Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

Post by toyg » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

eaurouge wrote: post #20

otherme123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The balance is probably around 90% the car and 10% the driver. In the years of RB dominance, a subpar driver like Webber almost got the championship. OTOH Alonso lost a decade in Ferrari and McLaren while being, tied with Hamilton, the best driver in the grid. The 10% of what the driver adds to the mix is what makes Hamilton champion instead of Bottas.

The ratio varies - I would say it depends on the car, teammates and team. But ultimately driver skill is what determines who gets to drive for Mercedes, Ferrari etc. So once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams or leaving F1 all together.

Post by kohtatsu » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:39 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #32

Watched a lot of F1 in 90s/00s, stopped after 2017 season. Current regulations make it very predictable. Most offending rules are: - limit on testing means that whoever makes the best car after regulations change will win until next regulations change (2010..2013 Red Bull, 2014.. today Mercedes), others have very limited means to catch up - scoring system introduced in late 00s rewards reliability over racing, and gi…

  25 vs 18 = 1.39x
   9 vs 6  = 1.50x
  10 vs 6  = 1.67x

Post by gsnedders » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #22

speedgoose wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it's not a case of selective memory? I remember old F1 races to be quite boring compared to today, if you don't care about who is going to win the constructer championship. It's perhaps not the best metric, but the number of overtakes over the year may remind you that before 2007, most GPs did look like Monaco. https://old.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/2charb/the_number...

Overtakes shot up because of DRS, which was introduced because reliability had gone up so massively that races had become too predictable. Before DRS, the 2000-2010 decade was ending up producing "Monacos" on most weekends. Pre-2000, reliability was more on par to what we saw this weekend (45% of cars not finishing), which made it much more exciting on average.

Post by actuator » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

OriginalNebula wrote: post #14

embrassingstuff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do u really feel an average/top driver can strategize during the race? The race engineer has X10 data, X10 mental bandwidth, and X10 domain practice (that's his day job!) There all these radio moments (Hamilton "how r we behind them?" after spinning out in Germany etc) .. which really makes it clear that the driver focus is very local (both spatially and temporally), as it should be!

Vettel called his pit stops in one of the last seasons and Schumacher was said to pull all the strings and that this was the reason for his success.

Post by eaurouge » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #31

eaurouge wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio varies - I would say it depends on the car, teammates and team. But ultimately driver skill is what determines who gets to drive for Mercedes, Ferrari etc. So once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams or leaving F1 all together.

> once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams That's not always the case. Eddie Irvine spent 4 years as n.2 to Schumacher pretty happily, only changing teams because Jordan offered more money. He was pretty spectacular on good days but nowhere as good as The Michael.