Thank you. And BAH! My company has blocked the site as "Sports". Bastards. Oh well. I'll look tonight. :cornut:
Rule tweaks for 2012. I highlighted the ones that seem to me the most interesting and/or controversial...IMO the defensive move thing is ridiculous... FIA World Council Outlines F1 Rule Tweaks For 2012 (formula-one.speedtv.com)
I think the teams that already have their drivers in place now will be at an advantage over those that wait till the last minute, and those whose drivers have already been teammates for a season or more will have an even better advantage due to synergies, better communication between driver, mechanics and engineers and so on... Thoughts?
I hate the whole "lapped" cars get a drive-by at restarts. Why should the drivers behind the lapped cars get a freebie pass when the leaders had to work to get it. :confused5: The rest of the rules look good. Hopefully the one defensive move can be enforced consistently.
A lot of people thought that was crazy at first in NASCAR but in function it works pretty good. The idea is that those cars are slower than the leader's anyway so they don't really realize any advantage on them, and then the lead cars don't take the chance of getting held up or worse, taken out of the race by slower cars trying to stay on the same lap and racing each other... Now the, ya can't move back in to the racing line after moving off of it, seems a bit nanny to me.....
All true, but every team will consider a change anyway if they think they can do better. But there's a reason the big teams tend to finalize their driver line-up sooner than others, they have enough money to pay for whoever they can attract and/or poach out of a current contract. The rest are left fighting for the best compromise they can get between talented and affordable and some of those negotiations can take a while. Especially true if they look at their books and decide they can only afford drivers who can pay for the seat...suddenly talent is a goal rather than a requirement. I suppose if you're planning to replace a driver in this era of limited testing you don't gain much by bringing in the new guy until it's about time for the pre-season tests to start, so the only reason to rush to sign is so you can get the best talent before it's all locked down by the other teams. I know some teams figure the first year with a new driver, even a top driver, will usually be a settling-in year (for the reasons you mention) and they don't seriously expect great things until year 2. Seems like strong motivation to stick with the drivers you already have...unless you feel like you can do better. Hmmm, I just circled back to where I started.....
The moveing back to the racing line is simply to eliminate the blocking that can occur now. The constant weaving back and forth to keep someone behind you is dangerous and hopefully will eliminate the habit of some drivers to push the passing car off, or very close to it, the track. By only allowing the car to make a single move it allows the car behind to feint a passing move to one side then he can move back and attempt a safer pass. And in regards to the lapped cars getting bingo'ed around the safety car, F1 req's the lapped cars to pull over and allow the lapping car by with as little interference as possible. This is really all they need, no reason to allow the lapped cars to basically get a lap back.
I like the defensive move rule but I don't like the new wording. The rule is meant to stop someone making more than one defensive move. The new version disallows a second move, defensive or otherwise, if it's a move back to the racing line. Sure, a post-defensive move back to the racing line would probably be an additional defensive move on many occasions, but not always, and the new wording disallows it point blank. IMO they already had the right rule, they just weren't enforcing it consistently. On the other hand, I don't think it's always possible to enforce this one regardless of the wording of the rule. There are many things that can affect a driver's line that would be hard for stewards to anticipate or understand without being in his head to know his true intent or in his seat to know exactly how the car is behaving or see debris on the track, etc, ETC. It's unfortunate, but I think they need to restrict enforcement of this rule to flagrant or repetitive instances. Even then they'll be accused of misinterpreting and being inconsistent.
Exactly why I thought it to be Nanny by nature... On the drive around; There is always cars that gain unearned ground under a full course caution and does anyone really believe that Vettel would be giving up anything to say a Lotus that he was about to lap anyway? All it might do is delay the lapping, whilst removing any chance that Vettel could get caught up in anything the Lotus might do on a restart... Used those two for example only.
Grosjean in, Petrov out. Looks like Petrov will have to spend his sponsor money elsewhere. Grosjean returns to F1 with Renault (gpupdate.net) Petrov to Marussia?
Anyone surprised to see Petrov out at Renault, especially after his comments about the team being all screwed up (but he can't say anything negative about them - it's in his contract! :wink: )? Equally not surprised to see Grosjean being promoted, he's been on an upward trajectory for several years now, and at 25 he should have the maturity to keep the car on the track and not do anything stupid - they have Kimi for that! Wonder where Petrov will land? Any bets for Marussia?
Jenson Button the taxi driver: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aua3UuT_FI4]Jenson & Walkers make Sandwich more exciting - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKH_vsJVPo]Locals shocked to see Jenson Button in Sandwich! - YouTube[/ame]
A couple Lotus stories: Lotus says Renault choosing Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean for 2012 and dropping Vitaly Petrov is a statement of intent (autosport.com) Full story here. Lotus to switch to black and gold livery for its IndyCar, GP2 and GP3 teams (autosport.com)
Williams chairman Adam Parr believes F1 team has learned vital lessons through its difficult 2011 campaign (autosport.com)