Any sort of competitive championship welcome/needed. Even a few more competitive races would be nice - even some of the supposed closer ones last few seasons have been down to safety cars etc rather than actual racing.Don't particularly care for Alonso, but if Aston Martin are even close to disrupting the established order, I'll be cheering them on. A few different winners is only good for F1, especially with it being a bit of a closed shop nowadays.
Budget cap arguably makes it harder to catch up, though. No chance to just throw money at it if you get it wrong.Alonso a nice story but that's ominous for the season. Best car wins by basically a lap and that's with engine settings turned down for large chunk of the race etc.
Is there such a dearth of engineers / designers that the other 9 teams just can't find the talent to compete with the top team - particularly in a budget capped sport? It's a Mercedes situation again when you can have anyone in the 2 car and they'll finish runner up.
Agree with you both @tisza @Paul Anthony
I've always said to people for me its
Coventry City
F1
Football
But i really dont think i can even defend it anymore. The gap at the front is massive and bar 2021, has been for the front team for ages. That added to the drive to survive malarky and i just think its lost its identity now.
Even people who werent F1 fans, would always be Sunday lunch, F1 on to have a watch of the first few laps or stay the course if a good race.
I dont even know anyone who does that anymore. I love to sport but my lord its hard to stick up for it at times isnt it?
In season sure. But season to season ( with a ltd number of engine suppliers) the gap should be closing with a budget cap. There's (seemingly) no one special expensive item the RB has that other teams don't. It's how they put things together.Budget cap arguably makes it harder to catch up, though. No chance to just throw money at it if you get it wrong.
Same with engine freezes, no chance for a car to have the best engine but mediocre chassis and vice versa, where you are is where you'll stay, within a prior set margin.
Once it's set regs though, not really, as you still have to progresssignificantly more than the other team to overtake them.In season sure. But season to season ( with a ltd number of engine suppliers) the gap should be closing with a budget cap.
In season sure. But season to season ( with a ltd number of engine suppliers) the gap should be closing with a budget cap. There's (seemingly) no one special expensive item the RB has that other teams don't. It's how they put things together.
Mercedes had the edge for so long then badly went off the rails last season to let Red Bull gain an advantage. They should have the experience (and resources) to claw it back but don't seem close.
Ferrari can't get any part right - on or off the track.
Are we just going to have to wait until 2026 and the new regs to see if teams can close the gap?
Goes back to my original point is there really a dearth of engineering/ design talent to compete? Mercedes had a prolonged spell "beating" Newey but the exodus of staff 2021/2022 to Red Bull also damaged Mercedes.There's one thing Red Bull have that nobody else does. His name is Adrian Newey.
Goes back to my original point is there really a dearth of engineering/ design talent to compete? Mercedes had a prolonged spell "beating" Newey but the exodus of staff 2021/2022 to Red Bull also damaged Mercedes.
Aston Martin obviously found someone seeing as the "Mercedes b car" outperformed the a car today.
This is where the "budget limits competition" argument falls down a bit. Aston Martin take a Mercedes engine and complete rear end Inc gearbox and suspension. They give them to a Newey protege and he uses them better than Mercedes does - a cocktail of red bull theory,/design and Mercedes technology.Aston Martin basically took Newey's number two from Red Bull, their head of aero Dan Fallows, which is why their car ended up going down the Red Bull philosophy. Obviously helped as he had a good insight into how the Red Bull worked and was able to apply that to his own work on the new Aston.
In general though, I think there's plenty of engineering talent in F1, but the problem is Adrian Newey has one huge advantage at the minute, in that he's the only one left with prior working experience with ground effect in F1. Hence he understood the porpoising issue before the like of Mercedes and Ferrari, because he'd seen before it in the 80's.
Clearly Mercedes have been hurt by the exodus of staff they went through, and I think it might be inevitable there could be changes for them. Maybe they bring James Allison back for a more hands on role, as I think he's less involved than he was three or four years ago.
This is where the "budget limits competition" argument falls down a bit. Aston Martin take a Mercedes engine and complete rear end Inc gearbox and suspension. They give them to a Newey protege and he uses them better than Mercedes does - a cocktail of red bull theory,/design and Mercedes technology.
Red Bull closed the gap when Mercedes know-how joined the team.
Mercedes persisting with a flawed design from last year shows gaps in management and technical leadership. They've obviously got the pieces just not putting them together properly.
Looks like Leclerc is taking a grid pen in Suadi.
He’s on about the difference when they open the DRS
Im developing a vague interest in the sport. Shouldn’t DRS just be stopped? I assume it’s a wind drag so cars with superior pace and torque can just glide away from the car in front? Without it you’d surely have a fairer race
Problem with DRS is if they ditched it, the only overtaking would occur during pitstops, for the most part anyway.
Which, to my mind anyway, is why Ross Brawn was premature declaring these rules a success. One of the longer term goals was to phase out DRS. And that looks no closer to happening. That and the whole we won't have one team dominating the sport again. Well, Ross. That went well didn't it...
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