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What depressing news coming out of F1 recently. I know I'm late to the party but I need to rant.
I can't exactly to it elsewhere so, pull up a chair or...just, you know, scroll on!

Maldonado's signing by Lotus speaks of serious problems with the money (or lack of it) in the sport.
Meanwhile the head of the sport busies himself with not fixing any of the important issues, instead proposes to make driver numbers bigger and thinks of ways to remove any semblance of overtaking from F1 races.

This stinks of Jean Todt all over. I'm sure the guy seems to resent on-track overtaking as too "crass" or something and does whatever he can to ruin it. That's how he ran ferrari and now it's how he's running the sport.

We may bitch about the DRS but I'd rather see 1000 easy straightline passes than 1 Undercut in pit lane.

What the fans want: No regulations, multiple tyre compounds ranging from the hard tyre that can run every lap reliably to the softer tyre that's much faster but will require changing. Would bring in good tast and honest racing.

What the FIA gives us: Allows the teams to continue their addiction to topside aerodynamics, ensuring artificial tricks like KERS, DRS and tyre life is needed to bring us aerodynamics.
Regulates 2 mandatory pitstops to ensure the majority of overtaking will take place in pit lane.

If I wanted a procession interrupted by mandatory pitstops and nothing else, I'll watch DTM.
Don't ruin the F1 action, which has JUST got sort of a good thing going after it was blighted by refuelling for so long.

Ok, I'm done!

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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

Vettel impersonating Jean Todt

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

He has too many talents, not fair!

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Here's the one of Marko
[youtubeidiot]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Symx3LfehHk&feature=youtu.be[/youtubeidiot]

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Autosport needs to broadcast it again.

Those indeed look silly to me as well, but that car is not helping it and maybe the fact it's not slicks make it look worse too. (and AFAIR, Michelin won't provide slicks to this series, just this grooved ones)

I just like the looks of the lower profile Firestones(not very low but still quite lower than F1) on the current Indycars

Race of Champions cancelled, due to the political situation in Thailand.

I think it's also a matter of what we're used to. I recon if it would be the other way around we'd think high profile tires look silly.

Return to those enormous 70's slicks I say. Imagine how batshit insane the cars would look

Brilliant Kinda sounded like Prost also

this


I still don't know why they say this kind of change would raise costs, as everybody will use the same tires

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

Just a bit of shameless plugging, but I have an 'awards' thing that anyone can vote for
http://www.f1zone.net/news/f1zone-net-a ... ing/21372/

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Cars with fenders just look more natural with smaller sidewalls than open wheelers.

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That guy has been making retro liveries again



*crisis*

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

So yellow, so perfect

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

So simple, so perfect (both).

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

I'm having an argument on Twitter so naturally I must paste and rant about it here.

Well, in short someone posted a picture of a potential Future F1 car with closed wheels and a closed cockpits.
I said "That's not an F1 car to me because it doesn't have open wheels"

I responded by saying if there was closed wheels, overtakes like Hamilton on Webber this year or Kimi on the Force India at COTA last year wouldn't be as brave a pass if there wasn't a risk the wheels could interlock and cause a big crash.
With closed wheels the overtakes wouldn't be as exciting.

This degenerated into a long conversation, the result of which was I got the notion that I was the only one that rated bravery as an important skill in an F1 driver.

I was stunned.

Is it a generational thing? Is the sport becoming so sanatised now that bravery isn't seen as important?

TL; DR Is Bravery and Open Wheeled cars part of the reason why you love the sport so much?

(TBH, if F1 went closed wheeled I might just check out. I tolerate it in Indycar because----> Ovals.
It makes their cars ugly as hell, it's slightly dubious if they do anything at all, (Right Dario?) but they have to try something, I guess)

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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 understand your point.

But it's a difficult discussion. Some of the biggest crashes have been caused because it are open wheelers.

but like you I think it is part of the sport.

An overtake on the Raidillon with an open wheeler gives me a real adrenalineshot. If it were closed wheels it would be less.

Bravery should be a part of racing in general. Not only F1.

No matter how safe the car is, freak accidents will occur. Even with closed wheels and a canopy.
I fear that some of the younger drivers somewhere out there don't know that risk. There is always Shift-R right??

I enjoy a low-speed drive or battle just like I would enjoy a table tennis match. For the sport of it, for the fun, the competition, the insane superhuman skills it involves.

But the Rush, the Adrenaline, the Emotion that only high-level motorsports can bring? To me, the strongest come from potentially life-threatening manoeuvers, because it talks directly to that primal part of your brain that fears for your fellow man.
Then you start breathing again and cheer after they made it stick, and IMO that cheer is 1000x stronger than that of your favorite team scoring a goal, because of the bravery involved.