TBK-Light.com

and there's Indycar at NOLA

Remember that thread for the wet race at Montreal with the driver name rain dad jokes? That was awesome...

I wonder if F1 will survive this. And if it survives, what the outcome will be?

The thing that annoys me is when drivers complain that it's undriveable, but they're on the intermediate tyres. The full wet tyre is there for a reason. If somebody puts on the wet tyre whilst everyone else is spinning off on inters, they shouldn't be penalised by making the right call on strategy. Everyone else should be crawling back to the pits to put on the full wets. Obviously if everybody is on the full wets and still flying off the road, then a SC or red flag is sensible.

It reminds me of when Rubens put on the full wet tyre at Silverstone (2008?). He was the fastest car on the track by a mile. On that occasion, there was no red flag and he was able to make up loads of time. If they'd stopped the race or put out a SC, he would have gained nothing despite making a good call.

The threshold for "undriveable" is when it becomes a complete lottery that has little to do with driver ability and car setup. If people start just losing control on a straight line because 13% of their rear tyre went over a puddle and the accelerator was at 76% instead of 75%, it's undriveable, regardless if some other drivers are lucky enough not to be caught out by it.

There's also a point to be made that as long as everyone is reliably driving the limit of grip based on feel, it works and all drivers know what to expect. But if drivers are just slowing down to cross "river" sections on the track, not all will slow down the same. Some will always try their luck, leading to aquaplaning crashes, or to collisions at big speed difference (check out videos from CART on Road America 1999 I think, and that huge puddle after the Kink)

I still agree with the rest of your rant, and I think that for modern circuits, the threshold shouldn't be necessarily grip level, but visibility (both will degrade equally anyways). As we sadly saw last year, one of the rare ways you could kill someone in a modern single-seater are impacts with a stationary car, and that is a big risk in heavy rain spray.

Just wait out the race a bit, and race while the rain is slightly lighter. Donington 1993, or Monaco 1997, were acclaimed rain conditions that needed mastery, but they were perfectly reasonable and had visibility. Problem comes when they wait until the track is completely dry before releasing the race, which kills the spice of wet-weather racing.

Talking about silly cost-saving measures, I just rewatched Spain-1996 and it called my attention that there was an actual band playing the anthems, which seems no longer to be the case. The anthems felt much more powerful at that time.