Originally Posted by dansus:
“Also Bernie and the TWC are looking at pushing forward with 1000bhp engines, bigger tyres and less aero that we may see as soon as 2017.”
I fear that might be a bit too much of a swing in one direction.
It
was kinda fun so see the cars sliding around in the first couple of races of 2014 and I'm sure
somebody's decided that it'd be fun to see more of that.
Trouble is, in a series where the tyres are made out of tissue paper and the team have to make 100l of fuel last to the end of the race, it's in everybody's best interests to drive efficiently rather than spectacularly.
And now Bernie wants to add 1,000bhp engines into the mix too?
Pretty much
none of those ideas stand up to scrutiny however attractive they might seem at first.
More powerful engines sound great but, as I said, we've already got the 100l limit and we've got fragile tyres so nobody's going to create a beast of a car even if they
do have a 1,000bhp engine in the back.
Think of what "turbo's" were like back in the 1980's and compare that to what we saw last year.
Did you see the turbo's procuce
anything especially exciting last year?
It's the 21st century and car manufacturers are very good at creating software to make an engine run tamely and efficiently regardless of BHP.
Hell, even Barry can cobble together a 1,000bhp Skyline that can be used to go shopping in so F1 teams shouldn't have any problems.
Bigger wheels are
kind of interesting but I don't think the benefits outweigh the problems.
The most common assertion is that you can fit bigger brakes inside bigger wheels which might lead to more overtaking under braking.
Except that it's
already perfectly normal to lock up the current brakes so bigger brakes aren't required.
The weak link is between the tyres and the track and, once again, with fragile tyres the
last thing you want to be doing is locking up the wheels.
The other thing about bigger wheels & tyres which might seem attractive is that they offer higher levels of grip.
Trouble is that lower-profile tyres
also have more sudden breakaway and they're much harder to recover once they
do let go.
Sure, it might
seem like it'd be exciting to see drivers having sudden snap-oversteer but when that usually ends with a driver going backwards into the armco (or another car)
every time he breaks traction, it's soon going to become tiresome.
Far better to have smaller wheels & tyres which break away more progressively so that a driver has more chance to try and balance the car on the edge of adhesion.
As for less downforce, we're back to tyres and fuel saving
again.
Unless you plan to make F1 slower than it is, you can't reduce downforce without, at least, providing tyres that are more durable or relaxing the fuel limits.
If you reduce downforce without conceding any of the other things, all that's going to happen is that drivers will go slower so they can get to the end of the race using the current tyres and fuel allocation.
Wonder if this is Bernie trying to shit-stir by deliberately coming up with ideas which contradict the philosophies that Napoleon has put in place?