Not trying to bash your favourite sport here...

[A.F.F.]

.. but man it's weird.

Btw, I made this crossover from F1 to WRC, hope you don't mind.

I'm not the biggest fan of F1, quite far from it actually but I do watch it occasionally. Like rallying, F1 is an equipment sport. In order to manage. driver has to be in a good team and have a good car. Everybody knows this.

But doesn't it consern any of you guys that with the radical resetting of rules, you now have the whole picture upside down? Jenson Button who was supposed to be a never-been as a driver is now unbeatable. And driver's like Hamilton, Alonso and Räikkönen are struggling to get in the top ten :confused:

Makes the driver's skill level to a new light. I mean, has Jenson Button been that good all the time? Or, was Hamilton success only because of the car ??

In rallying these gaps are smaller I believe. A driver is able to succeed with a lesser car if he is really good or has the advantage of knowledge and experience of certain rallies.

Seems that the indicator of good driver in F1 is to be at the right team at the right time :mark:


PS. having said all this, I think you F1 guys have a better or at least more interesting season ahead than us, witnessing Loeb's 12 win calendar :mark:

[methanolHuffer]

More and more apparent that the car/engine is the dominating factor.

F1 is among many sports that its star personalities don't match up with the hype.

Cars are the stars to me, personally. I could care less who drives them.

[Viridian Black]

Button has always been a class driver in my opinion, 2005-06 were pretty competitive for him, just in the last 2 years Honda have given him a complete shed of a car so he wasn't able to get near the top. I might be abit biased as i've been a big button fan for many years :P.

It is true that you need a brilliant car to be battling up the front, that why i respect petter even more this year with his hugely inferior car being in the top 4. Watch the super special in portugal vs sordo, the difference in acceleration is pretty big assuming petter got a good a start as dani.

[Charlie]

Button has always been a class driver in my opinion, 2005-06 were pretty competitive for him, just in the last 2 years Honda have given him a complete shed of a car so he wasn't able to get near the top. I might be abit biased as i've been a big button fan for many years :P.

It is true that you need a brilliant car to be battling up the front, that why i respect petter even more this year with his hugely inferior car being in the top 4. Watch the super special in portugal vs sordo, the difference in acceleration is pretty big assuming petter got a good a start as dani.

2004 was Button's year. 2005-2008 he was pretty average. Altough that was mainly the car's fault.

[UltimateDanGTR]

Formula 1 is a badly run, farcial, riduculous, expensive, political, biased, bad-blooded, bitter tasting, cheat filled, liar run, tosser owned joke of a sport. yet somehow, I love it. because formula 1 is the ultimate test of car, driver, design and science as one complete package on a track, much like WRC is a rallying version of it. Just F1 isnt always won by the same bloke and isnt predictable (no offence to WRC fans there-F1 was the same in the Schumi days) and championships go down to the wire, heartstopping edge of your seat stuff. the racing this season is brilliant, F1 is all about tactics, skill, speed, determination combined into one and whoever gets that combination right the most is the winner.

WRC isnt racing. WRC is different. not in a bad way, but F1 and WRC are two different things. to me Im not a huge fan of rallying because you never see a race, its a time trial. and from a personal perspective, Im not interested in that.

Instead i love the political, biased, bitter tasting, bad blooded, ruthless, tosser owned rollercoaster of a heart stopping, edge of your seat, exciting sport. Car and driver (although most drivers can only be as good as their car)
together in harmony (or not if its a crapmobile) racing for the ultimate prize: the Formula 1 world championship.

the radical resetting of rules does not bother me if they are for the good. some people are afraid of change, but change happens and is worth it if it is good.

Formula 1 represents everything wrong with sport. But F1 also represents all that is right with it. thats Formula 1.

[aryan]

.. but man it's weird.

But doesn't it consern any of you guys that with the radical resetting of rules, you now have the whole picture upside down? Jenson Button who was supposed to be a never-been as a driver is now unbeatable. And driver's like Hamilton, Alonso and Räikkönen are struggling to get in the top ten :confused:


Button was always praised around here, even in that dog of a Honda. Many people-in-the-know always commented on how smooth his driving style is.

Drivers are usually rated in F1 on how they compare with their team mates. Button has an old hand as his team mate. Rubens has been in this sport for so long that we all know exactly what he is capable of. To beat him, or not to beat him, becomes a good indication of how good button is.

Same is true for many other drivers. Fisichella was always praised, until he was paired with Alonso. Speaking of Alonso, he was beaten in 2004 by Truli, even though Truli didn't race the last part of the season for Renault. That's why IMO Truli is very much underrated, and I'm not suprised to see him up there.

And it is well established that even the best driver in the field can't do much in a mediocre car. This has always been true in motorsport, no matter which category you look at.

Most people would say that in F1, the car/driver combination has about 70/30 or 80/20 role in how fast the combination is. I don't know much about rallying, but I believe it is more "stock" than F1, where teams still have quite a lot to play with. The more homogenized a car, the more driver skill will play a part. Tha't why in GP2, the driver has much more say in where he ends up in the championship standing, than the car.

Personally, I don't care. F1 has always been like this. This is nothing new. Hill probably wouldn't be a World Champion if it wasn't for that Williams. But I still love F1. Much more than GP2. Much more than stock car racing.

[koko0703]

I agree that you need to have a right car at right time, but it is not everything. The competitiveness of your car plays a big part in any motorsports but you still have to be a good driver. If car is everything, Rautenbach or Matthew Wilson should be doing much better.

In current formula one, I would say top 10 drivers are not too much different in their talent. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case for current WRC :(

[Mark in Oshawa]

F1 is unique. F1 is corrupt. F1 is where the cars are the athletes. F1 is a lot of things.....but one thing I will just say is this: No one would get excited about this process if there wasn't flesh and blood controlling the cars from inside the cars. Remote Control car races dont' draw fans.

So the drivers ARE important, even if they are handicapped or sandbagged by poor equipment.

It is the reason that I often lose interest in F1 by mid season, for the top cars are pulling away from the pack by this point. It hasn't happened every year, and there is some drama for sure, but just doesn't grab me the way it should. It may be why I was a f1 fan first, but as of the last 20 years have been more engaged in Indycars, NASCAR and Sportscars....

[steve_spackman]

PS. having said all this, I think you F1 guys have a better or at least more interesting season ahead than us, witnessing Loeb's 12 win calendar :mark:

Yes it has come to the point that the WRC is a tad boring. Loeb has NO other driver that can match him. Should just hand Loeb the championship now.

[steve_spackman]

F1 is unique. F1 is corrupt. F1 is where the cars are the athletes. F1 is a lot of things.....but one thing I will just say is this: No one would get excited about this process if there wasn't flesh and blood controlling the cars from inside the cars. Remote Control car races dont' draw fans.

So the drivers ARE important, even if they are handicapped or sandbagged by poor equipment.

It is the reason that I often lose interest in F1 by mid season, for the top cars are pulling away from the pack by this point. It hasn't happened every year, and there is some drama for sure, but just doesn't grab me the way it should. It may be why I was a f1 fan first, but as of the last 20 years have been more engaged in Indycars, NASCAR and Sportscars....

I could never see the thing with NASCAR..watching a pack of billboards drive in a circle just doesnt do it for me.

Indycars..F1 on ovals ha ha

[mdesign]

It is true that you need a brilliant car to be battling up the front, that why i respect petter even more this year with his hugely inferior car being in the top 4. Watch the super special in portugal vs sordo, the difference in acceleration is pretty big assuming petter got a good a start as dani.

I think this video shows what you mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTK3y2eemf8

[MikeD]

Being at Anderstorp in 1977 to watch my first F1 race live. Experience the sound and the atmosphere is something quite exceptional. Unfortunately for many years it was hard to watch the races because of poor or no TV coverage - but from the mid 90'ies the TV coverage got better and more possibilities to read about the news other than the Autosport magazine.

I have been fortunate to work in both F3000 and in GP2 so I have also tried the hard work that a top formula series requires.

I can understand that people don't like all the politics, but I love all parts of the sport ... and to sit at the start/finish line in Monaco when 20-26 cars blasts of, are one of the few things in life that's better than having sex with a beautiful girl ;)

I also love rallying, but for different reasons.

[MrJan]

Im not a huge fan of rallying because you never see a race, its a time trial. and from a personal perspective, Im not interested in that.

:laugh: Have you not been watching F1 for the last umpteen years? Drivers set off at the same time but from then on it's a time trial with some pitstops. I love all forms of motorsport but given the chance of watching F1 or any form of rallying then it's the rallying every time. I'd even go and watch a local single venue event rather than commit myself to 90 minutes of F1 shaped misery. Don't fool yourself that this season has been exciting, there has been passing but not enough to even compare to even something like a 10 lap Mini race at Castle Combe.

Yes the championship in WRC is dull at the minute but the action out on the stages can still be exciting which is something that F1 just hasn't done over the last Idon'tknowhowmany years.

[big_sw2000]

:laugh: Have you not been watching F1 for the last umpteen years? Drivers set off at the same time but from then on it's a time trial with some pitstops. I love all forms of motorsport but given the chance of watching F1 or any form of rallying then it's the rallying every time. I'd even go and watch a local single venue event rather than commit myself to 90 minutes of F1 shaped misery. Don't fool yourself that this season has been exciting, there has been passing but not enough to even compare to even something like a 10 lap Mini race at Castle Combe.

Yes the championship in WRC is dull at the minute but the action out on the stages can still be exciting which is something that F1 just hasn't done over the last Idon'tknowhowmany years.
Yes give me a damp cold foggy muddy forest any day. With a 5 mile walk from the carpark, hours of waiting. Then you turn your back as soon as the car arrives. Mud and crap everywhere. God i just love it.
Monaco Start line. Or a Welsh forest in mid November, i know where i would be, and its not Monaco.

[V12]

I disagree - modern motorsport is not equipment oriented enough. IMO of course.

We have frozen engines, the threat of standard components left right and centre, so called formulae below F1 where everyone has to use the same car. Generally speaking innovation and technical variety are slowly being strangled.

What attracted me to motorsport in the first place was the fact that it was about both man and machine. Without the "machine" part it kind of loses half (literally) of its appeal.

As far as rallying goes, well the WRC goes, I used to love it separately for what it was, now it means absolutely nothing to me. When we had the RAC, Safari, and a whole host of other events in their classic formats, it was great. Since they became homogenised, they lost most of their appeal, much like F1 circuits but at least the 2 or so hour format has been in place for decades.

[MrJan]

Yes give me a damp cold foggy muddy forest any day. With a 5 mile walk from the carpark, hours of waiting. Then you turn your back as soon as the car arrives. Mud and crap everywhere. God i just love it.

Don't forget the point where you become convinced that your toes will never fully recover from the cold :D Oooh, now I just want to go and watch some rallying :D

[ioan]

I disagree - modern motorsport is not equipment oriented enough. IMO of course.

Agree!

[Koz]

I disagree - modern motorsport is not equipment oriented enough. IMO of course.

Agree!

Are you implying that you want twin-charged, ultra light, 0-60-in-under-2-second, rear engined, fourwheel driven monsters back flying through unsealed forrest roads being driven by fearless relentless demi-gods of gravel and snow??

I AGREE!!!

:p

[Tazio]

Not trying to bash your favourite sport here... but
Who cares? :s mokin:

[big_sw2000]

Are you implying that you want twin-charged, ultra light, 0-60-in-under-2-second, rear engined, fourwheel driven monsters back flying through unsealed forrest roads being driven by fearless relentless demi-gods of gravel and snow??

I AGREE!!!

:p
I AGREE, but it must be cold damp and muddy, in late November, maybe 1986

[wedge]

.. but man it's weird.

Btw, I made this crossover from F1 to WRC, hope you don't mind.

I'm not the biggest fan of F1, quite far from it actually but I do watch it occasionally. Like rallying, F1 is an equipment sport. In order to manage. driver has to be in a good team and have a good car. Everybody knows this.

But doesn't it consern any of you guys that with the radical resetting of rules, you now have the whole picture upside down? Jenson Button who was supposed to be a never-been as a driver is now unbeatable. And driver's like Hamilton, Alonso and Räikkönen are struggling to get in the top ten :confused:

Makes the driver's skill level to a new light. I mean, has Jenson Button been that good all the time? Or, was Hamilton success only because of the car ??

In rallying these gaps are smaller I believe. A driver is able to succeed with a lesser car if he is really good or has the advantage of knowledge and experience of certain rallies.

Seems that the indicator of good driver in F1 is to be at the right team at the right time :mark:


PS. having said all this, I think you F1 guys have a better or at least more interesting season ahead than us, witnessing Loeb's 12 win calendar :mark:

Part of motorsport is being in the right place at the right time. More so in F1.

Every category has become homogenised which means you have to be in the factory/big teams and its the same teams in contention year in year out:

IRL: Ganassi, Penske, AGR
NASCAR: Hendrick, Roush, Joe Gibbs Racing
GP2: Campos, ART,
Brit F3: Carlin, Manor, Raikkenen

WRC - correct me if I'm wrong but it seems factory cars have more chance of 'success'

I feel there's more ebb and flow in F1 because by its very nature teams are constructors. Look at McLaren for the last ten years, they've been up and down like a yo-yo.

[V12]

Are you implying that you want twin-charged, ultra light, 0-60-in-under-2-second, rear engined, fourwheel driven monsters back flying through unsealed forrest roads being driven by fearless relentless demi-gods of gravel and snow??

I AGREE!!!

:p

So you mean blasting through Kielder Forest then, and not a few pathetic laps of a Cardiff car park? :cool:

P.S. wedge's last post: nail -> head.

[chuck34]

I haven't read the rest of this thread, so maybe I'm repeating, sorry about that. But anyway, here we go.

The only true measure of a driver's skill in F1 is against his teammate. That being said, I think Button is among the best. He fairly consitantly out-qualifies his teammate. He doesn't always out perform him in the race, but that is because he loses some motivaion during the race itself. That is a knock aginst him, and why I won't put him in the top 5 all time. We'll see where he is after the year.

[chuck34]

Part of motorsport is being in the right place at the right time. More so in F1.

Every category has become homogenised which means you have to be in the factory/big teams and its the same teams in contention year in year out:

IRL: Ganassi, Penske, AGR
NASCAR: Hendrick, Roush, Joe Gibbs Racing
GP2: Campos, ART,
Brit F3: Carlin, Manor, Raikkenen

WRC - correct me if I'm wrong but it seems factory cars have more chance of 'success'

I feel there's more ebb and flow in F1 because by its very nature teams are constructors. Look at McLaren for the last ten years, they've been up and down like a yo-yo.


Exactly, you have to do well at the "lower levels" to be noticed by the "big teams". This is what I think 'ole Jens did fairly well

[callum122]

I also don't like the way F1 is becoming so standardized. I agree with making the sport even, but the FIA always manage to make such a complicated mess of it all. I would like to see how much money Bernie makes and how much money Bernie gives the teams.

I do enjoy seeing a Driver completely dominate his sport even though it gets boring.

I love F1, not sure how much longer it can keep its title of 'Pinnacle of motorsport' for!

[tmx]

Interesting AFF, I think I should stop watching WRC for this reason and start watching some F1.

[pino]

Who cares? :s mokin:

I do, so stop posting stupid comments and stay out of a thread when/if you don't like it !

[big_sw2000]

So you mean blasting through Kielder Forest then, and not a few pathetic laps of a Cardiff car park? :cool:

P.S. wedge's last post: nail -> head.
Being Welsh, i was thinking more of the mid Wales forests, Crychan SweetLamb etc. But ok, i can make the trip up to a cold wet muddy Kielder.

[A.F.F.]

Interesting. According to these replies it seems that F1 fans love the whole show over the individual factors like drivers, cars etc. That makes sense actually :up:

[slorydn1]

I have been a NASCAR fan for many many years, have only been following F1 since the mid 90's. Its a shame, I never did get to see Senna race, although I knew who he was. I knew it was a big deal the weekend he died because they were interviewing Dale Earnhardt, Sr about the race he was in and he made mention of it during the interview, seemed very upset about it. I decieded I should check this oddity (for us Americans anyway) called F1.

It was hard back then, almost no covereage here in the states to really mention, but I soon fell in love with the cars, and the technology behind them. I love both Nascar and F1 for very different reasons. In a Nascar race there is racing all over the track, you may have 2 guys fighting tooth and nail for 23rd place. In f1, its usually the same 2 or 3 drivers race after race who will win, but the cars themselves are the show. When the FIA decided to start neutering the cars because they were going "too fast" I said "Uh,Oh".

The FIA had started to drink the nascar coolaid. And, it wasn't just with the cars, either. They went to American style single car qualifying, remember that? Although today's deal is more exiting than that, i still miss the way it was, with the top teams sand bagging until the end of the Q session, Shuey would come in and nail the lap for the pole. The fastest lap was the pole sitter, not some contrived deal with race fuel in Q3 so the guy with the fastest car in Q2 could be 10th on the grid.

Look how they killed Hochenheim. That was my favorite track on the circuit. It was "redesigned" killing all the character, made to be a "cookie-cutter" no different from any of the other european tracks on the circuit, except for Spa, of course. More and More chicanes at every track "just to slow the cars down".

I could go on and on. No more V-10's, new "areo rules", single tire manuacturer all in the sake of saving $$$$.

This is professional big league auto racing. Its SUPPOSED to be expensive. Its SUPPOSED to be fast. Its like Jeff Burton has said when asked if Nascar should do something about one or 2 teams dominating the series. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, don't have the exact quote in front of me something to the effect that it was those teams jobs to kick everybody elses tails, and it was the rest of the teams job to get better and beat them back. I believe F1 is in the same boat there.

Im just afraid that with the latest dust-up with Mclaren, Diffuser-gate, and the FIA's handling of all sorts of things from the last couple of years , that the FIA is losing (and from looking at posts in other threads has already lost) all creditability wich would be a shame for all involved, most importantly for the fans like us

[jens]

F1 has always been mostly about the car, so I don't see, what the big deal is now even if we have an unusual pecking order and "unusual" drivers in front.

I actually like the change. Several drivers finally get a proper opportunity close or at the top, something they have been waiting for so long. It doesn't make them less capable just because they have had a harder career so far.

Competition was also a factor that made early 80's such a great era in F1 (for me, the greatest era). A lot of teams were competitive, hence a lot of drivers could really shine. We really didn't have a clear-cut so-called 'best driver', who has existed in people's minds in many other times.

[nigelred5]

Yes give me a damp cold foggy muddy forest any day. With a 5 mile walk from the carpark, hours of waiting. Then you turn your back as soon as the car arrives. Mud and crap everywhere. God i just love it.
Monaco Start line. Or a Welsh forest in mid November, i know where i would be, and its not Monaco.

Sounds like every USGP I ever attended at Watkins Glen in the 70's. It was so miserable some years, we used to warm our feet on burning busses.

I think F1 has gotten to the point where the race to have the largest most impressive hospitality area is the best race at the track. I don't think the changes were radical enough.

In almost every formula, ther comes a time when truly radical changes are needed to slow the cars and provide a new envelope for development. They really need to dramatically decrease engine output and over all speeds. Unfortunatley, F1 has declared themselves as the pinnacle of everything that is racing, and there are so many under categories that are within that margin that formula 1 needs to decrease the performance, that they don't dare make the needed changes for fear that they will no longer lay claim to the pinnacle of motorsports.

Honestly, they need to go back to the range of 500 HP and minimal aerodynamics and give the engineers room to grow again. the problem is modern race designers and engineers simply know far too much about the art of speed to make any change truly lasting.

[DexDexter]

Sounds like every USGP I ever attended at Watkins Glen in the 70's. It was so miserable some years, we used to warm our feet on burning busses.

I think F1 has gotten to the point where the race to have the largest most impressive hospitality area is the best race at the track. I don't think the changes were radical enough.

In almost every formula, ther comes a time when truly radical changes are needed to slow the cars and provide a new envelope for development. They really need to dramatically decrease engine output and over all speeds. Unfortunatley, F1 has declared themselves as the pinnacle of everything that is racing, and there are so many under categories that are within that margin that formula 1 needs to decrease the performance, that they don't dare make the needed changes for fear that they will no longer lay claim to the pinnacle of motorsports.

Honestly, they need to go back to the range of 500 HP and minimal aerodynamics and give the engineers room to grow again. the problem is modern race designers and engineers simply know far too much about the art of speed to make any change truly lasting.

That's just your opinion, in reality F1 is not in bad shape at all at the moment: the racing is good, designers have made innovations, the politics create a lot of publicity, the grid is healty despite the economic situation, all drivers have a good pedigree, no visible tobacco sponsorship....Why fix it if it really ain't broke?