New F1 rule good or bad ?

[newbie babs]

What do you think of one of the new rules for the F1 new season

This was after a few incidents involving Hamilton but the one with Schumacher in Monza where Hamilton used his radio to ask his team "I thought you were only allowed to make one move". The new rule it to prevent drivers from Blocking a rival.

It says: "More than one change of direction to defend a position is not permitted.
"Any driver moving back towards the racing line, having earlier defended his position off‐line, should leave at least one car width between his own car and the edge of the track on the approach to the corner."
The previous rule that forbids drivers from forcing rivals off the track remains.
It is article 20.3 and it reads: "Manoeuvres liable to hinder other drivers, such as deliberate crowding of a car beyond the edge of the track or any other abnormal change of direction, are not permitted."

Is this another rule that takes the excitement out of the race and enable drivers that could not pass using their own talent to be able to pass without trouble.

or

Will it make the game more exciting so those that can pass, time their passing with perfection and showcase their talent.

Its not the only change, The new sporting regulations also forbid drivers from "leaving the track without justifiable reason", an attempt to stop them taking shortcuts back to the pits during practice and qualifying to save time and fuel - as Sebastian Vettel did in Korea.
This should be an interesting change.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

That rule is pointless - it effectively states that the driver in front cannot get back onto the racing line after stopping someone from overtaking him!

Preventing drivers from forcing other cars off the track is a good thing, but stopping drivers from using their skill to anticipate from which side an attempted overtake will be made ( and when ) and then preventing it is quite another thing altogether.

Yawnula One?

 

[90019]

Yawnula One?

It's been that for ages.
I've barely watched F1 for some time because it's just not interesting anymore.

Yet another rule to dull the racing further.

 

[Heinz57]

So basicaly the rule says if someones behined you, you arn't alowed to defend your position.

I thought this was racing?

 

[Lampshade]

This rule has been in F1 for years, it just means that a driver can move to position his car once, but then can't weave back to block him i.e. Hamilton vs Petrov in Malaysia 2010.

[YOUTUBE]5vkushrj-F4[/YOUTUBE]

 

[MidnightFlyer]

I'm sure if it gets dull enough people won't watch, sponsors won't be interested and the whole thing dies. Please.

 

[Lampshade]

I'm sure if it gets dull enough people won't watch, sponsors won't be interested and the whole thing dies. Please.

Or if it goes to Sky... oh wait :roll:

 

[Eagle]

I've barely watched F1 for some time because it's just not interesting anymore.

Formula 1 is for me like Test cricket. One of those things I have on in the background, glancing at it every few minutes to check on how things are progressing (the answer is usually "same as last time you checked six minutes ago").

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Preventing drivers from forcing other cars off the track is a good thing, but stopping drivers from using their skill to anticipate from which side an attempted overtake will be made ( and when ) and then preventing it is quite another thing altogether.

Peter, you have an uncanny knack of reading my mind and stating what I was about to say. Do you remember Schumacher doing just this type of exaggerated racing line protection, many years ago, to a British driver when they only had one point separating them at the top of the Drivers Championship and both of them ending up off the track and out of the race, effectively protecting the one point differential between the two drivers involved.

 

[newbie babs]

Its going to be difficult watching it with no excitment. Oh for the days when it was really exciting.

Mansell, Senna and Prost in a line coming towards where I was standing, that obviously wont happen with the new rules. Its a case of "go on past me then".

 

[mikebillabong]

hopefully it will be impossible to police and the racing will be just the same!

 

[hairyhandedfool]

This rule has been in F1 for years, it just means that a driver can move to position his car once, but then can't weave back to block him i.e. Hamilton vs Petrov in Malaysia 2010....

Although Hamilton got a warning for that, I think it is fairly clear Petrov wasn't going to overtake at that point (if you watch closely he was following Hamilton's moves not pre-empting them), just trying to keep in his slipstream until the corner. It is trying to prevent things like Hamilton and Kobayashi's incident in Spa, where Hamilton 'couldn't see' Kobayashi.

That rule is pointless - it effectively states that the driver in front cannot get back onto the racing line after stopping someone from overtaking him!....

You can still make a move, you just can't then return to the racing line to stop them again. In most cases the other car is up the outside anyway, so I don't see much difference here tbh.

 

[gasheadsteve]

I'm not a fan of rules like this. The drivers are supposed to be racing each other, not cheerfully waving each other past.

If anyone here follows Indycar they'll probably remember Helio Castroneves's post-race meltdown in Edmonton in 2010 when he had his win taken away from him for running a line slightly to the right of where he'd have been if he didn't have a car behind him. I really hope F1 doesn't go too far down this road, I'd much rather see a faster car battling with a slower car for lap after lap (like Mansell and Senna in Monaco in the early 90s) than see the faster car fly straight past and disappear off into the distance.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

I'm not a fan of rules like this. The drivers are supposed to be racing each other, not cheerfully waving each other past....

I don't necessarily think these rules are an issue, I think most are looking at safety, but I do think the blue flag rule is stupid. You have to let the faster car through before you get a third blue flag or you get a penalty. I have no problem with them showing a blue flag to warn of a faster car, infact I think it is a good idea, but the quicker driver should have to overtake them imo. This would show up tracks like Monaco and Valencia as pretty boring tracks when the leaders are stuck behind a HRT for 60 odd laps.

 

[Madge Wildfire]

hopefully it will be impossible to police and the racing will be just the same!

Racing?

Forgive me, but I dont see that a long line of cars driving many seconds behind each other for 2 hours round and round a circuit comes anywhere close to a description of racing.

And now it seems that you dont like the idea that if one car has the power to overtake/go faster than another, that should be allowed either?

You mean the driver in front should be able to weave all across the track as much as he likes in order to prevent being overtaken?

That does not seem much like a race to me, although it does have some parallels with following a caravan on roads through the Lake District.

 

[Clip]

This chaning of position rule has been in force for ages hasnt it? Way back to when schumey used to do it often to stop people getting past.

 

[Bungle73]

Preventing cars from weaving is good idea imo. If they all did that no one would ever get past.

How anyone can have watched F1 last season and say it's "boring" I have no idea.

And where this idea comes from that in Mansell's/Prost's/Senna's time it was wall-to-wall action I have no idea. I was watching then and I can assure you it wasn't.

 

[Clip]

Preventing cars from weaving is good idea imo. If they all did that no one would ever get past.

How anyone can have watched F1 last season and say it's "boring" I have no idea.

And where this idea comes from that in Mansell's/Prost's/Senna's time it was wall-to-wall action I have no idea. I was watching then and I can assure you it wasn't.

I agree to some extent. I think this train of thought may be due to a few years where the outcome of the racing has all been dictated by pitstops and that tactics around that..

been some great racing of late though.

 

[Lampshade]

Any critic of the 'lack of racing' in F1, I hereby direct you to Canada 2011

 

[Ivo]

Any critic of the 'lack of racing' in F1, I hereby direct you to Canada 2011

An awesome race, and certainly the best I have seen in my 13 years of watching the sport (my first was Japan in 1998, itself quite a spectacle). I had the choice of watching the Russian rugby team live in action at Kingsholm or the race, and the way it turned out I'm glad I chose to stay in the hotel room while my father went off without me! (The real reason I chose the race is that I didn't know I would be given free access or not, whereas it was absolutely certain that my father would as he was driving the team coach. I did watch a training session though! )

If Canada 2011 alone does not suffice, Brazil 2008 would make for a good back-up.

 

[DavidBrown]

Last season was something of a disappointment compared to the previous couple of years - the title race was over very quickly, the whole Hamilton v Massa rivalry just came across as petty name-calling at 200mph (unlike the great racing that it produced in 2008), and I still can't really work out whether the increased reliance on DRS and KERS is a good or bad thing - it can certaintly be improved, I think. Races that you would normally rely on to be classics, such as Spa and Interlagos, were also somewhat disappointing though there were still some crackers at Canada and Monaco. Bit of a shame as 2010 I felt was one of the best seasons for a few years.

I think that this new rule on defending is just really a clarification on what already existed, to be honest. The rules already state that you cannot make more than one change in direction, and this rule just clarifies whether or not you can drift back onto the racing line for the next corner - you can't. I reckon that this will mean more action in the corners instead of the straights leading up to them - you can move off the racing line to defend, but will have to brake earlier and harder to make the corner, allowing the person behind to potentially get you through the corner, but of course overtaking on the bends is a lot more difficult - and exciting. Button and Webber had a good old battle through several of the chicanes at Abu Dhabi, and I think we'll see more of it, which is good.

Another key change is the ban on off-throttle blown diffusers. As Silverstone proved, this will benefit Ferrari a huge amount, and hopefully mean some competition for Red Bull. If McLaren can pull their finger out this winter and have a decent car for the start of next season, then we could have a great title battle once again.

 

[jon0844]

Formula 1 is for me like Test cricket. One of those things I have on in the background, glancing at it every few minutes to check on how things are progressing (the answer is usually "same as last time you checked six minutes ago").

Like!

Yes, I've long given up on F1. I used to love it and stay up late/get up early but now the most I'll do is wait and see who won and then look at the highlights of whatever controversial things happened and then go 'meh' and carry on.

The fixing of cricket was perhaps the only thing that ever got me to watch ANY cricket - so I am wondering if they should actually encourage more of it.

 

[Bungle73]

Another key change is the ban on off-throttle blown diffusers. As Silverstone proved, this will benefit Ferrari a huge amount, and hopefully mean some competition for Red Bull. If McLaren can pull their finger out this winter and have a decent car for the start of next season, then we could have a great title battle once again.

Yeah, but at Silverstone they changed the rules overnight, so the teams had to make to do with what they already had. This year the rule is known before the season starts so they can design the cars around it.

 

[gasheadsteve]

I'm surprised that some people don't think much of the racing in F1 now. Ok, the championship was a one-sided affair, but most of the individual races have been great.

I've been watching F1 since the 1991 season, and I think this season has had the closest racing I've seen in that time. Yes, you got some spectacular wheel-to-wheel battles at times in the 90s, but back then you tended to only have three or four cars on the lead lap at the end of the race. There was even one race in the mid-90s won by Damon Hill two laps clear of the second placed car.

The field as a whole has been closer together in terms of performance than probably at any other time in the history of the sport. Even the HRTs were within 107% of the leader's time at most races, something that can't be said for a lot of teams in recent times.

 

[ChrisCooper]

I think one thing this year that's been a double edged sword has been the strong competition in the runners up. The negative has been that part of Vettels dominance has been down to the fact that the lower drivers have been just as much battling each other as him. McLaren particularly had two drivers very capable of winning the Championship, but in the end pretty much shared the McLaren victories. Alonso was then there to sweep up wins that Vettel or the McLarens couldn't get. Really Red Bull have the ideal pair, a great no.1 driver, but also a great no.2 in Webber who whilst not taking too many points from Webber, is regularly able to take points from the other drivers.
On the other hand the positive is that there has been so much action down the field, so even if one driver is dominant, they can often pretty much be forgotten. A number of races this year they have just cut back from the action futher back to see the leader cross the finish line, unlike the Murray Walker era when it would be "and he's just got this lap, and the next lap, and the next one, and the one after before the final lap to take the chequered flag and win the race" and of course we'd watch it all the way though.

Compared to the Schumacher era it's quite different. Then the Championship often went down to the wire, but with just two drivers having any chance. The other teams were often out of it from quite early, and no.2 drivers were usually scrapping with themselves and the rest further back. It wasn't just the leading driver who would be driving off on their own but the second place driver too, infact the main action tended to be lapping one of the backmarkers (who made Hispania look competative) for the hunderedth time, or when someone's engine decided it was going to blow up spectacularly. Most of the time coverage just seemed to be following the leading or chasing driver around.

That said, in terms of the coverage, I think the technology has helped in a way, as it helps the director and the commentators keep track of action all around the circuit. Things like team radio also add in interest. The BBC commentary team has also been good. I think in any sport the commentary can play a big part in making less exciting periods more interest, finding interesting things to talk about at times when there isn't much happening.

Also, people complain about Formula 1 being boring, but with the exception of very fast sports the same can be said for most. How many football matches do even the commentators complain about how boring they are.

 

[455driver]

I don't necessarily think these rules are an issue, I think most are looking at safety, but I do think the blue flag rule is stupid. You have to let the faster car through before you get a third blue flag or you get a penalty. I have no problem with them showing a blue flag to warn of a faster car, infact I think it is a good idea, but the quicker driver should have to overtake them imo. This would show up tracks like Monaco and Valencia as pretty boring tracks when the leaders are stuck behind a HRT for 60 odd laps.

The blue flags are shown to cars that are being lapped, not overtaken.

 

[Bungle73]

The blue flags are shown to cars that are being lapped, not overtaken.

I thought that was what he meant? After all there's not much chance of an HRT being in front on merit.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Or if it goes to Sky... oh wait :roll:

We have Freeview at home and have come to terms if much sports coverage is taken away from terrestial television, well, so be it. I have no intention whatsoever of taking out any subscription to cover any sport not wishing to be seen on terrestial television.

There is enough variation on terrestial television for my wife....and there is always RailForums UK for me to view..

 

[hairyhandedfool]

I thought that was what he meant? After all there's not much chance of an HRT being in front on merit.

Yeah that is what I meant, although I could have made it clearer.

We have Freeview at home and have come to terms if much sports coverage is taken away from terrestial television, well, so be it. I have no intention whatsoever of taking out any subscription to cover any sport not wishing to be seen on terrestial television.

There is enough variation on terrestial television for my wife....and there is always RailForums UK for me to view..

F1 will still be on the BBC, it's just that there is not as much of it and some of it won't be live (half the races and qualifying sessions will be 'highlights'), that won't stop me watching them on the BBC though.

 

[Lampshade]

F1 will still be on the BBC, it's just that there is not as much of it and some of it won't be live (half the races and qualifying sessions will be 'highlights'), that won't stop me watching them on the BBC though.

Just like the Premier League is "still on the BBC", highlights are not good enough.

The contract states the BBC are allowed to screen full reruns of the races, but they're choosing to only screen highlights, just like they chose to share with Sky rather than Channel 4 to have less competition on terrestrial and just like they chose to employ James Allen as radio commentator.

I know the radio commentator part sounds irrelevant but it means that people like me who are buying a satellite dish to point at RTL and watch the German coverage with 5 Live commentary now have to put up that bumbling buffoon.

As far as I'm concerned it's 100% BBC or 0% BBC.