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

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

#51

Post by mhh__ »

toyg wrote: post #37
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…

What, no mention of r/formuladank ? Once you look past the neofascist sympathies of moderators, it can be a pretty good source of content. All r/formula1 memes are born there first. The Alphamaxnova1 shorts were !

Formuladank used to be much better before the sport exploded a few a years ago.

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

#52

Post by mhh__ »

kqr wrote: post #12

This article failed to mention what seems to me like one of the most important aspects of the competition: team dynamics. Mercedes is the only team (as far as I know) that says things like "we win as a team and lose as a team", try to hold blame-free retrospectives, open collaboration between various sub-teams, and so on. Every other team goes for cut-throat competition between individuals. "You have to prove yoursel…

Mercedes talk a mean game but whenever they are under pressure they play just as nasty as everyone else on the grid.

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

#53

Post by mhh__ »

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…

There are HUGE differences in the cars this year. The mercedes literally doesn't have sidepods whereas all the others do.

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

#54

Post by lordnacho »

F1, from an excitement point of view, suffers from the same issue as European footie: unequal budgets. Every team is only really judged against how much resource they brought. Witness Man Utd, everyone is saying what an awful season they're having. They're in 5th place. Watch an F1 race and it's the same, everyone is on a money ladder and are doing well when they're up a little based on where you expect from their budget.

The truly interesting thing about F1 is hidden from sight: engineering. Yes, your driver matters a bit but if you have money you will have a good car as well, which you need to attract a good driver. I guess it's easier to exaggerate the importance of the driver than the dozens of engineers who are doing new things all the time. Quite hard to do a TV show I guess.

There's also the issue that driving is basically a plutocracy. You can't be a driver without huge, huge amounts of money. You _can_ be a driver if you've only got huge amounts of money. Either you have to be unusually good at driving so that someone sponsors you (an even narrower eye of the needle than pro footie), or you have to be unusually wealthy so that mom and dad can sponsor you. Is this a truly global sport? Top drivers seem to come from a small range of countries that either have a motoring tradition or absurd wealth inequality, or just rich countries.

Finally the races seem to happen in all sorts of places that are to motorsports as Qatar is to football.

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

#56

Post by toyg »

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…

> Like mercs for almost 7 years now

Uh, I think you mean "almost 10 years now". Hamilton joined in 2013, which is when they got second in WCC. They have effectively dominated since then.

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

#57

Post by macksd »

kqr wrote: post #17
basisword wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe what you see in Drive To Survive then you think the above (which is a big problem with the series). In reality it’s not true. Mercedes are successful because they had a huge head start on the new hybrid engine regs and hired one of the most talented drivers in history. Management is important but “we win and lose as a team” is marketing. The Hamilton/Rosberg era illustrated a lot of cracks in that mark…

Interesting! Do you have further reading I can look into? Do you know why the Drive To Survive authors would slant things this way?

Yeah just so you know that show twisted all kinds of things to add to the drama. More drivers speak out every season about how audio clips of them were edited to make them sound more adversarial to their team mate, etc. and they really don't feel that way. Look at the social media comments about it from fans, and everyone feels like they ignored the big stories everyone really talked about and just fixated on drama.

But a lot of teams have historically had this "we win as a team" vibe and done things like expect the #2 driver to obey team orders and give up position to let the #1 driver score more points and increase the odds of the driver's championship going to a driver from that team. I don't have further reading on this topic specifically, but if you're wanting to learn more and you're in the HN crowd, Steve Matchett's books are awesome and Adrian Newey's autobiography is also pretty good and covers a lot of the last couple of decades with a ton of cool technical detail.

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

#58

Post by mhh__ »

mauvehaus wrote: post #44
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.

Renault's mass damper was also banned on the basis that it was a moving aerodynamic device perplexingly, IIRC.

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

#59

Post by mhh__ »

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…

One of my favourite bit of cheekiness was red bull turning up to FP1 with the camera mounted inside the car.

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

#60

Post by macksd »

chrisan wrote: post #39
basisword wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What F1 really needs is one monopost for all drivers when only driving skills will make difference and not how much money will someone throw at car R&D. That would no longer be F1. There are lots of other categories that follow that formula (e.g. F2/3 and IndyCar) if that’s what you’re looking for. Engineering genius is an important part of F1, even historically (e.g. the “fan car”).

The problem is we don't need a full race to see engineering genius. Certainly not a full season. I've been watching F1 since Senna burst out. Naturally as a kid I loved seeing him win and could care less about most other drivers of the time, certainly the bottom half. As an adult however, I wish things were more equal. F1 could do with less of a gap between the poor and rich and showcase drivers who have to constantl…

But there are already series that do that, and they've been doing it more and more. And honestly even in those series' it's hardly a surprise which teams are finishing at the top all the time because they snag the most expensive drivers and just have a more well-oiled operation.

Why can't there be 1 open-wheel series that is more about the engineering?

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