2017 race 17: United States ; comments thread

I've found a website that shows the lap charts, so I should be ok

Gasly is out as he will be racing elsewhere, so 2 new drivers for Toro Rosso

EDIT
Well, new from the last race anyway. Latest news has Kvyat back in one car and someone called Hartley in the other

I'm totally puzzled by Hartley being given grid penalties for an engine change when he's never raced in F1 before.
Has the FIA lost the plot? Not going to get many new viewers in North America if they carry on like this IMHO. There has to be greater separation between constructor issues and driver issues. The poor guy steps into the breach for his first race and is penalised for something that he has absolutely no control over.

INHO as a new driver in a car he has never raced before, probably never even driven before the start of practice sessions, there should be no car or engine-related penalties imposed on him

Discuss......

As Ben says, the power unit penalties apply to the car entry, it isn’t driver-specific.

Chris does make valid points, though. I think back to 2005 when the teams had to use the same engine for more than one GP for the first time. The requirement to use engines and gearboxes for multiple races was introduced with good intention. It eliminated the waste of special engines for each race, and if one looks at the very last years of the V8, all the development had been exhausted. It wasn’t possible to spend a lot more to gain time, there was nothing more to gain.

This brings me to the puzzling nature of the current powertrain regulations. In 2017 we have the most stringent engine and gearbox allocations ever seen, becoming even more stringent in 2018 despite a longer season. Despite this, development is relatively open. In a way this is good, because Renault and Honda certainly won’t catch-up with development limitations like the token-system. However, if we want to talk about cost reduction, since 2014, it is the sheer R&D required to make the 1.6 litre hybridised V6’s which has increased costs. The issue isn’t about excessive supply, each driver could only be allocated two engines in 2018 and costs wouldn’t significantly reduce.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be such an issue if the grid penalties weren’t so excessive. We now have drivers suffering all sorts of absurd penalties they literally can’t serve, and drivers opting to stay in the pits to limit engine mileage. Jean Todt has been particularly obsessed about tightening engine and gearbox allocation. Nobody in the paddock is suggesting a return to bespoke qualifying engines, and a new engine for each race. There should be engine and gearbox limitations, but the current regime is hurting the spectacle, and not even solving the root problem.

I do wonder what will happen in 2021 with the next powertrain regulations. Hopefully Ross Brawn is involved and a much simpler, louder engine is introduced – something that privateers can feasibly purchase.
 
I really don’t doubt the competence of Jean Todt. He’s achieved far too much in motorsport to be a lousy FIA President. Undeniably, however, under his direction there are a few key championships that have suffered from his obsession about road-relevance. It hasn’t bought new spectators, competition has suffered and even the manufacturers themselves are largely not interested. WTCC is by far the worst championship in professional motorsport, and WEC is mostly in a mess. In fairness, the ACO organise WEC. However, if I were running the FIA, I would threaten to stop sanctioning the championship with the absurd 2018 WEC calendar, and the continuing obsession with the 2020 LMP1 regulations.....that literally nobody has signed up to! 

Perhaps a few of these championships that should be great championships need new thinking from new people. The ideas from the ACO for WEC don't solve any problems, merely creating new problems. WTCC almost needs scrapping completely and rebuilding again.

Does the WRC still exist? Haven't heard anything of it or seen any new WRC cars for some time. If it's still going are there any works teams left? I can't see them wanting to bother if they gain so little publicity from it.

Todt really has made a bollock up of the motorsport side of his job with his obsession with road relevance, which is surprising.
F1 & WEC - gib the hybrid bollocks. It’s a road car dead end, as proven by the manufacturer flight to Formula e. F1 would be much better served with turbocharged engines and fuel tank that could just hold enough fuel for a race. Ge rid of flappy paddle gearboxes - make the drivers hoav3 to physically remove a hand from he wheel to change gear and bring back H pattern gears - you can keep the electro-hydraulic control of the actual shift, but th3 drivers must take a hand off the wheel and move a leaver through the H pattern. Oh and ban live streaming of data back to the factory, cut wind tunnel time by 75% and resinstate testing.
WRC - bring back group A & N if you want road relevance. Sure the current cars look better with swollen arches & spoilers, but they are still don’t look spectacular enough going down the road. Gib electronic control of the diffs and simplify the dampers. Also allow a different range of cars such as coupes etc.
WTCC - 300/350 ponies is chicken feed when most hot hatches have that or more. Remember the days of the RS500s with 500 odd versus the 200 of the road cars? Or the supertourers 300 when most of their road equivalents made less than 175. If that means we have to do away with fwd then so be it, the cars are virtually silhouette racers anyway.

Most of all, make the damn rules then tell the manufacturers ‘This is it for the next five years’ rather go to the makers and ask what they want. When the series are popular (you know, because the cars are fast as fuck, look spectacular and can race) then the makers will want to play without the threat of taking their balls away.

I would say that WRC is quite fantastic this year. Anyone amongst the factory teams has a chance to win, and even though Ogier will probably take the championship again, it hasn’t been another WRC season of someone utterly dominating. Admittedly I got bored of WRC in much of the 2000’s, with a lack of competition and poor TV.

The faster cars in 2017 have been breath taking to watch, and I really mean that. I’ve been flabbergasted at the commitment and bravery of the drivers in Finland, Poland and other rally’s. Sometimes faster cars don’t particularly translate that well on TV, but this year, the driving talent needed has been beyond my comprehension. It just looks that much more daunting in 2017, perhaps because you know the margin of error is so slender.

I was a tad bemused at the Evo piece about rallying. WRC has gone up in my estimation in 2017; did anybody of those Evo contributors watch something like Finland, Monte-Carlo, Mexico and get bored? They complained that WRC cars no longer accurately reflect their production counterparts. But that has been the way for a few decades now. And when one sees the likes of Latvala or Ogier finely control a massive slide in terrible conditions, I’m not particularly concerned about what car it is.

In an ideal world, I want all WRC cars to be RWD. I would accept far lower cornering speeds for more visible driver control. I think it would be safer as well, with drivers carrying far less speed on corner entry, which is important considering the number of spectators that line the outside of corners. Sadly, I don’t see much commercial appetite for this, and I think rallying has kind of been cemented as a 4WD, hatchback sport. I think it would take a lot to change that mentality. WRC unfortunately isn’t the easiest sport to televise. The free online coverage from Red Bull is a positive step in the right direction. Personally, I’ve been enjoying the dazzling exploits of the sport on BT Sport, including live stages.
 
Scouse is right about WTCC. The series is very lucky to be promoted by the owner of Eurosport, who have a vested interest in providing decent coverage. My ‘world’ championship would have 500 bhp at a minimum and RWD. FWD just isn’t right for a world championship. WTCC is the most boring and sterile championship in existence today, it’s completely dreadful. BTCC has proven that you can have plentiful brand representation without typical factory budgets, whilst having your own technical rules. I find DTM and Australian Supercars have machinery more worthy of a World Touring Car Championship. I would change almost everything about WTCC; that includes the technical framework, engines, circuits, race length and race organisation.

I absolutely agree with you about announcing rules, rather than asking manufacturers what they want. Alan Gow did this with the current BTCC regulations. The NGTC regulations have become so popular; certain major manufacturers have wanted to join the grid anyway, but on BTCC’s terms. It has to be that way. Most championships need an Alan Gow.

The ACO made the terrible error of asking existing LMP1 teams what they wanted. They said further hybridisation was needed, so the ACO introduced exactly that, only to find costs soared, previously-interested manufacturers got cold feet, and now those manufacturers that previously agreed to increasing hybridisation have left. Contrast to what IMSA did with prototypes in USA, called DPI. They’ve combined LMP2’s roster of eligible chassis manufacturers, with free choice of engine and selected bespoke bodywork. That has allowed the likes of Cadallic, Mazda and Nissan to run as OEM teams at a fraction of the cost of building a prototype from scratch. More manufacturers are interested as well, because theoretically if you already make a GT3 car, you can use your GT3 engine in a DPI prototype, and partner with a privateer team with bodywork that represents your brand – Nissan does this. The ACO with their bewildering LMP1 cars used to sneer at DPI, not liking the simplicity of DPI - who’s sneering now?

Imagine if BMW, Audi, Porsche, Ferrari, Nissan and others could be represented at Le Mans in LMP1, like DPI? Who exactly would object to this? What if this could be like the prototype answer to the highly successful GT3 formula? Sadly, I think the ACO would rather die than adopt another championship’s approach. DPI and the NGTC rules are the way forward; manufacturer representation without traditional manufacturer budgets.