TBK-Light.com

Thanks for the correction, I'd forgotten about Porsche and Yamaha. I wouldn't necessarily call the Ferrari V12 successful. It is the most famous for sure. They had a handful of wins in 1990 and challenged for the title, but other than that it was pretty unreliable and achieved little before the switch to V10 in 1996. Honda was the only successful V12 and even then that was only in 1991. After the reliability issues and uncompetitiveness in 1992 Honda quit entirely.

As for the Lambo V12 and suggestion Ayrton would have stayed with McLaren for 1994, what's that based on? I've never heard or read that suggestion before.

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maybe he had more faith in Lambo than in Peugeot. Only real memory of Peugeot is Brundle roasting the guy behind him at Silverstone

From what I can find Ayrton had said the Lambo had potential but needed more power and wasn't very sophisticated. That's about it. However when you consider that he had been pursuing a drive at Williams since 1992 I find it to believe that he was willing to give up something he'd been working towards for well over a year for something that was a largely unproven commodity. Given I've followed F1 very closely for 25+ years, this suggestion is something I've never come across. I'm very interested to know the validity of the statement as I know Chrysler were looking to fund the project at the time.

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

once I read that the Porsche V12 engine on the Footwork was just 2 TAG V6 engines without the turbo, so it was heavy and underpowered, a failure

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

He was also apparently so impressed with the Chrysler/Lamborghini V12 that he wanted to race with it for the final 2 races of 1993 but Ron Dennis said no.


During the Senna programming on Sky a few months ago Ron Dennis said that when Senna found out that McLaren had factory Peugeot engines for 1994 he told Ron that he would have stayed if they had done the deal sooner because he felt the only way to win more races/championships was to have a factory engine deal.

Here are a bunch of photos from the new grade 1 track being built in Thailand and will host a round of the Japanese Super GT championship in October

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 919&type=3

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


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

What's wrong with hookers?

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Can somebody please explain to me how this is not the case presently?
The nature of competition is that there is competition. That means strengths and weaknesses. Whay you are describing is the opposite of competition. It's called spec racing.

Where are these numbers coming from? It's not like the teams are going to make that information public. Mercedes is the largest luxury car manufacturer in the world. They have big money and governmental support from a strong economic power like Germany. Red Bull is the biggest energy drink brand in the world. McLaren has obviously suffered from losing Mercedes. Williams is, admittedly, outperforming others at the moment.

Mercedes clearly has an upper hand this year. It's not because they are spending less money. Ditto with Red Bull. Ferrari is still raking in tobacco money. That's billions right there. But the team has no structure. So no, money alone will not guarantee success. But lack of money will almost always guarantee that winning will be close to out of reach.

Racing is not about cutting costs. Racing is not about making the driver's job more complicated (I didn't say we're making it easier). Racing is, on the other hand, about cutting-edge. Hybrid technology might very well be the "future" of street cars. Guess what else is? Self-driving cars! Why don't we just cut the crap and make the cars drive themselves while the driver pedals to keep the KERS system going. That's a real test of innate and learned driving ability!

Stop defending Formula One. I watch numerous races and I enjoy racing even when it's dull, or even when I don't agree with the organizers' idea of racing. That doesn't mean that I have to agree with your standpoint, and it doesn't mean I'm ignorant. I just prefer internal combustion engines. It's a personal choice. Talk to the people designing engines today. See what they have to say about the intangibles and character of the power plants. Wait, they don't care about that anymore. Now we just have to make the engine run while connected to 9,000 computers. It's not impressive to me.

And yes, I suffer from serious rose-tinted syndrome. But I have revisited the late 90's-mid 00's era many times. I would still consider that the pinnacle for me. This is my opinion because this is a forum for discussion and that is why the site exists. If you don't agree with my opinion, then fine. But please don't act like I'm being ignorant by having personal preferences or differences in taste.

Teams spending...
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1927 ... of-control

http://www.formula1blog.com/people-even ... formula-1/

Here's also driver's salaries...
http://www.crash.net/f1/news/191002/1/f ... -most.html

These are just a few of the sources available and that are published yearly.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
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Those are nice looking numbers. But how do they reach those conclusions? Who "publishes" the information? Are they affiliated in any way with grand prix motor racing? Affiliated with auto manufacturers? Affiliated with Bleacher Report? My point is, I don't know whether they have an agenda. I also do not know if they used consistent and verifiable methods for determining those numbers.

I'm sorry. I should be more specific.

Sure, Williams is a publicly listed company. What about the other teams? I'm not a sponsor or affiliated with any of the teams. So I'm not privy to that information. You said it yourself, it's for the shareholders, not the general public.

I prefer a gasoline-powered engine that is naturally aspirated OR forced induction via turbo OR forced induction via supercharger.

I do not prefer hybrid cars. I do not and will never agree that hybrids are "the future". Have you ever felt the weight of those battery packs? Do you know what kind of damage to the environment that creating all of these hybrid units inflicts? Hybrids are bad for the environment, good for business. Plain and simple.

When the Toyota Prius first came out, it did not sell well at all. So that argument is invalid.

I like that you are resorting to simple personal attacks on my character because you don't want to play nice on the internet. You have obviously never heard of using hyperbole to get a point across. I didn't just seriously suggest pedal powered Formula One cars. This should be obvious given the context of my post.

I have news for you: affordable self driving cars for everyone might very well be 50 years away. Guess what? There are self-driving cars driving legally right now in the United States. Right now.

Do you really think Formula One race cars are the reason we are running out of oil? If so, you should do some research about the usage of oil for commuter and personal vehicle purposes worldwide, as well as for home heating. Formula one is a drop in the bucket by comparison.

"Everything else is sensors that relay information" isn't exactly a technical description. Would you care to elaborate more about those "two" computers? Did you know that if a computer can multitask, then it may essentially perform the tasks of several computers at once? Therefore making the whole two computers thing a moot point. Do you know how to warm up an F1 car? I think if it was so simple, then you should know how to do it. Right?

Notice that not once during this discussion, have I labeled you as anything other than an equal. We are all motorsport fans here.

I don't appreciate the personal remarks. Anyone who can read this should damn well know that I am not "insanely ignorant". "Insanely ignorant" is a term, I feel, that should be reserved for a discussion more moral in nature. We are talking about racing. There is no right or wrong. There is, however, a politically-correct image that the sport of F1 tries repeatedly to uphold. The upper brass continually pander to the wrong crowd. Rich western European race fans aren't going to be around forever. Just like the hybrid cars that we understand and know today are shit compared to whatever happens when the next wave of battery technology comes out.

I'm tired of reading about how awesome everything today in F1 is. Yes, there is some damn good racing going on this year. They also took away a large amount of character from the cars in my opinion, rendering them unsightly in the process. Nothing more, nothing less.

If the figures are accurate, Williams and Force India are doing a fantastic job. Ferrari are underachieving massively.

Reading the Newey quote, sorry Adrian, but I'd MUCH rather F1 was an engine formula than an aerodynamic one.
At least then we have half a chance of the cars following each other closely...

Now if you suddenly want to switch it to being an engine and ground effect formula?
Now you're talking

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Whether it's hybrid or another means, fuel efficiency and/or alternatives to oil power *is* the future of automobiles. Whether or not we have passed the era of peak oil, I think it is pretty clear we have passed the era of peak *cheap* oil.

Since the late 1990s, the trend line on inflation-adjusted oil prices have only gone up. Unlike other forms of energy, all signs seem to say to me that this long-term trend is going to continue. Unlike other times of high oil prices (in the 1970s for instance), the cause of this does not seem geopolitical, but rather the drying up of some of the easy sources.

Unfortunately, barring some new miracle that allows easy oil again, this means that gas-guzzling, very loud naturally aspirated V12s probably are not in the interest of engine manufacturers.

That being said I do think that the rules package of F1 (as well as Formula E TBH) seems too "spec" and constrained. Maybe fuel efficiency is a good goal, but why not just dictate some minimum specs and let the manufacturers find their way towards the solution, instead of dictating the exact technology required? (Probably because someone feels more "specish" cars makes for a better show, for all I know...)

I guess F1 could stick not to hybrid, but to alternative fuels like biodiesel or ethanol. obviously only when fossil fuels run out

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

ethanol is a piss off here. they only sell gas mixed with sugar cane ethanol "to streghten sugar cane producers", but I can see is life span reduction in engines and increased gas prices

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

Er, is this really true? Indycar at one point for several years ran 100% ethanol, and for 40 years prior to that it used 100% methanol. (I think Indycar is now E85 last I heard.)

The biggest issue with ethanol I thought is that the most efficient cost-competitive way to make ethanol at the moment is to use food, such as sugarcane or corn. Which isn't exactly a great thing overall. (Alcohol fuels are indeed also less energy dense fuels but as I understand it ethanol / methanol engines are a bit more energy efficient and burn cleaner.)

Methanol is indeed derived from natural gas, but natural gas isn't likely to run out anytime soon as I understand it.

Assuming "Australian GP" means the city of Melbourne has done the deal to keep the race and not some other Australian location has designs on the race?

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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

And in Finland we have a brand called RE85 that has ethanol made out of waste. It does have that 15% of fossils but otherwise it's quite smart product. There's also a project to start producing bio-diesel out of trees and it's soon available for the markets.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."