Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 403 posts

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#61

Post by GuB-42 »

JshWright wrote: post #26
wombatmobile wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the automobile market transitioning to EV, it is inevitable that F1 will be rebooted as an EV contest. Expect Honda to re-enter then, particularly if MotoGP goes EV first.

So, Formula E?

Formula E is entirely unlike how F1 was.

The big one is that all drivers drive the same chassis and battery, and with strict regulations regarding the engine. Pilots may as well all drive the same car. They also added Mario Kart style boosts. This is a game, mostly intended to provide entertainment and show off the pilot skills.

F1 was as much about constructors as it was about pilots, and in fact, being a pilot was as much about tuning and working with engineers as it was about driving. Technical advances driven by competition between constructors made the sport.

To replicate that with Formula E, constructors should be able to make everything from aerodynamics to the batteries. Have regulations that allows for technical breakthroughs to happen, with the minimum amount of limitations to ensure the competition still looks like car racing and to allow pilots to get old.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#63

Post by [deleted] »

x87678r wrote: post #16

F1 isn't what it used to be last century. Races were nail biting epic contests, cars visibly improved every season, drivers were international celebrities dicing with real life ending risk, and passionate fans filled the stadiums. Modern races are just a procession of the same few people each weekend in global rich social events.

[deleted]

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#64

Post by zebrafish »

wombatmobile wrote: post #24
x87678r wrote: post #16

F1 isn't what it used to be last century. Races were nail biting epic contests, cars visibly improved every season, drivers were international celebrities dicing with real life ending risk, and passionate fans filled the stadiums. Modern races are just a procession of the same few people each weekend in global rich social events.

With the automobile market transitioning to EV, it is inevitable that F1 will be rebooted as an EV contest. Expect Honda to re-enter then, particularly if MotoGP goes EV first.

Formula E already exists. As a PR play, other power unit manufacturers may follow Honda. Volkswagen put a lot of pressure on them with their announcement last year. However, I don’t think (and hope) that ICE racing will go anywhere. The engineering challenges and reliability challenges are part of racing that EVs remove from the equation. I don’t understand why EVs can’t have their place as personal and commercial vehicles and racing can keep ICEs in competition vehicles.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#65

Post by dzhiurgis »

GuB-42 wrote: post #61
JshWright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Formula E?

Formula E is entirely unlike how F1 was. The big one is that all drivers drive the same chassis and battery, and with strict regulations regarding the engine. Pilots may as well all drive the same car. They also added Mario Kart style boosts. This is a game, mostly intended to provide entertainment and show off the pilot skills. F1 was as much about constructors as it was about pilots, and in fact, being a pilot was…

> Mario Kart style boosts

Yeah I'd much rather watch some sort of AI or RC game with random challenges like oil spills and bombs. Driving is boring.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#66

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

snuxoll wrote: post #37
x87678r wrote: post #16

F1 isn't what it used to be last century. Races were nail biting epic contests, cars visibly improved every season, drivers were international celebrities dicing with real life ending risk, and passionate fans filled the stadiums. Modern races are just a procession of the same few people each weekend in global rich social events.

Modern F1 has an extreme amount of simulation behind it that just didn’t exist last century. Whether you can make a car that is good or not is a factor of budget you can spend on engineering teams, wind tunnel time, etc., instead of what whacky idea you can come up with that makes the car better. Budget caps introduced this year will hopefully start to level the playing field once the 2022 regs kick in.

From what I see, budget caps and limits on testing reach the opposite of levelling the field: they make it harder for slower teams to catch up. So these days whoever makes the best car after big regulations change wins with little challenge until next change of regulations. First RB, now Mercs.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#67

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

snuxoll wrote: post #55
znkynz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether you can make a car that is good or not is a factor of budget you can spend on engineering teams This has been true since the 1970s.

Not to the degree seen in F1 since the start of the turbo hybrid era. Scrappy underdog teams could score wins with creative, out of the box thinking that was possible with a small budget. Today the only time you see a team with a budget less than Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull winning is because of some act of god during the race.

That's because of the emphasis on reliability, made worse by limits on components and a scoring system that makes it much harder to catch up after DNF. In the past a quick but unreliable car could get to some high place thanks to luck.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#68

Post by russellbeattie »

Guthur wrote: post #13
causality0 wrote: post #11

F-1 has always baffled me as a sport. Not that it's inherently bad or boring, just that there are so many motor sports that make it look that way. Same with NASCAR. I don't understand how an audience for those exists when, for example, rally races exist.

Simple, F1 and nascar are both races. Rally is a time trial. Generally I think people find racing more exciting.

The problem is that at the top of the leaderboard there's rarely any passing in modern F1 that's based on skill.

What I mean is, passing usually requires some sort of screwup or random external force (race start mosh pit, engine failure, flat tires, etc.) and rarely does it happen because one driver out maneuvered another.

Races can be exciting, but if the end of the race has basically the same order as the qualifying time trials, then it really doesn't matter. Might as well say the qualifiers is the race.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#69

Post by gsnedders »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #66
snuxoll wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern F1 has an extreme amount of simulation behind it that just didn’t exist last century. Whether you can make a car that is good or not is a factor of budget you can spend on engineering teams, wind tunnel time, etc., instead of what whacky idea you can come up with that makes the car better. Budget caps introduced this year will hopefully start to level the playing field once the 2022 regs kick in.

From what I see, budget caps and limits on testing reach the opposite of levelling the field: they make it harder for slower teams to catch up. So these days whoever makes the best car after big regulations change wins with little challenge until next change of regulations. First RB, now Mercs.

From next year, windtunnel & CFD limits are inversely proportional to championship position in the previous year.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#70

Post by AnthonyMouse »

zebrafish wrote: post #64
wombatmobile wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the automobile market transitioning to EV, it is inevitable that F1 will be rebooted as an EV contest. Expect Honda to re-enter then, particularly if MotoGP goes EV first.

Formula E already exists. As a PR play, other power unit manufacturers may follow Honda. Volkswagen put a lot of pressure on them with their announcement last year. However, I don’t think (and hope) that ICE racing will go anywhere. The engineering challenges and reliability challenges are part of racing that EVs remove from the equation. I don’t understand why EVs can’t have their place as personal and commercial ve…

The issue is going to be that racing is where vehicle manufacturers go to push the limits of their cutting edge technology. Which they don't fundamentally create for racing but for the versions of it that trickle into production vehicles. If everyone starts expecting the decline of ICE vehicles in the market, who is going to be putting a lot of resources into continuing to improve them?
Post reply on HN