TBK-Light.com

Well done you lie in a category which you share with about 12 others. The other 500 million of us would rather keep that loud sound that F1 has had forever. Clearly you have never been to a Grand Prix.

So I guess you guys are pretty stoked about the tumors, then

Wouldn't it be easier to change the thread title to 2010 discussion?

It wouldn't be to hard to start a new one...

Where is the difference between this thread and the Silly Season 2009-2010 thread ?
Do we need two threads for the same topic ?

Silly Season was about driver changes.

This is about everything else. But the Silly season thread isn't really needed anymore.

Why not? There's still six spots open officially: 2xUSF1, Renault, Toro Rosso, Campos and Sauber.

F1 designers call for track changes

Sunday, 03 January 2010 01:52

Two of Formula 1’s leading car designers believe radical changes to circuit layouts are needed to spice up the show.

Red Bull technical chief Adrian Newey and his Williams counterpart Sam Michael agree that the major rule changes instituted in 2009 yielded disappointing results, but feel circuit rather than chassis design is the key to improving the spectacle.

“Fundamentally, I think the circuits are probably the biggest influence,” Newey told Racecar Engineering magazine.

“Everybody keeps conveniently forgetting about that, as it is deemed to be easier to change the cars than change the circuits.”

Michael reckons the switch to slick tyres and lower aerodynamic downforce in ’09 had some positive effects, and says the disparity in the amount of overtaking at different circuits highlighted the nature of the problem.

“One thing that hasn’t really been addressed at all so far is circuit design,” he said.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, why do you go to a race such as Barcelona where no one overtakes, and then take exactly the same cars to Monza, Montreal or Hockenheim and you get lots of overtaking.
“Those cars are exactly the same aerodynamically, yet on one circuit they overtake a lot and on another circuit they don’t overtake at all.

“It’s because of the circuit layout – it’s because when they lay out circuits they don’t look closely enough at the combination of slow-speed corners onto straights followed by slow-speed corners.

“This is something that the FIA are dealing with now and having a really strong look at.

“If you look at somewhere like Abu Dhabi, which was a brand new circuit, there are some very good aspects to that circuit, but because there were some pretty fundamental mistakes there, they need to change them before next year.

“There’s no point being sensitive about it – ultimately there wasn’t good enough racing in Abu Dhabi, and Formula 1 has to look at itself and ask why.

“You can’t keep putting all of it on the car design all of the time.

“Of course the car design has some responsibility for it, but if you went to every circuit and you never saw any overtaking, then you could blame it all on the car design.

“But clearly that’s not the case, because there are places where cars do overtake.

“So clearly this needs a pretty thorough look at. It’s something the FIA have taken charge of now, so hopefully we’ll see some good come out of it.”

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh concurs that much more attention needs to be focused on circuit design.

“You only need to do simple statistical analysis and look at where the overtaking moves are,” he told F1 Racing.

“If, say, we race on 18 circuits with 350 corners, then 90 per cent of overtaking moves in a year would happen at just 10 corners.

“You also have to look at the preceding corner.

“The fact that overtaking is focused on such a small number of corners clearly demonstrates that it’s circuit-dependent.”

The FIA recently hosted a seminar to investigate how to increase overtaking in F1 – attended by the sport’s dominant circuit designer Hermann Tilke, seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher and veteran Penske and G-Force designer Nigel Bennett – but few major changes are expected to be implemented for the 2010 season.

Happy 41st birthday Michael Schumacher

no shit sherlock's
http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=47588

bye-bye Tilke

Or make it simpler, 2 hairpins linked by 3 km-long straights. Every single country in the world would be able to organize a GP as all you need is a small stretch of a public highway.