Motor-sport sadness

[GeezerGarage]

Right not spot on the retro side but some ties.

After watching F1 and seeing the Senna bit on Top Gear last week It is very obvious that F1 drivers are ever so limited by their cars.

Motor-sport seems to be taking steps backward, big time, no class B, no turbo, engine limiting...

I know that allot is due to safety and the likes but how beautiful would it be to have a RS4 Rally driving? or a 6 wheeled, v12, twin turbo, gear-less, 1500BHP F1 car?

[suterman]

What we really want is a whole new scale of racetrack, much bigger and wider, so the cars can be more everything and still be safe (ish)

Formula .1

[GeezerGarage]

Good point. Maybe that's a bit more indi car...

[Rich606]

Aug 1, 2010 15:35:16 GMT GeezerGarage said:

I know that allot is due to safety and the likes but how beautiful would it be to have a RS4 Rally driving? or a 6 wheeled, v12, twin turbo, gear-less, 1500BHP F1 car?

I don't honestly think it would make much of a difference to F1. It would just widen the gap between the fast (read: wealthy) and slow teams.
There would still have to be regulations limiting the engines; totally unlimited twin-turbo V12 F1 engines would easily make more than 1500bhp when you consider the turbo-era cars were making 1000bhp from 1.5l in qualifying trim in the '80s, and the last of the V10s were making near enough 1000bhp from 3.0 normally-aspirated litres. Then the wealthier teams would just turn up the wick a bit more and away they go.
I don't think a faster race is necessarily a more exciting race; you'd just end up with a mad drag race to the first corner.

And you can't really say that a 2.4l V8 that makes nearly 800bhp is a step backwards

[keithyboy]

How much more entertaining was the BTCC in the early 90s when it involved repmobiles with roll-cages that didn't handle all that well?

Is anyone in an F1 car with 1500-2000 bhp and probable 250mph performance really going to overtake and risk touch a wheel? The results could flip the cars onto the moon.

[e21meister]

What we need is to breed a new race of human to drive these mega-race cars.
Unfortunately the current ones have limits, but thankfully very few die on the race track nowadays. If that's the price to pay for sanitised race cars, so be it.

[Camp Davy]

have to agree with amazo on that one best to have limits if it means less fatal accidents

[waveman1500]

I agree with keithyboy, cars which are closer to standard is the way forward. That way you know that it's really the driver pulling off something heroic in a regular car, not just a super-fast race car which is easy to drive fast. Rest assured, the recent banning of driver aids in F1 has made the series slower but much more exciting, because we get to see some real driving skill.

I'm upset about the V8 Supercars "Car of the Future" which is coming out soon, they're going to have the same 'control' tube chassis, floorpan, suspension, brakes, driveline and everything for both Holden and Ford. You just put your manufacturer's engine in and put on a bodyshell which resembles the factory car. At least up until now they're actually made using real steel shells with rollcages in them, albeit shortened and chopped a bit in the rear roofline. The next generation of V8 Supercars will most likely have absolutely no remaining parts of the factory car that they represent, which is a crying shame. Bring back the '70s when the touring cars had to be homologated and sold for road use, complete with all of the go-fast parts and even gauges in them. The GTHO Falcons came with an 8000rpm tacho in them as standard because that's how fast they ran the blueprinted race motors. That's the kind of racing I want to see.

[Lawsy]

Get rallycross back on the TV more oftne, I used to love watching that, Audi quatro's and mini's in the same race, mini takes the lead in the bends then every straight the big blast past

i remember watching it as a nipper and loved it..

Yes, Health and safety has got ridiculous, soon motor racing will involve bumper style cars witha bump strip all the round, motorbike racing will be outlawed, how the F1 still survives with the open wheel design is amazing, I'm suprised H&S havent made them close it all in

If i was to put my 2 penneth in, I wouldnt see the need for big stupid engines and trillions of horsepower, all I'd say is to just not allow electronics and let the drivers drive the cars like they used to..

yes in the late 80's rally, rallycross, BTCC and F1 were all brilliant, when they could hoon roudn a car and drive it

soon motorsport is going to be like football, whoever has the most money wins..

[boyracer]

Modern rally cars are faster through a stage than Group B cars. No step backwards there thanks to active differentials and insane torque curves.

Motorsport is already "who has most money wins". If I have more money than you I can spend more on parts I may junk because they turned out to be not that good, more on personnel who know their stuff better, more on testing at the tracks we'll be running on, etc. I love a good saloon series but I remember Matt Neal's win in the BTCC because his Primera was running in the Independent class which meant he got to run with the previous year's suspension (thanks to a change in the rules this was far superior to the works cars) and he had a really good bloke setting up his suspension and differential. His car was the fastest thing on the circuit and that means every other racer was already playing catch-up.

The problem with saloon racing is that everyone ends up in the same car (check Stock Hatch for that), the team with the most money win (Stock Hatch again) or, in series with a lot of works teams, if one team have a better base car manufacturers who aren't winning drop out.

There are ways around these problems but the results end up getting further and further from the road cars they're based on.

As for electronics, some drivers are better in a car with none, some know how to use those systems to their advantage. Are we saying one type of racer is better than another?

No-one here remember McLaren winning 15 out of 16 F1 races one year? Anyone think that was better than this year's championship?

It's doing drivers a massive disservice to believe that in the past "real men" were driving "real cars" and that somehow made them more talented than today's grids. Unfortunately probably the only way to make F1 cars handle like they used to would be to cut the engine down to a 600cc turbo, make the tyres even skinnier and the wings even smaller. Progress has meant that engines make better power (not more, just a better curve) than they did in the 80s, tyres are now way better than the huge slicks they used to run and the aerodynamics have more downforce with less drag.

[kee]

its probably more difficult to drive a modern F1 car than past cars, very complicated and the stupid G-Forces produced will give most a very floppy head in no time.

I'd like to see modern rally cars based more around the road cars like they used to be, so they have to have good, powerful engines and 4wd like the evo/impreza/cossie. now we have the fwd C4 and fwd Focus all in 4wd trim and next year they are shrinking even more to 1.6l, still 4wd and ford will be using the fiesta.

we need mental road cars again for homologation purposes.

this years F1 has been the first season to get me attracted to it, as I'm learning more about the techincal side but this time i'm actually enjoying more of the races, apart from when italians cheat, of course. the battle is close, and the teams at the top are very different, red bull have the cornering pace but not the out and out power of the ferrari and mclaren, it makes for more interesting races and qualification is good too. vettel needs to learn to race though.

[jontanner]

In my mind, Motorsport at top class levels like F1 and so on is never going to have the mystique it used to now that it is a BUSINESS and not a bunch of, in essence, rich clubman racers.

If you want to see close racing, get yourself to Brands or Silverstone or somewhere one weekend when the Jaguar boys or the Top Hat series are about (or the Kuhmo BMW lot if you fancy more collisions than you can shake a stick at!). I LOVE walking around the pits at Brands and chatting to everyone then seeing them thrash it out on track. It's how I imagine F1 used to before Bernie et all figured out there was serious money to be made. It's nice to still get close to the action and be with genuine enthusiasts as opposed to a few people who love the sport and a lot of people on corporate hospitality days...

[popuptoaster]

you don't have to alter any regs at all, just take the formula one OFF the telly and put some interesting motorsport on instead, there are loads of close fought race series around, you just don't see them.

[dbizzle]

It's so easy to slag off Formula One. I've really been enjoying this season, I think it's getting better and better with every race.

[skinnylew]

The limiting factors in motorsport are the human part (the driver) and money.
Why isn't there a Veyron, Koenigsegg, Saleen etc race series? Because it costs too much!
Technology is there to produce super fast cars but the infrastructure isn't there to race it!
Besides the best racing is close, fair competitive racing and it's even better if you can relate to it.
The BTCC back in it's hey day was just that. 7 or 8 different marques battling over the same piece of tarmac just as they did day to day on the motorways and roads in Britain.

Bring back BTCC with Ford, Vauxhall, Renault, Peugeot, Mazda, Nissan, VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Alfa, Volvo etc that would be very exciting imo!

[surprisingskoda]

What exactly is wrong with Formula One?
Can any of the detractors list how many different drivers have been on pole position, led a race, or won a race this year?
It's competitive, and competition is the draw. It doesn't matter if it's 150cc karts or 12,000hp rocket-propelled scanias, it's not interesting if it's not competitive.

[popuptoaster]

they should pass a law that says that you must enter at least 2 of any model of car van or truck that you intend to sell in the UK into a special race series that runs on all the small twisty tracks around the country once a week, no mods allowed except roll cages and tyres, with local drivers drawn from a lottery.

I'd love to see a double decker bus chasing a Merc Sprinter van round Druids while trying to block a Fiesta and a Range Rover from overtaking.