I don´t get Formula One races.

[symbv]

It's hard to quantify how a TV experience can cover everything that happens in the race. In a lot of ways, the TV experience has more information about what's going on than actually being at the race. But there's a couple of things involved.

Thanks for the write-up, Ornette! I guess I now gained a bit more understanding why some people want to sit through a race watching TV. There is obvious a match of strategies and their execution between the lead car and the chasing car -- but I guess it requires discerning eyes as real overtake is so uncommon. On the other hand, your summary also highlighted the drawbacks of watching it just on TV, particularly if the TV channel is not willing to invest in informative commentator or replaying events not seen in the official feed. This made me question what those people in China were enjoying as they were listening to the laughable commentary.... :)

[Eva Yojimbo]

I too would like to thank Ornette for writing that post. My uncle has always been crazy about motorsports and F1 in particular but I never understood the appeal very well. Now I can see it :)

This thread and various tangents in the music thread has taught me to never mess with Ornette when it comes to stuff he knows about. When Ornette knows about shit, he REAAAAAAAALLY knows about shit.

[Ornette]

On the other hand, your summary also highlighted the drawbacks of watching it just on TV, particularly if the TV channel is not willing to invest in informative commentator or replaying events not seen in the official feed. This made me question what those people in China were enjoying as they were listening to the laughable commentary.... :)

There's plenty of other sources for race commentary, like in magazines or TV shows. In particular, the Mandarin broadcast (this was several years ago) had commentators who struggled to come up with the names of some of the different components on the car. China doesn't really have a high density of F1 fans (or most motorsports for that matter), it's almost non-existent compared to Japan or Brazil. They don't have a direct hand in the cars or their manufacturing or design, they don't have any drivers, and eventhough they have a state of the art facility, the track is barely used. The first time I was there for the race in 2006, we sat in the large section E, and it was mostly full, the track/facility was less than 3 years old at that point. 2 years later in 2008, the entire Section E was closed off because of lack of ticket sales, and tickets for the Chinese GP are like $50 (1 day), cheaper than a rock concert (compared to $1500 per ticket in Singapore).

To give you an idea of the overtaking in F1, this is the lap chart from the live timing from the race last Sunday in Malaysia.


The clusterfuck arond lap 14 and 25 was because there were wholesale pit stops taking place and the telemetry in the cars register an overtake even when in the pits. So when a car passes another car in the pit lane, it gets recorded as an overtake.

[Ornette]

Bumping this old thread because I happened to come across it.

Has anyone been following F1 the last year or so? Since Pirelli has taken over as sole tire supplier for all the teams (before the 2011 season it was Bridgestone, and around 2007 or so, it was both Bridgestone and Michelin) they've been engineering their tires so you only get a certain amount of performance out of them before they get horribly shitty, the teams have been calling it "the cliff".

Previously when the tires would wear out, you'd get a gradual and predictable decline in grip and performance as you continue to race on them, but the last year and this year, they have good steady performance for some number of laps before getting really bad, longer the laps for harder the tire compound. This is making the pitting strategy a win or lose scenario in a lot of cases, since you either have to really be gentle on them (by not driving hard) or they go off the cliff and you have to slow down for lack of grip. This is producing a lot more overtaking and some genuinely exciting racing.

On the engineering side, 2015 will bring new engine formula to F1. To get an understanding of what's going on here and just how balls crazy this is, the engines are going to be 1.6L V6's, turbo charged, that generate probably 8-900 hp. 1.6 liter displacement is like a motorcycle engine, it's tiny.

[Mr. Tines]

the engines are going to be 1.6L V6's, turbo charged, that generate probably 8-900 hp.

That's only just slightly larger capacity than the paired 3-cylinder engines in v6 configuration that powered the late lamented Smart Roadster.

[Ringworm128]

Any sport or game would be boring to watch if you don't know what's going on. I can't watch Cricket or American Football because I have no idea how the game works. To me it just looks like people hitting a ball or running with it, I have no idea who's winning or what they're even doing. But I can watch Australian Football because I know enough about the game to be able to understand what I'm watching.

[Ornette]

Another thing since they removed refueling from the sport is the pit-stops actually play a large role in the outcome of races. Before, pit-stops were mainly just refueling stops and you change tires, but you need to refuel anyways so the majority of time was spent refueling, and since all cars need to refuel with about the same amount of fuel, all cars spent about the same amount of time sitting idle in the pits which fuel is being dumped in.

Now they come in to just change tires and you have these mindbogglingly quick pit-stops like this Redbull stop that takes a total of 2 seconds, so 2 cars can come in one behind the other, but leave the pits in the reverse order because one team changed their tires 0.5 seconds quicker.

[driftking18594]

I was at the British GP on Sunday, and I was giddy with excitement. Those V8s just resonate with your body, and the noise was incredible! I can scarcely imagine how the V10s would have sounded in real life, I guess the only chance I'll have to experience them is at some sort of "legends" race where they're being driven by untalented multi-millionaires. :/

[Ornette]

Must have been an exciting race to see live, seeing as how tires were exploding like the track had landmines in it.

The V10's don't sound so much as you'd imagine them to. If you were sitting at an easy or high speed corner, or a straight, you can hear them just fine, like the last banked turn at Indy. But before they unified all teams to use the same ECU (incidentally made by McLaren), all the teams circumvented the "no traction control" rule by having their ECU detect drastic increases in RPM (e.g. wheelspin) and purposely backfire the engine, so anytime it's wet or exiting a slower corner, the ECU kicks in and there's this really low constant crackling from the engines backfiring at like 10k RPM. It's kind of an amazing sound in and of itself (sort of reminds me of when I got to see a space shuttle launch from the Vertical Assembly Building, it's really low and the ground shakes, but it sort of taints the awesome sound of the engine. On TV, you can't hear the sound of the backfiring at all.

[ath]

The V10's don't sound so much as you'd imagine them to. If you were sitting at an easy or high speed corner, or a straight, you can hear them just fine, like the last banked turn at Indy.

Heh. I remember those V10 back when F1s used to race in Imola. I haven't seen the V8s live, so I can't really compare, but the thing that impressed me the most was how much every car used to sound different from each other, back when the exhaust layouts weren't strictly regulated. They all sounded so similar to each other on TV. The McLarens used to have an amazing bass-heavy sound, that was probably when they were first experimenting with the blown diffusers somewhere around '01. Fun fact, back then it didn't really work out and they were back to the regular exhausts for the following season. Oh, and I would've loved to hear those track-tuned Alfa 75s V6 the firefighters were standing by at the sides of the track ;)

Another thing since they removed refueling from the sport is the pit-stops actually play a large role in the outcome of races. Before, pit-stops were mainly just refueling stops and you change tires, but you need to refuel anyways so the majority of time was spent refueling, and since all cars need to refuel with about the same amount of fuel, all cars spent about the same amount of time sitting idle in the pits which fuel is being dumped in.

Well, back before the refueling ban the pit stops actually had a huge influence on the race. A choice between a two- or three-stops strategy required longer or shorter stops and had a large effect on the cars' handling and the chance of coming out of the pits in the clear for the following stint. Of course we had a lot less overtaking maneuvers back then, but to be fair I find the current DRS-assisted battles a little too artificial. But hey, at least they're fun, even if nothing can still beat a really wet race for the fun factor (Brazil 2003 & 2008 anyone?)

I sometimes wonder how it would be interesting to see the last cars that were built with the much looser aerodynamic regulations (around '07-08 if I'm not wrong) and refueling coping with the modern Pirelli tires. Throw in the old (sorry, the real) Hockenheim while we're at it. And Imola! Who cares about the sleep-inducing "modern" street circuits Ecclestone's so proud about.


Unfortunately, our national TV broadcaster lost the rights to the F1 live coverage this year so I'm not really following this season. I've never missed a single race since '99 before that. Damn you, Murdoch!