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

Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

jorisroovers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#41

Post by nradov »

toyg wrote: post #34
dodgerdan wrote: post #21

Formula 1 is one of the worst offenders of Sportswashing, the practice of dictators and human rights abusers to use their money to buy good will in the sports world. And not just in Russia & Saudi Arabia, F1 is hosted by lot’s of other dictators, human rights abusers countries. Just like FIFA: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/feb/25/uefa-and-fi...

F1 lived for decades (and still does, to an extent) on money provided by tobacco companies. IIRC they even raced in apartheid SouthAfrica during boycott times.

OK but you have to admit that Ayrton Senna's car looked pretty cool in Marlboro livery.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#42

Post by sokoloff »

neoberg wrote: post #19
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80's and 90's was the golden age of many sports like boxing, rallying and football (the international one)

Good old days where people dying was a part of the sport.

By the 80s, F1 safety had improved significantly and the fatal accident rate was on par with today’s rate. The 50s and 60s held significantly higher danger to participants.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#43

Post by implements »

alkonaut wrote: post #10
dazc wrote: post #2

You missed the golden age of F1 in late 80's and the early 90's. Today's version is like watching a computer simulation where the team with the most money is almost guaranteed to win.

Teams aren’t really racing 10 teams against each other. The top 2-3 teams are competing, then there is a middle 2-3 teams competing for the spots behind the top pair or trio. There are drivers and teams that would celebrate a 10th spot more than one in the top teams would celebrate a podium. I think this aspect is important and the sport can be exciting if one accepts these conditions. A field of 10 teams where anyon…

> .. then there is a middle 2-3 teams competing for the spots behind the top pair or trio ..

Commonly referred to “Formula 1.5” (the Best of the Rest).

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#44

Post by mauvehaus »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #6

My favourite parts of F1 are the parts which don't occur anywhere near a track. The ingenious rule bending which goes into trying to get an advantage and the politics when people try to get it banned. Things like the f-duct where a driver used the back of their hand to close a passage which reduced the areodynamics drag of the rear wing because movable surfaces aren't allowed; the two pedal system which allowed diffe…

For those who aren't aware, the rules have banned movable aerodynamic devices for years (recent exception: DRS). The F-duct was so delightfully cheeky because it used the driver's body as the moving component in a system that would have otherwise been wildly against the regs.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#45

Post by mdoms »

jug wrote: post #15

For me also: community. I love the F1 community discussing the off-track banter, the drama, the memes, that has grown immensely since Drive to Survive. Here's a shout-out to www.reddit.com/r/formula1! It has maybe become my favorite subreddit on that site. Professionally moderated with semi-regular appearances of drivers or team representatives for Q&A's as well. Every practice session, qualification, race also gets…

/r/formula1 is one of the worst communities I have ever encountered. Every comment on every post is the lowest low effort garbage you can imagine and it suffers hugely from that tunnel vision effect where only one opinion is allowed per topic and anything deviating from the hivemind is quickly buried.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#46

Post by voqv »

jrimbault wrote: post #23

Is there something similar to F1 but with autonomous cars ? Just a race between autonomous cars, pitting teams of engineers directly against each other instead of via the human pilot. I guessed that would involve some pretty different design of the cars, since without the human much of the current designs around safety wouldn't apply. Cars could go faster, slow less, take more risky trajectories. There's RobotWars, b…

In addition to what other's mentioned, there's also this:

https://www.indyautonomouschallenge.com/

Idk if it's going to be recurring, but they had a second race for CES22.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#47

Post by chrisan »

Markoff wrote: post #11

I used to watch F1 back in 90s until beginning of 00s, it was interesting, there were not that significant differences between cars and you could see actual driving skills and overtaking, over the time it turned into siesta lullaby where overtaking happens at best in the pitstop and that's it, pretty much boring from start to finish and you really need to stay extremely focused to not fall asleep. What F1 really need…

> over the time it turned into siesta lullaby where overtaking happens at best in the pitstop and that's it

Data says otherwise, in general https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/nf4jkq/f1_overtak...

The late 90s/early 00s had the least amount of overtakes on avg

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#48

Post by macksd »

itsbits wrote: post #40

If you like F1 because of "Drive to Survive", I am sorry but F1 is not at all like that. I have been follower of F1 for more than 20 years now. But not because of only racing. Racing is just 20%. It's more a team game, team politics, engineering, team strategies etc that keeps my interest in F1. If you just follow live racing, I can guarantee you, it's more boring than 5 day cricket test matches. There are lot times…

Yeah a lot of these comments definitely sound like they are from a new fan who picked up the vibe from Drive to Survive, with its made-up rivalries and over-editorializing. I find the items laid out in the article to be some of the most untrue or frustrating things about the sport.

But hey if you're in the HN crowd / an engineer and this piques one's interest, I really enjoy the Tech Talk show with Sam Collins and following Craig Scarborough on social media because they both dive into the technical innovation (one might say "hacking" of the regulations) the teams are doing to try and eek out new advantages.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#49

Post by toyg »

neoberg wrote: post #19
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80's and 90's was the golden age of many sports like boxing, rallying and football (the international one)

Good old days where people dying was a part of the sport.

But that was part of the point - old-school motor-racing attracted the sort of (wealthy white male) characters who lived every day to the max, and hence were pretty fun to follow inside and outside the car.

Nowadays they're a bit less white, don't die or get maimed nearly as often (last death in 2015), but they have largely become a set of meticulous and obsessive kids who spend most of their life in front of simulators.

Re: Why I love Formula 1 (and why you might like it too)

#50

Post by macksd »

dgritsko wrote: post #7

This is a really good summary. Much like the author I was hooked by Netflix's "Drive to Survive" a few years back, and have since found myself watching every race hence (although I have yet to attend a Grand Prix). In case you're interested in checking it out, the first race of the 2022 season is this weekend and should be broadcast on ESPN in the US.

And if you don't already pay for ESPN, F1TV has a 7-day trial or $26 for the year (if you don't mind waiting 2 days after the race - there's a higher package that lets you see stuff live) that let's you watch on-demand and has a lot of content besides the race, etc.
Post reply on HN