[thetinywanderer]

After the terrible accident in FIA is planning to get a new rule where the drivers are given instructions to slow down to a specific speed. What do you guys think about this? If they plan to adopt this plan how will they decide what speed the drivers should maintain and how will they ensure adoption?

[sudev]

One: This will be another nail in the coffin for F1 racing.
Two: Might as well red flag the race.
Three: All locations are not same for a yellow on a straight vis yellow on a zig zag

[Soumyajit9]

What the hell !! Who comes up with lame FIA rules ?
And why employ a person to wave a flag. They could very well put in a LED display inside the driver's cockpit and show red, green, yellow, double yellow, whatever colours they want to show.

I would say, remove drivers driving the cars in the race, put in some robots, let them calculate the speed, angle, blah blah and race.

What's the point of having a Schumacher, or an Alonso, if everything is so much controlled and computerized.

A practice lap is given for drivers to famialarize themselves with the corners, chicanes, approx speed, etc etc. When a driver has utilized a practice session, why limit the drivers to a FIA designated speed at a certain point.
Let the driver decide (or remember) at what speed should he cut a corner.

To be honest, this is my 4th year that I am not following/watching F1, and its gonna be like that unless we have some lesser computerization of the race.

[Hatari]

Originally Posted by thetinywanderer

After the terrible accident in FIA is planning to get a new rule where the drivers are given instructions to slow down to a specific speed. What do you guys think about this? If they plan to adopt this plan how will they decide what speed the drivers should maintain and how will they ensure adoption?

Originally Posted by sudev

One: This will be another nail in the coffin for F1 racing.
Two: Might as well red flag the race.
Three: All locations are not same for a yellow on a straight vis yellow on a zig zag

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

What the hell !! Who comes up with lame FIA rules ?
And why employ a person to wave a flag. They could very well put in a LED display inside the driver's cockpit and show red, green, yellow, double yellow, whatever colours they want to show.

I would say, remove drivers driving the cars in the race, put in some robots, let them calculate the speed, angle, blah blah and race.

What's the point of having a Schumacher, or an Alonso, if everything is so much controlled and computerized.

A practice lap is given for drivers to famialarize themselves with the corners, chicanes, approx speed, etc etc. When a driver has utilized a practice session, why limit the drivers to a FIA designated speed at a certain point.
Let the driver decide (or remember) at what speed should he cut a corner.

To be honest, this is my 4th year that I am not following/watching F1, and its gonna be like that unless we have some lesser computerization of the race.

This is to explore the feasibility of a virtual safety car at the event of a disruption in the race. Race control dictates the speed. This is just an idea, implementation yet to be discussed.

The steering wheels already have flag indicators in place - Red/Black/Yellow etc.

[thetinywanderer]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

A practice lap is given for drivers to famialarize themselves with the corners, chicanes, approx speed, etc etc. When a driver has utilized a practice session, why limit the drivers to a FIA designated speed at a certain point.
Let the driver decide (or remember) at what speed should he cut a corner.

To be honest, this is my 4th year that I am not following/watching F1, and its gonna be like that unless we have some lesser computerization of the race.

This is what is in practice right now. But the problem as seen in the Japanese grand prix is that different drivers slow down to different speeds, it's relative. The FIA wants to make sure that everyone slows down to a safe speed. Bianchi did slow down after the flags were waved but it's not disclosed to what speed he slowed down to. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to have complete control of his car. This is the issue here.

Originally Posted by Hatari

This is to explore the feasibility of a virtual safety car at the event of a disruption in the race. Race control dictates the speed. This is just an idea, implementation yet to be discussed.

The steering wheels already have flag indicators in place - Red/Black/Yellow etc.

I read in an article they might implement it as soon as possible, maybe even in the next American grand prix as they have all the equipment needed. But my question is wouldn't this be too much for the drivers? They're racing, they will be in a different world, including a signal that tells them to slow down and stuff, won't this break their flow, their thought process?


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[Soumyajit9]

Originally Posted by thetinywanderer

This is what is in practice right now. But the problem as seen in the Japanese grand prix is that different drivers slow down to different speeds, it's relative. The FIA wants to make sure that everyone slows down to a safe speed. Bianchi did slow down after the flags were waved but it's not disclosed to what speed he slowed down to. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to have complete control of his car. This is the issue here.

I personally think that if a driver is not able to judge a safe speed at a corner, even after running through a practice lap, a qualifying lap, and numerous statistics that the team manager might have given, then that driver ought to crash. Why ruin the spirit of the race for the novice-ness of one driver ?

The last thing I would expect is a driver looking for flags, lights instead of focussing on the road and curves ahead.

[SilentEngine]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

I personally think that if a driver is not able to judge a safe speed at a corner, even after running through a practice lap, a qualifying lap, and numerous statistics that the team manager might have given, then that driver ought to crash. Why ruin the spirit of the race for the novice-ness of one driver ?

The last thing I would expect is a driver looking for flags, lights instead of focussing on the road and curves ahead.

Not sure what your point is. Even best of the drivers had crashes in worse conditions, so it is NOT down to novice-ness of driver which results in crashes.

Even now drivers are expected to look for flags, and expected to react appropriately (slow down for yellows etc). So how is this a new distraction? Only additional thing is, they will be told how much they are supposed to slow down in a sector (between two marshal posts) where there is an incident.

This rule seems to be trying to address the issue of drivers not slowing down enough, but what is not clear is will this be left to drivers again to actually slow down (in which case it's not really useful) or they automate it such that the speed will be reduced from race control to limit the speed.

[Hatari]

Originally Posted by thetinywanderer

I read in an article they might implement it as soon as possible, maybe even in the next American grand prix as they have all the equipment needed. But my question is wouldn't this be too much for the drivers? They're racing, they will be in a different world, including a signal that tells them to slow down and stuff, won't this break their flow, their thought process?

Its actually quite easy for the drivers, the principle should be the same as the Pit Lane speed limiter, which is a button they press prior at when they enter the pit lane and the car automatically stays within the limit (60 or 80 Km/hr).

Currently, at full pace, the drivers are constantly fiddling with brake balance/diff settings/fuel mixtures etc on the steering wheel.

[gtonsing]

They removed fuel refills, they've reduced pitlane speeds, they have reduced the engine size, they have limited race timing (not sure if this has always been the case) to 2 hours, if they now implement this, like someone has already pointed out, could be one of the actions FIA did to kill the sport. While accidents are bound to happen (like Jeremy Clarkson once said) when fast moving cars suddenly come to a stop, I believe F1 has been made as safe as can be (not ruling out areas for improvement either)
Racing is to race and to race is to excite. If FIA cant come up with something more sensible other than removing the excitement quotient of F1, then they might want to do something else with their time, rather than govern a race!

[anand_hc]

They should have stopped that race due to dangers it posed to drivers.

Instead of that they take these stupid decisions which start taking the thrill of the race itself

[Hatari]

Originally Posted by thetinywanderer

Hmm makes sense. Lets see what happens when they implement it.

Slightly off topic but look at this video. Fernando takes his right hand off the wheel to 'fiddle'
interesting is it not! adjusting engine braking and diff.

then later on he explains how he was watching Vettel in his mirrors going off the track!
so the drivers do and notice quite a bit.. while looking the other way!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyiyOLNvb-8

[thetinywanderer]

Originally Posted by Hatari

Slightly off topic but look at this video. Fernando takes his right hand off the wheel to 'fiddle'
interesting is it not! adjusting engine braking and diff.

then later on he explains how he was watching Vettel in his mirrors going off the track!
so the drivers do and notice quite a bit.. while looking the other way!

http://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=iyiyOLNvb-8

Wow incredible driving from both of them. Yeah now I see they've a lot going on already so you're saying this law shouldn't really be big issue for them?

[deetjohn]

A virtual Safety Car restricting the speed through engine mapping looks good on paper. But there should be no knee jerk reactions. The change should be brought in gradually. Imagine the scenario when the override is not working on a specific car during the race. The relative speed difference will make it very risky.

Originally Posted by thetinywanderer

Wow incredible driving from both of them. Yeah now I see they've a lot going on already so you're saying this law shouldn't really be big issue for them?

One more button to handle? Piece of cake for the drivers really. Multitasking is involuntary for racing drivers. Its not just big balls you know, the brain got to be big as well. It's a bit like Quicksilver from X-Men. They have all the time.

Read this up. Former F1 medical chief Prof Gary Hartstein on the brainpower required for F1

There was a video where Jeremy Clarkson (I think) attempted many tasks simultaneously to show the extent of multitasking that F1 drivers have to do. Can't find it now.

[KiloAlpha]

A blog on detriorating flag discipline:
http://formerf1doc.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/2271/

[thetinywanderer]

Originally Posted by deetjohn

A virtual Safety Car restricting the speed through engine mapping looks good on paper. But there should be no knee jerk reactions. The change should be brought in gradually. Imagine the scenario when the override is not working on a specific car during the race. The relative speed difference will make it very risky.



One more button to handle? Piece of cake for the drivers really. Multitasking is involuntary for racing drivers. Its not just big balls you know, the brain got to be big as well. It's a bit like Quicksilver from X-Men. They have all the time.

Read this up. Former F1 medical chief Prof Gary Hartstein on the brainpower required for F1

There was a video where Jeremy Clarkson (I think) attempted many tasks simultaneously to show the extent of multitasking that F1 drivers have to do. Can't find it now.

Originally Posted by KiloAlpha

A blog on detriorating flag discipline:
http://formerf1doc.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/2271/

Thanks for sharing the links. I think incidents like these are bound to happen once every 10 years or so when we are dealing with cars going at such speeds. Its easy to analyze what went wrong after the accident but to prevent one is difficult given that there are so many things at play in a F1 race. But they're learning and hopefully we don't see such incidents again in the future.