TBK-Light.com

Would he have won it however? Ferrari seems fast over 1 lap but on racepace RBR stills seems to have the upper hand.

so if Lewis sore back doesn't heal by friday could de Vries be called for backup?

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

So, does the FIA need to do something before a serious crash happens or someone gets injured? Or is it up to the teams (mostly Mercedes) to make a car that doesn´t bounce?

Discuss!

Nobody will change the new regs so quickly. Mercedes has to own up to the fact they screwed the design. It will eventually happen. As others have said, they are in the denial phase of the experience. Not to mention Russell is kinda outdriving Sir Hamilton all season so far.

_________________
07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

FIA should measure the potential liability that a car could cause injury (like when Lancia was using so much turbo boost that their rally drivers were enduring motion sickness) and if they see a driver could get an injury from regular driving (not counting bizarre situations like t-bone impacts or sudden deaccelerations) to implement new directives on how teams must work their cars

let's face it, there are no more Colin Chapmans building the fastest electric chairs in the world anymore

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I think the FIA need to mandate something pretty soon before these drivers end up with mobility issues in their later life for the pursuit of a few tenths on track

As much as people here like to pretend it's a Mercedes issue and don't want any changes because it might stop them being uncompettitive, if you take a wider view it's not just Mercedes that suffer from porpoising, Ferrari, Mclaren and even Red Bull, depending on what wing they run suffer heavily too

I also don't believe if the FIA were to mandate something (as it seems they thought was necessary) that it'd suddenly mean mercedes dominate again, they've made it clear the porpoising is merely stopping them from understanding why this car is so bad, not that the porpoising is making the car bad itself.
Red Bull are clearly the fastest team now and will have this championship won by the summer break it seems, so a team-wide ruling about ride height won't change much but cause drivers less physical pain which is what matters most at the end of the day
Safety comes first, the FIA can't be a sport that pats itself on the back about the halo, fire suppression measures and other safety measures they're implimented then have a driver in so much pain he can barely get out of the car.

And I realise you all hate Hamilton here but do you really hate him that much that you want to see him in that much actual pain to the point he might have trouble walking in later life? And he's just the one that's suffering the effects now because of his age, no doubt about it all these young drivers will ALL be feeling this in 5 or so years if the FIA don't do something now

In the short term, yes, Mercedes should just raise the ride height and be slow, but sometimes these teams and drivers need to be saved from themselves, otherwise none of the safety measures of the past few years would ever have been adopted by the teams off their own back, all they care about is getting a car around a laptime in the quickest way possible.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Anyway, a BAD RACE, as Baku always is without SC interventions

I think the race directors knew this as well, they'd prefer a boring race than one that has the level of action of most Baku races here, because it's MUCH less work for them by a factor of about 10

Congrats Max Verstappen, Formula 1 world champion of 2022

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I thoroughly enjoyed that race although Ferrari retirements made it less interesting.

McLaren pace pretty disappointing.

Their low downforce package last year was the best, with these new cars it's just about the worst. They were fortunate to salvage those points, without the Ferrari's going out they would have gone nowhere.

To quote myself from earlier in this topic.




Mercedes is the most vocal about it but their car also sucks. If they where 2-3s ahead of the field regardless of porpoising, would we hear them this much about it? A quick glance over the interwebs and "my back is so sore" is the new "my tyres are gone" for Hamilton. People have hard time believing him and calling him an actor when climbing out.

And I can get that. Halfway he complained how bad it was but still finished the race and a good pace. Would have made a bigger impression if he parked it 5 laps later tbh.

But others have said similar things. So where do you draw the line? And how do you solve it fairly? Would it be fair if Ferrari and RBR lose 1s and Mercedes gains 1s due to that change?
And does that change fall into the budget cap or can they keep it out of the books so to say? And in that case, where do you draw that line? The richer teams can sneak other updates in there as well claiming it is necessary.

A fix this season will be a shitshow on its own.

Mercedes got way ahead of themselves. They had two years to design this car, and instead of the amazing rocket they thought, they have designed a dud and now want the rules to be changed under "safety" as they know once that word gets branded around it makes it very difficult to argue against it, as you are "against" safety. It is the motorsport equivalent of "think of the children".

Do other cars porpoise? Yes. Do other cars do it to the extent they do? No. Is there a set up fix that changes it for Mercedes? Yes. It is called raising the ride height. But they don't want to do it as it means they will lose performance.

They just have to face up to the point that they have designed a crap car. The history of this sport is littered with cars that are "inherently" great, but are in fact shit.

Is this, isn't it? On some level, the team would rather physically damage the drivers than lose a bit of performance. We already know that it is affecting both drivers because George has been more vocal about it than Lewis.

Unfortunately, this kind of borderline recklessness isn't even really a Mercedes problem. Newey-designed cars used to be notorious for it, Justin Wilson never drove a car he could actually fit inside, and Colin Chapman was Colin Chapman. I think the difference here is that those cars had inherent design choices that made them painful, and Mercedes can literally reduce this in 10 minutes if they wanted.

Horner has said that if they were in Mercedes position he'd be doing the same ie. telling the drivers to publicly and vocally play up the safety angle. Not saying that Hamilton wasn't in genuine pain yesterday, but it's pretty clear what Mercedes are trying to do.

I think the FIA do need to step in, but like I said somewhere else they need to find a way of enforcing it which only punishes the teams who are suffering the most. I'll be very disappointed if they just introduce some sort of blanket ride height increase.

Gerhard Berger also complained a lot about being crammed in a car where the pedals were behind the front axle, and the teams didn't put the driver more to the rear as that could compromise performance

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

There are already accelerometers fitted to every car. The FIA already has all the data they need. All that's left to do is set a limit and chuck meatballs at any car which exceeds it.

_________________
Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

The issue is that by definition, a technical regulation needs to be blanket. Otherwise it's arbitrary.

What they could do is impose a "dose of maltreatment" the driver can safely be subjected to, based on health criteria like RtN hints to. That would impose only the worst offenders to act. It's tricky to define such criteria though, because accelerometer curves are everything but smooth or easy to interpret.

In other fields like construction, this ends up being a limit of exposure per day, vibration levels for jackhammer operators for example impose 20mins maximum a day per operator in some countries. But you can't really apply this to a GP, or Hamilton would pit it after a couple laps

He can only take sprint races

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

They just need to adjust their cars and go slower but safer for the drivers. Same stubbornness this as with racing in the rain, they need to drive slower but yet the drivers just go flat out and then complain it's undriveable. No it's not, if you drive accordingly it's fine. Same with the porpoising, set the car up accordingly. Imagine if the teams applied this same logic with other things. Every corner needs to be a flat out corner now fia, you can't expect us to lift and brake to take the corner. No, we go flat out and you need to change the rules/tracks so we can run flat out all the time.

Wouldn't raising ride height also mess up the ground effects package everyone's running this year? I'm guessing they'd become just about impossible to control in the corners, as far as following closely goes not sure if that would make them better or worse.

_________________

This is an interesting discussion, and similar to the points made during the 1970s when some drivers complained about safety. Some instances back then argued that you can always drive conservatively and build up to the limit, a bit like the riders at Isle of Man TT typically do still to this day, so why push for safer cars and tracks? In practice it's been proven difficult to apply, race drivers and teams will always look for speed instead of health & safety. It's a balance to be found.