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PostPosted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 3:06 pm 
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Yeah, that 1982 race at Brazil was fantastic! The first half of it was crazy anyway.

I don't think those statistics are inaccurate either. Sure, a turbo Ferrari might be 10 seconds quicker than an Osella or ATS. But they never battled each other on the track so you can't say that super fast car passing slow car is the reason why the passes are so high.

You also NEVER saw any battles down the field in the old TV coverage. Always focused on the top 6 or so cars. There were plenty of dull races in the 80's but there was probably still action that we didn't see. All you need to watch is an old race from Zandvoort or Austria or any tracks with fast sweeping corners. The cars can follow each other really closely in fast corners whereas you get stuck about 1 second behind now.

I like that the teams are a lot more equal now. The coverage is better. But anyone who thinks overtaking isn't stupidly difficult now is only fooling themselves.


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:30 am 
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Most circuits of the past were not easy to overtake on. Many on todays tracks (Turkey, Bahrain, China, Abu Dhabi, Sepang, Hockenheim) are designed specifically for overtaking but there is hardly any seen.


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:45 pm 
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On Monza F1 cars couldn't overtake each other but Superleague cars with the same HP were passing each other like crazy. It's clear that F1 cars are the problem and not the tracks.


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:14 pm 
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chimp wrote:
On Monza F1 cars couldn't overtake each other but Superleague cars with the same HP were passing each other like crazy. It's clear that F1 cars are the problem and not the tracks.


Well I don't quite think they have the same HP but that's the difference between a one make championship with cars designed to enourage overtaking and a technically open championship with teams designing cars to prevent overtaking.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:14 am 
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I think the Superleague cars are designed with more under body downforce so the turbulence problem is far less than F1.

I saw some crazy overtakes at Estoril when SBS showed some highlights.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:33 pm 
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mclaren2008 wrote:
I think the Superleague cars are designed with more under body downforce so the turbulence problem is far less than F1.
Seems to be how most other series design the cars now, utilise more underbody downforce so you can run less aero & therefore have less turbulant air.

I read that the Overtaking working group looked at that & found that if they were to utilise more UnderBody downforce in F1 the cars would end up having way too much grip. This because unlike things like SuperLeague, A1GP, GP2 Etc... the F1 designers are able to develop the cars so they would end up figuring out ways of generating tons more downforce from wings as well as Under the car so you would still end up with too much turbulant air but also cars that had ridiculous amounts of grip.


I think that had it not been for the Double Diffusers the OWG aero regs put in place this year may have worked a bit more effectively.

If yo go back to the 1st couple races we did see a fair bit of overtaking, However when everyone adopted the Double Diffusers things seem to have become more difficult.


Ross Brawn spoke about overtaking recently:
http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=47125

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Ross Brawn is convinced further radical rule changes are necessary to increase overtaking and improve the spectacle in Formula 1.

It was hoped that the return of slick tyres, a big reduction in aerodynamic downforce, adjustable front wings and Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems for 2009 would generate much closer racing than in recent years.

But although cars are now able to follow each other a little more closely owing to a reduced aerodynamic wake, passing moves have not been noticeably more frequent.

Brawn believes the key reason for this is that the cars still generate much too high a proportion of their overall grip from aerodynamic surfaces, which are sensitive to turbulence, rather than mechanical grip from the tyres – and that no amount of tinkering will work until this nettle is grasped.

“I still think we’ve got the ratio of tyre grip and aerodynamic grip wrong,” he said at Suzuka last weekend.

“I think we’ve got far too much aerodynamic grip and not enough tyre grip.

“We really want a lot of tyre and mechanical grip and we want to diminish dramatically the aerodynamic grip, and then I think you’ll get cars that can race with each other more effectively.

“These cars are better than we had last year, for sure.

“But we’ve still got cars which rely heavily on aerodynamic performance, and because they do, it’s very difficult to create a package whereby one car can follow another.”

One factor that blunted the planned downforce reduction was the loophole in the regulations that spawned the controversial twin-diffuser designs pioneered by Brawn, Toyota and Williams and subsequently developed by the rest of the F1 grid.

But Brawn believes the damage was done earlier, when teams resisted more radical measures to slash downforce and the governing body acquiesced.

“I think there was a reasonable push to be very draconian with the aerodynamic regulations, and it was resisted too much,” he said.

Brawn’s comments echo the assessment of the FIA’s technical consultant Tony Purnell, who admitted earlier this year that the rule changes had not gone nearly far enough and described the F1 community as “deeply conservative”.

“If we’re going to give the fans what they want, we’ve got to take another step,” he said.

Brawn conceded, however, that identifying the problem and finding effective solutions were two different matters.

“There’s lots of theory, but putting it into practice is very difficult,” he said.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:27 pm 
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But isn't the diffuser part of the underbody downforce generating system? It didn't prevent it from spoiling the fun!

Even if we ban wings altogether and come back to the 80s wing cars, they would probably still find a way to make that air behind the car turbulent enough to keep followers away.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:49 pm 
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coldtyre wrote:
But isn't the diffuser part of the underbody downforce generating system?


It is, yes. But in the olden days, the cars didn't have the 50mm step and the plank on the floor of the car. That enabled them to run much lower to the ground with a much larger surface to create masses of downforce.

And to take it back to the late 70's/early 80's when the cars has sliding skirts, there was little need for a front wing because of how much downforce was generated. And this was all without diffusers. There's a legendary story from when Colin Chapman tested his first ground effect car. They had it on the rolling road in the wind tunnel. Chapman knew the idea was brilliant when the car sucked the rolling road up.

F1 cars need to go to single plane front and rear wings that must not curve along the horizontal as you look at it from the front, have flat bottoms and be wide-track again (2m wide as opposed to the current 1.8m wide).


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:56 pm 
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Ban winglets.


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:02 pm 
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Cheeveer wrote:
Ban winglets.

Which ones ?


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