... the death of the internal combustion engine, yes for sure. Why do you think manufacturers wanted to go hybrid in the first place with minuscule v6's in the first place? They want to push the product, by establishing some imaginary connection between the car you see on TV and on track, and the car you see in the dealer's lot. It is about pushing sales. In the market of road cars, v12s are dead, v10s are dead... and v8s are dead. We are not going to see them in the future, except on niche type cars that going to be very expensive. It is only a matter of time before the current v6 1.6L is dead too, and in the not so distant future, the internal combustion engine altogether.

So where does this go, if F1 is defined as the technological pinnacle of motorsports AND road car relevant. Well for one thing, to engines that have no internal combustion at all. Electric is probably where it is gonna go, barring some unforeseen breakthrough in some other technological field. Which means Formula E. Maybe not the current Formula E, but something along the line of that technical regulation for the propulsion of the cars.

As for road car relevance, I don't think people really understand just how close we are to a present day, where NOBODY is going to be driving their own cars. We see these examples of AI cars making poor choices and doing silly mistakes. And sometimes people even get hurt. But the framework for the AI decision making on the stance of danger to humans and choice in difficult situations, has been laid down in philosophy and ethics decades ago. Most of these problems are handled by Trolley examples and this a field that has received enormous amount of attention before anyone really thought of AI cars. AI cars might make silly mistakes, and they might get people hurt, but that is actually irrelevant to the case.

Private motoring is the 9th leading cause of death globally. People driving cars kill 3,287 a day 1.3 million globally, and additionally 20-50 million are injured or disabled. AI doesn't have to be perfect to drive cars. It just has to be statistically BETTER than humans before it begins to save lives. And once that happen, things will move FAST.

An F1 franchise with technological pinnacle of motorsports AND road car relevancy as it's self-definition, self-identity and self-explanation to the world will find itself in the puzzling paradox, that it will be forced to either EJECT these values, or accept that F1 will no longer be piloted by humans. It will be a contest of AIs. Perhaps standard AIs and the contest is on the car hardware... perhaps a combination of car hardware and manufacturer AI. I don't know what it will be. But keeping this self-identity and defending humans as pilots of the cars will be impossible.

As to the image of being wasteful and polluting, I understand the point, but it is utterly ridiculous. And mind you, I am totally on the boat of having serious concerns that we may be on the brink or even past the brink of having fukced the planet for good. The thing is, 20-22 cars doing 1000 kilometers for 25 weekends (so we include testing) doesn't make any serious impact on anything. It is a tiny droplet in the ocean of pollution and energy mismanagement on this planet. What really matters is the 10 factories with massive computational power, extreme usage of rare and precious materials, massive energy bills, and the stupid amount of transport and logistics that comes along with the F1 show. What the actual cars are doing is nothing compared to the industry and transport that feeds the sport itself.

And for heaven's sake, it is entertainment. I promise you, every single medium sized stadium with grass turf has large machines that saturate worn spots of grass with UV lighting. Pretty much every season the entire turf of grass is cut up and removed, and then replaced with fresh turf grown somewhere else. And this speaks nothing of the massive bills for watering and the usage of fertilzer and chemicals to keep the pitch nice, fresh and green. And exactly how many people in the world of soccer do we see lament about this extreme waste of energy and water that goes on all over the world in every city that has a decent sized soccer team? Nobody... none at all.

The "green" image of F1 is not about being scared of the crowds not showing up to see the cars, or them not wanting to see it on TV. It is about SELLING the crowd a PRODUCT. There is absolutely zero environmental concern involved, only mass marketing to the fans... and looking at how the fans have received hybrid cars... they don't seem to like it.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

But... Soccer IS life ! How can you compare life with those utterly stupid things turning endlessly around a track ?

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F1 2017 technical regulations according to McLaren technical director: Tim Goss

[imgur.com]

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So, all the Bottas-Massa-Wehrlein thing confirmed now.


And Mclaren posted this today



Orange is the new predatory grey?





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2017 05:30PM by Frantic.

Meh frankly.... Upend a sack of salt. People have been getting excited about a non coming retro McLaren livery for years.